Good morning everyone I’m very excited to be sharing a Guest Post from one if my favourite authors Leigh Russell today. Leigh’s new book is slightly different from her previous ones as it is dystopian fiction rather than a crime book. It sounds really interesting and I can’t wait to read it in the near future.
Before I share my guest post with you, here is a little bit about the book.
Book Synopsis:
In a world where food is scarce, the government rules and ordinary people only exist to serve, can there ever be happiness?
As a child, living in a post-apocalyptic world, the only person Rachel can rely on is her mother. But when her mother is killed, Rachel is initiated into The Programme where selected young girls are medicated to make them fertile.
Fearing for her future, Rachel escapes. But freedom comes at a price and Rachel must navigate through a terrifying landscape of persecution to survive.
What is on the other side of the city wall?
Will the repressive government hunt her down?
One thing is certain. Rachel’s world will never be the same again…
Rachel’s Story is available in ebook and paperback now. The ebook is currently the fantastic price of 99p. You can purchase your copy of this book via the links below.
Guest Post by Leigh Russell
Just over a year ago, few of us foresaw a pandemic that would effectively bring the world to a standstill. Perhaps if we had worried more about the possibility of such a calamity we might have been able to avoid it, or at least limited the devastation, but we were preoccupied with other issues.
When the virus struck, with such deadly effect, there was discussion among members of the writing community about how to deal with it in our books. Some writers felt they couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. Along with many others, I made a conscious decision to completely ignore coronavirus in my crime novels.
Fiction for me is an escape from reality, and the pandemic was the last thing I wanted to be thinking about when writing. So my detective, Geraldine Steel, continues to investigate murders without any need for social distancing, masks, or singing happy birthday while washing her hands. She lives in a parallel pandemic-free universe, which was the right decision for her. Readers of my crime novels want to read about fictional murder investigations, not about sickness in the real world. In the words of TS Eliot, ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’
But writers find inspiration all sorts of unlikely places and the pandemic started me thinking, in spite of my decision to ignore it in my writing, What might happen if this new virus evolved to attack not just humans but all life forms? Of course that would ultimately prove self destructive for the virus, if it killed off all possible hosts, but the idea was sufficiently disturbing to capture my imagination.
So a vision of a dystopian future emerged in my mind, a post-apocalyptic world where food is scarce, and the government use fear and deprivation to maintain absolute power over the people. This is the world in which Rachel grows up. As a child, she is initiated into The Programme where selected young girls are medicated to make them fertile, and conditioned to obey. Fearing for her future, Rachel escapes, only to discover that freedom comes at a price and she must navigate her way through a terrifying landscape of persecution if she is to survive.
Dystopian literature offers us more than fantasies about possible future worlds. As with other novels in the genre, Rachel’s Story invites the reader to think about our own world today, and the direction in which we could be heading, as individuals, as a society, and as a species. In so doing, Rachel’s Story also looks at issues including women’s role in society, the exercise and abuse of power, love and betrayal, and addiction.
I found the idea for Rachel’s Story captivating, but launching a dystopian novel was challenging for someone known as a crime writer. Having written twenty-three crime novels, I was afraid my readers might be disappointed by my decision to try something new. So far I am absolutely thrilled that reviews have been very positive. I can only hope that when the devastation caused by coronavirus slides into history, people will continue to read all my books, including dystopian story that was in part inspired by the real twenty-first century pandemic.
Thanks for the interesting guest post Leigh. I can’t wait to read the book now.
About The Author:
Leigh Russell has sold over a million crime fiction novels, and writes full time. Published in English and in translation throughout Europe and in China, her Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson titles have appeared on many bestseller lists, and reached #1 on kindle. Leigh’s work has been nominated for several major awards, including the CWA New Blood Dagger and CWA Dagger in the Library, and her books have been optioned by major television production company Avalon Television. She chairs the CWA Debut Dagger Award, and is a Royal Literary Fellow. Leigh writes the Lucy Hall mystery series published by Thomas and Mercer. Find out more about Leigh on her website http://www.leighrussell.co.uk where news, reviews and interviews are posted, with a schedule of Leigh’s appearances. You can contact Leigh via her website, where you can subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on Twitter and facebook.
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