Who Is Anna Stenberg? by Tracey Norman BLOG TOUR #WhoIsAnnaStenberg @DartmoorGal @RandomTTours #BookExtract

 

Victorian England...

When her murderous father escapes from an institution, a young girl is forced to flee to safety with secretive pickpocket Anna.

Disguised as a boy called Viktor, and drawn into Anna's mysterious activities, she is catapulted into a strange investigation, and learns that Anna may be able to help her uncover the mystery of her mother's disappearance.

As she and Anna find friendship, Viktor's disguise brings empowerment and safety, until a tragedy forces her to take on a new identity in order to survive a world full of supernatural threats.

Who Is Anna Stenberg? by Tracey Norman was published on 31 October 2023 by Liminal Books. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I am pleased to share an extract from the book with you today. 

Extract from Who Is Anna Stenberg? by Tracey Norman 

I pounded along the street, lugging the bag, which kept bumping into my knee, making me stagger. I had only gone a short distance before becoming breathless, wincing with each painful spasm in my chest as I hurried along, keeping to the shadows whenever I could. There was no sound now except my boots on the cobbles. A police whistle screeched at one point, but it was impossible to tell from which direction the sound had come. 

Head down, I slowed to a half-jog, my muscles screaming in protest. I had always thought myself active, but this short burst of speed had proved that the stamina required to run any distance was very different to that required to last the evening at a ball. I cursed myself for not thinking ahead, for not preparing, whilst a more reasonable voice countered each criticism. No one could have foreseen my father escaping from a secure institution like St Bernadette’s. It was a private facility with excellent staff, including my uncle, who had been kind and compassionate, helping me at every stage when it became evident that my father could no longer remain at home. I suspected that my uncle was partly motivated by a desire to find out whatever he could about the disappearance of his sister, my mother, when we had been travelling in Germany three years earlier. My father’s mania had sprung from this trauma, along with his visions of strange demon-like creatures and the obsessive building of bizarre-looking weapons. I had insisted that he remain at home for as long as possible, but after he had tried to attack me with one of his weapons, my uncle had stepped in, and my father had been removed to St Bernadette’s. 

I vividly remembered the devastating day he had been escorted from the house by four burly orderlies, spitting fury and insisting I was some inhuman creature which needed to die. After he had gone and the house had fallen silent once more, I shut myself in my room and sobbed for hours. 

He had been in St Bernadette’s for about eight months, I realised. I wondered how long he had been plotting his escape. 

Tracey has written fiction for as long as she can remember, covering a variety of genres and subjects. 

She is currently enjoying success with her first stage play WITCH, a historical drama based on original English witch trial transcripts, which premiered in 2016 and has been performed continuously ever since. 

It has been used as Theatre In Education for Years 8 and 9 and for Exeter University undergrads and has been included as a formal seminar in two Bristol University undergrad degree courses – ‘Witchcraft’ and ‘History Outside the Box’. Its 75th performance was also its London premiere.

Tracey’s most recent publication was ‘Dark Folklore’ (2021), co-written with her husband Mark, and she has several other titles currently in progress, one of which is a non-fiction expanding on the research she undertook to write WITCH. She has written regular folklore columns for the Dartmoor newspaper The Moorlander, and is an active member of the Exeter Authors Association, a network providing support to writers and promoting a love of books and reading.

When she is not writing, Tracey can be found behind a microphone, as one of the voices behind Devon-based indie audio production house and theatre company Circle of Spears Productions. 

She is a freelance narrator on Audible and has a sizeable list of stage, TV and film credits. She gives talks to a variety of groups on historical subjects such as witchcraft and early modern medicine. 

She doesn’t relax often, but when she does, it generally involves reading, coffee and her slightly unhealthy obsession with sock yarn. 

She, Mark and their daughter live near the edge of a forest in mid Devon with a feline trip hazard.