Iain Kelly

My A-Z theme this year is a guide to my trilogy of novels called ‘The State Trilogy’. Set in an unnamed island country known only as ‘The State’, in the imagined near future, the books follow the intertwining stories of a number of characters, principally a State police detective named Danny Samson and an assassin, Gabriella Marino, over a period of six years. It begins with the assassination of an elected official and spirals into revolution and civil war. Part political thriller, action story, war story and dystopian science fiction, the trilogy took three years to complete and the books are available to read now – you can find links to purchase them HERE

In The State Trilogy, ‘G’ stands for:

Gabriella Marino: Alongside Danny Samson, Gabriella is one of the main characters in the trilogy. She is the opposite in many respects to Danny: an ex-military assassin who is tough, no nonsense and doesn’t let emotions get in the way of her work. She is decisive and physically and mentally strong and she was the favourite to write of all the characters. I tried not to stereotype her, so she is not a ‘sexy’ assassin, although she is fit. She doesn’t run around in skin-tight clothing, but wears army fatigues. She is scarred and through the course of the trilogy becomes disfigured from injuries sustained. She is a natural leader and left the State military after objecting to what she saw in the First Strike War. When she assassinates Consul Donald Parkinson, she instigates all the events that follow. Initially she teams up with fellow ex-soldier Phillips, but later she and Danny become close friends and loyal comrades. Of all the characters, I could see Gabriella returning in the future in her own series of stories. Who knows? Aliases: Helena Myers, Phillipa Young

Great Britain and Glasgow: Although never mentioned, the island of the State is a thinly-veiled futuristic version of Great Britain, and Central City, where much of the main story occurs, is the city of Glasgow, where I was born and live. I wanted to set my novel in Glasgow, which features in lots of gritty crime novels, but I always felt had so much more to offer to the world of literature. By basing the State on places that I knew well, I was able to describe a world that felt real and was familiar to me, even as it was set in a fictional future. I could imagine the locations and the distances between places. The river in Central City is the River Clyde, which I see every day from my work office. The old part of Central City in the east is Edinburgh, and the castle and Princes Street feature. The subway system around Glasgow is the underground tunnels that characters travel through. The wilderness along the west coast of the northern state is the rural, rugged landscape of north-west Scotland, and so on. It saved a lot of time and research in writing the novels to make the State mirror an actual place I knew well. And hopefully some of the character of Glasgow, and Scotland, comes through in the books.

Giesler: A structural engineer and trusted lieutenant in the rebel army of the civil war in Central City. Giesler is ruthless and focussed, and Phillips, the leader of the Independents (as the rebels are known), trusts him with planning the final attack on the city, which he hopes will turn the civil war in their favour.

Genetics: Not something I am an expert on in anyway, but in the future world I created, I wanted to imagine a place where genetic engineering had eradicated almost all disease and illness and disability. It has also been used to solve things such as obesity and baldness. This of course, does lead to the creation of inequality – for those who have not benefited from such science, they become disadvantaged. It also leads to new problems, such as citizens who can physically live for a long time, but lose the mental will to keep on living.

Next up – H is for: Heroism, Henrik James, Hassan, Hanlen Samson, HighLand City, Hansel, Hassan, Harris Ellroy and Horace Frinks

All the entries in the A-Z of ‘The State Trilogy’ can be found HERE

The books are available from a wide selection of online retailers, including AMAZON

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