Please give a warm welcome to Historical
Mystery author, N. Joy.
Author’s Inspiration
I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I could remember. I’d been working on
various ideas for a while but couldn’t connect fully with my muse. A couple of
years ago I was reading a magazine article about the usual Jack the Ripper
suspects. Right at the end was a paragraph detailing a suspect I’d not heard of
before. I loved the idea, it was quirky and different. That was it. My muse had
kicked it up a gear.
I am by no means a Ripper buff, but I’ve read up on the unsolved murders
over the years and am captivated by the mystery and the theories surrounding
the killings. Why did they do what they did, why did they stop, was it one
person, a duo or copy-cat killers? Were they killed themselves, arrested for a
different crime, left the country or did they simply lose it with the horrific
death of Mary Kelly, and go insane? The questions are endless and the answers
elusive. It is the intrigue, mystery, and the unresolved status surrounding
Jack (or Jill) that I found to be my inspiration.
I couldn’t shake the ghost of this latest suspect, the twist to the tale
that she provided haunted me. The only way to be rid of her was to weave her
imaginary tale to it’s historical conclusion. The cause of my motivation was
the convicted murderess Mary Pearcey. I explored the nature of the human mind,
and the capacity of a person’s actions. This offered a myriad of possibilities.
Mary would become a passionate yet cold-blooded murderess.
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| Mary Pearcey |
She is the novels protagonist, a female in a man’s world. I enjoyed discovering
the gender stereotypes of the age and equipping Mary with the persona to break
a few of them!
Once I had a name I found information about the last few years of her
life was readily available. None stated what her early life was like, what lead
her to behave the way she did. Armed with facts from the trial and a rough time-line
of her later deeds I needed to fashion a journey where the destination would be
the magistrates court. I wanted the story to be as authentic as possible, so I
threw myself into researching Victorian England. I learnt about education, professions
and investigated the poverty that was rife in the East End. It was like being
back at school (but I enjoyed it!) I didn’t want to start the novel with the
Whitechapel murders, I wanted to create a unique tale. As a result, Mary had
several different jobs and fought many personal demons in my quest to turn her
into one of Britain’s most notorious killers. I hope I wove the known facts of
her depression and alcoholism into a believable character. The novel took shape
with Marys voice coming out in my words.
I allowed my version of the Ripper to stalk the pages and lives of people
who once lived, creating a fictional world in the shadows of the past. I wanted
her to be a disturbed individual who used her addictions to cope with life but
to also experience episodes that would make her character’s final actions more understandable
in the eyes of the reader.
I infiltrated Marys world, ‘lived’ in a time that is different to my own
to write from Marys point of view which was both exciting and harrowing but
also a little troubling when it came to the murderous aspects of her
personality, but I did discover that I had a taste for ale! There were a few disturbed
nights of sleep as I opened my mind, and world, to that of a serial killer.
N.Joy
N.Joy is an author, artist and mum born and bred
in the inspirational setting of North Devon. She is passionate about literature
and giving everybody the opportunity to read.
As a teenager she had poetry published in
anthologies has exhibited art locally N.Joy's personal interests including
writing, reading, drawing and miniature sculpture as well as wood work which
she’s not very good at! N.Joy has loved writing since she was a child (wrote
her first book aged 9) and loves cats, wolves, unicorns, dragons and Christian
Slater!
Jill
In the autumn of 1888 terror stalked the streets of Whitechapel, women of
the night were slaughtered in the streets but the perpetrator, ‘Jack the
Ripper’, was never caught.
Follow a surprising suspect as she weaves her mayhem into a tapestry of
blood and lies in a twist on one of Britain’s most notorious unsolved murders.
What if Jack was a Jill?
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Fascinating... I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to "get under the skin" of a serial killer.
ReplyDeleteHello Jacqui. It was hard to into that mindset of a killer, especially one that did what this one did! Spent a time watching dissections and reading psychology reports .... and it never quite leave you!
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