Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories
Page 27
Last year, when we were talking about colleges, I encouraged her to attend the local college where I teach. It is mostly a commuter college with college-aged kids and many adults attending courses during the day or night and then returning to their homes.
She had met that suggestion with something just short of disgust. “Mom! Are you serious? I want to go to a real college with real professors!”
We had been in the kitchen. She was getting something from the refrigerator and I had to turn to face the sink to hide the pain on my face. My own daughter didn’t think I was a “real” professor. True, I had never gotten my PhD, but I had my Master’s degree and taught classes part time to real students who end up with real degrees. Up to that point, I had actually thought she was proud of me.
I tried to remain calm. “You could go to IU, then. Maybe even go there a couple of years and then transfer somewhere else, to another state if you want to go away for college.”
“I am not going to IU! Just because you and Dad went there, doesn’t mean I have to go there. I want to get away from here! Can’t you see that?” She’d slammed the refrigerator door and stalked out of the room.
I open my eyes and I am still in the cabin. Outside, the rain is coming down gently but steadily; inside, dampness has permeated the room. It takes all my effort to crumple the letter to Jeanne. I feel its rough edges upon my palms and squeeze it hard. Taking aim, I throw it toward the fireplace. It lands, with a puff of ash, squarely in the center. I stand up, collect the crumpled note that I started to Matt and throw it in too. Other crumpled balls of paper lie on the floor. I walk past them. I will start a new note to him. Maybe I won’t write Dear Matt at all. Maybe I will just start the note. Getting cold, I go to the bedroom and pull on an old sweater. I decide I’ll start a fire and then take a nap on the couch. When I wake up I will write that note to Matt.
I walk out into the rain, searching the woods for broken limbs. There is a small stack of firewood near the front of the cabin, but it is composed of large pieces that will be difficult to ignite. If I can gather enough small pieces from the forest floor, maybe I can get two or three of the bigger pieces from the stack going.
I look for relatively dry pieces under the now wet leaves. I’ve never started a fire before, but how difficult can it be? Once my arms are full, I walk back toward the cabin. Rounding the corner, I come face to face with a man. And he is carrying an axe.
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Prue Batten
Mrs. So Got It Wrong Agent
After writing forever, I decided to go down the independent road in 2008, then called self-publishing. My books had been declared commercially viable by the UK literary consultancy that assessed them but in every instance they were declined by the Big Six.
The only time I had comment prior to print publication was from an English agent who said she loved the novels and knew she would kick herself but felt I lived too far away to engage with. I know I live in the far southern hemisphere but this was a time of email, video-conferencing and similar and so rather gobsmacked at her antiquated approach, I felt it was time to take control of my own destiny.
I was getting older and with age comes a degree of intransigence and so I actually lost my rag and that was when I took up an offer of POD publication from the peer review site to which I belong (www.YouWriteOn.com) for The Stumpwork Robe.
I did everything right; good cover, great PR, website and blog live and active, electronic and press media coverage. Life was good. Book Two in the two-book saga was released and I continued to sell, taking a prime position in a bricks and mortar bookstore and selling more than any other unknown first release.
Then, whilst I was working on my most favourite novel yet, (A Thousand Glass Flowers) I had the misguided idea I should secure an agent in my home country to help me push the barrow further. I contacted the first on my list. Imagine my surprise when she rang me at home late on a Friday to talk business.
Her first comment after a monologue about her credentials and how she was responsible for signing a family member to a major overseas publisher was ‘Why in the hell did you POD publish your first two books?’ Ironic snicker followed this acid comment.
‘Because I was tired of submitting the old way and getting nowhere.’
‘But you’ve signed your own death warrant.’ Snort of derision.
‘Then why are you talking to me.’
‘I am intrigued that you managed to get the web hits and book-sales you have.’ Sarcasm incarnate.
I was so flummoxed at this point that I allowed her to continue to slam me and roast me. Heaven help me, I agreed to send her the first two print novels as word.docs. Perhaps I’m a masochist, who knows?
She read them and sent them back slashed to pieces. These were novels about love, loss, grief and revenge. She had deleted every conceivable piece of emotion from the manuscripts so that they expressed nothing. If she read them right through I would be surprised as she asked elementary questions about the plot resolution… questions answered in the denouement of each of the novels. Her editing was unbelievable, her spelling appalling and she got my name and address wrong for the return of the ms’s. Now remember, this is supposedly one of the top agents in my country, top obviously not equating to manners and sensibility.
When I rang her to say very politely thanks but no thanks, she lambasted me and said, ‘I still can’t believe you went POD. You are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small-time.’ My reply was that if she had taken me on, what a good talking point she would have had about her exciting new author. As it was, I was declining any further involvement with her as the books were out there and selling. She said once again, ‘You have committed professional suicide.’
Well guess what, Mrs. So Got It Wrong Agent, I’m having a ball, I’ve sold across the globe, I have a niche following, I’ve made friends of a lifetime and I am master of my own destiny! In keeping with the new age, I’m epublished now and part of the list of a brilliant new digital press.
In the last three years, Mrs. SGIWA has been the only negative in my writing life and far from depressing me it was the biggest shot of tenacity in the arm. Reverse psychology at its very best!
Addendum: Whilst writing this for Indie Chicks, I’ve been nursing my little muse, the dog who would jump up behind me to sit on the chair as I typed my first three books. He has terminal cancer and has had four emergency trips to the vet in the last four days. He is on borrowed time and by the time you all read this, he will have been quietly put to rest… a brave, funny and tenacious companion and I dedicate the above tale to him… to Milo.
About the Chick
The best way to describe myself would be to use a quote written about me by Mark Williams on a recent blog. Here it is: ‘She lives in Tasmania, has a pet Tasmanian Devil called Gisborne, eats kangaroos’ testicles, has the most ridiculous one-star ever awarded on Amazon, and wrote a novel on Twitter…’. Believe it or not, most of it is true. My husband and I own a farm so we do have lots of kangaroos around, but the testicles? !!!! As to the Tasmanian Devil? I wish I did have one for a pet, but as recently reported in the Huffington Post they are suffering the ravaging effects of a disease that is bringing them to the edge of extinction. Better the scientists and conservation zoos look after them than me. And I do have a one star rating on Amazon… a woman bought my first book thinking it was an embroidery book despite the blurb and then gave ME a one star despite HER mistake. And yes, myself and 50 others wrote a Jane Austen style novel on Twitter, [(#A4T) http://www.austenproject.com] which was mentioned by The Times (UK) no less as it took off earlier in the year. Me in a nutshell!
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A Thousand Glass Flowers
Prue Batten
An Excerpt
&n
bsp; Chapter One
Lalita
Thumping woke her, the dog growling from her bed. The bar across the door rattled and underneath her fingers the hackles on the animal’s spine stiffened. ‘Hush, Phaeton,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t hurt me.’
‘Lalita Khatoun.’ The hated voice boomed from the other side of the door. ‘Bestir yourself, my niece. We have much to do before the Grand Vizier graces the premises.’
Get you gone, fat Uncle. I despise you. She swung her legs to the floor, the dog arching his back and stretching, the hackles flattening as the threat diminished. The floor trembled as Uncle Kurdeesh and his bloated ego moved away down the passage, the vibrations of the bar across the door settling. For the thousandth time she wished her guardian uncle and aunt were here to share the moment to come, not the gross man outside who lurked like an indelible blemish on her life. She grunted in disgust. I can’t believe he emerged from the same womb as my father and Uncle Imran. He’s a foul man, evil…
Dismissing Kurdeesh with effort, she thought on the parents she had never known but who had loved her and she blessed the memory. Think of me, Mother and Father, and pray for me. But then she allowed the mechanics of rising and dressing to focus her mind for the momentous time ahead, strengthening her spirit as she pulled on each garment. A quick glance in the mirror revealed eyes bright with expectation and lips tense with nerves for this was the day that could change her life, a day that could alter her status beyond recognition. She looped a scarf around her neck, and bent to smooth her fingers over Phaeton’s head as if the action would settle her. ‘Come, dog,’ she said as equably as she was able and lifting the heavy iron bar from her door, she walked down the stairs to the small emporium, her thoughts centered only on this day of chances — perhaps the Grand Vizier would commission her.
The Sultan Mohun was to send the gift of a book to the people of Veniche and there was talk this manuscript would be an illustrated copy of One Thousand and One Nights. For a week she had dreamed of how she would lay out the figurative work, the colours she would use, how she would copy the text, and now she scrutinised the shop display, eager it should represent her well. She unlocked the door to the street, pushing the heavy studded panel back. The townsfolk bustled past calling to her and she answered them with a smile and butterflies in her belly.
Ahmadabad, the City of a Thousand Magnificences, glowed in the desert dawn. The pink walls of the palace and royal seraglio dominated a skyline interspersed with onion-domed minarets coated in gold leaf. The bureaucracy of the Raj squatted close by in marble buildings with shady colonnades and in one entire corner of the city the Academie spread itself under the shade of aged date palms. Water ran from fountain to rill and quiet porticos provided spaces for the men of the province to debate and philosophise. But like the rest of Eirie, it rested on the whims and wherefores of the Other world that laced through the rhythms of life like a heartbeat and Lalita prayed for such spirits to bring her good fortune.
‘Have you written your fingers to the bone yet, Lalita?’ The baker hurried past, tossing her a honeyed pastry.
‘Not yet, Sulieman.’ She grinned as he jogged on the spot. ‘But I shall try.’
He laughed and winked at her and she watched him leave as she nibbled on her pastry.
‘Lalita,’ a voice called out and she swung the other way, wiping away the crumbs from her chin and brushing her clothes.
‘Mahmoud.’
‘Good morning, are you prepared?’ A young man of her age, studious in his black kurta and trousers, walked toward her.
‘Oh Mahmoud, I have such high hopes but I am merely a woman in a man’s world.’
‘Nonsense. In your heart you know your work is beyond excellent.’ The son of the apothecary, he and Lalita had grown up together, studying flowers and leaves and all manner of things, he for their properties and she for their artistic value. When she needed to examine the famous books in the Academie, it was he who took her as his assistant, for to be a lone woman studying the tomes of men of learning was a difficult thing. ‘Can you remember my father’s delight when you handed him the copy of the Venichese Herbal? Every petal, every leaf and every stamen was detailed so well that you might as well have given him the original. Besides, how often have you said to me that it is the challenge. That you can accomplish this like no other.’
‘That was my ego speaking, Mahmoud, and well you know it. But I understand what you are trying to do and thank you for reminding me of your father. I’ll keep the memory close, if only to believe in myself for just this morning.’
Mahmoud moved toward her, lowering his voice so that she leaned in to hear. ‘Lalita, I have been so worried about you alone with that man …’ he tipped his head toward the shop interior. ‘He is strong, you …’
‘I’m safe, honestly. Your iron bar works admirably on my door and only a djinn could enter my room. Kurdeesh dare not be obvious. Please don’t fret.’
‘I wish Imran and Soraya were here but as they are not, I wish you had agreed to stay in the women’s quarters at our home.’
‘Mahmoud,’ Lalita laughed in spite of her nerves. ‘Would you entomb me in a seraglio? My dearest friend, you have provided for my immediate safety and Aunt and Uncle will be home tomorrow.’ She gave him a tiny push. ‘Call in this evening when you are finished with your business and I shall tell you my news. Wish me good fortune.’
‘Always, Lalita.’ He touched his forehead and chest and bowed slightly over his hand. Lalita felt the eloquence of his gesture, knowing he had feelings for her and would ask her to be his wife. But she knew also that he understood her well and respected her desire for freedom.
She turned back to the store, endeavouring to survey the emporium with the objective eye of a lordly customer. A simple space but one she had enhanced with the quality of its contents. Light glanced off the pure colours of the illuminations and seductive goldleaf glistened. Pots of inks were shelved with precision, the quills, pens and burnishers lying below them, evenly spaced according to size. Lalita walked to an open book displayed on a polished cedar lectern, the page turned to a workday illustration of some bucolic scene, rich in blues and viridians. Some instinct made her fingers flick the page over and there was the illustration of a room of houries in transparent garb, their skin lustrous and draped with silk organza. The piece had taken her two weeks of painstaking work with a brush that she had plucked, leaving only one or two hairs. She believed the painterly rendering of such sheer fabric might almost be considered the touch of a Master.
Kurdeesh bustled into the shop tying a vast green sash around his middle. His turban gleamed white and his waxed and trimmed moustache flew up in two handles on either side of his face. ‘You’ve done well, my little flower,’ he grunted and reached to touch her, sliding his arm along her shoulder and then down so that his fingers brushed her breast.
She stepped away, putting the lectern between herself and the man she abhorred, taking a risk to speak her mind. She grasped the lectern, her palms greasy with sweat. ‘Uncle, I would like the opportunity to speak to the Grand Vizier myself. I am the scribe and I understand what will be required. It makes sense.’
He glanced at himself in the mirror behind his brother’s counter. ‘Perhaps to you, Lalita. But it’s not the way of men and most definitely not the way of the Court. I shall speak for you and for my brother’s emporium.’
‘But I…’
‘No, Lalita.’ Kurdeesh raised his hand and slapped it down hard on a pile of journals and she shrank further behind the lectern as a shadow filled the open door. The street noise faded as the Grand Vizier stepped inside and Kurdeesh licked his lips. ‘Aah, Excellent Lord, we welcome you to our humble shop. You do this house much honour by entering the portals. May you be blessed with …’
The noble brushed past. ‘Enough, I am here for a purpose. This is your niece?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Kurdeesh moved to Lalita’s side. ‘This is she. Our little scribe.’ His hand began its vile cr
eep across her shoulder.
‘I am honoured, Lord.’ Lalita shifted away from the impolite grasp and lowered her head.
The Grand Vizier tucked powerful fingers under her chin so that she was forced to look at his face; a strong face with slightly slanted eyes as dark and depthless as an oubliette. He was clean-shaven, his head polished to an unworldly shine and when he spoke, Lalita found she could barely stand, her knees as weak as a baby’s.
‘Pretty. Maybe more than pretty.’ The Vizier’s scrutiny burned into Lalita’s skin and her hands twisted together.
‘Ah sir, she is our little flower, a flower just waiting to be plucked by some lucky man.’
Lalita wanted to yell at her uncle. Is it a commission we are selling Uncle, or my body?
‘Lord, please feel free to examine all that you wish.’ She drew the Vizier’s attention with a sweep of her arm, seeking the confidence that had vanished when the man had entered the emporium.
He stepped away from her, the austerity of his black Raji jodhpurs and kurta arousing an image of some forbidding djinn. He moved with grace, his stride soft but powerful, his fingers careful as he examined the odoriferous papers and the tools of her trade, but his eyes lingered long on the page of houries. He flicked back and forth through the book with slow and careful deliberation, before returning to the page she had marked. ‘How long did this work take?’
‘Not so long, perhaps a week. The transparent fabric on the odalisques required some attention but I can see you appreciate the detail, sir.’
‘I am impressed with your hand here, the use of the quill and brushes, very elegant. And here, the curve of your capitals and your clever figurative design, it is excellent. The colours you have used too, they are very pure.’
‘I make my own sir, when I require a tint peculiar to my tastes.’
‘You handle linen paper well. Most scribes use parchment.’
Lalita was surprised at the man’s knowledge. ‘Yes, but despite its cost paper is magnificent. The grain, the texture …’