A TIME FOR SILENCE: first love

A TIME FOR SILENCE. It wasn’t my first novel by a long chalk, but it was the first to be published. Like Jane Austen, you see (and I do try to bring her into as many posts as possible). She wrote several books, including FIRST IMPRESSIONS, which later became PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, before she was finally published (SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, which was first written as a epistolary novel called ELINOR AND MARIANNE). But I digress, as I often do.

A TIME FOR SILENCE holds a special place in my heart because it was my first success, even though it was my 495^th attempt at publication (I might be exaggerating, but I am a fiction writer). What was brilliant about my first ever published book was that we still lived (as authors) in the age of innocence, when Amazon was a really good idea for buying BOOKS online when you couldn’t buy them locally, and social media was a weird thing that was mostly about chatting with distant relatives. Or at least it was for me.

A TIME FOR SILENCE (or ATFS as it has endearingly become to me) was a deeply personal book, although you probably wouldn’t realise it, based on a cottage two fields away from my relatively new home (at the time), a rumour I had heard about another cottage in the area, and some deeply distressing research I did at the National Library of Wales. Yes, those were the ancient days, not far off the use of quill pens, when you went to a library, instead of Google, to research something. My book was accepted by an agent, very nearly accepted by Allison & Busby who were enthusiastic, but for some reason it all fell through, my agent got irritated and I decided to go in search of a small indie publisher that didn’t insist I approach them through agents.

So I went to HONNO, which published books by Welsh Women Writers. It was accepted. It was edited. Changes were made and finally, in 2012, it was published. “That’s nice,” I thought. “It’s all easy downhill from here on.” (I was probably right about the downhill bit).

Anyway, 2012, e-books were still a new and slightly suspect thing. I was a little disturbed by how cheap they were, but what the hell, just go with it. I had a few nice reviews. All good. It bobbed along. About a year later, while I was mulling over Christmas present options in a Swansea shopping centre, I had a call from my publishers, very excited, to say my book was on an Amazon deal at 99p. I confess I was horrified. 99p? That was positively insulting. Having only just realised there was something called “Ranking” on Amazon, I did check it out late that night, just to see if it might have sold any, and I was seriously impressed. I mean SERIOUSLY impressed. Those were the days when an Amazon Daily Deal was a seriously impressive thing, highlighting maybe five or six books to the world. Result. Maybe 99p wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The next year my little darling was nominated for the People’s Book Prize, where readers vote for the winners. I was very flattered to find I was a finalist, which meant a trip to the Stationers’ Hall in London.

One initial problem: the hall is near St Paul’s, which meant buying a tube ticket from a machine, by typing in Saint Pauls. Or St Pauls. Or StPauls… I had about five goes without success before an irate crowd behind me persuaded me to find the ticket office instead. Yes, I know, today you just waft a card over the gate and it’s all done by magic, but those were primitive days. We still used cash and phones were just for making phone calls.

Having reached Stationers Hall, I scored two major results in the one evening: a very posh dinner and a chance to race Frederick Forsyth for the toilets afterwards. I That would have been enough thrill for anyone, surely, but the real triumph was that I finished up as runner-up for the Beryl Bainbridge award for first novels.

I got to stand on stage under a stained glass window that, we were told, depicted Caxton presenting a printed Bible to James I, which was pretty neat considering Caxton died 74 years before James was even a gleam in Lord Darnley’s eye. It was lovely at the time but, looking back on it, I am even more awestruck that my first-born/published took me so far without any promotion from me. These days, being aware of the stranglehold grip of social media on every aspect of public life, I would, if nominated for anything, however humble, be on-line every few minutes, begging my friends, relatives, contacts, groups, followers, postmen, passing Jehovah’s Witnesses and complete strangers to vote for me. But back in 2014, or whenever it was, it never occurred to me to say anything in public to anyone. I used Facebook to ask my niece how her degree course was going, but that was it. So if I finished up as finalist for anything, it was purely down to the appeal of the book to the reading public, and that is, and always will be, as flattering as it gets. A TIME FOR SILENCE, I love you still.