Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
Why My Exhausted Tuesday Still Counts as a Win
Tag: Behind the Pages
Authenticity Is the Boldest Choice
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
When It’s Hard to Change (and You’re Tired of Pretending It’s Not)
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
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…
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…
Behind the Pages: The South African Influence on My Writing PART III
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.
New environment, new writer
Under our young democracy, we’ve had a lot more freedom and affluence to grow as people. There are also a lot more opportunities for people to live out their expressions as they choose. An artist can create their own art. Writers can write their own articles and books. Musicians can make their own music. Entrepreneurs can identify a need to fill and continue to make it happen. It obviously allowed for the darker opportunities to flourish as well with tenderpreneurship flourishing, illegal trading in whatever you can imagine flourishing, corruption and fraud blossoming and so on and so forth.
It’s very much like a small child being allowed to explore their environments. The only difference is that the parent figure in our democracy is as corrupt, greedy and dark as the crimes they are trying the convince the world they are banishing. At some stage, our democracy will mature. Every year our society matures and grows a little bit more. More and more people develop the skill to look at what’s happening and add their voice to the right channels that can make the difference or add their weight to the dark underbelly for the fortune they want to make. It’s a fascinating swinging of the pendulum.
I prefer to observe. I don’t agree with any of the sides in the power positions, it’s truly a matter of supporting the lesser of two evils and I just can’t.
As our democracy grew, my confidence as writer grew as well. The two have nothing to do with each other but it’s a great analogy of the growth I’ve undergone to get to this point where I can, at least in a blogpost, admit that I am a writer.
- I’ve struggled to let go of the shame of being outside the box.
- I’ve struggled to admit that I prefer to colour outside the lines.
- I’ve had one hell of a time to realise that my skill is weaving with words, not academics, though I tried, not corporate, though I love the power dynamics in corporate, not domestic life, though I threw myself into homeschooling my sons.
All in all, this has been my necessary journey to become the writer I am developing into.
Anne, the writer
I have so much to learn as a writer. You have no idea. Least of all is my actual writer’s voice, but that’s why I am here now. And that’s why you as the reader are here.
In the following post, I will get back to the purpose of this series.
**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…
Sewing Stories: How My Creative Hobbies Inspire My Writing
Hi Everybody,
Welcome back to the blog!
If you’ve watched some of my videos, you might’ve seen pictures and time-lapse clips of me sewing. Today, I thought I’d share a bit about this hobby of mine. For a while, it was more than just a hobby.
I started sewing as a young girl, decades ago now. Like so many others who share their origin stories, mine began with dressing dolls. What really sparked my interest, though, was when my maternal grandmother sewed me two dresses. I wore those dresses until it was painful to squeeze into them! The idea of making clothes we actually wear fascinated me.
When I started school, I became friends with a girl whose mom sewed all their clothes. She and her twin sister always wore matching outfits, and I thought it was incredible! The fabrics were beautiful, and their dresses had lace, ruffles, and other details you’d never find on store-bought clothes.
During sleepovers at their house, I got to watch their mom sew. She let us use scraps of fabric to make clothes for our Barbie dolls. That’s when I fell in love with sewing—it was creative, hands-on, and so satisfying.
My mom wasn’t much of a sewer. She often told me how she bought a Bernina sewing machine in the 1960s. She paid it off at fifty rand a month. Because she didn’t sew much, there wasn’t a lot of fabric to play with at home.
Then, in primary school, I got the chance to take sewing as a subject. I was about 11 years old, and it felt like heaven! Our first task was to cover a shoebox with fabric, paper, or anything we liked. This became our sewing box—the equivalent of our grandmothers’ sewing baskets, where all the tools and supplies were kept.
My box was fabulous (if I do say so myself). I covered it in baby pink gingham. Fine lace was wrapped around it. A small bow was sewn onto the lid. Inside, everything was blue—my favorite color. The pincushion, scissors, measuring tape, and even the seam ripper were all blue.
After that, we learned basic hand-sewing stitches using wool and mesh. These stitches—running, blanket, and stay stitches, among others—are foundational, even in today’s world where machines do so much.
We also tried cross-stitch and a type of embroidery I’ve never seen elsewhere. I still have my cross-stitch tray cover. It features white floss on navy gingham. The design is Christmas-themed with candles and festive decorations. It was far beyond my skill level at the time, but I loved every stitch.
Later, we tackled sewing patterns. I remember making a simple summer outfit: a half-full skirt and a strappy top. I wore it all summer, though my changing body ensured it only fit for that one season. Years later, when my mom cleared out her house, I found scraps of that fabric. Seeing them again was bittersweet—perhaps a Barbie outfit is in its future.
Unfortunately, my dad didn’t see sewing as a career path and wouldn’t let me continue the subject in high school.
What Does This Have to Do with Writing?
Interestingly, sewing and writing have a lot in common. Both require creative inspiration, a fair amount of planning, and dedication. In sewing, you need to know your fabrics, tools, and techniques. In writing, you need to understand character and plot development, grammar, and genre conventions.
Both crafts also demand time. Writing a novel, even if you can write a thousand words in an hour, takes fifty-plus hours at minimum. Similarly, sewing a garment isn’t just about cutting fabric—it’s about planning, measuring, pressing, and assembling.
The saying “measure twice, cut once” applies to both. A well-constructed garment takes careful preparation, just like a well-written story. And thankfully, in both sewing and writing, there’s room to revise—whether that’s ripping out a seam or editing a draft.
That’s it from me today—thanks for stopping by!
From Sweet Romances to Cozy Mysteries: What’s Next?
Happy Monday to you all!
I’ve just finished writing a series of sweet romances as part of The Unknown Series.
**A booktokker admonished that we are not allowed to refer to ‘clean’ romances, so let’s stick to ‘sweet’ then. ‘Clean’ apparently eludes to sex being dirty. I must admit, it never crossed my mind but I suppose we see the world as we are. ‘Sweet’ it is then.
Anyways, I finished this series and decided to move onto another genre I love watching and reading: cozy mysteries.
For those who are not familiar with the genre, cozies, as we like to call them, include mysteries, crime, and other stories. They are basically the ‘sweet’ version of the big brother genre. There’s nothing explicit in cozies, just mysteries and puzzles with loads of adventure along the way.
Some other hard-core characteristics of the genre are tested and stretched frequently.
Female sleuths usually dominate cozies. They’re always set in a cozy, small, and fairly close-knit community or society. This could be a small, quaint town. Some authors love to make the sleuth a pet. The pet solves the crimes with the help of their human, of course.
The sleuth will always have sidekicks. Those will be the comedic element or the voice of wisdom. They could be the muscle or even the romantic element. Even though romance is seldom part of the story. Of course, pets could also be the sidekicks in some way or form.
Cozies are usually mysteries. These mysteries could be crime mysteries. They could also be murder mysteries. Alternatively, they might be any other type of puzzle your sleuth needs to solve.
The cozies set in the 1920’s are hugely popular. Kerry Greenwood wrote one of my favorite series from this time era. The series features Miss Phryne Fisher as the sleuth. The fabulous Essie Davis did an excellent job at bringing Miss Fisher to television. Even though it’s not available in South Africa, I binged it for the short time YouTube missed it.
I would lie if I did not admit that Murder She Wrote was and still is a firm favourite. Jessica Fletcher, played by the late Dame Angela Lansbury, did an excellent job at sleuthing. I loved the innocent curiosity she portrayed in her sleuthing. Not to mention her wit that miraculously solved an unsolvable murder. I must acknowledge that Jessica Fletcher’s role as a novelist greatly appealed to me.
The latest cozy mystery that I’m loving too much is Only Murders In the Building, currently on Netflix. Even though Mabel Mora is the actual sleuth, her two much older male sidekicks are just amazing. Steve Martin and Martin Short are just amazing in their roles as goldy oldies!
There’s so much more, but these are my favourites.
Murder She Wrote is definitely the one motivation for loving this genre so thoroughly. It’s also the greatest inspiration for the new series I’m planning at the moment.
I told you I have one planned.
- Do I have a female sleuth? Yes. She’s young and super curious.
- Do I have a specific era for my series? Yes. I love the late 1940s and 1950s. It was very exciting, where the world came back to life after the horrors of WWII. So many advancements in trade and enterprise, inventions and economics. What’s not to love about this era?
- Do I have a specific setting for this series? Yes. Kensington, Johannesburg, was the most affluent neighborhood. It was the heydays of Johannesburg after the war. The bioscope, tram system, multi-story shopping experiences, sports, and culture all boomed in this time. I chose this neighborhood because it had everything a modern small society needed. However, it also had all sorts of conflicts and intrigue. These could create the perfect opportunities for murder and mayhem! And I’m curious about the history of Joburg.
- Will there be a pet or an animal sleuth? No unfortunately not. I don’t want to put any animal in a place where they can be harmed.
- Will my characters have sidekicks? At the moment, yes. She will have two. And I would like for every book to have a temporary additional sidekick to take part in every book.
It will become available on Patreon as a serial while I write the book. I will let you know when I get there.
Do you have a question for me about this new series?
I’ll get to the other details in the future such as the timeline and where it will be available.
That’s it for today. Please let me know in the comments if you have questions.
Cheers until next time!
Behind the Pages: The South African Influence on My Writing PART II
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.
My writing
My writing, as all writers, was heavily influenced by my upbringing and my environment. Writing entered my life nearly the same time libraries did. As much as I enjoyed escaping into books and stories and make-believe, my reality called for a deeper, darker place where I could hide and escape to.
I appreciate and love parents who encouraged their little writers in their writing endeavours from a small age. Mine thought God was punishing them for something by giving them a child that was seldom in reality. Therefore my writing happened in secret.
I filled up so many A4 hardcover counterbooks at that time. I hid these notebooks with my scribblings. The stories were always of dire situations and lots of violence and abuse. It both scared me but exhilarated me when I could cause that character to overcome the odds in a miraculous way. The ease and conflict-free pages changed with my reality to dark, suspenseful and conflict-ridden scenarios. Only to morph into a winner-takes-all all against the darkest most difficult odds.
Thinking back, I processed most of my days and all its troubles through the stories I weaved.
Shame the writing (writer)
Something I was never willing to admit was the shame that I carried with me and poured into my writing. Not just the shame about myself, my life, and what I carried with me but shame about writing.
Raised in the carefully crafted conservative, racist, politically moulded reality, shame is a powerful tool to keep everybody in line. And shame was something that worked double time in my parents. In my parents’ generation stepping out of line was a death wish. And both of them were quite rebellious come to think of it. The last thing they wanted to do in their lives was have children who stepped out of line.
Unfortunate for them, that is exactly what they received.
Fortunately for me, the environment in which I became an adult became a lot less of what it was but a lot more of a different kind of control.
We can’t get away from controlling people, can we…
But all in all, I prefer the modern day political and social environment. The African version of democracy is a far cry from the philosophical version of democracy. At least we moved past banning writers. We just threaten their families in which they make the prudent decision to move to Germany. Platforms aren’t banned from the South African population. If said platform can pay the bribe, they are free to do and be here.
**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…
Behind the Pages: The South African Influence on My Writing PART I
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.
My youth
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.
Political side of my youth
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…