Carol M Mottershead

I was born in the north east of England. As a young person I used to dress up as a nun wearing my mothers' black half-slip. I loved the way if felt swinging round my shoulders, ha! As the only nun's I'd heard of were teachers, I'd play at being a teacher dressed as a nun and I considered that as my future for such a long time. It was almost half of the summer holidays, a whole three weeks, lol! (Well I was only 10/11yrs old at the time.)

I began playing the piano from the age of around 8/9yrs and the school would ask me to play the piano during assemblies, this continued into the secondary school where I then dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. :-)

Unfortunately, maybe for my future audiences, at the age of 14yrs my family moved to a new town. My parents tried, but couldn't find another piano teacher to take me on, so that particular dream fell by the wayside. I never once dreamed of becoming a writer.

My first attempt at writing that I remember, was a musical play... to be performed on roller skates.

At the time I loved Toad of Toad Hall, so my play consisted of the characters introducing themselves to the audience. My school teacher gave me permission to get one or two of my friends and perform the 'musical play', but it never happened. Although my friends were keen to take part, they didn't all skate. Regardless of the 'failure' of the project, I still enjoyed skating and performing my play outside our front door, it was a perfect 'stage'.

As I had a musical 'bent' I was often in the school shows such as H.M.S. Pinafore or Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan, they were always fun to be in (plus you got to stay in when it was cold outside lol!) I guess I could say I had a penchant for performing at an early age.

A3 My first 'book' practically wrote itself! I started writing 'JOAN - Put on a happy face' in 2018. With the help of Kindle Direct Publishing, I published the book in September 2020. I had never dreamed of becoming a writer, let alone a 'published' author.

I am an entertainment agent and I love it! But after my husband died 5th February 2017, I was at a loss as to what to do with myself. The agency took up most of my time, but I still felt like at a loss... I've always been either a daughter, a wife, a mother, or more recently, a grandmother; but now I was a widow, I had no one to consider other than myself! I needed something, a reason to keep going.

Then one day, one of my entertainers, a puppeteer called Professor Brian Llewellyn, was on Good Morning Britain, a British TV show. He was being interviewed about the British iconic puppet show Punch & Judy, a famous seaside puppet show that's loved by children everywhere. Local authorities, schools etc had been cancelling his bookings citing the controversial topics of domestic violence and racism as their reasons for cancelling.

Punch and Judy has always been controversial; it's been accused, many times over the 400+ years of it's history, as promulgating domestic violence because Mr Punch hits people. The show contains a black minstrelling puppet they claim makes the show racist, it's all ridiculous to anyone who has actually listened to what the show is about! The puppeteer became frustrated when the TV presenter told him to 'put the puppet away, it frightens me!' She was referring to the black puppet that Brian had brought out, along with Mr Punch, to show the cameras. After being asked if he would ever change the format of his show to leave out the violence, he replied... 'No! It's a traditional story known to everyone. There's only 45 seconds of any violence in my show, and I don't understand what all the fuss is about anyway, they're only blocks of wood!'

Only blocks of wood? resounded in my head... ONLY BLOCKS OF WOOD?

I couldn't get the phrase out of my head. I found myself feeling angry, first because people were stopping one of my entertainers from earning a living, which I was sure was against the law, but secondly because in all the Punch & Judy shows I'd ever seen, I'd only ever heard Judy call to the children to shout for her if they saw Mr Punch doing anything naughty! The show actually tells the audience NOT to accept or ignore the naughtiness (ie violence etc) but to speak out - to tell someone, report him! The puppet show is about the naughty antics that Mr Punch gets upto. He flaunts authority figures and gets himself into all sorts of trouble and his wife, Judy doesn't approve.

People weren't listening to the 'words' of the show, only seeing the actions! It was wrong! I got so annoyed, I write a three-page rant to the press. Realising a letter would probably be ignored, I decided to make a video. The video would be a silhouetted 'Judy puppet' with her crooked nose and mop hat 'hidden' by backlighting silhouetting her outline. She would be interviewed by a well-known TV newspresenter and she would speak out against the injustices.

I asked a local female puppeteer to be the voice of Judy for the interview as she performed Punch & Judy shows locally. She commented that what I wanted the puppet to say could be quite controversial itself and did I know enough to give answers should the press pick up on it? I didn't!

Research was needed before I could really send out a video and so my reseach into Punch & Judy began. That was when I discovered that Judy used to be known as Joan, or Dame Joan to be more precise. And Dame Joan was real and living in the Lake District in the heart of England. She had her own story to tell, and I listened.

This first book 'Joan - Put on a happy face', was an eye opener for me, a journey into authorship that I had never expected to take. I thought I knew all about Punch & Judy, but was surprised to find that they were all unique, no performance was ever identical to the previous one, even with the same professor. There are the basic stock characters that are in all the shows or course, but Punch & Judy is performed like the shows known as Commedia dell'arte. They change with the times. Political and moralistic. The use of puppets instead of humans had to be the idea of someone... had to have started somewhere, and for a reason, but who, why, where?

'JOAN' is about a naive and shy young girl, an only child, brought up by her mother and a governess and, for the most part, an absent father. After her mother died, she became angry at God for taking her mother from her at the early age of 14yrs. With the help of her Governess she is taught how to become a Lady, and it becomes her duty to act as her father's escort. Once allowed out in the world she see sights she'd never seen before and meets a travelling actor, ten years her senior who flirts outrageously with her and she falls in love.

When her father finds out that she has been 'accidentally' meeting up with him, he forbids her ever to see him again. She rebels and tells her father that they love one another, but this is news to the man. Her father demands to see the vagrant, the vagabond and by way of a deterrent he challenges him to carry out a task. Succeed and her father will agree to a marriage. Fail... and he must leave never to see her again. The story is filled with love, marriage, jealousy... even death! You'll have to read the book to find out more!

John Punch was a Joan's adopted son in the first book, but he had and an eye adventure. He wanted to travel to far off lands and when the opportunity to travel to the colonies of America arose, he grabbed it. To pay for his travel, he arranged to be an indentured servant and this seemed a good way to explain how Punch & Judy travelled over the pond.

When, out of curiosity, I researched the name John Punch I discovered that there was a real person named John Punch who lived in the colonies at just the same time that my character John was going to be there. I researched further and started to piece together a life for John... his friends... his family. It was exciting. I wasn't driven to write his story as much as I had been with my first book, but then I discovered that the real John Punch was the 11th generation great grandfather of Barack Obama o nhis mother's side, and the 10th generation great grandfather of Ralph Bunche on his father's side. The opportunity to combine the stories was too good to miss!

It was due to Kate Garraway's reaction to the puppets that Brian said what he said about the puppets being 'only blocks of wood'. If I'd not had that phrase going through my head, I would never have written my story and Joan would never have been written, so between them, they're my reason for writing lol!

I was like a crazed woman, 'driven' to write. I had nights I couldn't sleep until I'd written her story. I'd wake up and have a scene in my head. I'd dream of situations she found herself in that not only 'needed' to be written, but HAD to be written! ha! Sometimes, I would find myself speaking in ye olde English language and my family would remind me that I was NOT Joan! ha! I had two years of her story going through my brain, and every time I needed to confirm a fact eg did they have crocodiles in Europe in the 1500s? I would find a solution to the question. It was like I was channelling a living being. She really came alive!

With 'Memories Of...' the only records about John Punch were two legal documents. He is known today as the first slave of Virginia. All but two records exist to even prove that he lived. all the records of that county were destroyed in a fire, which was great for me, as it gave me carte blanche to write whatever I wanted and no one could dispute it lol!

His name was linked with Hugh Gwynn, a Virginian plantation owner, and owner of indentures for John Punch. There was a bit more information about him and Gwynn's Island. Researcg on a genealogy site showed that Hugh Gwynn had two women with sons fathered by a man with the same name but slightly different spelling, but the child was given the same name... other pieces of information helped to piece together their story of how this may have come about. The narratives? Well I have to say that a lot came from personal experiences mixed with a lot of fictional narratives... this one is quite emotional in fact, a love story some have called it.

Again, it was the genealogy website that did all the work, found the connections with Barack Obama and Ralph Bunche. I can't take any credit for finding the connection, I'm afraid, as they did all the hard work for me. Thanks for asking.

I'm not quite sure how to answer this one. The story of Joan takes a young naive girl through to adulthood, her first love, the love of her child, the happiness and the pains of a woman growing up, her live spanning centuries. She battles with her religion, he faith, her belief in a God that took her mother from her when she needed her the most. In the end, when her life is at it's lowest, the only place she has left to turn to is the church and to a God she feared would condemn her.

The basic information about John Punch was available from the genealogy site. But other sites questioned the sentencing her received and implied that there was something more to the sentence than we knew about. Why did Hugh Gwynn want to deliver his own condign punishment to John, and only John? There were three runaways, but his request was only about John.

I already had created a personality for 'my' John and it seemed to meld well with the real John Punch, for why would he have ran away leaving his new wife and 3yr old child and why would he be running to Maryland, what was so special that he would risk death running away to Maryland?

I say risk death, because it was well known and documented, that Governor Leonard Calvert believed that anyone who did not have a belief in Jesus Christ or any other recognised religion should be punished by death... so why risk it?

The second document on record shows a crucifix or emphasis at the end of his sentencing... did this mean something? Something was going on, but further records are not available, so I made one up!

A11 'JOAN' is a feel good story of love and family loyalty. A family of immortals who have no one to trust but each other. Even when challenged by her husband's misbehaviour, his drinking, his drug-taking, and the murder of her, their best friend, Joan still loves her husband. She believes him to have a troubled mind and only wants to help. The overall 'theme' of course, is Punch & Judy. Joan made the puppets to represent baby's father so that they could have adventures together, it was play therapy, you'd call it these days. She added characters to remember their friends as baby grew older. As a child, Joan had loved playing with her dolls, and the puppets were her way of being child-like with her own child. When her husband misbehaved she would teach her baby that it wasn't acceptable behaviour, by way of teaching her own child how to be a better person.

A12 The short answer is No! Since this book was launched sales have been poor for a lot of indie authors, but rather than sit worrying about it, I keep on writing the next book. Amazon have been changing things within their system this year which has affected sales for a lot of writers. The economy hasn't been good, and Amazon themselves have had t close the Book Depository through lack of sales, so that must say something... But like all things in life, it will settle down, life is a cycle, and I use the zen lemur approach and patience and wait for the cycle to turn once more.

As I said earlier, I never had any dreams of becoming a writer. I was 'driven' to write 'Joan'. I went without sleep day and night for months as she revealed her story to me and I enjoyed every minute of the research. I've never been one to like history when I was at school, but since writing 'Joan' I find it fascinating, simply fascinating! As I wrote the book, I could imagine the story being turned into a TV series and I still see that as a vision of the future, but first I have two more books in this series to write, so wish me luck!

At the moment, I see at least two more books about Joan and her family, the family who, in the first book, she doesn't even know about, she never knew that her grandfather and mother were immortal (oops! maybe I shouldn't have said that til it's revealed in the next few books lol!) I don't see myself 'writing to market' as they suggest at Bryan Cohen's Ad School. Joan's story is unique. Her family has a secret yet to be revealed. The first book only shows her life from her own perspective, no one else's. There is romance in my first book, but it's more implied than graphic, the reader hopefully 'feels' what Joan feels about herself, about her life. (I hope!)

There could be a bit more romance in the future as Joan's son Nicholas finally meets someone and falls in love, and maybe when the antagonists show themselves, there will be a bit more mystery and suspense, we'll have to see what happens when I begin typing.

I'm still new to AllAuthor. I'd hoped it would help with sales, but as this year has been a bad one so far, I don't think it's had a fair chance to prove itself, but I've found the banners, promo materials and gifs of great help. I'd love to win the book cover competition, because it was created by GetCovers and they've done a really good job on both books. It would be nice to be able to give them positive feedback, but it's early days, and my first competition, so I've got my fingers crossed for now. I do like the idea of the interviews, so thank you for the opportunity.