This time last year, I posted about the heroines who feature in my
ACE Gamebooks, concluding:
"And then there is
NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters!, which I am currently in the process of writing, and which features not one but two heroines, the Lara Croft-esque shipwreck survivor Wendy Darling, and the Sabretooth-riding heroic hunter Tiger Lily."
Well
NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! has now gone to print, and here's how Wendy and Tiger Lily ended up in the book.
Wendy Darling
Shipwreck Survivor, The Girl Who Lived
Oldest child of George and Mary
Darling, Wendy was eighteen years old when she and the rest of her family –
including her younger brothers John and Michael, and their pet dog Nana –
boarded the RMS Titanic at
Southampton on 10th April 1912, for the passenger liner’s maiden
voyage.
She is well-educated,
well-mannered, and resourceful. While at finishing school in Switzerland, as
well as learning the formal rules of etiquette and improving her French, she
also learnt how to fence.
Tiger Lily
Heroic Hunter, Saviour of the Accala
Daughter of Chief Great Panther of
the Accala, and therefore technically a princess, Tiger Lily nonetheless dreams
of being inducted into the elite warrior brotherhood of the tribe. She is
already well on her way, having raised her Sabretooth steed Fang from when he
was a cub, after his mother was killed while protecting him from one of the
terrible lizards that dwell on the island. She is adept at using not only her
flint-headed tomahawk axe but also a spear, whilst hunting with Fang.
Tiger Lily models herself on the
great Warrior Queen Lai Tai’Glaa, the legendary ruler of the Accala who
supposedly first brought her people to the promontory the tribe now calls home.
