SHONEL JACKSON
When I was a kid, I hated reading. Unless it was mandated by my school and teachers, you'd never have caught me reading, let alone for pleasure. Then, when I was twelve years old, I found a little red book lying around my aunt's house in my hometown in Georgetown, Guyana. A man and a woman were on the front cover. He was wearing a dark suit and she, a black dress... evening wear. Their arms were wrapped around each other and they were staring into the other eyes. The title read, Stranger From The Past. The author was someone called Penny Jordon.
I'd never seen the book before, but something compelled me to open it up. I read a few pages, and then a few more, and then even more. Something was happening to me. For the first time in my young life, I was reading a book which no one had forced me to... and I couldn't put it down. That was nearly three decades ago, (I won't date myself too much), so the details are a bit fuzzy on what the story was actually about. However, as the title implies, the two people knew each other way back when, then they lost touch. As fate would have it, they met each other again and a multitude of things would ensue. I remember the characters being interesting and the story being compelling. I remember not being able to put it down. I would later understand that the book was from the Romance genre, and in the years that followed my twelfth to now, hundreds of others of that genre would pass through my hands.
Stranger From The Past set off a tidal wave of reading for me. Aside from that genre, a torrent of others followed in my youth. Here's but a few of the books that I sought out and consumed after I realised that maybe, just maybe, reading might not be so bad; the Nancy Drew series of books (tons of them); The Hardy Boys series (after Nancy, naturally Frank and Joe had to follow); the Archie and Betty and Veronica comics (Team Betty all the way! Ronnie was too much of a mean girl sometimes); To Kill A Mockingbird (admittedly that was in my High School's curriculum, but I read it far more times than my teacher required us to. Now I think of it as my favourite book of all time); the Sweet Valley High series (I loved those damn twins!). There are a lot more, I'm sure, than my brain can recall right now, but I just remember coming into my teen years reading everything that I could get my hands on. All of this was thanks to a little red book which I instinctively knew that I should not have been reading at that age. So, I'd snuck it around the house until I could finish it.
When I was sixteen, my life drastically changed. I'd moved to a new country, a new continent, culture and climate. My new city was London and to a sixteen year old, just off the boat, so to speak, everyone talked funny! There was me with my rich Guyanese creole tone being confronted with a multitude of accents which it took my brain a little while to acclimatise to. Needless to say, I went through a bit of a culture shock. Once again, books became my escape, in the best possible way. I needed something to take my mind off of all the new changes in my life. I'd got a coupon from a magazine or something to get some free books. I thought, great! I remember not recognising the options the magazine offered, so, on a whim, I chose The Testament and The Street Lawyer by author John Grisham. It was the best random decision I'd ever made! That marked the start of my little obsession with Mr. Grisham's mostly legal world based thrillers. After those two, many of his other titles graced my palms, including, but not limited to The Client, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Firm and The Pelican Brief. During my Grisham phase, I also came across Danielle Steele. That woman singlehandedly changed my idea of storytelling. She wrote sagas. Her characters were complex, in turmoil, conflicted and heart wrenchingly beautiful. I remember barely being able to keep it together when I read Zoya. More than a few tears were shed. It's one of my favourites from Ms. Steele. I also loved Full Circle, A Perfect Stranger, Now And Forever, Message From Nam, Fine Things, No Greater Love, Kaleidoscope and The Promise. Ms. Steele's epics span time and distance and her stories are woven together with ease. Her books solidified my love for the written word.
Aside from John and Danielle, I found another way to cope with my new situation. My Mom had an electric typewriter which I liked to play around on. One day, at sixteen, I had an idea, so I sat down at the desk the typewriter was on and started typing what was swimming around in my head. It was a story that I'd started writing. It was something that drew a little on my own life. There was a woman, who, as a teenager, had moved away from her home to live in London, and she'd left her life, family and friends behind. She'd also left her first love behind and as art was imitating life, I made it so that the 'first love' in my story was also in the dark about having occupied such a position. From there, art diverted down it's own uneven path.
What had started out on an electric typewriter, was later transferred to a pc and saved on a floppy disk! Who remembers those? Lol. I think I probably typed about twenty thousand words, but writing that story would become kind of like therapy to me. It helped me excise many demons and helped me imagine, 'what if'. As in, 'What if so and so had happened?' or 'What if this or that choice had been made instead?' In my story, the life choices that I had not made, became their own imaginary reality.
I would not finish that story for about sixteen years. What can I say? Life happened. I was a young woman who'd thrown herself into the new reality of her life. And life needed to be lived! I took control of my existence and enjoyed my life and the people who came and went through it.
When I eventually finished my book in my early thirties, I approached the same publisher who published that first romance novel that had kickstarted my love affair with books. As destiny would have it, M&B let me down gently. I was disappointed, because I'd convinced myself that, of course, they would take me on. But alas, once again, my story lay dormant. However, this time, I'd graduated to a flash drive!
As life is want to do, it went on, until last year when the seed of self-publishing was planted in my head by an unlikely source. I reread my book, tweaked a few things and Voilà! I became a self-published author on 13th February, 2022, with More Than Friends.
The road I've travelled as a self-published author has not been easy, but it's been fun. I'm enjoying engaging with the stories that have been inside me for all these years. I can't wait to entice new and exciting characters out of my head and onto the page. No matter what happens for the rest of my life, I'm sure that I'm going to write. Whether I continue to self-publish or get snapped up by a publisher, I'm going to write. I know that I owe it to myself to flesh out this intrinsic part of the woman that I am. I am on tender hooks to see which other vivacious vixens and smouldering alphas are yet to be unearthed from the recesses of my ever loving mind. And as I follow where this yellow brick road leads, I hope you'll take a leap of fate and follow along with me...
Check out my other titles
From left to right - Let's Play, Playing With Fire, Poetry on Love, Lust & Love Vol.1 and Poetry on Love, Lust & Love Vol. 2.