AUTHOR'S CORNER:

THE MISFORTUNES OF ELLIE-MAY  -  REVISTED

Dear readers, for the past few months I have been blogging about the things writers need to do in order to gain success in the publishing world.  I have given you the benefit of my limited experience, as I am quite knew at this game, my first novel published only last year.  In this year, I have learned (the shocking and painful) truth about self promoting and how difficult it is to actually get the right attention for one's book.  It has also been a very interesting year, I may add, as I have learned so much about the web (I used to be a web coward) and how to use the marketing tools which are thankfully available.  

I feel that at this point, I must firstly thank you for following my blog and taking an interest in what I had to say.  I am very pleased to say, that I have a healthy following and my blog page is frequently visited.  For this my warmest, most sincere gratitude is extended to each and every single one of you; for without your interest I am nothing!  Every artist is made by the people who take interest in him or her, as people are the decisive factor as to whether their art is accepted or not. 

Secondly, I have come to a point where now I feel that although you know me, you need to know more about my novel and what kind of style I write in.  It is only fair that I give a little of myself, just as you have given a little of your time to me.  I feel that I should give you, dear readers, a sort of synopsis or description of my novel, as my second novel entitled 'The Devil's Truth' is due out in 2013, and soon it will be the next topic of conversation.  So today I shall revisit 'The Misfortunes of Ellie-May' and give you - dear readers, an insight of what it is about....

THE MISFORTUNES OF ELLIE-MAY

Ellie-May Brown was born in the late sixties to hippy parents, Malcolm and Gloria Brown.  She was a beautiful girl with long blonde hair, a button nose, full lips and big blue eyes that could entrap any man with just one glance.  Tall, slim with a perfect figure and a pert bottom and breasts that were neither too big nor too small, but big enough to see and small enough to cup in the palm of one's hand.  As beautiful as she was, she was troubled and disturbed by her disruptive upbringing.  With a selfish father who was resentful of the fact that he had to conform to a conventional life, he often took pleasure out of being mentally cruel to her mother, who was an alcoholic as a result of his unreasonable behaviour.  Ellie-May had to assume the role of her mother's carer and tried her best to keep her nasty father at bay.

After falling for a handsome young man, Tommy Black, in the first term of her law degree, she soon discovers that he was using her for his own depraved sexual kicks.  He encouraged her to get up to all sorts of sexual acts which led to making her sleep with his friends while he watched!  She discovers she is pregnant, but Tommy wants nothing to do with the child or her and denies that he could even be the father, since she has slept with his friends, albeit with his consent!  Upset and scared, she drops out of university and returns back home, where by a twist of fate, she miscarries the baby, upstairs in the toilet in her parents house.  Shocked by her hysteria and the bloody scene, her parents rush her off to hospital.  In shock and feeling shameful for their own behaviour, they briefly rekindle their love for each other and all seems well with them.  But selfish as always they fail to offer any support for their heartbroken daughter, as they were too wrapped up in their new found romance.

With no place at university and a miscarriage behind her, Ellie-May decides to leave home and head off to London, in a bid to get away from everything and make sense of life.  She ends up in a small establishment called The Bayswater Rooms, where, unbeknown to her, it was in fact a brothel under the guise of a hotel.  Run by a middle aged Greek pimp/drug dealer called Costly and his three sons, Nikias, Paulo and Sethi, and his nasty nephew Helios.  This was how they would lure young girls into their establishment, by posing as a cheap hotel and a safe haven for runaway girls.  After a few weeks at The Bayswater Rooms, with her money running out and her parents not really bothered about her or wanting her back home, she turns to Costly for some fatherly advise and support.  He offers her a free stay and promises that he will help her find work, but then a few weeks later he forces her to work as a prostitute, claiming that she owes him money for her stay and that she has to work it off!  They allocate Helios as her pimp and he initiates her into prostitution  by raping her.

While she was working as a prostitute, she befriends two of the girls who work there, Teri and Donna.  She soon learns that there is no way of escaping this gang of pimps, so she starts to plot to bring down the establishment from the inside.  Helped by Teri and Donna, she works on Helios and makes him fall in love with her.  Once he is truly smitten, she gets Teri and Donna to make trouble by spreading gossip and vicious rumour to Costly and the others.  Once Costly finds out, he is furious and throws his nephew out.  But he returns for Ellie-May and a big argument breaks out, in which she pretends that she does not know what Helios is going on about and hands Sethi Costly's gun, which he kept in his desk.  Sethi, shoots Helios and kills him, they later dispose of the body.  Helios was not legal in the country and with no identity, the police fail to trace the body.

Now Sethi becomes her pimp, but he is gay and has no interest in her in a sexual way.  She works on the fact that Sethi is suppressing his sexuality and is therefore miserable.  She befriends him and encourages him to make a life for himself.  She, Teri and Donna, fix him up with a local boy and soon he runs off to Spain with him.  Costly is furious!  Ellie-May turns her attentions on Costly and starts to flirt with him until his ego is enticed and he falls for her.  After many months of wanting her, he eventually admits his feelings to her, much to Nikias and Paulo's discontent.

Her affair with Costly blossoms to the point where his sons start to turn against him.  She means to get rid of the brothers, so she plots and schemes and her, Teri and Donna start to steal from each of the sons' rooms and getting them to suspect each other.  She also gets a hold of Costly's cheque book and starts to forge cheques made out to the brothers.  When Costly suspects his sons, and the bank informs him that amounts have been made out to his sons, he is furious and holds a gun up to his sons, Paulo pulls out a gun too but drops it and he and his brother leave the establishment.

Later she gets hold of Paulo's gun and with Teri and Donna, they plan to kill the brothers before they come after them.  They wait for them outside the pub, late one night and kill them in a nearby alleyway.  Costly is devastated at the loss of his children and goes to pieces.  But Ellie-May convinces him to let her take over the running of the brothel, helped by Teri and Donna.  Once she is running the brothel she convinces him to marry her and soon the three girls start to plot his death.  They first tried to poison him, but the rat poison was taking too long to work and the others panicked about pathology reports.  So they decided to stage his stabbing, to make it look like a drug deal that's gone wrong.  But when the police probe, Teri and Donna panic and tell all.

Parallel to the main story, her own parents' story is progressing, Malcolm and Gloria have a son, but as usual, Malcolm becomes jealous of the shared attention and reverts back to his selfish behaviour  Gloria goes back to drinking and the poor baby is neglected.  When Malcolm tries to abuse Gloria by flaunting his latest lover in front of her, Ellie-May helps Gloria get rid of him by planting drugs on him when he decides to take his mistress to Malaysia.  Malcolm serves fifteen years in a Malaysian prison and Gloria is able to file for divorce and take all his assets.  But Gloria soon reverts back to her sordid ways and her son is subjected to a string of strange men and witnesses quite a lot before social services take him from her.

This is a story about emotions, about hang-ups and personal failings, it is told in a style reminiscent of some of the old classics, the story is thought-provoking and highly entertaining.

This is a story of how the self can let one down, if the ego is allowed to ride it.  Of how despair can take over the mind and become a web of confusion and red mist!  How quickly one can spiral into the abyss, never again regaining their true essence.  It is a story which explores all aspects of human nature, from the good to the bad, the happy to the miserable state human beings can get themselves into.   This is a story about the forces of the Yin and Yang which reside in every single one of us, the same Yin and Yang which balance the universe, the same Yin and Yang which exist in everything from the inanimate to the living, from the skies to the earth.  It is only humanity that has the ability to pick and choose what they want to put into practice!

THE MISFORTUNES OF ELLIE-MAY, BY SAMMAR ALLY IS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON, AUSTIN & MACAULEY, WHSMITH, WATERSONES, FOYLES AND VARIOUS FOREIGN WEBSITES.