Common Questions from New Writers

I get emails and phone calls from people with all sorts of questions. I thought it might make more sense to answer some of them here.

1. I’ve written a Christian counselling book, how can I find a publisher?

As I’ve said in this column before, unless your book is for schools then you won’t find a publisher in Botswana. They might agree to publish it, but they don’t know how to market a book for a trade market so it will sit in their storeroom, which does you no good.

For a book like this, you need to know a bit about yourself. Do you work in religion or in counselling? Do you already know people who will buy your book? Do you do speaking engagements around these topics? If the answer is yes, than I think your best bet is to self publish. Make sure you hire a good editor. Get your book designed and printed. And then market it yourself. Sell it when you move around and speak on these topics.

 2. How do I find a publisher for my novel?

Again, if your novel has no chance of being chosen as a prescribed book in Botswana, you’d rather look for a publisher elsewhere. The first place might be South Africa. You can approach publishers in South Africa directly without an agent. To find South African publishers, take a tour of the local bookstore. Which books are like yours? Note the name of the publisher. Then do research on the internet to find their website with their submission guidelines. Sometimes publishers want you to send only a synopsis of your novel. Others want the first three chapters and others want to see the entire manuscript straight away. Follow the submission guidelines to the letter; you don’t want them hating you even before they’ve read your manuscript.

If you want to see your manuscript published overseas, then in most cases you need an agent. The best place to find a good up-to-date list of agents is the website Predators and Editors. What is good about this site is they tell you if the agent is a deadbeat or if they're a star. They give you the agent’s website so you can check the other authors they represent. Do your research. And again, most agents have submission guidelines on their websites- follow them. Once an agent takes your manuscript on, they will then approach publishers on your behalf. This is good because if you have a good agent, they have connections and know what type of books each publisher is looking for so your odds of getting published are increased. But note they will not do this for free, they will be taking a percentage of your royalties, usually 10-15% but that varies. This is good in a sense because they then have a vested interest in the success of your book. If an agent asks you to pay them any money directly, say no and stop communicating with them, they are trying to cheat you.

 3. How can I get my poetry or short story collection published?

Getting poetry and short story collections published is very difficult. The reason is that publishers find it difficult to sell them. If you do poetry readings often, I would suggest self publishing. Your market will be the audience at each of your readings.

If you want to get shorts stories and poems published, you would best start by being published in literary magazines. There are many online magazines and some very prestigious print magazines. The more your stories are out there, the more your name is known, and the more likely a traditional publisher will be willing to publish a collection of yours.

Some prestigious literary magazines in Southern Africa and Africa are New Contrast, Coin, African Writing, and Botsotso. But with the internet there really is no reason to restrict yourself to Africa.Most literary magazines have submission guidelines online.

4. How can I be sure they won’t steal my manuscript?

This is such a common fear of new writers but if you are careful it is one that is completely unfounded. By careful I mean, you check out the people you’re sending to. You never send to a publisher or agent that charges a reading fee. If you think about it, what would be gained by a reputable publisher stealing your manuscript? You would likely complain and complain loudly. Writers would begin to see the publisher as a crook and would stop sending them their manuscripts. The publisher, having no books to publish would go out of business. It’s simple- reputable publishers don’t steal manuscripts. 

(These questions and answers were first published in my column in The Voice newspaper, It's All Write, 4 February 2011)

Childhood Tragedy No. 34: Sea Monkeys

Every kid in America knew Sea Monkeys. The perfect little undersea nuclear family. The tall commanding father with his crown and long monkey tail with a little arrowhead at the end. The kindly mother with her Mary Tyler Moore flip hairstyle except in blond so we all knew she was a stay at home mom. That’s what blond hair meant in the 1970s. The prepubescent daughter, naked, with her perfect white toothed smile. And the naughty baby brother. They lived under the ocean in their majestic purple castle, a happy loving home full of fun and laughter. I suspected they played lots of board games together. From the moment I saw the Sea Monkey advert I had to have them.

I dreamt about my future Sea Monkey life. They would be my friends. At first a bit confused about the abrupt shift from their ocean home to my fish bowl on top of the water heater. But then they’d settle in and they’d tell me all about their life under the sea and I’d tell them about my life on land. They’d be the best kind of pets, talking ones. I knew this because from the photo in the Richie Rich comic book it was obvious they were conversing with each other. And I lived in America at the time, so, of course, Sea Monkeys spoke English, none of that foreign Sea Monkey talk.  It was going to be great.

I was nine years old and had a bit of experience with comic book buying. I’d already bought the X-ray glasses. I was obsessed with the idea that once I got those glasses I’d be able to see my horse Barney’s skeleton. While everyone else wanted to look under Miss Mason’s dress, I was more interested in the equestrian bone structure. It didn’t matter in any case, the X-ray glasses didn’t work, not to see horse bones or third grade teacher’s very pointy boobs.

I bought the life-size glow in the dark skeleton poster which I hoped would scare me at night. Where all other kids were afraid of ghosts and monsters that filled up bedrooms at night, I welcomed them and they never showed up. I hoped the glow in the dark skeleton poster would fill in until they did.  The skeleton did glow in the dark, so that was a good thing, but only for a very short time, seconds. Not long enough for you to forget it was a poster and to trick you into thinking you had a glowing skeleton man in your room ready to eat you.

So my comic book buying experience was a mixed bag. But for some reason I was sure the Sea Monkeys wouldn’t let me down. They were like the Cleaver family. Would Beaver let you down? Maybe by accident, but never on purpose. Never, never on purpose.

I was a big fan of happy nuclear families mostly because I’d never known a real-life one before. I knew all of them on TV, though. I knew the Partridge Family. And Laura Ingalls Wilder’s happy pioneering family living in The Big Woods in books, but on TV they lived On The Prairie. I knew the Brady Bunch. I knew happy families were out there. I even sometimes had hope my family, with my mother living in the mental hospital, a stepmother filling in who wasn’t too pleased about the situation, and my father who tried his best to stay away from home for as long as he could, would transform. I  hoped my family would be one of those happy TV nuclear families. It didn’t matter if they didn’t though because I was sure once my Sea Monkey family arrived I’d be welcomed into their lovely functional watery family life and everything would be perfect.

So I sent off my money collected from weekly 50 cent allowances and waited.  When the package arrived, I was worried. It had no air holes. There was no water. The post takes some time and I was sure they’d killed my sea monkey family with their negligent packaging. I tore it open and inside I found two packages of powder with lengthy instructions.

I’m genetically predisposed to instruction avoidance. I know many people claim this affliction just to get out of reading instructions, but I have evidence that I actually have it. The evidence is my father. My father was keen on DIY and purchased a set of DIY encyclopedia from the TV. These encyclopedias had detailed instructions about how to build all sorts of things. For my father, the lengthy, detailed instructions were just taking up space, he bought the books for the pictures. Using those pictures he managed to build a picnic table that if your stepmother, for example, sat on one side and you plopped down very hard on the other side, directly opposite her, you could launch her like Apollo 11. He also built an elaborate brick barbecue stand using the DIY photo in the encyclopedia that got all sorts of compliments for being the most beautiful dog house in the neighbourhood.

So like I said, I had no ability to read instructions much less follow them. But I tried my best. My sea monkey family depended on me. I dumped both packages in the fish bowl and added warm water. I was sure they’d want warm water. In the photo they didn’t even have clothes.

Then I waited for the Sea Monkeys to emerge. I wondered how big they’d be. I knew they wouldn’t be my nine-year old size, but I was sure they’d be about the size of the goldfish that I’d won at the fair that had previously inhabited the bowl, at least the father would. The daughter, Debbie, maybe half his size, and Tommy, the little brother, half of Debbie.

Days passed. Each morning I rushed downstairs to the water heater to see what had happened over night. At first I just thought they were slow starters. But then brown bubbles began to form on the surface of the water. After two weeks the smell was so bad I was afraid it might harm Arnold, the hamster that shared the water heater with the Sea Monkeys. After two weeks, I dumped my Sea Monkeys and all of my Sea Monkey dreams down the toilet.

Now that I have a bit of distance, 38 years of distance in fact, I guess I was to blame. I should have read the instruction more carefully. But after reading other people’s “successful Sea Monkey experience” I think I’ve decided I am not the most culpable for this tragedy. The bulk of the blame rest on the shoulders of the inventor of Sea Monkeys- Harold Nathan Braunhut aka Harold von Braunhut. First, I think we can agree any person with aka in their name is a shady fellow. But too, I find out now he put over 3 million adverts for Sea Monkeys in comic books. Three million lies targeted at naive kids like me because there was never going to be a happy Sea Monkey nuclear family. Sea Monkeys were just a few sizes above microscopic, they were not monkeys, they were not even mammals. They were brine shrimp. Even the inventor didn’t have much faith in them as was discovered in an interview done in 1997 when journalist Lara M Zieses interviewed Harold Nathan Braunhut aka Harold von Braunhut  for The Baltimore Sun, a man who she describes as “a cartoon character come to life”. When speaking about Sea Monkeys he admits, "Keeping them alive was a terrible struggle."

Great. In a way I guess it makes me feel a bit better. Only a bit though.

When it Comes to Books it's a Man's World and It's Not About to Change

Nora Roberts is one of the most successful authors ever and yet her books never appear in the New York Times Book Review or The London Review of Books. The reason they give is that romance is not considered serious literature, but that's not true. What they mean to say is that romance written by women is not serious literature. A US group just released a study that shows despite the talk men are just taken more seriously in the book world even if they write romance.

"Marina Warner, author and reviewer, described the imbalance as "marked", pointing out that it also applies to which titles are given to which reviewers, "reflecting how readers are subtly influenced to respond – even before starting to read. [So] a romance by a male author reviewed by a male reviewer gains stature beyond the usual expectation of the genre.""


And in fact it is not just romance written by women, it's anything written by women. Even the critiques. Men dominate everywhere.

"But the latest figures show that little has changed since 2010: at the LRB (London Reveiw of Books), in 2012 24% of reviewers were women (66 out of 276), with 27% of books reviewed written by women. At the New York Review of Books, 16% of reviewers were women, with 22% of the books reviewed written by women. At the TLS (Times Literary Supplement), 30% of the 1,154 reviewers were women, and 25% of the 1,238 books reviewed were written by women."

And yet there are people out there who still think we don't need special prizes for women writers (i.e. The Orange Prize, currently in transition but thankfully being saved) and magazines like Mslexia.
We still have a very long way to go.  

Birds of a Feather (a short story)

     Bontle hated everything about Gaborone Birding Club: the heavy khaki shorts that created an embarrassing ‘shwish’ sound when walking, the wide expanse of khaki vest advertising she’d not earned a single birding badge, and, most of all, the pith helmet written- “I’m a Gaborone Birder!”. 

     The members lived in some La-La Land where bird lists and call recognition created an odd hierarchy they worshipped with voracity unseen outside of African Evangelical Churches. She knew on their ladder she was at the bottom rung, but she also knew she had only herself to blame. It all began because of lust and a lie.

     Bontle had lusted after the tall, heavy-brained Dr. Kavindama ever since she heard him give his speech- ‘Cloning- It’s Always Good to Have a Spare’. One day in the university cafeteria he said, “I love bird watching”, and without thinking Bontle responded, “Me, too.” Now, here she was.

     “Don’t forget your guide, Bontle, we don’t want another embarrassing incident,” Lillian Molemi shouted already pushing to the front of the queue. Lillian -the Birding Queen. Bontle wondered how she moved weighed down by all of her badges; ‘Best Birder’ 1989 through 2007, alone, took up the whole left side of her vest. Then she had ‘Warbler Call Recognition’, and ‘Complete List’ for ducks, birds of prey, and- the coveted- owls.

     The Bird Queen called and the group congregated like moths to a cherished lamp. “Turn Newman’s to page 471, Voila! Today’s bird- the Long-Legged Buzzard. Let’s be on our way birders!”

     Professor Kavindama pushed to the front, his pith helmet slightly askew. “Lillian, let’s not forget, a sighting will earn the person a ‘Rare Vagrant’ badge.” He smiled up at his Queen.

    Bontle looked away. Professor Kavindama of the Gaborone Birding Club was not the Professor Kavindama with a passion for clones. He likely stole hair samples from Lillian with the hope of reproducing his own Birding Queen back in his lab. Bontle felt ill.

     Lillian kept a brisk pace when hunting a bird and Bontle quickly fell to the back. She’d never be the first to spot the Long-legged Buzzard anyway. The members were ruthless when a badge was at stake. On a trip in the Okavango Delta,  Gothata Modise, a slightly built accountant,  pushed two members into a hippo-infested channel just so he could see a copper sunbird and earn his ‘Complete List: Nectar Feeders’ badge.

     ‘Kraak!’  Bontle strained her ears.  ‘Kraak!’

     Wait-she knew that call! It was a White Back Night Heron, a very rare bird for this area.  If she found it, she’d get one of the most prestigious badges- ’Rare Night Water Bird’. She looked left then right- she was alone. Bontle set off towards the sound. 

     Suddenly she heard the group in the distance, they had heard the call too and were coming her way.  Bontle ran, ignoring the thorns tearing at her bare, chubby legs.  She pushed through some reeds and then- there it was; the white eye ring and yellow legs gave it away.  

    In seconds, Lillian’s annoyed face appeared through the reeds. “Imagine you stumbling upon that, Bontle.”

     “No stumbling involved. I heard the call, I followed it. I don’t believe you have this badge, Lillian, am I right?”

     Ignoring her, Lillian ordered a bit too harshly, “No time to waste ogling that, let’s find the buzzard!” She set off and the group trailed away after her.

     Bontle sat down on the mat of reeds, happy, and watched the heron hunt in the marshy water.

     “Quite a find.”

     Bontle jumped; she’d thought she was alone. It was Professor Kavindama. They both watched the bird for some silent moments. “I wonder…. would you like to accompany me to brunch later?” the Professor asked hesitantly.

     The heron pulled its beak out of the water holding a wriggling frog- finally -hunting success!

Sharing the imagined thoughts of the bird, Bontle looked back at Professor Kavindama and smiled. 

(This story is included in the book 50 Stories for Haiti which raises funds for the people there affected by the hurrivcane)

The Collector of Lives (a short story)

(  I wrote this story just after the Tsunami, trying to find a way to understand what 200,000+ people dead really means)

 

 SHE LAYS still, her body bloated and pale.  In the constantly moving water, her long, black hair waves like ribbons in the wind. Fish swim past; nibble a bit at her battered leg, then move on. A small crab creeps over the mound of her bare stomach. A piece of seaweed is wrapped around her toe. He wonders where have her clothes gone to.

   Then he shakes himself awake. Dripping with an icy sweat, he manages, after long minutes of confusion, to pull himself into reality. The sharp truth that she is gone, gone not known where, settles once again in its usual place. He reminds himself that a dream is not the truth, the dream of her alone forever on the floor of the unfeeling ocean. It is not the truth, it is only an option.  An option among many, he assures himself. Why, when there are so many options, must the worst one be the truth? Why couldn’t she be alive and a few steps away from their own front door, just now ready to knock?  Why couldn’t tomorrow be the day that they lay in bed holding each other until the sun rises high in the sky for fear that letting go would dissolve the truth of their togetherness like so many grains of sugar in tea? Why not that? He spoke out to no one because everyone was gone who could have heard.

    They stayed for a while. They were lost, wandering this way and that- crying out, keeping silent. They paced his beach with him. They too looked out with anger at the sea; shouting impotently and at other times, silently watching, waiting. But then others came and said, "It is time to move on." And everyone left.  It was not worth their time to rebuild the village. They had no will to fight the ocean for the land. The sea had taught them who would be victorious. Throwing up their hands in defeat they walked away.  

    Once alone, without interference by "I'm so sorry" and "you must move on with your life" - he felt better. Strict routine helped. He woke at day break. Ate a sparse breakfast and spent the day patrolling. He would search the coastline up and down to see what the sea decided to return. To check if his Kade was among the ocean’s rejected rubbish. So far she was not. So far the sentence of her leaving was not complete.

    But others had returned. Nameless people, lives washed clean. These he would spend the afternoons burying. They were quite a few now, an even dozen since the day before yesterday when a girl, a teenager, washed ashore. She wore only the remnants of a purple t-shirt nothing else. Her face was gone and her left hand had only a thumb. She might have been twelve or thirteen, small nubs of her new breasts poked through the holes in the tattered shirt and curly dark hairs sprouted here and there around her pubic mound. Womanhood was just around the corner for this girl when she died. Somewhere her parents mourned her. Because of that he removed her purple shirt before laying her in the grave he had dug. Folding it carefully he placed it in the box with the eleven other identifying bits and pieces that he would show the buried ones’ families if they should ever decide to return. So that their question marks could be changed to solemn but finally ending full stops.

   

     The dream of Kade held deep on the ocean’s floor decided that sleep would elude him so he moves into the small light from the moon and opens the box. He has come to enjoy looking through the objects, creating the lives of the dead.

   There were pieces of various coloured clothing, a few rings, some necklaces, three single shoes. He took whatever the sea agreed to give back. Carefully, he turned a plain gold wedding band back and forth in the moonlight. He remembered it, it was taken from a short, fat woman with a kind face and a small pert nose who washed up only a few days after everybody was gone. He thought that she must have been loved by her husband for her soft, round body to hold for comfort in the inky darkness of an uncertain night.

    Digging to the bottom, he searched for the silver necklace, one of his favourites. It was a beautiful thing, smooth and well crafted. A man had worn it, a tall, well-built man maybe his own age. He imagined him one of the rich jewelers who populated the capitol. He was Chinese and he knew the Chinese in Jakarta were very wealthy. Though the poor often held animosity for the rich, he felt none for this dead jeweler.  If he were to be honest, before perhaps, but not now, loss had equalized things, pain had set the meter back to zero and everyone could now look eye to eye.

  

    Soon a thin line of light appeared through the hole that once held the glass of a window. He puts everything carefully back into the box. Getting up, he rolls his sleeping mat and places it in the corner of the empty room. He grabs the door on both sides and lifts it to the side. It’s a bit small for the space; their door had been torn off and taken somewhere else so he had replaced it with another found abandoned at the shoreline. He walks into the coolness of the new day. After stoking the fire back to life, he adds a few broken pieces of timber till it bursts into flame. Placing his tin of coffee at the edge of the fire, he goes back into the house for a few pieces of dried fish that will serve as his breakfast. He eats watching the sun slowly climb into the sky.

     Breakfast finished, he makes his way to the beach. Stepping over piles of broken wooden walls, he spies the brown teddy bear lying trapped in a low bush as he does every morning, its owner maybe dead, maybe moved away. As he passes it he gives the toy a benevolent nod of common circumstance. They both wait, wait for the uncertain return of their heart’s owner, both hope that the likely truth- for them- will not be so.

   Patrolling is calming and nerve wrecking at the same time. At least finding her beautiful body would put an end to it.  He could maybe move on, as they all like to say. He’s become accustomed now to his routine, though. He hates to admit it, feels guilty even to think the thought that he’s come to accept it somehow. It is a small contained life but a life nonetheless, something he was not sure he’d ever have again.

   By the time that he reaches the water’s edge, the sun has risen completely. A gull screams at him for disturbing his morning hunt. Looking out over the water, he sees something floating in the tide wash a few metres down, he quickens his pace towards the dark spot in the distance. As he nears, he knows that it is a body. He has seen so many he is nearly an expert.

     It is as he thought. He knows without turning it over that it is not her, though. This person is taller than Kade, the hands are not right. Relief washes over him. He pushes the body over and sees that it is a woman.  Her body bloated, just like the one in his dream. Three toes are missing, her chin nibbled off. She wears the remains of a beautiful dress. Even in its tattered state it is evident that money was spent by this woman to buy the dress. She walked through air conditioned shops, overseas perhaps, through store after store looking for a certain dress. A dress that would accent her almond eyes, for he could see, even in the state that she was in, that her eyes where beautiful, a feature to take pride in. And she brought the dress home, anxious to show her husband. She pranced in front of him, reminding him once again of her beauty and why he should be thankful she agreed to marry him. And he was thankful, as all men with beautiful wives are but was that thankfulness not also tinged with a bit of anger at her boastfulness? Or was he a kind man who knew she was just making a present of herself for him? He wondered these things as he looked at this body of a living woman long gone.

      The sweat poured from his face and down the middle of his back as he dug the grave. The steamy humidity of mid-morning pressed on him and the digging was slow going. But, he had decided to dig proper graves and, as his wife had often said, he was a perfectionist once he had found a goal.

    In the end, the sun sat on the edge of the horizon when he finally laid the shovel down and went for the body. He rolled her, face down, onto a washed up board and dragged it to the plot. At the side, he tipped the board and she fell to the bottom of the grave, lying almost perfectly on her back. He picked up the shovel and pushed soil into the hole mechanically, standing up straight when the task was finished. In the light from a full mooned night sky, he repeated a short Islamic prayer they’d memorized as small children. It was about the love of Allah and Allah’s love for a good wife. He thought that it was appropriate, though he believed none of it himself. After all that had happened, he was convinced that there was no god; that he was absolutely sure of.

    He had taken the wedding ring from her finger and the belt of the fancy dress for his box.  He pulled a smooth piece of broken timber from a nearby pile and, using a piece of charred wood from his fire, wrote 'gold ring with two small diamonds and yellow belt of an expensive dress' and he pushed the timber into the ground to act as a headstone. It was his system. Then he tied the ring inside of the belt. He would put them in the box and if ever her husband arrived he might go through the box and find the belt of her expensive dress and the wedding ring he gave her and then he would take him to her grave where he knew she would always be.

      When he was done, he sat down next to the grave exhausted and watched the moonlight shimmer on the calm surface of the deceitful ocean. He heard a noise behind him and turned. To his shock, he saw his wife standing in the distance; the moonlight glowed around her, her silky hair pulled back into a tidy braid that laid over her other shoulder down to her waist. He stood up and ran to her shouting, "Kade? Kade is that you? You have returned! You have returned!"

     He ran as fast as he could towards her until he was a few metres away, then he stopped short. His heart fell to the earth with a thud, and the aching sadness that he thought he had managed to escape from with his routine and his patrolling, with his box, came crashing into him and he felt his bones shatter in despair. A howl echoed down the coast as he fell to his knees. 

    "Sir, please do not cry. Please do not cry," a woman's voice said.   She could do nothing but speak the words. She could add no edge of kindness to ease his burden. No hand to rub a shoulder; only words was she able to offer. She needed him to stop, her ears were overflowing with the sound of people's pain and she could take no more.

    After some moments, his sadness put loosely back in its place, he looked up. "What do you want here? Why did you come here?" he snapped, not meaning to be so abrupt but having no choice in his state.

     “I wanted to check if my son has returned, “ she said ignoring his rudeness.

     He got up from his knees and looked this woman over. She was slightly older than him and he regretted having been short with her so the next words he spoke with gentle kindness. “I patrol this beach. Since everyone has gone I’ve buried thirteen that the sea has returned. I have a box, I can show you."

    She followed him away from the beach over the broken homes, past the stuck bear to his house. She waited outside while he moved the door to the side and entered. He returned after some minutes with a large metal trunk. Setting it near the fire, he pointed at a stool he had salvaged for her to sit on.

    "How old was your boy?" he asked.

  She rocked a moment then bent her head down and held it hard between her hands. She had found by doing this she could force the pain back inside and then she could think of her son without going insane. "He was ten years old." He watched but thought nothing. In such times acceptance becomes very wide.

    "There was a boy," he said opening the lid and letting it fall over onto the ground where it clanked to a stop. "He arrived two weeks ago, maybe it's three weeks now. I’m not sure; the days are a bit muddled. He wore a shoe, only one but if it’s him you’ll know it as it had something tied on it." He dug through the box and finally after a time, said, "Yes, I remember now, it had a bell." And he pulled the shoe out and handed it to the woman.

   She snatched it from his hand and pulled it close to her body. Falling to the ground, she rolled violently back and forth, sand sticking to her body, twigs catching in her long braid. "Budi, Budi!" she moaned in a deep, ripping voice.

    He sat quietly poking at the fire, closing up his box.   After a time, when the moon was already small and white, hidden half behind a drifting cloud, she sat up, still holding the shoe next to her heart. "Where did you take him?" she whispered.

     "He is with the others. Shall I show you now?"

      She stood up as her answer. They made their way to the makeshift cemetery where he had to read a few of the headstones before he found her son. "Here it is."

     "Thank you," she replied. "Now you can go and leave us."

    When he stepped away to go, she fell on top of the grave and he was surprised that her wailing began yet again. The limitlessness of her grief astounded him. Silently, he crept back to his house and fell asleep on his reed mat. 

   In the morning, before eating his breakfast or beginning his patrol he went to check on the woman. Her cries of Budi pushed above the roar of the excited ocean. She lay where he had left her the night before. Knowing that there was nothing that he could do, he turned around to begin his day.  By morning, a soft drizzle began. From his patrol he could see the woman still on the grave. He turned to check her every once and a while, but soon he forgot and went about his daily routine.

     And so it went for four days. He attempted to bring her food and water, but she was unaware of him. Her grief was opaque and sturdy, blocking off all around her. He told himself that she would know when it was time to come away from her son, so he left her.

   On the night of the fourth day, she came to stand next to where he sat on the beach. The sea was rough and the wind howled so he had wrapped himself in a torn curtain he had found. "I wonder what I should do now," she stated and he jumped at the sound where none should have been.

     Sitting next to him, she pulled her legs up and wrapped them with her arms, and then reaching behind she undid her braid and let her long hair fall around her to insulate herself from the wind. He looked at her and repeated what he knew he must, without conviction. "You must go from here and move on. Make a new life."

    Turning she looked at this strange patrolling man and laughed. A wild, abandoned laugh full of the uselessness of life, of love, of loss and the open pit of uncontrolled emotions that she was unable to cover politely with a lid, a laugh that nearly swallowed them up in the despair of it.

   When it was quiet again, he said in response, "Yes, I suppose you're right."

   And that was how their life began- amid the rubble and the sea, with bodies floating in and being buried. With hearts like mangled meat, they began, step by step.  It was a simple routine without a shred of contrived pretense. No, there was no room for that. They patrolled the beach and they collected the bits and pieces that described a life so that those who were searching might one day be found. And on a certain day a hand accidentally touched an arm, and then, later, a kiss opened a heart that had been shut tight with cement and chains, thinking only the awaited one had the key or the hammer to open it up again. But surprisingly, inside was found a small place, a growing place, which could make just enough room for one more.

Pumping Life into Characters

No matter how exciting your story, if your characters are flat, two-dimensional stereotypes no reader will connect with them and your story won’t work. Here are some pointers to help you create characters that come to life.

1. Start with a list

When I begin a novel, I start a page for each of my main characters. On that page I have all of the important information about that character. Some of the things I include are age, family, special mannerisms, education, what they look like, what they like to do, where they live, what they fear, ambitions.  Some writers even have a prepared form that they fill in for each character. I don’t do that because different stories have different requirements but if it works for you give it a try. As I begin to write, and more details come out about the character I add this information to the character’s page. One thing to remember about this list is that it is for you the writer. It is for you to get to know your character. Some of that information might end up in the story, but not all of it.

2. Interview your character

This might sound crazy but some writers say this works. You interview your character as if you’re interviewing a real person so that you can interrogate what views they have on various issues to get a better idea in your mind about who they are. You need to know this person completely so you know how they will behave in your story.

3. Find a Photo of your Character

I’ve done this before. If I’m not seeing my character clearly, I page through magazines and newspapers to find someone who looks like the character in my head. I cut the photo out and staple it to my character’s page. If I can’t find the exact person I’ll take a head off one and a body off another.

4. Choose the right name

When a writer chooses a name for a character she must be careful. Firstly, the name should match the character. Names have certain impressions associated with them. For example your sexy, svelte kick-ass protagonist is not going to go over very well with readers if she’s called Bertha. And keep your readers in mind. I had an instance in one of my books where my main female character was called Lame. The book was published in South Africa where not everyone knows Setswana and a non-Setswana speaker would read the name as the word lame instead of La-mee. I only had this pointed out to me by the editor; I hadn’t thought of it myself, so her name was changed.

5. Don’t forget your Bad Guys

It’s easy to make good guys the reader can be sympathetic with, but what about your bad guys? If your bad guy is an adulterer, a child beater and a thief just because he’s evil, he’s not interesting, he’s flat and stereotypical. If instead he watched his mother murdered at the hands of his father, things become a bit more interesting. Your bad guy starts to come to life.

6. For Main Characters reveal them Through Action

For characterisation just like all other writing- show, don’t tell still applies. Let’s say your character is short on cash to buy a new car. You could have your character steal the money she needs. You could have her borrow the money from a cash loan company. You could have her get an extra piece job to earn the money. Each of these would be a way of showing something about your protagonist instead of saying she’s dishonest, not very disciplined, or hardworking.

7. Introduce your Main Character at the Right Time

When introducing your protagonist, do it at a point of crisis. Don’t start with her entire back story. Introduce her when her husband is leaving her or she just lost her job or her child died. This will immediately have the reader empathising with the character. They will want to know how she gets through this crisis. If a reader has interest in your protagonist they will have interest in your story, if not, they won’t.

8. Plot sometimes drives Characterisation and Some times it’s the other Way Around

If your plot for your detective novel requires the kicking in of doors and the running after bad guys, you need a detective that can fill those plot-prescribed shoes. A tough, fit character will be required. In literary fiction, that is pulled more by characterisation than by plot, the character will decide the plot. For example, if your character is one with weak morals and they succumb to an act of corruption, the plot must follow him to where he will go, to a place true to his character. Will he turn himself in? Will he run? Will he lie? Will he make a deal and turn his wife in?  This will be decided by his personality which you the writer need to know inside and out. 

(This column first appeared in The Voice newspaper on 4 November, 2011)

The Cape Times Reviews In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories

Below is today's review of my short story collection, In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories, in the Cape Town South Africa newspaper The Cape Times. Hope you can read it!!

An excerpt from the end: 

 "...Her storytelling is rich in its simplicity and reminiscent of the telling that is engaged in folk tales. Kubuitsile's strength lies in her ability to highlight ordinary human moments. She zooms in on them with care and humour, turning the seemingly ordinary inside out to reveal the magic that lies within." Yay!

How to Market Yourself

I know we all want to be artists. We don’t want to have to concentrate on the business side of writing. This is fine if you want to write and never want to make a thebe out of it. That’s a perfectly valid choice and if that describes you, it’s best you move on to another article. This one is for people wanting to get their name out there in the hope that someone, somewhere might pay them for their writin

Let me speak about which marketing techniques have worked for me.

1. Website vs Blog

When I started out writing about seven years ago, I had a website. Because I am not very techy, I found the website cumbersome. Things happen fast in my writing world. I have books coming out, I have short stories published, I have events I’m attending, and I couldn’t keep my website up-to-date because I was unable to do it personally. I had to ask the website tech people to do it for me and it was very slow and not always done how I wanted. I find most websites to be dull and too static for my liking. You can fix that situation if you’re good at the technical side of things- I’m not.

So I let my website die and moved on to a free blog. I use blogger. I use my blog as a sort of online personal diary, but I also use it for marketing. If you go there you’ll find a page with my CV, a page with all of my books and where they can be found. I also have a section where I write about any news in my writer life.

I’ve found a blog more useful. It is interactive and I’ve met a lot of people through my blog. The important thing, though my blog is perhaps not the best example, is to be clear about what you’re selling. If you’re a freelance writer, for example, it’s a good idea to focus your blog posts in that direction.

At the same time, any blog that is just about blowing your own horn and marketing your goods will get little attention. You need to give back too. People need to have a reason to come to your blog, it’s up to you to give it to them.

You can do a lot on your blog. You can sell an ebook. You can get readers to sign up for a free e-zine that you send out to their email. You can have polls. You can hold contests. Whenever I have a new book out, I give a free, signed copy away on my blog.

2. Write articles

I was a published writer for quite some time before I started this column but now suddenly strangers come up to me on the street and want to talk about writing. I’m a fiction writer, but writing this column helps to sell my fiction.

If you are, for example, a nonfiction writer who writes about career guidance, a good way to sell your career books would be to write articles about career guidance and get them published, even free if you must. If you set yourself up as the expert in career guidance in Botswana, then it is likely more people will want to buy your book.

3. Show Your Face

If you get invited to speak somewhere, make sure you go. Be prepared, be professional, be entertaining, if at all possible, and it will assist you in selling your writing.

Make sure you come prepared with things to promote you. Print business cards or bookmarks. Have copies of your books for them to see. If possible come with copies to sell.

4. Social Networking

Say what you want about the time wasters called Facebook and Twitter, but I have found them invaluable for marketing. Many people outside of Botswana (and inside for that matter) know me only though Facebook. I’ve only just started on Twitter so I can’t speak too much about it just yet. As for Facebook, it has presented so many opportunities for me. I’ve found writers residencies on Facebook. I’ve met journalists who have interviewed me in magazines and newspapers in their countries. I have even got freelance jobs from contacts I’ve made in Facebook. I’ve also met a whole community of writers which has opened up my world.

Again, if you use social media only to promote yourself, it’s not going to work. You need to build up solid networks and you do that by interacting. It should never be a one-way speech.

 (This article first appeared in my column, It's All Write in The Voice newspaper 1 July 2011)

How Claudia Became a Bad Girl (a short story)

On the day the light appeared at the top of St. Mary’s steeple, Claudia was sure her prayers had been answered. Although her father looked at the red-gold light high up in the sky and decided the only cause could be aliens, Claudia was convinced that God had finally found time in his busy schedule to listen to her nightly prayers.  Every night for two and half years, once the door was firmly closed, Claudia knelt at the side of her bed and made a deal with him; she would be a good girl for the rest of her life if only he would find her mother and bring her back home. Somehow she was positive the light was him saying the deal was on.

It showed up on a Friday night. Claudia and her family lived in the house at the corner, just opposite to the church so they were among the first people to see the light. Claudia’s younger brother, André, looked out of the window after hearing a noise. He was always thinking he heard stray dogs outside, so any noise had him rushing to the window. André believed that though their father had banned all dogs, a stray dog was a different story. Who could pass up an orphan? Claudia knew the answer was her father. That night, like all of the nights before it, there was no stray dog. Instead it was the beginning of the crowd that would soon begin to assemble on their front lawn.

“What’s that?” André said pushing the dusty curtains aside to get a better look.

Their father got up from the sofa where he’d been reading the newspaper to see what André was on about. “Well I’ll be damned! Claudia, get the camera!”

They rushed outside and joined the growing crowd. They flung their heads back like everyone else to look at the light. It was a glowing ball stuck on the very top of the steeple creating a giant, golden shish-kabob. Claudia smiled. She knew that God was just then working on her mother’s mind. He was sticking in thoughts and memories that would remind her that when she got in the taxi saying she was off to her sister Glenda’s, she had left behind a husband and two children who still waited for her return. The light was the sign that holy forces were at work.

Since God was keeping his part of the deal, Claudia immediately got to work on her part. She stopped fighting Mrs. Anderson, 14th in the parade of baby-sitters that passed through their house since Claudia’s mother left. She started taking better care of André and kept her room tidy and neat. Claudia knew enough that cheating in a bargain with God was not a good idea.

As the days passed and the light remained on the steeple, people collected from all over the state to stand in Claudia’s yard to look at it. Claudia found it odd that no one climbed up there to see exactly what was going on, but she suspected that they, like her, preferred to operate from a firm position in faith. The factual intricacies might just mix them up.

On a Tuesday evening, with a gasp from that evening’s collection of onlookers, the light went out. The crowd slowly drifted away. Discussions about the light fell back into memories only pulled out when relatives visited who hadn’t been there during the time. Claudia watched the trampled grass in their lawn unbend itself, and kept an eye on the road for her mother who was surely on her way home. Every day that the grass got greener, Claudia’s faith in the light got dimmer.

Claudia sat at dinner, more than a month later, another meal of burnt hamburgers and milky macaroni and cheese, Mrs. Anderson’s specialty, and Claudia’s father said out of the blue, “I wonder what the point of that light was anyway?”

André shrugged his shoulders.

Claudia looked down at her food, and then she said, “There was no point. Just a bunch of nonsense”.

And the winner is.....

Because I so enjoyed the comments, I've decided to pick two winners, each will receive a signed copy of In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories. The winners are Amo, for incredible effort, and Susie Dinneen, for linking to the incredible photos of the Botswana Cowboy Metalheads. Congratulations!!

Please contact me with your postal addresses. You can use lakubuitsile at gmail dot com.

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Pay for Writers

Writers in Botswana are notoriously underpaid. This is endemic from television to magazines to newspapers. Since most people learn to write in standard one, many people believe that writing is easy, anyone can do it. Because of this good writers are undermined. If you compare rates for writers in Botswana to our neighbours in South Africa it is shocking what we tolerate in this country.

Let’s look at television. A few years ago BTV was looking for scriptwriters for a thirty minute sitcom. They were offering a rate of P1800 per episode. If you check the minimum rate for South African scriptwriters for writing a thirty minute sitcom as recommended by the South African Scriptwriting Association you see that they recommend R8000-R11000 per episode. The discrepancy is almost laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

Freelance writers in South Africa regularly get R2/word for magazine and newspaper articles. In Botswana even P1/word is considered high and you’d be lucky to get it. I was recently happy with pay I got for an article I wrote for a local newspaper but when I worked out the per word rate I realised I’d been paid 30t/word, I was no longer very happy.

Other aspects of the job that make freelancing very difficult in Botswana are the way most publications work in the country. In other places, when you want to write an article for a certain magazine you query first. You send the editor your idea with the manner in which you would approach the topic and the word count of the proposed article. You ask the editor if they would be interested. You only write the article once the editor says yes they will buy it and at which rate.

In Botswana, in most cases, freelancers write on spec. What this means is that writers conduct interviews, do research, write up the article and then send it out to the publication they would like to buy it. Now it is up to the editor to decide if they want to buy the completed article. If they say no, then all of the writer’s work was done for nought.

Another difficult aspect of working as a freelancer in Botswana is payment. Almost all publications in Botswana pay on publication. What this means is that you might write an article in May but if the publication does not use your article until September, you will be paid at the end of September. What other industry would tolerate such conditions?

Publications need writers. Production houses need writers. Without writers many industries would come to a standstill, but writers continue to operate under very harsh conditions. Some of this can be negotiated with the employers. Here are some things you can do: 

• Always ask for more.  If the money is not enough, don’t write for them anymore.
• Ask for payment on submission. Many overseas publications pay writers as soon as last edits are done. Why can’t publications in Botswana do this?
• Don’t write on spec. Writing on spec is an inefficient way to freelance. Everything you write should make money for you, if you write on spec then that may not be the case. Pitch an idea to the editor, if she agrees- only then write the article.
• Work your articles. If you interview an MP, for example, use the time wisely. Ask a wide range of questions. From that interview try to pull out at least two or three articles. Maybe a personal piece, an article about what he’s done for his constituency, and maybe a third article about a recent overseas trip he took. In this way your time is efficiently used. You conducted one interview; you get paid for three articles.

Trying to make a living in Botswana as a writer is tough. It’s made tougher when writers undermine themselves and write for peanuts, sometimes even for free. Respect your work and the situation will improve for all of us.

Win a Copy of In The Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories

My short story collection, In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories, is now available in print thanks to Hands-on Books. It contains a collection of my stories all set in Botswana.

Would you like to win a signed copy? Then leave a comment below telling me one obscure fact you know about Botswana, my lovely adopted home. The weirdest unknown fact gets the book.

Good luck!

The Making of a Bestseller

 When I was in London at the London School of Economics (LSE) Space for Thought Literary Festival to speak last year, I also had the opportunity to attend some of the other talks and panel discussions one of which was titled “The Making of Bestsellers”, a panel discussion which made me slightly sad, but was an education all writers need.

The panel included Andrew Franklin, the managing director of Profile Books, an independent publisher in the United Kingdom, and author John Thompson. Thompson has written a book titled Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century and what Thompson had to say I found the most interesting. His book approaches the study of the trade publishing industry (books sold for the mass reading public) as if he is an anthropologist studying an unknown tribe. Though everyone is aware that trade publishing is currently in flux because of new technologies such as ebooks, Franklin argues the change in the industry began some time ago.

His book focuses on the English language trade market in America and the United Kingdom. From his research he uncovered three key factors which have changed the way trade publishing operates. First was the establishment of big bookstore chains and later Amazon. Second was the rise of the super agents in the 1990s, agents that no longer acted as an intermediary between author and publisher but instead work ruthlessly in the author’s interests.  And the last change was the consolidation of publishing houses under big mega publishing companies.

Once these things were in place publishers were suddenly under immense pressure from every side. The mega publishing companies wanted an increase in their profits. The agents wanted larger and larger advances for their authors. And the bookstore chains demanded deeper and deeper discounts.

In this pressure cooker, according to Thompson, was born “the big book”. “The big book” is a hoped for bestseller, and often times because it is so hoped for, with so many people with a vested interest in its success, it is made into a bestseller. He gave the example of the book The Last Lecture by an unknown academic who was dying of cancer. His agent managed to sell a proposal for the book for an advance of $6.75 million (USD).

Thompson cited three things that made such an event possible. The author had given a lecture as part of a symposium of last lectures and had been invited on a famous American morning show and on Oprah. His lecture was put on YouTube and watched by millions of viewers. By doing this, he had a ready readership, a platform from which to start.

Another important aspect in the making of a “big book” is the building of a web of collective belief. A few key people, big people in the industry, respected agents for example, must give the book some attention. This calls the attention of other people and soon a large group of important industry insiders have decided the book is important, if it is or not is not that important, it has been decided that it is important.

The last thing the book needs to be a “big book” is a comparable title.  The book needs to be able to be compared to a best seller already published.

So the publisher of The Last Lecture paid out a massive advance for the book and then they began the process of having it defined as a “big book”.  When it finally hit the shelves it was a best seller, selling more than 14 million copies. They made their advance back and then some and all the actors applying pressure on the publisher were happy.

Quite disheartening though I must say, the publisher on the panel did his best to disregard Thompson’s theories on the industry, explaining that good books from unknowns with no platform still get published and go on to do very well; that things are not as jaded as Thompson was making it seem. 

We can only hope. 

(Note:  This  first appeared in my column, It's All Write in The Voice Newspaper, 4 March 2011)

My Pet Store Mother

It was six flights up to the apartment that smelled of forgotten dirty laundry in corners of closets that were never opened. Most of those dragging days in the summer of my eighth year the apartment rang with my mother’s voice. She bellowed out creative insults against the anger that echoed back and forth in her head, while all I yearned for was to be away from the people-smelling city, and home to the fields and forests I was used to.

“You drunk bastard!” she’d shout at her father. Slumped on the sofa, he watched the Baltimore Orioles on a staticky, portable black and white. His bald head showed red in protest against the temperature in the tight apartment. He wore an over stretched dirty vest that hung loosely on his body covered with a fine, white fur. He rarely responded to his daughter, who had been confirmed crazy by the doctors who examined her inside and out after her first attempt at ending her life.  He hardly noticed me.

I was spending the summer with this stranger called my mother, so that my father could move his new wife into our house. My mother, between her required fights with her father, tried her best. I breakfasted on ice cream and had trips to concrete covered playgrounds with red plastic ponies that bounced back and forth on giant springs, and I feigned gratitude but wished myself anywhere but there.

I cried most nights into the grey pillowcase in the tiny room in which my mother slept. I cried as the concrete of the city suffocated me. The concrete stairwell leading down to the patch of concrete fenced with a gate opening onto the concrete back alley where I spent most days watching the sinewy street cats dig through the rubbish bins. Any life in the lifelessness around me was welcome.

At night I dreamt of lying under spreading oak trees, rolling in the fresh grass, picking apart the purple clover flowers and sucking out their sweetness. I’d wake up with the sugary taste still lingering on the tip of my tongue until the concrete wiped it clean.  I counted off the days on the calendar pages I had folded up in my red suitcase I never unpacked. I thought my unhappiness was not seen by the two adults I lived with, who could not find space in their ritual of hostility for me, but I’d been wrong.

“I have a secret place I want to take you to today,” my mother said that morning.  She smiled and her green eyes, normally damp and grey from medicine and torment, shown emerald.

A humid, organic smell filled my nose when we entered.  At the door, a bath tub held slippery frogs and lazy turtles that swam between lily pads floating on the water’s surface.  A room at the back had big trees where parakeets and canaries sang from high branches. An African Grey Parrot sat on a perch keeping a careful eye on what went on, commenting with, “I’m a pretty bird” whenever attention  drifted from the glory of him.   The oppression of the concrete melted away.

 “It’s nice here,” I said to my mother.

“I thought you’d like it.”

For the rest of that summer, my mother and I made that trip to the pet store each day. My mother was different there and so was I. And though the summer ended and I went home to my old house with a new mother inside, my pet store mother was the one I searched for in my memories when the dark days that were to come descended.