The Beginning of Bunyip Jones
If you’ve read Blood in the Dust, then you’ll know: Bunyip Jones was born of pain and misery, in a billabong in outback Queensland, on the day she fled a cruel, abusive cult that had abducted her as a baby.
But why did I give her that background? Where did she really come from?
Yip was actually one of the last characters I created for the Slipworld, because she was the most important and, therefore, the hardest to craft. Obviously, I needed someone new to Slipworld, so she could serve as a vehicle for readers to learn about it.
I’m generally what’s known as a “pantser” when I write - I don’t make detailed outlines, I just write and see where the characters take me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a plan. I do - I knew where I wanted this story to go from book 1 to book 7. And, for the most part, I stuck to the plan.
Part of that plan included the challenges she would face and the tools she would need to overcome them, because, first and foremost, I wanted her to be ordinary.
Yip’s not a princess, or the chosen one, or “different” - she’s like every woman. All of us. She’s just seen some shit, that’s the difference.
What she’s been through gave her a special skillset that, at the beginning of the series, she doesn’t even realise she has: the ability to blend in, be “invisible” in plain sight. An ability to read body language, particularly for signs that someone is lying or about to become violent.
These were survival traits: she needed them to minimise her suffering. Anyone who has lived with violence or endured trauma creates the same coping mechanisms, whether they realise it or not.
What really set her apart is what these experiences gave her beyond these mechanisms.
Some people will experience trauma and come out angry. Bitter. They might hate everything and everyone because they can’t process their own trauma. Experiencing horrific events isn’t an excuse to be a dick, though.
Bunyip Jones went another way: she chose compassion. Empathy. She doesn’t want anyone else to experience what she went through, and THAT is her true power.
Again and again, it’s her compassion that saves the day.
It’s also why very few of the villains in my stories are killed. Yip isn’t about vengeance, but second chances. Redemption. And you can’t redeem yourself if you’re dead.
“Oh, but some of these people are awful! Don’t they deserve it?”
I hear you: I try to imbue my villains with the worst I’ve seen in humanity - even if they aren’t strictly “human”. Some of them probably do deserve it.
But what would that make Yip? Someone who just killed everyone, without due process? Without ever finding out if they can redeem themselves? How does that make her any better than them?
On the other hand, I also created Gehenna - the Slipworld’s prison - to be the most frightening place I could think of, and that’s where the bad guys end up. But even there, compassion exists: only the worst of the worst end up in The Spire.
What I’m trying to say is that Bunyip Jones is a woman who’s able to overcome hardships by seeing all the angles, by understanding what she’s up against on a visceral level - and by inciting compassion in those around her.
And that’s something we can all do, if we want to. We just have to choose it.