Sins of the First Eleven.
Sins of the First Eleven
Sins of the First Eleven.
A couple of months back I published a new novel and it has occurred to me that I have yet to write a blog about it for xHamster. This was reprehensible of me because this particular novel really owes its existence to the old Ham and those readers who, over the years have been kind enough to read my writing. The novel is called “Sins of the First Eleven” and it has its genesis in the pages of this blog.
Some years ago I wrote a number of short stories for xHamster set in a fictional Roman Catholic Girls' Boarding School. They started off with a story called “In the Name of the Father” which was essentially a short descriptive account of the central heroine in the series being publicly caned in the school gymnasium. The story was unusual because a) it was written in the first person which is not usually my style b) it was written in the present tense and c) the heroine was my eponymous alter-ego... the sixth form school girl, Michaela Francis. From this original story I developed a whole series of humorous accounts of Michaela's misadventures, her disgraceful and hilarious misconduct and the inevitable painful consequences of it.
The stories, though I say so myself, were very funny and soon had a small but dedicated following of readers delighting in my eponymous heroine's latest madcap escapade in her school days at St Margaret Clitheroe's Boarding School. As well as Michaela, there was a whole cast of supporting characters; Michaela's associates in crime of the Dead Fish Liberation Front, Michaela's beautiful but not overly bright girlfriend Jacqueline, her arch enemy Stephanie “Slippery” Stockworth-Smyth, the grim headmistress, Sister Claire, the perpetually drunken school priest, Father Ignatius, the vapid and naive Sister Juliana, the formidable games mistress Miss Pearson and a whole host of others.
My readers were able to follow Michaela as she lined up with her friends for the cane outside Sister Claire's office in the disgraceful affair of the purloined DFLF's minutes ledger. They learned the origin of the Dead Fish Liberation Front in the scandalous account of the kipper nailed to the bottom of the Divinity teacher's chair. They chuckled at the outrageous efforts of Stephanie Stockworth-Smyth to nobble the DFLF's runner in the under 13s 100 metre dash at the school sports day and delighted as Michaela's saucy love letters to Jacqueline are exposed to public view and bring the wrath of school authority down on her.
Michaela was a loveable, albeit incorrigibly villainous, figure at the centre of these stories; inevitably being deservedly required to lower her knickers for the cane yet somehow always managing to emerge triumphant from her latest pickle. She was one of my better comic creations and I remained strangely fond of her. She was just an adorable little rebel, forever in trouble and yet always full of life and mischief.
Finally I gathered all the St Margaret's stories together in a single collection and published them under the title of “Sins of the Upper Sixth”. I originally published it under the title “The Belles of St Margaret's” but hardly anybody understood the allusion to the old St Trinian's movie and it fell flat so, in consultation with my publisher, I changed the title and cover.
It was not to be the end of Michaela's adventures however. I had long harboured a wish to write a full novel around her and her school career at St Margaret's but it was one of those projects that keep getting pushed onto the back burner. Oddly enough it was through another series of mine that Michaela re-emerged. She put in a short guest appearance in the fourth novel of my Castlebridge Hall series “The Punishments of Miss Pendleton” and another, more important appearance in the fifth book of the series, “Last of the Summer Cane.” With her snapping at my heels like this, it was time to give her a whole new novel of her own.
The result was “Sins of the First Eleven”. This was a full length novel of Michaela's misdeeds and, I think, the funniest book I've ever written. For the purposes of this novel, I abandoned the present tense of the original St Margaret's stories but I retained Michaela's first person account for I was eager to keep her dry, witty and cynical voice at the heart of the narrative. For all that it is recognisably the same style that earned so many fans when I first penned the stories for xHamster and Michaela, you'll be glad to know, hasn't changed a bit!
The story starts at the beginning of the new school term and with Michaela predictably deep in the brown smelly stuff with the school authorities. A lunatic scheme dreamed up by the Dead Fish Liberation Front to supply adult sex toys to the student body of the school sixth form has gone tits up and Michaela is thoroughly implicated in the affair. It is, as far as the school headmistress, Sister Claire, is concerned, the last straw. She has had enough of young Miss Francis' wicked ways and is determined to expel Michaela from the school.
Salvation comes from a most unlikely quarter however. The Head of the Board of Governors of St Margaret's is none other than Lord Castlebridge of the Castlebridge Hall series and, for reasons that are a little obscure, he has taken an interest in the incorrigible little madam. He prevails upon Sister Claire to spare Michaela from expulsion and instead she receives the soundest thrashing of her misbegotten days.
Michaela is by no means out of the woods however. The threat of expulsion still hangs over her should she not, against all previous form, mend her ways and Sister Claire orders a weekly caning for her just to stay on the side of caution. Stephanie Stockworth-Smyth opens a book on the likelihood of Michaela's expulsion and is offering generous odds against Michaela's continued presence at the school come Christmas. To compound Michaela's woes, she has a fall out with her friends in the Dead Fish Liberation Front and her girlfriend, Jacqueline has been promoted to prefect and, in view of her new position, is keeping her distance from Michaela who has the worst reputation of anybody in the school. Even more sinister is the news that now Lord Castlebridge is monitoring Michaela closely and that she will have to spend half term in a work placement at Castlebridge Hall; a grim abode of which she has heard terrifying stories about.
Just when Michaela thinks that things can't get any worse, Sister Claire drops another bombshell on her. In order to instil some sense of responsibility and team spirit into the wayward Michaela, Sister Claire drafts her into the school's field hockey team. This appointment is greeted with universal horror by the other members of the team and by the team coach Miss Pearson who would rather eat her own pancreas than have Michaela defile her hockey team with her presence. The hockey team is struggling in the doldrums as it is without being lumbered with Michaela whose only contribution to school sporting activity is to provide exercise for Miss Pearson's right arm in the wielding of a length of cane. Michaela herself is appalled by Sister Claire's mad notion and the rest of the school is openly derisive of Michaela's new role in the First Eleven.
Everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket but then a new and completely unforeseen element emerges. A beautiful and enigmatic Indian exchange student called Priya arrives at the school and, inexplicably, attaches herself to Michaela. It causes yet more complications, of course, since Jacqueline is fiercely jealous of Michaela's new friend and relations between her and Michaela become even more frosty. But Priya seems determined to insinuate herself into Michaela's company. Unbeknown to Michaela, Priya is something very special indeed and she lands in Michaela's life with profound and far reaching consequences.
I won't tell you any more because I don't want to spoil the story. Suffice it to say that, if you enjoyed the old St Margaret's stories, you'll love “Sins of the First Eleven”. It is a funny yet ultimately moving story; a comic farce mixed up with a love story … unashamedly escapist fantasy, richly detailed, full of unforgettable characters and lovingly and hilariously narrated... leading to a delightfully exciting climax. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of it and it would thrill me to know that you had entered into the world of St Margaret's and found joy and laughter there.
The novel is available both as an ebook or as a paperback from;
http://www.a1adultebooks.com/ebooks/b12624-sins-of-the-first-eleven.htm
I do hope that you might be tempted to read it and fall in love with my irrepressible heroine.
Michaela xxxxx
Sins of the First Eleven.
A couple of months back I published a new novel and it has occurred to me that I have yet to write a blog about it for xHamster. This was reprehensible of me because this particular novel really owes its existence to the old Ham and those readers who, over the years have been kind enough to read my writing. The novel is called “Sins of the First Eleven” and it has its genesis in the pages of this blog.
Some years ago I wrote a number of short stories for xHamster set in a fictional Roman Catholic Girls' Boarding School. They started off with a story called “In the Name of the Father” which was essentially a short descriptive account of the central heroine in the series being publicly caned in the school gymnasium. The story was unusual because a) it was written in the first person which is not usually my style b) it was written in the present tense and c) the heroine was my eponymous alter-ego... the sixth form school girl, Michaela Francis. From this original story I developed a whole series of humorous accounts of Michaela's misadventures, her disgraceful and hilarious misconduct and the inevitable painful consequences of it.
The stories, though I say so myself, were very funny and soon had a small but dedicated following of readers delighting in my eponymous heroine's latest madcap escapade in her school days at St Margaret Clitheroe's Boarding School. As well as Michaela, there was a whole cast of supporting characters; Michaela's associates in crime of the Dead Fish Liberation Front, Michaela's beautiful but not overly bright girlfriend Jacqueline, her arch enemy Stephanie “Slippery” Stockworth-Smyth, the grim headmistress, Sister Claire, the perpetually drunken school priest, Father Ignatius, the vapid and naive Sister Juliana, the formidable games mistress Miss Pearson and a whole host of others.
My readers were able to follow Michaela as she lined up with her friends for the cane outside Sister Claire's office in the disgraceful affair of the purloined DFLF's minutes ledger. They learned the origin of the Dead Fish Liberation Front in the scandalous account of the kipper nailed to the bottom of the Divinity teacher's chair. They chuckled at the outrageous efforts of Stephanie Stockworth-Smyth to nobble the DFLF's runner in the under 13s 100 metre dash at the school sports day and delighted as Michaela's saucy love letters to Jacqueline are exposed to public view and bring the wrath of school authority down on her.
Michaela was a loveable, albeit incorrigibly villainous, figure at the centre of these stories; inevitably being deservedly required to lower her knickers for the cane yet somehow always managing to emerge triumphant from her latest pickle. She was one of my better comic creations and I remained strangely fond of her. She was just an adorable little rebel, forever in trouble and yet always full of life and mischief.
Finally I gathered all the St Margaret's stories together in a single collection and published them under the title of “Sins of the Upper Sixth”. I originally published it under the title “The Belles of St Margaret's” but hardly anybody understood the allusion to the old St Trinian's movie and it fell flat so, in consultation with my publisher, I changed the title and cover.
It was not to be the end of Michaela's adventures however. I had long harboured a wish to write a full novel around her and her school career at St Margaret's but it was one of those projects that keep getting pushed onto the back burner. Oddly enough it was through another series of mine that Michaela re-emerged. She put in a short guest appearance in the fourth novel of my Castlebridge Hall series “The Punishments of Miss Pendleton” and another, more important appearance in the fifth book of the series, “Last of the Summer Cane.” With her snapping at my heels like this, it was time to give her a whole new novel of her own.
The result was “Sins of the First Eleven”. This was a full length novel of Michaela's misdeeds and, I think, the funniest book I've ever written. For the purposes of this novel, I abandoned the present tense of the original St Margaret's stories but I retained Michaela's first person account for I was eager to keep her dry, witty and cynical voice at the heart of the narrative. For all that it is recognisably the same style that earned so many fans when I first penned the stories for xHamster and Michaela, you'll be glad to know, hasn't changed a bit!
The story starts at the beginning of the new school term and with Michaela predictably deep in the brown smelly stuff with the school authorities. A lunatic scheme dreamed up by the Dead Fish Liberation Front to supply adult sex toys to the student body of the school sixth form has gone tits up and Michaela is thoroughly implicated in the affair. It is, as far as the school headmistress, Sister Claire, is concerned, the last straw. She has had enough of young Miss Francis' wicked ways and is determined to expel Michaela from the school.
Salvation comes from a most unlikely quarter however. The Head of the Board of Governors of St Margaret's is none other than Lord Castlebridge of the Castlebridge Hall series and, for reasons that are a little obscure, he has taken an interest in the incorrigible little madam. He prevails upon Sister Claire to spare Michaela from expulsion and instead she receives the soundest thrashing of her misbegotten days.
Michaela is by no means out of the woods however. The threat of expulsion still hangs over her should she not, against all previous form, mend her ways and Sister Claire orders a weekly caning for her just to stay on the side of caution. Stephanie Stockworth-Smyth opens a book on the likelihood of Michaela's expulsion and is offering generous odds against Michaela's continued presence at the school come Christmas. To compound Michaela's woes, she has a fall out with her friends in the Dead Fish Liberation Front and her girlfriend, Jacqueline has been promoted to prefect and, in view of her new position, is keeping her distance from Michaela who has the worst reputation of anybody in the school. Even more sinister is the news that now Lord Castlebridge is monitoring Michaela closely and that she will have to spend half term in a work placement at Castlebridge Hall; a grim abode of which she has heard terrifying stories about.
Just when Michaela thinks that things can't get any worse, Sister Claire drops another bombshell on her. In order to instil some sense of responsibility and team spirit into the wayward Michaela, Sister Claire drafts her into the school's field hockey team. This appointment is greeted with universal horror by the other members of the team and by the team coach Miss Pearson who would rather eat her own pancreas than have Michaela defile her hockey team with her presence. The hockey team is struggling in the doldrums as it is without being lumbered with Michaela whose only contribution to school sporting activity is to provide exercise for Miss Pearson's right arm in the wielding of a length of cane. Michaela herself is appalled by Sister Claire's mad notion and the rest of the school is openly derisive of Michaela's new role in the First Eleven.
Everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket but then a new and completely unforeseen element emerges. A beautiful and enigmatic Indian exchange student called Priya arrives at the school and, inexplicably, attaches herself to Michaela. It causes yet more complications, of course, since Jacqueline is fiercely jealous of Michaela's new friend and relations between her and Michaela become even more frosty. But Priya seems determined to insinuate herself into Michaela's company. Unbeknown to Michaela, Priya is something very special indeed and she lands in Michaela's life with profound and far reaching consequences.
I won't tell you any more because I don't want to spoil the story. Suffice it to say that, if you enjoyed the old St Margaret's stories, you'll love “Sins of the First Eleven”. It is a funny yet ultimately moving story; a comic farce mixed up with a love story … unashamedly escapist fantasy, richly detailed, full of unforgettable characters and lovingly and hilariously narrated... leading to a delightfully exciting climax. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of it and it would thrill me to know that you had entered into the world of St Margaret's and found joy and laughter there.
The novel is available both as an ebook or as a paperback from;
http://www.a1adultebooks.com/ebooks/b12624-sins-of-the-first-eleven.htm
I do hope that you might be tempted to read it and fall in love with my irrepressible heroine.
Michaela xxxxx
7 years ago
Jay