Valour

Artwork by Amber Maren

The Inspiration for Valour…

Valour is a retelling of Ernest Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition, with female protagonists, magic and monsters.

I remember the first time I read about Shackleton, having vaguely heard of the name. It was in a children’s book about his Trans-Antarctic expedition that I was reading with my son. I couldn’t believe how he managed to overcome disaster and keep his 28 men alive for two whole years, when the outside world assumed they were all dead. It seemed crazy to me that they survived in spite of the enormous odds stacked against them.

I then read Shackleton’s own account of the expedition, and one by his captain. I couldn’t get enough. And then my brother in law said ‘women would never have survived that expedition’. And that got me thinking. What if women had been on that expedition? What if they had led the expedition? And the characters appeared in my mind’s eye when I was at a sea shanty festival (there’s even a shanty I wrote in the story!). Hester appeared to me so clearly, staggering down the streets. I went home and the story just started pouring out of me.

This story means a lot, especially because, as a mum, I felt as though I’d lost myself, and it was through solo adventures that I began to make my way back to someone I could be proud of, rather than just ‘mum’. Before I had kids I did a lot of sailing, both in dinghies and yachts. My biggest expedition was sailing from Falmouth, along the South coast of England and into London, but I have also sailed down the coast of Sweden, and over the North Sea from Harwich to Belgium and the Netherlands. Being at sea is in my blood, and I come from a line of shipwrights from the North of England.

After having my kids I haven’t sailed so much, but I started challenging myself to step out of my comfort zone on bigger and bigger solo adventures, culminating on an 80 mile cycling trip along the Scottish Outer Hebrides, battling headwinds, rain, and camping on my own. I was terrified most of the time, and cried a lot, but the experience has made me so much stronger. I wanted to explore this duality in my personality, the woman who goes and does the thing she craves, and the woman who is absolutely scared out of her wits doing it. And that was where the character of Charlotte came from. A woman who wants to go on adventures, but is fearful. And then Hester is the version of myself who buries the fears deep and does things anyway.

I wrote this story for women who have been told they can’t do things by men, by other women, or even by their own beliefs in what they can achieve. I wrote it for those of us who step out the front door every day feeling a little bit anxious, but quietly determined. I wrote it to give hope, and impart the warm fuzzy feeling that hope brings in these dark times. My greatest dream is that someone reads this story and it changes what they think they’re capable of. That someone might go and have an adventure because of what they’re read. And most of all, that someone might find Valour in the face of fear.