After a few years of mastering the art of procrastination, I have finally republished my “crash test dummies”: Kate’s Heart and Islands of the Blessed.
Backtracking to around 1992/93…. I lived for a while on a farm in Harrismith before moving to Magaliesburg. In both places, I occasionally lived in a, let me be generous, house. With no electricity. In Harrismith, I picked up an old portable Olivetti typewriter.
Remember typewriters?
The keys were sticky, and much of the writing was done by literally pounding the keys.
The poor thing eventually started falling apart. By the end of its life it contained bits of kitchen sponges, paperclips, and other random accoutrements that somehow continued its lifespan long after it should have been put out of its misery.
BUT!!
In that time, I remembered how much I loved writing. As a kid in English class, I wrote stories. Of those, I recall three essays called ‘Loneliness’, and the only thing I recall the teacher saying was that I had misspelled the title.
Oh, and that they were pretty good stories.
Digression: I was not a popular kid with teachers. Mostly because I failed to attend school as often as I could. An announcement to my (private tutor-educated) mother that I would not be going to school that day would always result in two questions:
· Are you writing any tests or exams? (No. I never missed those. I hated school and the only way to get out of it was to go through, and pass.)
· Do you want to go to the library? (YES!!!)
(To be fair, those were probably the only things she knew about formal schooling, I think.)
So off we would traipse, and about half my selection would be stuff we were learning at school. Come to think of it, perhaps my unpopularity with teachers wasn’t so much not attending, but more because they would be teaching from textbooks, and I was adding much anecdotal information to their class by interrupting with my library-found knowledge. (I'm sure I was VERY annoying.)
The other half of my book pile was fiction. Of every conceivable genre. As many, as thick or thin, as appropriate or not, as I could carry. I devoured books.
After graduating, I was in and out of media jobs: newspapers, television, and later radio, and my writing was generally focused on news, issues, and current affairs. So, when I found myself living on a farm with no electricity and little clue what was going on in the world, fiction seemed the obvious direction.
I bashed out a book, hammering away at that poor old typewriter. Often into the night, with candles and paraffin lamps surrounding the machine, luring me into a world entirely of my own making.
It wasn’t good.
But there was a story in there, somewhere.
Fast forward to the Age of COVID when work wasn’t interrupting my day, I hauled out the large manilla envelopes that I had carted around the world with me since 1993, looked at the yellowing pages, the fading lettering, the story that, in its good moments, read like a Danielle Steel novel* and thought: Hey! Maybe I can do something with this!
(*So, Romance is not my jam. Or even my bread. I have tried to read DS books, among others from the Romance genre, and I can feel brain cells curl up in the fetal position and howl for mercy. She might be prolific and sell gazillions, but they just aren’t for me.)
Despite my general position on the Romance genre, I thought they might be the easiest way to start. Harlequin’s website guide said a minimum of 50,000 words.
Enter KATE’S HEART.
‘They’ say you should write what you know. I set the story in Eugene, Oregon - where I lived for 16 of the 18 years I was in America. And then I spent many weeks researching winemaking so I could give my main character a career. (Sadly, during COVID, sampling the stuff wasn't generally possible.)
I made it 50,000 words. Exactly By the time I had finished writing, it was 45 words over. I found a way to delete 45 words. Mission accomplished.
I loved the process.
So, I wrote another one: ISLANDS OF THE BLESSED.
For ‘Islands of the Blessed’, I ignore ‘They’s’ advice, and discovered a fascinating story from Egypt. More than two months of research followed as I delved down rabbit holes, learning about the paleontological and archaeological work done at Dakhla Oasis (the remotest of Egypt’s oases). Describing the area wasn't easy, either. Google's street car has never been there, and I had to rely on academic papers to understand the region's geology, stock images, blogs written by students (since it's not a place tourists normally visit), and peering at Google satellite images with a magnifying glass to try and spot where the military checkpoints are located.
The book itself took about 6 weeks to write.
I probably should have made more of an effort, but I like the story, and it proved one thing to me: I could actually write fiction, after all. And it didn’t read anything like Danielle Steel.
I also didn't care about word count - on the umpteenth time I read it through, I realized I had nothing more to say. The story was told. The end.
I kept them on Amazon for a few weeks, before taking them down to do some work on them both.
A few months ago, I reminded myself that I really should re-publish them. So, after new cover designs, some minor content tweaks, and several weeks of tearing my hair out as I navigated distribution channels like IngramSpark, Print On Demand, and others, I have finally put them both out there, again.
After finishing these two ‘crash test dummies’, I took another look at my first draft of that typewritten story. It’s taking a few years (instead of weeks) to work it into something I can be proud of, but I think I’m getting there.
On a computer this time. With electricity.
And I don’t give a damn about the word count. This story will be finished when I’ve said everything I want to say.
It’s how I always wanted to write.
Check out the PERSPECTIVE PUBLICATIONS website.
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