when the story is bigger than you imagined 

I’ve always written, working briefly as a press officer then as an advertising copywriter, all the while biding my time, waiting for the big novel idea to tap me on the shoulder. 
One day, amid the burning rubber and teargas that was black South Africa in the late Apartheid years, it did. It was a tap I was eager to shake off at first; how could I, an urban, white South African, write about a brown-skinned indigenous person living in a remote area? How could I do it convincingly, ethically?  That's another story about a long journey I've been on; you'll find reference to it here. 

Meanwhile, I lost hope of the South African apartheid regime ever handing over power to a majority government. Packing up my three worldly treasures,  husband and two small children, I left the country. Once in England, the tapping grew louder, more insistent, harder to disregard, until finally I felt it physically, like a hand pressing on my shoulder, forcing me into that chair in front of my typewriter. ​
Picture
Baobab writing spot.
Yes, a TYPEWRITER! I started my first novel in pre-p.c. days. Tippex was the height of hi-tech... and there were Pterodactyls flying past the window. I didn't even see 'em. Too busy clacking those typewriter keys, telling Koba's story. She'd chosen me and I couldn't let her down.
However, I quickly discovered that the story of Koba and her people is epic.  (It would be, with a lineage dating back to the dawn of modern humans, i.e. about 150 000 years, scientists now think.) Soon I had to write what happened next to my bush Juliet (Koba) and her Romeo (Mannie,) in a sequel called  Kalahari Passage,. And I'm currently working on the final instalment of this trilogy.  

My Novels

So far, there are two Koba novels,
Salt and Honey and Kalahari Passage.

Writing reflections

As author,  Creative Writing tutor and dementia  memoirist.