Publishing Journey: Song For Ria

I won’t lie, there were a few days, after Song for Ria was published, when I looked at its web pages on Amazon and watched its ratings go down. My self-confidence tunnelled a hole in the ground that I wanted to bury myself in and I eventually decided not to look at those pages again and just concentrate on promotion and what I’m going to write next. 

It’s ironic, actually, that I reacted that way, especially when my novel is about the trials and tribulations connected to ultimate success in the arts. Or as the psychotherapist, Pamela Stephenson, so succinctly put it in an interview on YouTube , ‘we think that happiness and fame and success are the same things, but it’s a lie that we are all taught really early on.’ 

So, you would have thought I would have known, having spent the best part of two years writing about the downside of worldly success, not to let my emotions get drawn into that premise, but it’s very deep in our culture, and it’s very deep inside me obviously, and perhaps that’s the reason why I wanted to explore the subject in a novel.

Song for Ria, is about a successful contemporary composer who lost her daughter, an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress, to an accidental overdose of a prescribed opiate medication. Alison, the protagonist is compelled to go on a journey to understand what happened to Ria, her daughter, and through her experiences, she gains the perspicacity to get on with the rest of her life. 

I know what you’re thinking; how can anyone ever get over something like that? But when I wrote the novel, I’d already been beaten up by grief. In 2009, I lost my husband and soulmate, to a sudden thoracic haemorrhage and my ability to carry on with my day-to-day life stopped right there. After a few months, I was encouraged by my writer friends to get back into writing. When I told them I was totally uninspired, they suggested I write about the Impressionists and that guy, Dr Gachet, that I kept talking about.

For the next year and a half I immersed myself in Mesmerised, my debut novel. And that saved me, until 2011 when we had a house fire and I became completely numb. I didn’t have the wherewithal to string two words together let alone a sentence. As a professional homoeopath myself, I have the greatest respect for all alternative health care practitioners in the UK, where I live, but I instinctively felt that in order to heal this time, I needed to connect with nature and ancient wisdom and went to Arizona to study with a shaman that I found on the internet, followed by a stay on the Hopi reservation. Of course, all my friends and family thought I’d gone completely nuts but the experience helped me to feel again and continue to write.

So, when after a few counselling sessions with her husband, Alison still didn’t have the emotional capacity to begin her journey, I suggested she do the same, and in desperation, she agreed. She wasn’t as open as I was to the experience. She is a completely different character to me. 

‘An eagle’s just fallen out of the sky!’

‘Probably not an eagle,’ Greg says, coming over, sliding the patio doors open and walking over to the bird. ‘Yup, it’s an eagle, all right,’ and turning to me adds, ‘When an animal behaves strangely it’s because he’s sick or it’s a sign for the onlooker.’

‘Is this one sick?’ I ask.

Greg gets down on one knee and scrutinises the bird.

‘It’s not alive.’

‘So, is it a sign?’

‘I think so.’

Milk chocolate feathers ruffle in the breeze, a white hooded head stays perfectly still, a custard beak droops as one pale, yellow eye fixes on me.

‘What’s the sign?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ Greg says, going back inside, whilst I stand there with a cold chill running down my spine. Certainty retreats. That bit of me I was so sure of on the plane shrivels and dies. The question mark appears as I wonder what I’ve done travelling thousands and thousands of miles to live and study under the roof of this man, who can’t even tell me what I believe he should know.

At an event where I was speaking the other evening, someone who had read the book pointed out that Alison’s seminar with Greg, her shaman, was not an altogether positive experience. And it’s true, Alison’s original expectations were based on her Western education about what knowledge, wisdom and healing entail and Greg was offering her something completely different. As a homoeopath, my expectations of shamanic healing were very different to Alison’s. I was already aware that true healing is a process that can be very challenging and the seminar would only set in motion the start of that process. However, some years later, this is what Alison tells a journalist:

‘My shaman and the Hopis taught me how to get back into life when I could no longer be inspired by it. They showed me a path, a route to return to acceptance by opening my eyes to what’s important.’

I’m sure she’d have to stop and think about it, but I reckon that Alison, in principle at least, would agree with Pamela Stephenson about fame and success; it is something we have in common now.

How about you?

—

Michelle Shine is a homeopath and novelist. Her published works include, the homoeopathic textbook, What About the Potency? A novella, The Subtle Art of Healing, which was longlisted for the Cinnamon Press novella award in 2007. Her debut novel Mesmerised, first published in 2013. Her second novel Song for Ria, published in June 2022. Short stories have appeared in Grey Sparrow, Liar’s League, Epiphany, and several collections. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck.

Twitter: @MichelleShine15

Facebook: authormichelleshine

Instagram: michelleashine

Website: www.michelleshine.co.uk

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing