The history of racial violence in the USA is usually framed in terms of the suffering of young black men, from George Stinney (executed, aged 14 in 1944 for a double murder he did not commit) to Emmett Till (lynched and mutilated, also aged 14 in 1955 for flirting with a white woman) to John […]
Category: The Books
There’s more than secret history to the saga of The Poplars. Author K.L. Fairless has been toiling for years now to bring the mysteries of the greenest, most fertile valley in Virginia out of the dark. Thomas Forbs, erstwhile member of the School of Night along with Shakespeare, Marlow, Dee, Bruno and Raleigh, sailed to the New World in the 1580s, then vanished from history for half a century. Was he really helping a goddess find a new home? And what of his descendant, Edgar Forbs, purported magician who disappeared in the 1850s after a ‘deal with the devil’ went bad? As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, why build a girls’ school on the site of an obviously blood-drenched and haunted former plantation? Why, in 2017, do girls still appear to be paying the ultimate price for that decision?
All this and more will be explored in a series of books and movies. The first book, EXEME, and the first movie, EXEAT, deal with the misadventures of Claudia, an orphan (aren’t they all?), who finds her mixed racial heritage makes her relationship with The Poplars so very complicated. All she wants to do in senior year is perfect her Beethoven sonatas and win a place at a conservatory, but in return for funding she agrees to dig for information on The Poplars’ Missing. A perennial outsider, she must seek insider information – thus exposing herself to the scrutiny and cruelty of the other girls – or risk watching her dreams crumble.
Sign up for email updates at the newsletter link below. In the meantime, this is where you can read extracts from Exeme and discover where the Author found inspiration over the years.
MISSING: Jane Doe, 1997
In this first extract from Exeme, Claudia is on her way back to School for her senior year. After an unfortunate accident, she arrives at The Poplars’ gates in the back of a patrol car. Jack The Cop calls in on his radio, tells the dispatcher he’s going to drop me off at The Poplars. […]
INSPIRATION: Louisa May Alcott
Like many other little girls the world over, I devoured Louisa May Alcott’s famous quartet of novels several times: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys. I giggled, wept, and was always slightly disappointed that Jo married Professor Bhaer – although I was glad she was so happy running her own school. Then I grew up, and forgot about […]
INSPIRATION: Peaches & Daddy Browning
The Sexual Revolution was a long time coming. Decades before the Pill, bra-burning, Roe vs. Wade or the Equal Rights Act, there was the struggle to establish that female sexuality existed, that women had enough agency over their bodies to enjoy – and even initiate – sex acts. Women in the USA and the UK […]
INSPIRATION: Yonic Symbols
Y’all know what a phallic symbol is, right? A jutting representation of the male ego: the rod, blade, column, crane, rocket, gun, flagpole, or even the pen used to pay homage to the penis. Our cityscapes are littered with them, proud skyscrapers and spires thrusting into the pliant sky, proclaiming the upward intentions of their […]
INSPIRATION: Passing
As we clock up one more year of the twenty-first century it seems news headlines increasingly reference the past. This week, TMZ reported that a Versace retail assistant “shocked the manager” by revealing he was African American – and was subsequently fired. Presumably, in order to get and keep his job for a luxury brand, […]
INSPIRATION: Jack’s Women
September is Ripper Season. Jack began the autumn of 1888 as a complete nobody and ended it as the most feared man in the United Kingdom. He materialized with the first mists but vanished before the winter frosts took hold, leaving an enduring mystery in his wake. To this day, people are still picking apart what he did, who […]