Avril Silk

THE WOLFBLOOD PROPHECIES

I have just published Oxide A- Zee, book six of a seven story sequence, The Wolfblood Prophecies. The though-provoking, challenging, dark fantasy stories are aimed at readers over twelve.

For new readers, the best place is to start with Forget Me Knot, a story about remembrance and forgetting; about the abuse of power and the corruption of innocence and beauty.

Jo Lakota comes from a gifted family. Her mother, Alithea, and her Aunt Lethe are twins; Mistresses of Memory, able to bestow remembrance and forgetting. Her father, Paul, descended from Native American trackers, can locate things that are lost.

Jo’s own powers are still developing but she already shows remarkable promise. Lethe, chief executive of VergissMeinNicht, a sinister organisation founded by the chilling Titus Stigmurus, wants to train and harness Jo’s abilities in pursuit of the VMN’s mission to build a brave new world free of unproductive or defective people.

In trying to escape from Lethe and Titus, and Sebastian who can invade her dreams, Jo begins a terrifying journey to London through long abandoned underground tunnels and Deep Level Shelters. She meets up with Reg, one of those resisting the rise of the VMN; The Ferals, a gang of disturbed children and an old woman called Crazy Em, all taking shelter with other displaced misfits in their subterranean world.

There is a brief respite in Jo’s dangerous journey when she finds shelter with Quinn, an old friend of her mother’s, who runs a shop dedicated to Bob Dylan, near Camden Lock. From Quinn Jo learns some of the background to the rivalry between her mother and her aunt, but before long she is back on the run.

In Mourning Glory, book two, Jo travels to America in search of a friend imprisoned by Lethe at the Funfair of Forgotten Dreams, and meets some of her Native American relatives. During her travels she sings in a gospel choir, where she encounters the unforgettable Reverend Obadiah Moon, an old flame of Lethe’s.

Heart Seize continues Jo’s adventures on her return to London. A strange treasure hunt takes her, once again, deep underground and on a terrifying journey into the past.

P.N.E. tells the back story of characters already familiar from Forget Me Knot, Mourning Glory and Heart Seize. As children, Jo’s mother and aunt are affected by terrible events arising from the expansion of the nuclear industry in 1950s America. Jo is caught up in a journey of dreams and nightmares as she, and those around her, try to alter the past and future. The Woodstock Generation meets 1984 in this exciting and disturbing adventure.

After the tumultuous events of P.N.E., in Sinnerman Star Jo hopes that life back in England will return to some kind of normal. However, everything has changed – and rarely for the better. As ever, she finds consolation in music but the ground beneath her feet is shifting and she struggles with loss at all levels. Meanwhile, in the political arena, there is a major re-branding operation as the corrupt, discredited VergissMeinNicht gives way to Compassionate Solutions.

In Oxide A- Zee, dark forces are gathering for Jo Lakota and her friends and family as the corrupt, rich and powerful Gatherers seek to control the talents of those, like Jo, who are empaths. People close to Jo are abducted and imprisoned, subject to ruthless experimentation as their captors try to steal their precious abilities and their capacity for resistance. Modern medicine and traditional herbal remedies augment the search for the scientific formula that will lead the fight against the Gatherers.

All six books can be found on Amazon’s Kindle site, and hard copies are also available there. Avril’s son James has been her editor and collaborator throughout the project. ‘He is particularly good at writing the explosions and fights,’ says Avril. ‘And he has an eagle eye for lapses into feebleness and sentimentality!’

More information:

I have a varied writing C.V and 2007 saw the successful publication, by Birlinn, of Dreams of the Road, a collection of memories and stories of West Country Gypsies co-written with Dr. Martin Levinson. We had the pleasure of talking about the book to a full audience at Ways with Words in Dartington, near Totnes.

Both Martin and I write independently. My current projects include The Wolfblood Prophecies, a series of novels for young adults. (See above)

Some years ago I was short listed for the Ian St. James Award with Crystal, a poetic gothic horror story and received tremendous encouragement from the organisers of the competition to develop one of my short stories, A Window on Her Life, into a full length adult novel. This is now finished (at last) and is called Fire and Ice. It tells the story of Penny Marsden, who is picking up the pieces of her broken life. On the back cover I have written:

When everything is broken,

and all you have is a pile of sharp, dangerous glass,

sombre, poisonous, heavy lead,

love, sorrow and passion,

there is only one thing to do.

Make something

beautiful, strong and enduring.

Make a stained glass window.

I am working on two plays for radio; Talking to Bob is an imaginary conversation with Bob Dylan. My Beautiful Baguette, is a comedy about stroppy women based on The Chronicles of Focking Barton, (pronounced F’b’ton by estate agents) which I co-wrote with Madeleine Morey. My Beautiful Baguette, looks at life in a small rural community, where everyone thinks they know everyone else’s business and exactly what they need to do to sort themselves out. The production of a local newsletter connects a very disparate group of people, with the normal scattering of stroppy women. Contributors to the newsletter meet in My Beautiful Baguette, a coffee shop, where the formidable editor, Maud, dreams her dreams of cutting-edge journalism and a complete absence of poems about cats.

The characters were conceived a while back, and refuse to go away. They were inspired by my experiences of living in a small village heaving with eccentrics, and ten years of working on a local feminist, co-operative magazine. They are portrayed with affection that has a few sharp edges. I like to include the full age range and I particularly enjoy older characters who have lived life to the full and refuse to shuffle off to the communal lounge in the nursing home.

Needless to say, My Beautiful Baguette is not really a one-off. None of the characters would settle for that, so I have planned out many more episodes. Recently some friends and I, under the leadership of sound engineer Ivor Richards, produced an episode for radio.

Before retirement from teaching I used my creative skills to encourage others to tell their stories; my Gypsy pupils worked on a video and produced a book – True Romanies, True Friends - about their experiences during the Tintinhull Project, a wide-ranging, multi-agency challenge to the mutually hostile relations between the Gypsy families and their neighbours.

When I taught in a unit for psychiatrically ill children I also wrote and produced five musical plays specially geared to the young people in our care, fully utilising the talents of pupils and staff in all aspects of production. Inspired by Virgina Axline’s Dibs, In Search of Self, I used therapeutic play where appropriate.

As a member of Cock Crow Stone, a local theatre group, I was involved in writing for all our performance, particularly a musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, which was subsequently produced by young people in a school and a youth club.

I was Chair of our local arts group for twenty-two years and on the Board of Take Art, Somerset’s Rural Arts agency. The Community Arts work I do, including writing and making stained glass windows with schools, is always about using the arts to engage people of all ages in meaningful, pleasurable development and success.

I was writer in residence in the village of Stowell, helping them produce the Stowell Millennium Book, and played a major role in the production of the Ashbrittle Millennium Book as editor and interviewer-in-chief. I recently produced and published The Rose Queen Dined on Spam and Semolina – a collection of life stories about and by members of the village Lunch Club.

I was part of the Somerset Just Women feminist, co-operative magazine team for ten happy years. I was at pains to use the magazine for entertainment, information and as a forum for women to find their voice and develop their skills. My regular column was sharp and funny; I also wrote in depth on feminism and religion, leading to publication in a diverse range of magazines, from Red Pepper to Just 17.