Hi blogosphere!
Have a dashing Tuesday.
With a cup of coffee or tea, hop over to:
As always, email me at anne@annecwest.co.za for a chat or a question.
Otherwise, see you around
Cheers!
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.
During my teen years we transitioned from apartheid to the democracy we currently have. From a teenage point of view, life was simple. Everything had a specific path. Everybody followed that specific path. Stay in the lines and all was well. Very conservative and very religious. Also very racist. This one never rubbed off on me and I still don’t get it. No questions ever asked. No explanations ever given. Not to mention demanded. Just no. It was subtly taught in schools, from the pulpit, media, you name it. Looking back, the funny thing is that it doesn’t seem as if it ever crossed anybody’s mind to ask. Nobody seemed to question or go against the flow. It’s as if generations of propaganda just stumped out curiosity. It’s actually fascinating!
Transitioning from one governmental system went along with immense fear. I remember the intensely heightened emotions on all sides.
What a crazy time.
I loved our town library. I discovered the concept of libraries when I was elected to Media Center Prefect in standard 4 or grade 6! Fancy name for library duty and no lazy break in between classes. As prefect I learned how to pack the shelves. I organized the cards used to keep track of the books lent out. I also explored the absolutely fascinating world of fiction and non-fiction.
I read my way through our primary school library in those two years. Those were the two years that remained of my primary school years. I mourned the very well stocked library when I discovered the pathetically stocked high-school library.
Enter our town library.
It was nothing fancy or massive but it was amazing! I used my mom and dad’s names to get access to more books. I was limited to four books for a maximum of two weeks. It became exhausting to peddle to the library every second day to exchange the four books. It became worth the effort when I peddled to the library with 12 books every Friday.
At the time, I was completely ignorant and unaware of the political environment. I did not understand the impact of said environment on information, literature, music, movies, sports, education, and such. and the limitations we were actually living under.
So many prolific writers, journalists and others were living in exile. Their books, articles, plays and such were banned here and only available after democracy were established.
Our education was shaped around the ideologies of the leaders in our country. Therefore, history, literature, sciences and other subjects were taught with definite agendas and objectives.
It’s actually fascinating and ingenious! But very much part of all governmental systems.
Also exhausting. Can you imagine how closely all things had to be monitored? All the policing strategies that was in place to uphold the propaganda machine?
I believe in literature the dystopia genre explores this type of environment. An environment I, ironically, have no desire to explore in my stories! Isn’t that funny? Write what I know… maybe not.
**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…
My dearest readers and visitors
I’m happy you’re here.
It’s been quite quiet on this blog, not because life is quiet, I’ve been doing what I do best: OVERTHINKING.
Anyody else suffering from this?
DON’T! It’s a terribly limiting habit with only harmful consequences.
Preaching to the choir…
Anyways, I’ve been putting off picking up the blogging habit because I wondered what to write about. What would you want to read? Will anybody read it? What is the use? You catch my drift.
Then after a looooonnnngggg winded affair, I realised, I want to blog because I like blogging. If somebody reads this, bravo! If nobody reads this, bravo!
I like it.
Enough waffling on about this, let me get to the blog post for today.
I listened to an interview on The Creative Penn with Jo Penn. She interviewed Sacha Black about her author business. They talked about the timeline, the progress, etc. Jo mentioned the page on her website where she’s been recording the progress of her own writing career.
I thought that’s amazing! I wanted one of those pages. I started digging through my archives. I compiled this list of when I did what in my author career.
I will record this on my own TIMELINE page after reviewing the year that was.
This is the first year I am taking my author career seriously. I decided to take May 2024 as the start of my official fiction author career. Therefore this is the collection of events unfolding prior to May 2024.
I shared a little bit of info on the TIMELINE page about when I actually started writing. I mentioned how I have a history of being on and off with my writing career. So, I’m not going to add that here.
I think, let’s get into it:
Published Amazon Appointment to Die 1 December 2016
Published Amazon Pebble in my Brick 2 December 2016
Published Amazon Walking the Pages 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Appointment to Die 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Pebble in my Brick 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Walking the Pages 4 December 2016
Joined Wattpad 22 April 2017
Joined StoryOrigin April 2018
Published Amazon Beauty and the Vampire 19 January 2019
Published Amazon A Genocide 19 January 2019
Published WIDE A Genocide 19 January 2019
Published WIDE Beauty and the Vampire 19 January 2019
Republished Amazon Beauty and the Vampire 20 February 2019
Republished Amazon A Genocide 20 March 2019
Published Amazon A Day of Celebration 17 December 2019
Published WIDE A Day of Celebration 18 December 2019
Joined Prolific Works March 2020
Published Amazon Frances & Gilbert 17 July 2020
Published Amazon Jack & Jool 3 October 2020
Published Kobo Jack & Jool 6 October 2020
Joined Bookfunnel 29 October 2020
Published Amazon Zara & William 31 January 2021
Published Kobo Zara & William 31 January 2021
Joined X (Twitter) for the 2nd time July 2022
Created Facebook Author Page 6 September 2022
Created Instagram at some stage…
Published Author Shop A Day of Celebration 25 February 2023
Published Author Shop A Genocide 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Beauty and the Vampire 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Pebble in my Brick 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Appointment to Die 26 February 2023
Published Kobo A Day of Celebration 10 March 2023
Published Kobo A Genocide 10 March 2023
Published Kobo Beauty and the Vampire 10 March 2023
Published Kobo Pebble in my Brick 20 March 2023
Published Kobo Appointment to Die 10 April 2023
Published Kobo Walking the Pages 8 April 2023
Published Amazon Notebooks 9 May 2023
Published WIDE Notebooks 10 May 2023
Joined TikTok 14 May 2023
Published Amazon The Harmony Bridge 28 May 2023
Joined Threads July 2023
Published Kobo The Harmony Bridge 15 August 2023
Published WIDE The Harmony Bridge 15 August 2023
Published Kobo Notebooks 1 September 2023
Joined Goodreads for the 2nd time April 2024
Republished Amazon Frances & Gilbert 1 April 2024
Amazon earnings from February 2019 to February 2024 R42.59
Kobo earnings R0
Draft2Digital earning R0
Direct sales earnings $45
That’s it until April 2024.
All I can say is, WOW! Indecisiveness, double-mindedness, doubt, insecurities, impatience, those are all things that only do harm. Can you imagine if I just stuck it out? All the stories that’s been simmering for years could have been out there in the world for all to enjoy.
I would also have been able to say that I’ve found my voice as an author. Or, I’ve found my genre.
Life is such an interesting journey.
But it’s what it is. We have now and we have our attitude. The rest of the things are outside our control. As an indie author, I can also say that I have technology that makes this possible, so use it, right?
That’s it for today, I’ll chat to you soon.
Cheers
Anne
PS. Future timeline posts will go to the timelines page
