My journey as an author and journalist happened more by chance than design. And entirely due to my dear friend, the author and journalist Caroline Akrill. I had become a regular collector of antiquarian horse books from Caroline’s catalogue business ‘Old, Rare & Antiquarian Horse Books’ in Suffolk, England. And we became fast friends to this day. Caroline is a prolific and very successful author whose writing I had much admired so the notion of her becoming my mentor became a reality that I was to cherish.
Out of the blue, she suggested to me that I should write a book… about horses of course as that was my background and first career. She felt that there was knowledge and experience that should be shared with a wider audience. My immediate reaction was both surprise and denial that I was even author material. I think it’s fair to say that most authors have ambitions to be published, but the very notion never entered my world until this moment. I had no experience with a pen, much less a computer, and Word Processors were only just making their debut before the advent of computers with multiple programs. And not being a typist by any stretch of the imagination, the idea of writing a book by manual typewriter with two carbon copies was daunting and unrealistic.
We decided on the subject for the first book and Caroline guided me through the primary steps of submitting a synopsis to a few well chosen publishers. Keep in mind this was in the 1900s and there was certain traditions and protocols to becoming a published author so I was grateful to Caroline for walking me through what was an intimidating process, which I expected was doomed to failure since rejection is a right of passage in publishing. So I was amazed that our first and preferred publisher accepted the synopsis (followed by two others that I had to turn down; and contracts were signed.
As it happened my osteopath’s husband worked for Dell at the time and they were selling early models of their Word Processor, which I was able to buy through his employee discount. I clearly remember it arriving on a Friday evening and by Monday morning after a weekend of trial and error, I began my first chapter of Fit to Compete. Since the book had to be illustrated I also taught myself photography as I knew what images I would need and it saved us paying a photographer so before you know it I was buying my first camera, an Olympus.
It’s probably fair to assume it’s unusual for writer’s to sit down to their first book without any writing experience, much less a track record as a journalist but that was the start of my journey. The journalism emerged as a result of being published and was to take me around the world covering major equestrian events, a few Olympic Games, many World and European Championships, World Cups and beyond. From reporting to feature writing, I was published in all major equestrian publications, and became a regular correspondent and columnist in various languages.
Meanwhile there was always a book in the works because no sooner has I submitted the first manuscript that my publishers had commissioned the second book. I also found myself co-authoring and editing other specialize equestrian books too. With three titles under my belt, my publisher suggested I try my hand at fiction writing. This was a whole new challenge but somehow an idea found its way to paper and a synopsis was formed. Alas after three chapters a life changing event interrupted my writing and the manuscript was put on the back boiler (it still lives in my imagination to this day)and I have not found my way back to it. The demands of my career as a journalist and then broadcaster and producer took over my media career until podcasting replaced writing… at least for now.