ADRIAN SCOTT'S REVENGE

Karen: Adrian Scott is a multi-published author with over sixty stories to his credit. He's here from Australia to give us the exclusive behind the scenes preview of his new chilling release, REVENGE.  

THE WRITING OF ‘REVENGE’ by Adrian Scott

Karen has kindly offered to give me the chance to tell, on her blog, the story of ‘Revenge’ – the research involved, and the creation of the story itself.

‘Revenge’ is set in Sydney, Australia, in the 1840’s, at a time before the invention of the percussion pistol and the repeating revolver, when the flintlock and the blunderbuss were the weapons of common use, a time before the telephone and the ‘horseless carriage,’ as the automobile was sometimes known.

The research was already well-known to me because, almost without exception, my novels are set in this time-period, many of them in Australia, so I was already well-acquainted with the city as it was, and society as it first came into being in a continent that was seen, by England, as a depository for its own criminal element. Times have changed, and society is different now; the city, too has changed – some of the old emporiums and shops still remain in scattered places, but most of them have given way to new buildings. The streets, however, are still there, and still just as crowded as they always were, although the traffic passing is different now.

 But the story behind ‘Revenge,’ and how it came into being is, in itself, another story altogether.

My three daughters have, for years, suggested I write my own autobiography, but I have always refused, saying it was a tale I could never tell, because of the painful memories involved.

Finally, some time ago, however, I found a way to do it: I created a work of fiction, and based it partly on my own childhood and early adulthood, on my mother’s illness and eventual passing away when she was only forty-three years old, and my father’s treatment of us both.

The character of Dr Marcus Learnaby is based on my father, although he is painted as a cold-blooded killer – that much is fiction. To my knowledge, he never broke a law.

Parkin Learnaby,his son, is based on myself, and my own life as it was then, and the character of the doctor’s wife, Alora, is my mother.

I made the principal character a doctor because my father enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force at the start of World War II, and was trained as a medical orderly, and I believe that, from then onward, his one desire was to become a doctor. But in those days, university studies were reserved for those who could afford to take five years out of their lives and devote them to study, and who could afford the high cost of university education. So my father’s dream never came to be.

I also believe that the strict military discipline he lived under was partly to blame for the authoritarian figure he later became to his own family.

Neither did we have the wealth attributed to the Learnabys; my parents were working-class, and I’m grateful for that: I learned to make the best of what you have, and to help others where you can. 

Because of a childhood illness that affected the heart, I spent many years in hospital, and was never able to become the son he would have wished to have – taking part in sport, being lively and active which, I think, was another part of the jigsaw he became.

So ‘Revenge’ is a work of fiction, but it is also an autobiography. The title does not refer to any thought on my part at ‘getting even’ for the past; instead, I feel a sense of pity for my father because he couldn’t see the damage he was doing all through those early years.

‘Revenge’ refers, instead, to Detective Clive Robur’s revenge upon the fictional characters who took control of Sydney’s underworld in my novel – the ‘dark man’ and the ‘little Greek’.

Should you read ‘Revenge,’ I sincerely hope that you will pause before you speak those angry words to the ones who love you, and hesitate before you act in temper. Those simple words, those actions, can cause damage far into the future. That is my hope for ‘Revenge’ – that it might result in some good coming from a time when my life was much harsher than it is now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Restricted to a Disability Pension due to a factory accident in 1980 at the age of 35, Adrian undertook part-time university studies at Mitchell College of Advanced Education, gaining an Associate Diploma, majoring in Theatre Arts and Journalism, then a degree in Communications after moving to Queensland in 1984; followed by a Graduate Diploma in Public Relations, and a Masters in Professional Writing.

In 1984, he and his second wife, Penny, and their three daughters moved from Bathurst, NSW; to Bundaberg, Queensland. In 2008, after his daughters had left home, he and Penny sold the family home and moved to a retirement village in Caboolture, Queensland, where he cared for his wife until her death in March 2011 from pancreatic cancer.

In 2008, he switched from writing short stories in the horror genre, which he had been writing since the age of nine, several of which have been published locally, to writing novels.

The first ten novels he has written have since been published as e-books by Renaissance E-Books, California, and the first of his novels published as a paperback, ‘Revenge’, was released by Rebecca J. Vickery Publications, USA; in  April 2012. To date, he has had twenty-two of his novels published as ebooks.

Adrian has written sixty-two horror novels, and is now working on his sixty-third.

He is 67 years of age, and sees no end to his writing, putting in up to eight hours a day on his novels. He describes himself as ‘addicted to writing.’

To Purchase a copy of REVENGE: AMAZON  

SMASHWORDS 

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