Our main character is autistic and is based on our head writer and director. We also have four of our main characters (including Atticus) that are LGBT, including a transgender character being played by a transgender actor. To date, all our creative team and department heads are women or nonbinary.

The Atticus McLaren Mysteries started two years ago as a series of novellas. I'd been seeing disability representation on the rise and thought it would be nice to have a book series about an adult autistic character whose story didn't revolve around his autism. So, Atticus was born. Then Atticus turned out to be a lot like me, Spring Horton, your screenwriter and director for this series. He's an archaeologist, who works in a museum, and just happens to (usually accidentally) get involved in solving crimes.

 

It didn't take long for me to realize that it would make a good TV show too. I just happened to have an MA in directing and knew a lot of actors. Not that that was the original plan. I thought about simply selling the script, but eventually realized that I'd rather make this show myself. So, after a lot of discussion with my colleagues, that's exactly what we decided to do!

 

The Story

Atticus McLaren likes a quiet life. He likes gardening, photography, archaeology, and detective shows. He's also autistic, prefers to work at his museum job after hours, and has a few personality quirks. His quiet life is turned upside down though when he runs into Freddy Spinner spying in his verge. Freddy is everything Atticus isn't. She's spunky, excitable, spontaneous...a lesbian. For some reason, Atticus clicks with her anyway.

 

When strange things begin to happen at his museum, Atticus enlists Freddy's help to figure out what's going on. As things escalate and the night security guard turns up dead, it's up to him and Freddy, along with his estranged brother, Scout and Detective Sergeant Drake Mallard to solve the mystery before they end up corpses themselves.  Along the way, Atticus and Scout work on their differences, Atticus learns to live outside his comfort zone, and he tries to work out why Sergeant Mallard seems so interested in him. 

 

After a year of planning, here we are. We started our own production company, Divergence Productions, figured out when and where to film, even managed to attract some fans and actors to help us out, went through a few growing pains, and are now ready to share Atticus with you. 

 

Representation was something that was always important to us. Many of us are autistic ourselves or have a family member who is, but many of us are part of the LGBT community too and it was just as important that this was represented in our story as well. Most of the main characters, including Atticus and his best friend Freddy Spinner are LGBT. We have a transgender character being played by a transgender actor as well as a transgender cinematographer. On top of that, all of the creative heads are either female, transgender, or non-binary. We are looking to push the envelope both on-screen and off. 

 

One challenge has been that this story was always set in the UK. Luckily, most of the cast and crew are there as well, but some of us are in the US. This has led to some very creative management fixes and me, as producer, relying heavily on the generous work of my cast and crew to get a lot of things done for me. With funding in place, those of us in the US will be able to go to Edinburgh to scout locations and get together to finally get the ball rolling. We will be filming in the great city of Edinburgh, as well as the surrounding areas, Portobello and other beaches, and the city's green spaces.

 

We really hope you decide to take Atticus' journey with him. We'll be posting updates (hopefully daily) that will let you get to know the cast and crew and the story or our hero!