Some ideas die along the way because they don’t quite fit and get scratched out with black Sharpie marker

Emer Morrisey is a six year old Irish girl in 1650, when Oliver Cromwell’s army attacks her village and kills her family. She is brought up by her uncle and aunt who sell her to a man in Paris when she is fourteen. When she escapes him, and then escapes Paris , she ships herself to the Caribbean and eventually becomes a ruthless pirate.

Saffron Adams is a very clever teenager in the 1980s, trying to please everyone until she can finally escape her loser family and get to Jamaica , where she knows there is treasure buried, because she buried it 326 years before, when she was Emer Morrisey.

Location clearly is a key defining element of THE DUST OF 100 DOGS. From the green hills of Ireland , to the drizzly streets of Paris , to the balmy beaches Jamaica , the setting of the story has almost as much character as the characters themselves. Why did you choose the particular locations, and what did they have to do with the evolution of the story? Lees verder →