I started writing as a child of ten. Blessed with a vivid imagination and spending the early years on a chicken farm in Kuilsriver near Cape Town, I could run wild while the path of my life was mapped out although unbeknownst to me at the time.
My younger sister had polio and had to wear a caliper. She was also frequently ill. My mother and father had bought the farm in partnership with a Welsh couple, Lalu and Taffy. The men went to work each day while the two women farmed chickens. My mother had a lot on her hands running the farm and looking after an ill child. I was left to my own devices.
Behind the chicken runs was a stretch of land that was covered in fynbos, the Afrikaans name for our floral shrubs and bulbs. Here I explored, loving the
freedom of being alone in this wild place. Back home I made up stories about my adventures.
Each Christmas I was given a couple of books, the most beloved of which were the Biggles books. Intrepid Biggles flew to exotic places such as the South Sea Islands, India and Borneo. I lapped them up and made up my own stories.
To the present. I wrote July Fever on an old manual Imperial typewriter. The original manuscript was about twenty pages long. By chance I met the then editor of YOU magazine, a popular monthly in South Africa and told him about the story. He asked to read it. His name was Peter and he had a great love of red wine. He invited me to join him and threw the manuscript at me. “You’ve got a story. Now write the book!”
He threw it back at me in all five times! Once he took a gulp of his wine, turned a page, looked up and asked “Have you ever had sex?” I bridled. “Of Course I have been married and have two children!” “Well then, write about it as it is and not this rubbish!”
I drove to Plettenburg Bay thinking about what Peter had said and in the Joyce family holiday home with wonderful views of the ocean I hammered the final copy out, true to Peter with a glass of red wine at my elbow! Returning to Cape Town I took it to him. Two days later we met at a restaurant and he handed it back with green corrections and turned the last page for me to see in his green writing “Wonderful! You are a writer!”
Then of course came the battle to find a publisher. Hodder and Stoughten sent it back with praise and apologies that at the time it was inadvisable to publish a South African writer. We were the polecats of the world because of the Apartheid policy of the Nationalist Government.
I found a private publisher and approached Frances Bond who ran a writing course in Howick to edit it which she did. Frances was very complimentary and also called me a writer! She undertook to launch the book at that year’s Durban July Handicap, the year was 1980.
The newspapers all gave the book great write praise and the leading Durban newspaper made it their book of the month. That was a long time ago.
I met my friend Steve Blignaut, here in Johannesburg at one of our favourite pubs, The Irish Club. Steve was a fellow writer and he offered to help me put it on Amazon which we did. It has not flown, largely due to my computer incompetence and insufficient marketing but I am learning and you, my followers of the blog are I hope helping to get my writing known.
This week my first novella is on Kindle and will be on Amazon too. It is a story of love, betrayal and courage against the backdrop of the wild places of Southern Africa. I painted the cover picture myself and once again Steve has put it on Kindle for me while my younger son, TJ has helped with lodging my blogs and his wife Maud with getting the manuscript into one document for Steve. I can’t thank them enough.
My new novel, Bring me a Dream, with the theme of hunting and conservation set against the backdrop of the Lugenda Wilderness in Northern Mozambique will be out next month. Please look out for it. I also painted its cover.
Below you will see two of a set of three paintings that I have finished trying to portray what it is like to be a writer. The first with the eagles flying in an out of a page represents the ideas. The second tells of the loneliness. The bird at the foot is a Secretary bird, always alone, stalking across the Karoo that stretches for miles
with only a solitary windmill and distance farmhouse to be seen, searching for prey.
The third will try and portray the joy of getting one’s own book published!
Molly's Musings On Life And Travel 