Blast from the Past - Mending Michelle
Added 2018-06-24 13:00:59 +0000 UTCThe briefest of story descriptions - "A woman arrives unexpectedly in Parkdale" - introduced one of my longest commissions.
I wrote Mending Michelle in 2013 - a one-off commission and one of the longest stories I’ve written.
Michelle wanted a tale that started dark, and I think I delivered that. I often draw on music when I’m writing, and for this story, I used Frightened Rabbit’s State Hospital as my soundtrack.
Agent-wise, it’s Kimberley Everett’s story (we saw her first in Fossil’s The Next Little Thing, and Dr Sucette also features. Their conversation in the doctor’s office, and the resulting aftermath, is one of my favorite moments in the story.
Mending Michelle is a story not of revenge, or even conspiracy, but the struggle to recover from physical and emotional abuse in early childhood. Michelle's flashbacks are stark, sometimes brutal, and reminder of how vulnerable children can be. Her regression was a response to her arrival in Parkdale (a road accident) and I see Parkdale’s behaviour here as a genuine attempt to deliver a second chance to someone in terrible shape.
Of course, whether Parkdale actually succeeds in "mending" Michelle is another question.
The story also touched on one of the biggest questions for me about this universe - what happens to people’s diseases or injuries when Parkdale makes them younger - do they disappear? - a question that dominates the multi-story Carly series.
At the end of everything, hey, it’s just a story. But the writing of it affected me, and the response from readers was a strong one. Five years on, I remain proud of this tale, a one-off commission whose themes continue to echo through the Parkdale universe.
