Marla O’Leery arrived on her own terms, and she doesn’t owe anyone anything.
Her heritage is Scottish, assumed Irish. She corrects the error mostly with a raised eyebrow.
Mid-thirties, five foot eleven. Heavy satin dresses, arm-length lace fingerless gloves, a cigarette holder silver and black. Hair always up, fascinator or hat and pin, sometimes with a veil. She dresses the part because the part is who she is — armour and identity, she’s never confused the two.
The calm she carries isn’t the calm of someone unharmed. It’s the stillness of someone who already paid the worst price, looked around at what the abyss actually contained, and found it smaller than expected. That knowledge is at the centre of everything.
She sings death the way death actually is — cold, factual, without sentiment. The Appalachian murder ballads found her before she found them. She built the dark cabaret around everything else she carries. That’s where she lives.
She moved to New Orleans because she heard there was a vampire element and wanted to see for herself. She is not disappointed.
Marla O’Leery does not explain herself. You accept her as she is, or you don’t. She isn’t bothered either way.
Marla O’Leery is APRA AMCOS registered and released through Seeker James Publishing.