Monday, April 2, 2012

The book is now published

The Haphazard Gardener was completed last year with the help and guidance of Sue Johnson - tutor with Writers' News Home Study Courses.  The words came thick and fast; suddenly I knew where the book was going and in which order to put it all together.  Sometimes one assignment critique from Sue was followed swiftly by my next finished assignment.  She spoke of 'letting her coffee go cold' whilst she read the next piece.  My confidence grew.

The manuscript has had so many read-throughs, each time I came across silly little mistakes; whether read to myself or aloud.  My daughter Sorcha gave me the final proofread. 

I offered the manuscript to several publishers and received some nice responses - but all rejections except via Vanity Publishers; some of which required a fortune to publish, whilst others were more modest.

An advert for FeedARead appeared to be the solution I was looking for.  The book is now published - privately - whilst I wait for my copy to review.  Once reviewed it will go public.  In the meantime I am working on a kindle copy.

The Book

The Haphazard Gardener has been in the 'writing' since 2002, when, whilst convalescing from major surgery, I began to write about my beautiful garden in Sussex.  Pieces of prose, thoughts about the garden, poems, were all part of my daily writing life for several weeks, whilst others worked in the garden on my behalf.  March 2003 found me hospitalised once more, yet still I 'crutched' my way around the garden with my first visitors of the new season.

The late Rosemary Verey, a family friend had suggested in 1990, that I wrote a daily journal about the garden and the jobs that need to be done.  This I did from then onwards and it is from these journals, the bones of the book took shape.