Devastating Debut from Author in her 80s

BRISTOL, U.K. - Dec. 10, 2017 - PRLog -- Author William Golding, in the days before his knighthood and Nobel Prize, used to entertain audiences with a desert island story very different from his best-selling Lord of the Flies. In this alternative version, the stranded children had a glorious time and bags of fun. It was a bedtime story requested by Golding's own children, and after reading it to them, he told his wife he was determined to write a story about how a group of stranded boys would really behave. She said, 'Why don't you?' and the rest is history.

But at one Cheltenham Literature Festival many years ago there was someone in the audience as incensed by Golding's portrayal in Lord of the Flies as he had been by that island paradise. That someone was Mary Brown. 'Of course the bedtime story was idealistic nonsense,' she says, 'but Golding got it wrong too. That's not how children would act. And I immediately said I would write a book about how a group of girls would behave.'

But whereas Golding produced the first draft of Lord of the Flies very quickly, Mary took longer to create 'I used to be'. Not only did life, a career and raising a family get in the way, there were many questions to be tackled. 'Not least,' she says, 'where could my island be, and how would a group of girls get onto it?'

Inspiration came unexpectedly as Mary sat in a train on her way to Gloucester Prison where she worked. 'I saw a triangular patch of wasteland,' she tells me. 'It was between two diverging railway lines, and was covered in yellow ragwort and purple buddleia.' Although her thoughts had been on work and not on her reaction to Golding's stranded boys, she immediately saw both her island and its inhabitants. That triangle of waste ground became the Tip, the place where the central character, Kayleigh, and her friends congregated, and 'I used to be' was born.

There is another, unplanned, way in which 'I used to be' diverges from Golding's story; Maude, in her 70s, sits centre stage with the stranded girls. 'I did not invite Maude to the island,' Mary says. 'She just arrived one day, quite early in the writing process, and I realized that growing old was an important part of the girls' stories.'

'I knew we had something special,' says Dan Grubb, CEO of Fantastic Books Publishing, 'but I'm afraid we didn't give Mary an easy time. We asked for some substantial changes before we took the manuscript. Luckily, Mary was prepared to give it a go and the end result is a gem of a book.'

'I used to be' explores people at the margins of society, children already labelled no-hopers before they reach adolescence, alongside the searing journey of grief and loneliness that has chased Maude into old age. The stories of Kayleigh and Maude are compelling as they entwine; their different backgrounds both clashing and meshing. The gritty realism bespeaks the author's working life spent educating and getting to know those at the fringes, the people that society has turned its back on.

A long time in the making, 'I used to be' is published as Mary enters her ninth decade, and is every inch as compelling a tale as the one that lit its initial spark, Golding's award-winning Lord of the Flies.

About the book
'I used to be' officially launched 10th December 2017. http://Tinyurl.com/MaryBrownIUsedToBe

About Mary Brown
Find out more about Mary Brown on the Fantastic Books Store: https://www.fantasticbooksstore.com/authors/mary-brown.

Further information and contact details
Further information can be obtained from Fantastic Books Publishing.

Email: fbp-publicity@outlook.com          Phone: 074 1538 8882