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Behind the Pages: The South African Influence on My Writing PART V


For those unfamiliar, I am a writer from South Africa. Born here and raised here.

Over the course of 5 posts, potentially more, I’ll share about me behind the pages. I will discuss what influenced me as a writer. I will also share how being South African influenced my writing.

The future of Anne, the writer

I love self-publishing. I love the freedom to dabble around with the technology available to writers today. There are some ‘old’ platforms and resources that most US and UK writers are completely used to, that’s not even available for writers from South Africa. It adds a little level of complication to publishing and getting to my readers but I love learning. And I will be playing the long game.

Currently my series of sweet historical romances in The Unknown Series, are floating around Amazon and soon to be everywhere else. I’m not quite sure where my audience loves to read so I’ve started there. It’s been a game of thirds: one third is reading on Kindle Unlimited, one third pre-ordered it from Amazon and one-third pre-ordered directly from my authorshop. Time will tell I suppose.

In the TIMELINE blog post I kinda showed my double-mindedness in admitting that I am a writer by building and changing and closing and starting up various platforms on social media. Oh, the following I’ve lost!!! It took me forever to accept that there is a way to write. I am very lucky that my husband actually supports my endeavor.

I’ve always loved writing the shorter formats out there, hence my collection of short stories in a mush mash of genres of which the bundle is available only on my website. In the future I will be releasing short stories in Kindle Unlimited. Possibly exclusively there. Patreon will see the rest of my short stories.

I have so many story ideas and so many genres that interest me that I decided to release romantic adventures through Ream in serial format until it’s complete. I will do the same with the cozy mysteries through Patreon that’s in the pipeline as well. And then use Wattpad for the young adult series I’ve been postponing. The word count for these books will be more genre-specific with the romances about 40k words, the cozies to as high as 70k words and the young adults to about 30k words. Each story will tell I suppose. Patreon and Ream will allow me to save up money for editing and possibly book covers after which I will release it everywhere books are sold, including my author shop directly.

I love writing. It’s no pain for me to write a minimum of 2k words a day. I do however find it boring to write 2k words in one story. And since my interest and story ideas are sprinkled over various genres, story lines and themes, I figured I’ll split it up in this way. That way I get to write every day in a structured form and my readers get regular material to read and comment on.

On this blog and on Substack, I will put the musings… I’m super curious and love exploring new ideas. I would like to share the background of the books and stories I’ve written. Maybe all of the stories, maybe some of the stories, maybe the background on the settings, or maybe just updates. If there’s something you would like, please let me know. I’d happily oblige if it’s in line with my own interests or just something that’s fascinating.

**I promised myself to keep blog posts to no more than 500 words so I’ll end this post here.

Thanks for reading. Look out for the next post in this series where I’ll go into a little bit more detail about my writing

Cheers!

Continue reading…

Get Your Free Short Story Here!
Posted on by

Behind the Pages: The South African Influence on My Writing PART IV


For those unfamiliar, I am a writer from South Africa. Born here and raised here.

Over the course of 5 posts, potentially more, I’ll share about me behind the pages. I will discuss what influenced me as a writer. I will also share how being South African influenced my writing.

How did being South African influence my writing?

I’m a cautious writer.
It’s fun for me to play with words. It could mean one thing. Or it could mean another thing. You decide.
Our newspaper articles were full of ambiguous messages. The words said one thing but I always read something different. For most of my life, it seemed to me that I spoke a different English or Afrikaans or Sesotho. It felt as if I got from the same words that all the members of my newspaper-reading family, a completely different message.
In the romances I wrote so far, there are many passages that readers ask me to clarify. My Beta Readers highlight something they find confusing, then I know to clarify this. Only to find that my Beta Readers are becoming attuned to my voice but new readers expect clearer or more obvious descriptions.

This is a deliciously new problem for me, how can I write in my cautious voice without giving too little info?

I prefer letting my reader make up their own minds.
What’s the use of a mind if you can’t change it? I love it when my readers get to color in the details for themselves. I see my writing as a sketch with black lines and my readers interpretation of the words the color that they add.

Ena Murray was one of the authors whose every book and omnibus I devoured in our small town library. She wrote stock standard books with the same formula but every book was delicious in its own right.

In an interview she was asked about her closed-door habit when it came to explicit scenes in both her romance and suspense books. Her answer was clear. Readers are bright and creative. Leaving them with a dot dot dot approach allows them to make up their own minds but also brings them back for more.
I loved the respect and love she had for her readers and there and then I went from writing the violence or sex or suspense explicitly to a dot dot dot approach.

All my stories are set in a version of South Africa.
Morgana Best, the cozie mystery author from Australia eluded in an interview with the fabulous Spa Girls ladies that publishers advice to non-US authors have always been to write in a US voice, set the stories in the US and use US characters.

A teacher from school and my dad echoed a version of the same advice when I made the mistake of telling them about my love for writing. Do it as a hobby. In South Africa, you will not make a living from your writing. And the international market is not welcoming to foreign writers.

I took their message to heart and desperately tried to change my voice, move my setting and create the characters that sells. Talk about a creative killer.

Then there’s the infamous advice of writing what you know. I know South Africa. Despite efforts and dreams and pleading with the powers in control to make another country home, South Africa is home and this is what I know.

Surprisingly, my stories resonate with foreigners as well! It’s amazing if you don’t keep people in boxes, how they surprise you.

**I promised myself to keep blog posts to no more than 500 words so I’ll end this post here.

Thanks for reading. Look out for the next post in this series where I’ll go into a little bit more detail about my writing

Cheers!

Continue reading…

Get Your Free Short Story Here!