A Memoir's Journey

carolekelly
Mar 25, 2022
3 min read

Updated: Apr 21, 2022

A Memoir’s Journey

Children of Change: A Memoir celebrates its first birthday in March of this year, so there will be much toasting and merriment around the 25th of the month. It is difficult to grasp and to convey, just what this first year has been like for me.

I am deeply grateful for all of those who shared my story and for those who gave me precious feedback. I guess the story had lain latent within me for so long, that the possibility of bringing it to light was never envisaged.

What a journey it has been………

I attended a seminar (with my story safely tucked inside me) run by a published author and I don’t really know why I enrolled, but as I listened, the idea of sharing my life’s journey began to emerge somewhere in the back of my mind and in my heart.

Like all sown seeds, the idea began to germinate and just as flowers emerge from the seed, so my story sprung forth. I really didn’t know where or how to start, but I knew I could do it.

Once I’d laid out the chapters in correct chronological order, the story began to emerge. I remembered events, friends, laughter and tears that I had forgotten had happened. It was an intense journey and was not always filled with smiles.

Over the ensuing eighteen months, I wrote and re-wrote my story many, many times. It took a further six months to refine it for distributing to Publishing Houses. I was convinced that no publisher would pick it up and that nobody would want to read it. Still, I am tenacious if nothing else and sometimes to my own detriment, I always finish what I start. I kept reminding myself that JK Rowling couldn’t afford a coffee after forty submissions over several years and look at the success of the Harry Potter series.

Although my social media skills are a little on the “lean” side nowadays (read here, very dependent on my daughters’ skills in this area), I managed to send the completed manuscript to about seven Publishing Houses over a seven-month period.

As it was the Christmas season, I was a little lax with checking my email messages daily, when I received a message from Pegasus Publishers asking if I was going to accept their offer of a contract.

My reaction: “Contract !! What contract??. Is this a hoax? Are you serious?”

Ironically, I found the offer in my junk mail box which I normally pay little, if any attention to.

I’ve never claimed to be a speed typist, but I can tell you that I would have reached the 90 wpm as I replied to that email.

Twelve months later, the first shipment arrived. The rest is history.

The book's success has brought home to me the great privilege of "belonging somewhere". After all the many years that have passed, my heart still belongs to a small historic mining town in Australia and its people still embrace me as one of their own.

As my story resonated with so many of my readers from across the globe- from France, UK, Canada, New Zealand, USA and Australia, it reminded me that in a world of immense change,

we are still very much connected.

Here's to a very, very happy birthday to “Children of Change: A Memoir”.