I had always wanted to write. However, I was not decided on which medium I wanted to write in. I then made a choice to be a filmmaker and so, at the age of fourteen I wrote to the National Film and Television School in London who kindly advised that if I was not Steven Spielberg, then I would have to undertake a degree. So, I followed their advice and graduated with a 1st Class Honours Bachelor Degree in scriptwriting and media production.
I then completed a Masters with Distinction and while undertaking a PhD won a place on the reserve list for the Frank Knox scholarship for a fully funded post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University in African American Studies. My academic interest in racial identity was borne out of the fact that my grandfather was Algerian and raised in Dundee and so, my mother was black-skinned, as were my four uncles. However, my aunt was white-skinned; as was I. I had grown up hearing the “N” word used in reference to my own mother and so, this insight into racism despite being white-skinned, had led me to want to study slavery and the concept of “passing” from one race to another.
However, after getting a top New York
literary agency’s support for a psychological thriller I was writing set in New
England where I had once worked, which encompassed racial, sexual and religious
politics, I gave up my ambition of Harvard, choosing to write creatively rather
than academically. The debut novel set in the States was never published and if
it had been it would have been over 1000 pages long and too complicated to be
commercially viable. So, on the advice of a fellow academic and author who told
me to “write what you know” I filed my debut novel away and wrote the DI Jack
Brady series set in Whitley Bay in the North East of England where I currently reside.
Ironically, Brady should have been a
woman, but I could not write the character from a female perspective. I was an
ardent feminist (I still am) and found myself politically bound up to the point
that my protagonist was too perfect. She had no flaws. How could she? After
all, I had created her to be so resilient, so strong…so very boring. So much my
heroine but so very far removed from reality – my reality.
Michel Foucault’s words: “Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to
remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to
have no face” hit me hard. My personal life was a sham and to survive it, I
had found myself masquerading. I could not write what I knew, because it was
too shaming. Too humiliating and ultimately, too painful. Feminist that I was,
I had found myself suffering from domestic abusive for the duration of the five
years I had been writing my DI Brady books. Whilst in academia I had arrogantly
struggled to understand the intricate reasons why victims do not/cannot leave
their abuser. Ironically, I came to acknowledge first-hand what it was to live
in fear of one’s life. I suffered in silence, too embarrassed to speak out, and
ultimately, feeling as if somehow I was to blame. So, I held onto that dark
secret. Until now.
I was one of the fortunate ones – I survived
to write my tale. After five years of abuse my ex was arrested, charged and
convicted of beating me up. He has now disappeared – his last attempt at
controlling me – but it is not his being convicted of domestic violence that
has liberated me, it is my decision to break the silence. Do I still live in
fear? Sometimes. I would be lying if I did not admit that. The police believed
he would have killed me that night. I know I could have become nothing more
than a statistic. Two years on and I am not ashamed anymore. I accept that
domestic violence transcends gender, race, class and age; that the word ‘victim’ has no type. I am the antithesis
of a victim, which is why I am speaking out. Which is the reason I am now
writing about what I know through a new female protagonist. It is a
psychological thriller that twists and turns with the usual expected and not so
expected thrills. But I wrote it from a place of authenticity, for I knew what
it was to live in fear of one’s life. But I also know what it is to survive and
metamorphose from a victim into a victorious warrior.
The
Last Cut features DS Harri Jacobs – a female cop who herself has been a victim
and makes the choice to become a survivor; someone who does not need to be
saved, for she saves herself. For in this novel the hunter becomes the hunted. Simply
put, she takes back control. Crucially, Harri’s namesakes are three inspirational
female writers (Harriet E. Wilson, Harriet Ann Jacobs and Harriet Beecher
Stowe) who used their work to battle against racial and gender oppression.
According to legend, Abraham Lincoln credited Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met
her in 1862 as being “the little woman
who wrote the book that started this great war.” Whether true or not,
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin was still hugely influential and it was her brave portrayal of
the horrific ills of slavery that shocked a nation.
I am now a patron for the charity Someone Cares which counsels
survivors of childhood abuse, rape and domestic violence and if I can dispel
the myth about victimhood through my writing, then I know what I endured was
worth it.
'A really cracking read!' Martina Cole
Purchase from SHOTS A-Store
The Last Cut, £8.99 pbk June 01, 2017 Hodder & Stoughton
