"Possessing an “irreducible identity, without equal in the opposite sex and, as such, exploded, plural, fluid,” a woman may be driven “to break the code, to shatter language, to find a specific discourse closer to the body and the emotions, to the unnamable repressed by the social contract
. . . this is an absolute and radical alterity that enfolds the other, as in pregnancy a woman’s immune system shuts down in such a way that she shelters and nourishes, rather than rejects and expels, the foreign body within her: “Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body, growing as a graft, indomitable, there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on."
Nancy Mains. Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer.
That's our special gimmick, and that’s Elanna’s spiel. We think Elanna might be an excellent vehicle for other authors from different backgrounds to explore themes around self and identity, develop their own language, and delve into their own cultures or subcultures in their own specific poetic/satirical way.Now that we've completed our two books, we’re hoping to eventually take submissions and invite other authors from various backgrounds to take the vibe and flow of Elanna's story somewhere else and try their own hand at creating an “Elanna Forsythe George Mystery”.
Take a look at our fledgling publisher website here.( It's going to be live in April.)
At the beginning of Bollywood Storm, Book I, Elanna mentions that she doesn't accept just any case. She only takes on 'cold cases' and has to be intrigued enough to take them. She’s presented with a case that was closed two years previous. Her client is Simryn Gill, a little-known Bollywood starlet. The case involves Rajesh Sharma, a licentious Bollywood Director who, supposedly, died of a heart attack at a swank hotel during the New York Bollywood festival. Elanna smells a big rat, and she’s drawn further into the intrigue by the sense of honor she senses behind Miss Gill's request. That's what draws her out of the safe and familiar cocoon she's created for herself at home.
Elanna stands to lose a lot whenever she takes on a case, so something has to catapult her into the next mystery. When she gets such a call, she’s compelled to respond and falls into the slip-stream of events and strange happenings where she's morphed into something, or possessed without a moments notice, and hopefully, sooner or later, she’ll find an answer or solve the mystery. (Or perhaps not, and find a good place to end the story.)
At the end of each mystery, Elanna must return to her solitude and be ready to take on another case and that’s our only hard and fast rule.
More on this later. . . .