The-It’s-Never-Too-Late Edition: Publishing A Debut Novel At 79

By Anne Oman,  author of MANGO RAINS (published by Galaxy Galloper Press)

To make life complete, you’re supposed to bear a child, plant a tree, and write a book.  

Not sure who said that. It’s been attributed to the Talmud, Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti, an obscure Czech poet, and maybe even Mark Twain and Yogi Berra.

In any case, I had checked the boxes: I had three beautiful daughters. Though I had never actually manned the shovel, I had my landscape guy plant orange, lemon and lime trees in my Florida garden. And my byline was on the cover of four books: two bicycle tour guides, one on things to do with children in Washington, DC, and one on a topic I knew very little about, the weather.

But something was missing: the book I really wanted to see my name on was a novel.

And time was marching on.

But let’s go back a few years.

In my senior year of college, I took the Foreign Service exam, both written and oral. That summer, when I was selling curtains in the San Francisco branch of Macy’s, I got a telegram. (Remember those?) The United States Information Agency offered me a job. I called, collect, to accept, and flew to Washington, DC for a training program. The agency, now defunct, was charged with “telling America’s story to the world” and “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” The corner of the world I was assigned to convert turned out to be Cambodia. I rushed to look at a map, and noted it was right next door to Vietnam, where the US was building up to continue the failed French fight against Communism.

But Phnom Penh, the sleepy, French-built capital of Cambodia turned out to be a delightful and fascinating place, governed by a mercurial Prince who conducted diplomacy on the volley ball court and danced between East and West and populated by an interesting mix of expats and French-educated Cambodians, many of whom thought of Paris as heaven. I made a mental note: If I was ever going to write a novel, I would set in here.

Fast forward through another posting, in Indonesia, a stint in New York writing for Scholastic Magazines, marriage to a dashing Navy officer who took me to California and Japan, a writing job with a children’s magazine put out by National Geographic, and three children.

With children, I found free-lancing gave me needed flexibility, so I juggled co-operative nursery school and soccer practices with covering neighborhood news for the Washington Post, contributing food stories to Washington Star, profiling Washington women for Washington Woman, doing a Washington-news-you-can-use column for Family Circle and writing just about anything anybody wanted to pay for.  Even a chapter on “Balancing Your Heating System” for a Time-Life book.

The novel had to wait.

When I retired, at age 63, I had no more excuses – and lots of time.

I found some of the notes and I written long ago, and a few souvenirs. But, mainly, I just rummaged among my memories. The discipline I had acquired as a journalist helped, also the fact that freelancers can’t afford writer’s block – they only eat what they kill.

That doesn’t mean it was easy. I wrote multiple drafts, had knowledgeable friends critique them, and took a chapter to a Writers’ Workshop in Key West, where my much younger workshop colleagues were titillated by the fact that I, the oldest student, was the only one to present a sex scene. Helpful comments by the workshop leader, Hilma Wolitzer, and others, prompted revisions.  And, in 2007, what became Part 1 of Mango Rains was a runner up in a novella contest sponsored by Miami University of Ohio.  Close, but no cigar.

Part 1 took place completely in Cambodia.  But what happened to the characters after they left?  I wanted to find out, so I wrote Part 2, taking the story to Viet Nam, Indonesia, India, Africa, the Philippines, Hawaii, Paris– even Nebraska.

Next came the hard part: getting Mango Rains published.

First, I tried agents. Some expressed interest, but said it wasn’t “right for our list.” Others never replied at all. I knew big publishing houses never looked at over-the-transom manuscripts, so I tried small houses, collecting piles of polite rejections. The big, existential question loomed: should I self-publish?

Self-publishing has grown more respectable and affordable. A few self-published works have gone on to greater things. But there was still a bit of a stigma. I wanted the validation that comes when a publisher decides to invest its reputation – and its money – on a book.

Enter Galaxy Galloper Press, a small publisher dedicated to reviving the novella as a literary form. A novella is a short novel.  Daisy Miller, Heart of Darkness, and Death in Venice are examples of novellas. To find new novellas, the publisher conducted a nationwide competition.  Mango Rains, at a little over 50,000 words, was eligible. Although it didn’t win, it was one of three selected for publication.

After nearly a year and half of editing, proofing, cover designing and planning, the book was released February 14 of this year. I can’t claim it set the literary world on fire, but the response has been gratifying.

A well-attended book launch at my local indie bookstore, Story and Song, a favorable review by Kirkus, some five-star ratings on Amazon and Good Reads, and praise from old friends – many of whom I hadn’t heard from in years. Of course, COVID-19 complicated the launch, and some events were cancelled.  But, with luck, they will be rescheduled. 

So, every story has to have a moral, or, at least, a theme. Here’s this one:  Never give up. It’s never too late – even at 79.  

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About:  

Anne H. Oman began her career as a Foreign Service Officer for the now defunct US Information Agency, which was charged with “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” She served in Cambodia and Indonesia and was expelled from both countries, for political, not personal, reasons.

Since that time, she has worked principally as a journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, Washington Woman, Family Circle, Sailing, National Geographic World, Senior Scholastic and many other publications. Currently, she is Reporter At Large for the Fernandina Observer in Fernandina Beach, Florida. She has also published four non-fiction books. Mango Rains is her first work of fiction.

For more information visit:  http://www.mangorains.net/

MANGO RAINS

“Before the monsoon came the mango rains, which were short, hard downpours that forced the mango trees to surrender their just-ripe fruits and tantalized the city’s inhabitants with a hint of the release the monsoon rains would soon bring. Julia Galbraith, a newly arrived Foreign Service Officer just short of her 23rd birthday, stood on the terrace of her ground-floor apartment on the rue Pasteur and watched the rain fall. She was not beautiful, or even pretty, but she was tall and slender and blonde, which almost made up for the lack. Though a little shy, she exuded the freshness and vulnerability of a woman on the brink of life….”

Mango Rains is a story of love, loss and political intrigue in Southeast Asia during the turbulent 1960s. While war rages next door in Viet Nam, expats in the sleepy, peaceful Cambodian capital fall in and out love and dance to the tune of the famously mercurial Prince Sihanouk. As the gentle mango rains give way to the tumultuous monsoon, world events—the assassinations of JFK and South Viet Nam’s Ngo Dinh Diem—precipitate a crisis that scatters the characters to the far corners of the globe.

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing