Kerria Logan and the Pirate Caper

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 Kerria Logan and the Pirate Caper 

(Post 38)

Kerria Logan and the Pirate Caper (2003) is one of those stories that pokes around in my brain for a while masquerading as a weird idea. In the 1980s and 1990s I did some scriptwriting and storylining, and was lucky enough to attend a brainstorming meeting with several other scriptwriters in Sydney. We drank improbably strong coffee and ate pastries, but that's another story. The experience was interesting, partly because we all came up with increasingly elaborate ideas which we eventually realised were probably a bit too far out. Being in a room with creative brains firing off all these impossible scenarios was fun though, and so was the insight I got into television scripting for animation.

Fast forward to the early 2000s when a market came up wanting genre titles for use in schools. Somehow I remembered my experience with animation, and the way animation characters differ from live action. You can put them in ridiculous situations without having to consider insurance or stuntmen. You can also rig escapes and chases that hark back to the old comic book serial chestnut; "with one bound, Dick was free!"

Some characters have origin stories, but they are rarely seen as babies. They just spring up at the age they are likely to stay. And of course, they rarely have downtime. They live in a permanent state of drama.

Kerria Logan is an adventurous girl. She tells her own story, detailing the perilous situations in which she finds herself. In between hair-raising scenarios, she seems to dwell in a grey quiet place where she sometimes hears voices. She can't remember her early childhood. She is, in fact, a character invented by a couple of happy-go-lucky nerds who argue the point and love putting her in life-threatening situations. When Kerria finally realises who and what she is, she goes on the offensive, causing genuine headaches to her creators by bouncing about in their brains. 

Kerria Logan got her first name from a tall yellow-flowered plant my grandmother used to grow. I'm quite surprised it hasn't entered mainstream naming, since it is easy to spell and to pronounce, has a pleasant meaning, and sits comfortably alongside existing names such as Kerry, Kerrin, Karen and Carrie. Logan, her surname, is an Irish name I used for a short story and liked, and so used again. 

Kerria Logan and the Pirate Caper is still in print. It is available from various places on the 'net, including Buy it here.

About the Blog

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. This preamble will be pasted to the top of each post, so feel free to skip it in future.

The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist.