My Best Job Ever by Victoria Chatham

 

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Apart from a love of writing, many authors have come from a background of teaching, and specifically teaching English, or working in some capacity with publishing or books. So, it is no wonder that from August 1972 until August 1985, I worked for Alan and Joan Tucker, owners of The Bookshop, in Station Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England.

During those years I have no idea of the number of books I handled. I sometimes unpacked stock for 

the children’s shop, the adult shop and, very exciting as you never knew what treasures you might find, the second-hand shop. These dedicated shops were all managed from the hub of operations, the old Station Master’s House. Here, in a room with large windows and bare board floor, surrounded by bookshelves (what else) and that dry-as-dust smell peculiar to old books, I unpacked, re-invoiced, and repacked school textbooks for over two hundred school accounts.   

 

I was fortunate enough to get the job as, the first time around, I turned it down. I was looking for something that would not interfere with my family life and I thought this would fit the bill. Invoicing schoolbooks sounded like just the thing. I’d get school holidays off, right? Wrong. That was when the school supply department of the business was busiest. Teachers submitted their book orders right at the end of the summer term or crammed them in (we neeeeed them now!) before the autumn term began. The timing did not work for me. I thanked Mr. Tucker for the opportunity and went home.

Two weeks later everything changed. I received a letter from Tucker’s offering me the position. Would I be interested in going to the office to discuss my hours? As I had just hired a new child-minder, I phoned to make an appointment for a second interview. How could I be so lucky? My hours during the school holidays were from 9 am to 1 pm, Monday to Friday, ideal for me and my child-minder who was also looking for more hours. During term-time, I worked from 9.30 am to 3.30 pm, perfect for dropping my kids off and picking them up from school. There was never a problem with making up hours on the weekend if we needed time off in the week because a kid was sick or we needed to make an appointment for the doctor, dentist, or whatever.

The Bookshop, Station Road, Stroud
Photo credit: Sylvia Giles

Those were golden years. My bosses and my colleagues, as a group we were nicknamed the Tuckers’ Angels, were more like family. We could do each other’s work when necessary, knew each other’s ups and downs, knew each other’s children who all came to work with us at some time or another, and all the while the businesses hummed along like clockwork. Most importantly for me, I had a dedicated group with whom I could discuss my writing ambitions.

Alan and Joan Tucker are now deceased, Joan in 2013 and Alan in 2017 at the grand age of 83 years old. The Station Master’s House became a funeral director’s premises. For a while, the children’s bookshop was an estate agent’s office and the adult bookshop has long been a taxi business. The business may be long gone, but those years were special and will always be lodged in my memory.

Victoria Chatham

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Writing Out of Darkness by Billie Jo Turner

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I’m probably the most inexperienced writer currently with BWL. Out of Darkness is my first published work. I’ve had minimal experience with writing a blog. I’ve only participated once in a blog spot offered by Janet Lane-Walters, Eclectic Writer (https://wwweclecticwriter.blogspot.com/).  Janet kindly offered a question and answer format. 

 Since publishing Out of Darkness, I’ve struggled with promotion and social media as these are things that don’t come naturally for me. I’ve never been a big presence online.  Facebook has always been a means of connecting with family and for little else. Instagram is my go to for Tasty recipes. So being a newbie, I haven’t felt like I have much to offer for a blog. Everyone start somewhere and  I’ve come to realize that being new, my beginning is still pretty fresh. What I can offer is my experience along with the trials and errors, my journey.

When I wrote my novel Out of Darkness, I was writing for me. I think at the back of our minds, at some point we’ve all dreamed of writing a book and having it published. But that wasn’t what inspired me to write my novel. Completing  Out of Darkness was an accomplishment, a goal I wanted for myself. I’ve always been an avid reader. I loved being taken away into other worlds. I would often imagine stories that I would like to see written. My English teachers always encouraged me to write and I’ve written many short stories over the years but I never had the courage to take on such a large project. 

A friend of mine is a writer and we often talked about her projects and her writers group. She encouraged me to come to some of the  meetings. I was already well on my way to writing my novel but there was so much I still didn’t know. I became a member of the writers group and tried to soak in the advice, knowledge and experience from the group and  from the workshops they offered. I was learning  the tools I needed to complete my book. 

I was thrilled to complete it. I thought I’d done a great job (I had learned humility yet). I gave my finished work to my friend to read and she gave it back to me with notes in the margins and a page of notes and suggestions. You can imagine my surprise to find out that the first draft of my amazing accomplishment was not the prize-winning literary art I expected it to be. I joke about my lofty expectations but I did think it was pretty darn good for a first attempt. I gratefully accepted her suggestions and notes and got straight to work at improving my work. When I figured I was done I sighed with relief and set it aside.  I wanted to give it some time before I looked at it with fresh eyes again. And it sat. 

My friend eventually published a series of books. I attended one of her book launches at the local library. I enjoyed chatting with other writers and artists of other kinds as well that attended. During the event, I visited with another writer. I told how her I’d also written a novel but  that it’d been sitting for a while.  We were discussing my difficulty in deciding  which genre my novel belonged due to the multitude of subgenres, so she asked me to tell her a bit about my book.  I told her how my hero Kai, accidentally stumbles into an immortal existence and finds himself bound to protect the mortal world  until the night everything changes when he rescues a university student from a brutal attack.  She agreed that my novel would fit the paranormal romance category. To my surprise,  I’d been talking to the publisher at the BWL Jude Pitman. She said my story sounded interesting and she invited me to email her my novel. 

Well damn, now what. It’d been quite some time since the last time I took a look at my novel. So over the next few days I went through it with a fine tooth comb and tweaked it yet again.

I sent it off to Jude and a few days later, I got a response. In the email, Jude explained that while BWL usually works with experienced writers,  she liked the way I handled the premise of my story. BWL was going to accept my novel with some conditions of course. She explained how BWL has high expectations from their writers and how the final onus is on the author to deliver a Ready to Publish manuscript. 

While they rarely do this, she was going to see if one of the editors would be willing to give me a little extra help. I was so excited. Then came more blows to my pride. While she felt my story had been handled well and had a good premise it needed some work when it came to the craft of writing. Some helpful suggestions were made and I went through my work once again. Something was just not clicking for me. I will tell you that working with an editor is not for the faint of heart. You need to have a thick skin. And I tried. There were times where I felt completely demoralized by the comments of my editor but I am very grateful regardless. As my editor told me, the comments were not meant to be personal but to make me a better writer. While it was hard to see that during the process, I took the criticism as constructive and carried on until I finally had that finished, ready to publish product.

One of most valuable things I’ve  learned is that everybody has a different method. I had one mentor telling me the importance of the rules while another mentor was telling me that there are times to throw the rules aside. The hard part is learning when the rules apply them when they don’t.  There are rules you need to follow for grammar and structure but everybody gets there in their own way. Some writers all about the structure while I write more freestyle. That isn’t to say that I have no structure or direction. I know when I start writing in the direction I want my characters to go as well as the general plot. I don’t have it all blocked out and mapped on a piece of paper like some writers. I have it blocked and plotted in my mind. Sometimes I let new ideas flow while I ’m writing and then I go back to make sure the continuity isn’t affected but that works for me. 

I have to also say that being accepted as a part of the BWL family is a blessing. The encouragement and support given by the writers of BWL has been amazing. I see a group of people who are dedicated to not just lifting up their own works, but the works of their fellow writers. 

This past year has brought many changes to my life. I published  my first book. Shortly after, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. My daughter went off to college and is just now moving into the dorms. I got married and moved to the country. My oldest stepdaughter moved away and my youngest stepdaughter moved in. I am still chipping my way through my next novel tentatively titled Snow Bound and working through ideas for a sequel to Out of Darkness. It has been a very eventful whirlwind of a  year.