Something a bit different on the blog today – the first in what will hopefully be a new series of interviews with characters from books.
First up: meet Onion from new dystopian fiction novel Sour Fruit, by Eli Allison.
In a northern river city, Onion is snatched. She has three days to escape before she meets an unpleasant fate, via a skin trader called The Toymaker. The novel explores ideas about what is home, how friendship can come from strange places and the debts we can’t ever pay back.
The interview
Who are you?
You think I’m telling some random from the internet my real name… how many trappings of daft you think I’m wearing? Call me Onion; that’s all you need to know. As for other info, I guess I can tell you I’m a girl… with a completely reasonable levels of anger no matter what you heard from those cretins down at the social. I’m also a Charlie… which no I do not want to talk about.
What’s your story?
You mean the social media circle jerk one, or the real one you sob out hunched over a bar? Bar right? I mean who doesn’t like to fatten themselves up on the misery of others?
I was born 2055 (for those muppets that can’t count, makes me the ripe old age of 15) born just before the Charlie loop-hole was closed so a spot of good luck in another wise shit show of a childhood. Care home aftercare home, never got permanently placed but then again who does anymore. I like films more than people, engineering more than people… pizza more than… basically like everything more than people. Except for wasps, we lost the Black Rhinoceros, the Orang-utans, the Borneo Elephant but those flying arseholes are still going strong. Fucking tragic.
If there was an Olympics for everyday activities, what activity would you win a medal in?
I’d take home the Bronze in, ‘Getting high off shit you find in the kitchen cupboard.’
The Silver in, ‘Speaking In Movie Quotes.’
And the Gold in, ‘Collecting Strange People as Friends.’
Tell us a secret that’s not in the book.
It was the Chemtrails that made me do it… nar just messing. Secret eh? I once bought my year 8 science teacher a birthday present. Sad right? It was a blue, structure of the atom tie, Ms Herschel would wear it every Friday, even that Friday she hung herself in the school hall off the climbing wall. Bunch of sports nerds found her, just dangling there as blue as the fabric noosed around her neck. If I hadn’t already been slapped around by life that might have fucked me up. As it was it just meant we got an extra day off school, and I used the time wisely to get wasted.
Find out more
Sour Fruit on Amazon
Sour Fruit on Goodreads
About the author
Eli Allison tells people at parties that she’s a writer, but she mostly spends the day in her knickers swearing at the laptop. She ping-ponged between one depressing job after another until her husband said, `take a year and write your book’.
Years later the book is done…There is a sneaking suspicion he would have kept quiet had he known quite how long it would have taken her. She lives in Yorkshire, works in her head and does not enjoy long walks on the beach or anywhere, in fact she gets upset at having to walk to the fridge for cheese. She suffers badly from cheese sweats but endures.
She’s also an amazing artist – check out some of her work on her website or follow her on Twitter.