Aurora Quinn

Sally's People are characters I invented for books, short stories and poems. Their creation spans the last three decades of the 20th Century and (so far) the first of the 21st.

Aurora is fourteen years old. She is talented and pretty, and longs to know more of the world beyond the island where she lives with her parents and younger brother and sister. When Josh visits the island, she longs to be friends, but he is her cousin and brings danger of a peculiar kind; of all the people in the world, Josh is one of the few who know Aurora Quinn should not exist.

Aurora herself is dangerous. She could kill Josh, or any other human, with one blow. If anyone knew the truth about her they would be afraid, and Aurora's family would be torn apart. What do you do when you have been brought up by a species that is not yours? Aurora doesn't know. She looks human. She feels human. And Polly and Keith are the only parents she has ever known.

Aurora appears in "Aurora", published by HarperCollins Australia. Originally, the story was called "UFO", but editorial advice was to change the title. Through Aurora, I explored what it means to be human, through her mother, Polly, I wondered how far a parent might go to protect her child... and through Josh I looked at truth and justice, and the rights of society vs the rights of the individual. Mind you, I didn't know I was doing all that when I wrote it. I thought I was writing about a baby found in the wreckage of a UFO.