I'm beginning to write this post on a day when I received a miserable royalty report for one of my books for the year 2019-20. Yet, the year 2020 has been all kinds of wonderful in terms of publishing for me. So many of my projects have seen light of day, though they have suffered for it too, thanks to the pandemic. With ecommerce, distribution and retail taking a blow, perhaps it was not a great year to have books release. But how can I not be happy to see my work out there? Poetry Creatures of the Dark Published by Oxford University Press Buy Roots 5 January 2020 brought me my first publication of the year, and it was a first in many ways. It was the first time I had something published in a textbook, the first time I could download an app and watch an animated video of my poem, and the first time … [Read more...]
Sisters at New Dawn – The Story Behind the Story
Everybody knows that writing a book takes time. Sometimes (is it especially so with me?), it takes quite a long time.I wrote Sisters at New Dawn six years ago. 2014. Of course, this meant that in the last edit, I had to make lots of changes in it to keep up with the times. For instance, I had to change the idea of young people on Facebook to young people on Instagram; you'll discover the context if you read the book. That changed in these six years.I sent my manuscript out to the first publisher on my list on the 14th of October 2014. I maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of my submissions, so I know. And publishing comes with follow-ups and more follow-ups. Four months and three follow-ups later, I was told that the story was 'interesting', but it didn't work for them.In three years, I read and rewrote Sisters for the I-don't-know-how-many-th time. Then, I … [Read more...]