The Beginning

Unless you are writing a book yourself, and are a first time author like myself, you are probably not going to get past the first paragraph without yawning. Likewise, even if you are, as suggested, writing yourself, you are likely to be bored reading this blog. At least the first few entries anyway, until something exciting happens.

I am writing a book; well a trilogy to be precise; and it's a bit of a long haul with many things to do, consider, write, research, re-write, research some more and re-write again, and not to mention look for a publisher/agent. It's all a wee bit daunting really. But I have for the first time in my life felt really dedicated to one craft in particular (I tend to flit from jewellery making and polymer clay bead-making, to drawing, to sewing, to decorating, to playing music and singing etc etc etc...) and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it slip away. I want this more than anything else; I want it for myself and I want it for my family, so I can show them that I can achieve something without having gone all the way through school and provide for them more than a weekend bookseller's salary.

About the book
It all started when I first came to the UK from South Africa. I initially came for six months when I was nearly 15. I had stopped going to school in the April of 2000 and gone to stay with my Aunt near Thabazimbi in the Northern Province while my mom made all the arrangements for schooling etc in the UK. My step dad to be, I had met only once. By the August, all was set and about 4 days before my birthday I stepped off the plane to the most miserable place in the world (I thought at the time) and all I wanted to do was go home. England was so green and wet and the long evenings were strange to me. I could not attend school, even if it were not summer holidays and I knew no one other than my mother. I spent my days reading/watching tv/crying/smoking/getting on my mother's nerves/cooking/cleaning/crying/drawing/smoking etc. You get the picture. I was depressed. I couldn't go to school, I had no friends and no means to make any, it was Autumn of a very different kind to the ones I was used to. By the time October came around, I had taken to wandering the little streets of South Darenth just wishing I were Dorothy and could find a pair of red sparkly shoes. I began to dream up fantasies about vampires and witches and as they became more and more real to me, and as my home became the inside of my skull, so came the urge to get it out of me, to write.

I started writing one after noon and didn't stop until about 3am. This happened every night for about a week before my mom started laying into me for screwing up my body-clock and never lifting a finger in the house and smoking too much, the list went on, but I honestly didn't listen after the first twenty minutes. She was really worried about me, but I was, I'm now ashamed to admit, past caring. If I couldn't go home, then I would live there, in my head.

I wrote the prologue and first three chapters before I had even the vaguest idea what my book was about. I started with the title and just went on from there, typing in time to my imagination as it led me from one thing to the next. As you could imagine, not much of it made sense, but it was just so real to me, I couldn't type fast enough to capture each image in my mind, each voice, each situation's atmosphere. And then she sent me home two months ahead of schedule. By the end of November I was back home. Christmas was heavenly and hot at my Aunt's house, the only one missing was my mother. I did miss her, but I was hell-bent that I would not be returning to that God-forsaken country (that became a well-used phrase, I'll come to that soon) and the 8 months passed, mainly at my Aunt's house, but a few weeks with my dad here and there. Life was a breeze without having to go to school (yup I was still not attending...) and not having to work because I was underage. I spent the time drinking, smoking and acquainting myself with men (I say men, because, by and large, they were much older than me, the youngest being only 3 years older, one of my brother's friends).

You're thinking, so what happened to the book? This is about a book right? Well yes, it is, but at that point in time I had all but forgotten about it. I was back where I wanted to be, I didn't need to recreate it to make a home for my mind anymore. I tinkered with it occasionally, but never wrote more than a few paragraphs at a time, mainly because I had no idea what the story was!

To cut a long story short, I did end up back in this God-forsaken country, and I did go back to school in September of 2001, but only managed a year, having leaped from below GCSE levels straight into AS levels because of my age. I met my husband the following May, at a friends birthday party, where he'd come to collect his sister who enjoyed art and English lit with me. He pursued me and though I turned him down a few times I finally came to my senses...7 years, two living quarters, two sons and two years of marriage later... and I've finally started writing again. I've been at it now for about 6months, having had the epiphany that the story would not imagine itself and that I would have to actually sit down and work it out, whence I promptly sat down with a coffee, pen and notebook and did just that. The problem was that the story became too intricate and too involved to be able to restrict it to just one book. And so I divided it up, fleshed it out a little and voila! A new Vampire trilogy has impregnated my mind, and slowly, will come to bear upon the world...

As for the story line, well you'll have to wait, because it's bed-time and though it's a little earlier than I would like to go to sleep (the brain is way way to awake) I have two boisterous boys (4 and a half and 13months) who wake up at 6am and 7am respectively, demanding their porridge oats and milk as if I can magic it onto the table without having to pull my eyelids up and throw myself out of bed to dress. At least Ethan starts school in September...peaceful days of only Leon's whining to contend with...