my girl

12 Jan 2019 news 2 Comments

VikingWoman_ProgressUpdate07I haven’t come up with a name for my character yet so I call her “my girl.” Christina Myrvold is working on a stunning visual representation, which I plan to hang on the wall next to my desk. She’s a sad one, my girl, believing her mother got rid of her by giving her to a Swedish trader when really she was just trying to save her daughter from a worse fate. I’m not a romantic—I couldn’t stand Outlander—so I’m not going to pretend that my girl eventually comes to love her much older White husband. She’s twelve when he starts raping her and she takes her own life four years (and two babies) later. It’s grim, especially with R. Kelly in my newsfeed right now, and so I’m writing my girl’s words in verse. I want to reflect her inability to speak fully and/or fluently in a language she doesn’t understand. And I want to show the trauma of being young and alone and afraid with no real way of going home. I love to travel (well, I love being in new places) and I know it’s a privilege to book a ticket and simply fly away. I was unhappy in Toronto and because my father was in Brooklyn, I was able to move. Now I’m trying to arrange my life so that I can leave the US when I need to. Yesterday I booked a trip to London; I just got back from IMG_2819Sweden but that wasn’t an enjoyable trip, really. Necessary, and productive, but not fun. In London I’ve got friends waiting for me, and Rosa (who’s spending the month there) has already made a reservation for tea at Kensington Palace. My hotel room looks tiny but I don’t need much space, just a quiet corner where I can set up my laptop and write. I’m aiming to have three solid chapters and a complete summary/table of contents to share with my agent by the end of this month. I don’t see The Ring as a young adult novel but all the main characters are children or teenagers so that might be my best bet. It scares me a little, this story. It’s been unfolding in my head for years but now that I need to write it down…I wonder what I’m trying to say. We don’t need another mirror that merely shows Black girls being exploited and abused in the past. There has to be a path to healing hidden somewhere in my imagination. My girl has two daughters and there’s hope there, though they make very different choices in the way they live their lives. And there’s a boy who doesn’t quite grow to manhood but whose kindness sustains the three girls in various ways. I made a To Do list today—plenty of reading, organizing, and research to be done before London…