During the Coronavirus-19 outbreak in Toronto, Robert Hugh Campbell wrote a novel wherein he has tried, as much as possible, to detail the lockdown and the Black Lives Matter protests that happened downtown. Despite being a middle-aged man, its unusual that he chose to write the story from the perspective of a twenty year old female amateur news reporter. Because the hero’s naiveite heightens the drama, perhaps it was a smart choice.
Toni Petti is an Instigative Reporter
Antonia Petti, the main character is an ‘instigative reporter’ which means she creates the media she publishes on her YouTube channel. She records police. The book explores protests in front of 52 Division at Dundas and University, and at Police Headquarters at College and Bay, and what it was like inside Yonge Dundas square with all the digital screens showing highlights from the local news stations. Toni explores Canadian Charter Rights issues and reminds readers that Photography is Not a Crime.
Recording Black Lives Matter protests during the COVID19 Lockdown in Toronto transforms cub reporter Antonia Petti into a battle-tested Charter Rights auditor. The scrappy camera-girl gets into Good Trouble and publishes a perfect ID Refusal video. Her work becomes popular on YouTube, but its success is not without consequences. Powerful people don’t like being so exposed . . .
The author’s Inkitt profile,
https://www.inkitt.com/roberrific
The book is also published on Wattpad
https://www.wattpad.com/993624968-toni-petti-live-chapter-one
The art is from Katerina Romanov, a terrifically talented artist living in Stuttgart Germany.
https://kromanova.artstation.com/
This artist works in a wide range of mediums with a wide range of subjects, whether it’s fantasy or cyberpunk, MS Paint or Photoshop or watercolour pencils or physical arts and crafts. She clearly enjoys depicting fantastical creatures and landscapes and brings that to her ‘reality’.
A real life Toni Petti ?
The photo on the right is what the author supplied to Katerina as inspiration for Toni Petti. It was taken from a NY Times story on the rise of citizen journalism. This person is what Toni Petti hopes to become, a successful freelancer. The author clearly wants Toni’s actions to be genuinely insightful so readers can learn how she makes her media and promotes her work online.
If you read the book, and I hope you will, you’ll see how it ends with Toni opening her own shop and becoming a Nancy Drew -like investigator with a camera and a popular YouTube channel. The author hopes to write more books about Toni’s video-auditing adventures.
