I have always considered myself a fantasy person. I read the entire Wheel of Time series (fourteen books and a prequel). I read Game of Thrones when it first came out. Shannara? Valdemar? Middle Earth? Earthsea? Been there done that.
My fantasy street geek cred is pretty deep. I have Lord of the Rings and Hobbit quotes tattooed on my biceps. In Sindarin Elvish. I have an Excalibur replica hanging next to my Mace Windu light saber. I have a stack of Elfquest comics…in German.
So how did it happen that my first complete novel was…gasp…women’s fiction and pretty close to pure romance?
Yeah. I am as shocked as you are.
It started as a challenge and ended up changing everything. You see, while I love magic and dragons, I find it interesting to delve into what makes people tick. Creating characters with problems beyond the inevitable orc attack or evil wizard, real life problems and personality quirks became endlessly fascinating.
Where did they come from? What happened in their life to make them the way they are? How do they see the world? What do they want?
It’s like world building, but on a body-sized scale.
This one started as a suggestion from my sister. Full disclosure, she came up with the basic premise and plot. She went as far as hiring a ghost writer to put it on paper (ok word file).
It wasn’t good.
Not even close.
Finally, she came clean and told me what she’d done.
She was afraid to bring it to me because it wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t fantasy. It was about a widow who goes to Tanzania to teach and catches the eye of a celebrity benefactor.
But it was a challenge I couldn’t pass up. Writing is writing. Best case scenario, I would have a written a book. Worst case, I would learn how to write better. I wrote a horrible first draft. Then tweaked. And I let it sit and simmer while I wrote my fantasy novel. I came back to what we now call the Africa book and tweaked again.
As fate would have it, my husband and I celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a trip to…you guessed it. Tanzania.
Needless to say, I came back and had to rewrite the book again. I got a lot of things wrong. A lot.
Armed with a solid setting and characters I knew better than myself, I finally wrote a draft I was proud of. Except the ending. After a beta read pointed out why it wasn’t working, I changed it. I’ve rewritten the first pages more than I can count. I’ve done the dreaded common word edits. I watched it shrink from 92K to just over 84K without losing anything but fluff.
Most importantly in this process, I have fallen in love with a novel that deals with, well falling in love. And even if the public never sees this exploration of one woman’s guilt and how she digs herself out of it to find a second chance. Even if it has at its warm little heart a trope that I never thought I’d write.
I love this book. That can’t be a bad thing. Especially since I’ve already started the next one.
Nancie Abuhaidar 