As a clinical counsellor with more than two decades of experience, Richmond's Danielle Aldcorn is attuned to examining issues and situations in great detail.
It’s an attribute that has helped fuel her other career as an author of “new adult” fiction with the release of her latest work — One Per Center.
Writing under the pen name D.R. Graham, One Per Center revolves around the life of an 18-year-old woman, Tienne Desrochers, who grew up amid the biker gang culture, that one per cent of the community which operates outside society’s laws. After the death of her father, who was a high-ranking club member, the young woman finds herself living with her aunt in a world far away from Harleys, leather riding vests and brushes with the law.
It’s a subject that fascinated and compelled Aldcorn to explore after seeing a TV news report one night a few years ago.
The news story focused on the funeral of an actual “one per center.” Police had set up an observation post near the funeral home to monitor the comings and goings of those attending.
“There were little kids who were there holding the hands of their burly, biker dude dads,” said Aldcorn, who also pens a Family Function column for the Richmond News. “It made me interested in what it would feel like to grow up as an innocent little kid in a world where those bikers — their family members — are people who the rest of society fear.”
To get a handle on that world, Aldcorn began reading almost every non-fiction book that exists on biker club culture.
The result is a collection of novels published by Entangled Publishing that she completed about three and a half years ago. They form the Noir et Bleu Motorcycle Club Series which was launched Monday (Feb. 23) with an online publication of One Per Center. The second book in the series — The Handler — is slated for release April 27.
“My personal branding, as an author, targets males and females, especially reluctant male readers.”
Capturing that latter segment is an important challenge for Aldcorn.“It’s like when young boys pick up The Outsiders for the first time. It’s probably one of the first books they read to the end,” she said. “That’s what I aspire towards. I like girls and women to read my books because of the romance, the love story. But I want boys to read it, too, because they will think it’s bad-assed.”
