Breaking down the walls

One of the core messages of The Hidden is female empowerment, a subject very close to my heart. When I was writing the novel I was in a bad space. I had become hyper-alert to sexism, misogyny and the repression of a woman's right to live her life in the way she felt best for her. I had become a mother and was expected to 'act' in a certain way. I was applying for jobs and was being treated as a second class citizen because my children were my top priority. I was also supposed to possess a toolbox of stereotypical female attributes and characteristics to make me acceptable in the eyes of society. I tried to play the game but obviously wasn't very successful. 

During this time I stood back and observed the world I was living in, and felt able to judge from my months and months of research into the lives of Muslim women in Egypt during the early 20th century, that despite the fact I was living in a supposed 'western' country that not much was really that different from Huda Shaarawi's time. 

Huda Shaarawi was an Egyptian feminist and Nationalist. She lived from 1879 to 1947 and saw radical change occur in her beloved Al-Qahire. She fought for women's rights in Egypt and refused to accept the roles assigned to her by religion, by tradition, by culture. She was the first Egyptian woman to refuse to veil, tearing off her veil in Cairo, out in public at the train station to the shock and horror of onlookers. She was the head of the Egyptian Feminist Union in Cairo and educated girls on the importance of independence and freedom. 

Harem Years - The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist - Huda Shaarawi

Decades later, a lonely mother (me) used the legacy of Ms. Shaarawi and all she stood for, as a spiritual balm to soothe me as I walked through hell. When I say 'hell' I will paint a vague impressionist picture to preserve my privacy, using the words: custody battles, a bullying male, geographic isolation and poverty. 

I was reading feminist writers but something still didn't add up for me. For one, I didn't like the term 'feminist'. It had been hijacked by the women-haters (and many women are actually women-haters) to mean something unattractive, unfeminine. 

It's such a defining term, that caged its subjects, that I grew to hate the word. I feel less strongly about it now, and have reclaimed it for myself. 

Back then I started an erotic small press to challenge the stereotypical view that women were looking for a love-marriage and male wealth, and were only interested in a passive role in life. I published four small prose poetry books of female erotica and set about selling them at literary festivals. The response was great but out came the male voyeurs, perverts and misogynists who wanted to damn me for suggesting that women could live out their sexuality on their own terms. 

I will always want to challenge expected 'norms' in society. Men and women suffer because of tradition, religion and lack of progress. I remember vividly once, as a journalist, interviewing a famous feminist from Israel. She was visiting Australia to give a series of lectures on women's rights around the world. She told me that lack of women's empowerment is tantamount to a country walking on one leg. It's hard to get very far walking on one leg. 

I grew up in an era when all that was expected of me was marriage. I damned that notion at the age of three! I was never a very pleasant little girl. 

Vulnerability..................

The Hidden by Jo Chumas

It’s roughly four weeks to publication day. My novel The Hidden will then wing its way to my readers, the wonderful people who have either pre-ordered it (thank you, thank you, thank you) or who have won it in my Goodreads Giveway (thank you, thank you, thank you for entering the competition – it will be on its way to you in late October). 

In the weeks leading up to publication I am mentally cowering inside my mind at the altar of my readers. To me, they are EVERYTHING!! I will owe them my life. If this sounds a little dramatic, let me try and explain why it’s not.

There are millions of talented writers out there, and millions of avid readers clamouring to read a good story. Anyone who decides to invest their time in reading my story immediately becomes my hero, because they could so easily choose another writer over me. 

This sounds black and white but it’s a fact. By reading my story, they are entering the world of my mind, they are joining me in a place that’s special to me – the sanctuary of my mind - a place where I seek to understand this world, understand the people in it, and try and untangle all the issues that confuse me about this life. 

My readers might not like what they find there. My story might make them feel uncomfortable, but if the opposite is true and it inspires them and takes them away to a place where they can find some liberation from the day-to-day, we will live this momentary journey together, and become friends forever.

My story The Hidden was written at a time when I was caged by a devastating set of emotional, geographical and financial circumstances which took me to the edge of my strength. Writing The Hidden was an attempt to control the world of my mind when my physical world was disintegrating. 

The Hidden’s three main characters Taha Farouk, Hezba al-Shezira and Aimee Ibrahim are all caged by issues of nationality, the sins of their ancestors and geography. They are all ‘up against it’. They are all looking for answers in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore (1919 Cairo, Egypt when the Nationalist riots were destroying the city of Cairo, Egypt, and in 1940 when the Second World War was threatening to destroy them once again).

Hezba, a Muslim, and daughter of the Sultan of Egypt, was married at the age of 11, but at the age of 17 she takes a lover and joins a terrorist organisation, determined to crush the British control of Egypt. She is caged by her sex; as a woman the physical boundaries of the harem at her palace and by the strict confines of her religion which she chooses to question to the very full extent of her power. She chooses to defy every one of these sets of boundaries and charts the course of life as a free, determined woman, set on living the life she wants for herself.

Aimee Ibrahim, her daughter, feels rootless in a city that offers her no answers. The brutal murder of her husband Azi propels her into a dark and seedy world of terrorism and espionage and changing landscapes. Nothing makes sense.

Taha Farouk’s band of terrorist activists is planning a revolution to end all revolutions. They want a new Egypt, free from the grip of the king and all who serve him. But Farouk is obsessed with the murder of one man, and won't rest until he's scored the ultimate revenge for past wrongs. 

My story was written at a time when I needed to inhabit another world. Every day I stepped through the door to early 20^th century Egypt and left my tiny, rented Australian (Melbourne) cottage behind. I left motherhood temporarily behind every day to live with my characters as they moved through the terrifying chain of events that took place in The Hidden.

By living with them, living through them, I was able to deal with my own fear, my own anxiety, my own sense of failure, my own utter devotion to my children, my utter terror at what was happening to me, my own chronic anxiety that I had no future in a society that was corporate, afflicted by consumerism and ownership and which didn't give two shits about creative people like me. I had my own issues of nationality to deal with. I knew I didn't belong. Aimee felt she didn't belong. Hezba didn't want to belong, not to the royalty of her heritage, but to the desert land of the fellahin. That's where she felt most comfortable. 

The Hidden is a tragic story but Aimee, Hezba and Farouk are fighters. They do terrible things and terrible things are done to them, but within them is the essence of goodness. They are ‘real’ fictional characters and they were my friends for a very long time.

Which gets me back to my readers; those people to who I owe a massive debt of gratitude; for taking time for my story, for buying my novel, for connecting with me, for sharing their thoughts, for walking with me in the city of Cairo and in Egypt in 1919 and 1940.

My characters are vulnerable, and they reveal the extent of my own vulnerability. But it’s vulnerability that drives me, and which drives them. The intimate depth of humanity fascinates me, not showiness, not surface stuff, not over-loud proclamations of affluence and elitism. Vulnerability and strength are a mesmerising mix.

Thank you for reading my blog and please, please connect with me on social media any which way you choose – www.jochumas.com - I will answer any writing questions you might have. 

Here’s to you all. In your vulnerability, I hope you find the strength you need.

Warm wishes, 

Jo

The Luna Park that is my mind!

Have just returned from a whirlwind five-day trip to Seattle in the Pacific North-West of America, as the invited guest of my publisher Thomas & Mercer. 

It was a crazily-good few days, sleep-deprived, alcohol and fooded-up, travelling from 40 degree heat in Southern Spain to the soft, gentle breezes of the PNW with very comfortable 20 degree temperatures. I was on high adrenaline, socialising like the world was ending and I´d never utter another word again, moving from luxury hotel to luxury restaurant to chauffeur-driven car to dinner with the top in the publishing business. 

It was as surreal as a date with Salvador Dali and just as enjoyable. But at the end of the day, being a sort of grunge person who has real and imagined poverty hard-wired through me, it´s important to look back and write about what I learned from the experience, as a way of reminding myself how much my life has changed in a few short months. 

If this inspires other serious writers to continue in the face of constant rejection (and this was my story for 16 years!), then I will feel all warm and lovely inside, and this is what this blog is about; not shouting from the rooftops about me - but inspiring other serious writers to live and love their talent, regardless of what those strange bods in the publishing biz (and I exclude Amazon from that mini-insult) have to say about their work.

Time to recap on what I have learned. I´ll number the mini-lessons, for ease of reading. Here goes (and I think they are in order of priority):-

1. The Amazon Group is a truly inspirational company and Amazon Publishing is the kindest, most generous, most author-focussed group of people I have ever met in my life.This is the second time in three months they have flown me to America, have requested my company and have treated me like royalty, for no other reason than they love authors, they love publishing novels and they love selling them. They want to be part of literary history, and they are!! Not only because they publish quality, but because the treat their authors like film stars - no expense spared. Their publishing model is what others dream of being able to achieve and yet don´t and they are creative, forward-thinking and always thinking up new ways for authors to sell their work. 

I met 64 fellow Thriller writers at the Thomas & Mercer (Amazon) event, and spoke to nearly all of them. Every story was the same, traditional publishers have never cared enough about them, have never treated them with the same respect. I have never been published by another publishing house so I am just reporting on what others told me, but I get the message. Despite the doom and gloom peddled by the press about the future of publishing, I know there has never been a better time to be published and I´m thrilled that T & M (Amazon) is my publisher.

2. Mini-lesson number 2. The world is an amazing place and not filled with scary, angry people who don´t give a shit! I have never really believed this, but when you´re writing novels for 16 years and agents and publishers reject you over and over, you start wondering if you should become a hermit and go live in a forest and just write stories on the bark of trees, living out your days without any more rejection!!! 

I have had dreams of doing this but I have a family and so that wouldn´t be possible. Still, it had occured to me for my retirement - carve stories on trees and be done with it. Throw away the hundreds and hundreds of rejection letters and live out some non-scary life in tune with nature. None of that is necessary now, because I have witnessed genuine (and I really mean GENUINE) respect and love of my writing, BY OTHERS in the Amazon Group!!! And that is what makes the rides on the Luna Park that is my mind all the more worth it!!!

3. Mini-lesson number 3. I LOVE MY ´job´. It´s an Odd Job or a Non-Job but I get money for it so I suppose you can forgive the fraility of the English language (any other word for job?) and just say the above. Writing stories is my job and it´s an odd job. This is why I have posted up a photo of the cover of my new friend, New York Thriller writer Ben Lieberman´s new novel. He wrote the Thomas & Mercer thriller Odd Jobs, about hachets and work and is a cracking good read. Look him up on Amazon. You won´t be disappointed!

4. Mini-lesson number 4. Cloudy days are good!! When I was in the PNW, it was cloudy and I felt inspired. Cloudy takes me to dark places.....brilliant sunshine has its place but I think I still need that forest and that dark place to get a move on with my next thriller. 

5. Mini-lesson number 5. Is just one word I´m afraid......BERLUSCONI. More on that word in my next blog. 

Thanks for reading. In the words of a Vueling flight on-board napkin - route Barcelona to Sevilla, then Sevilla to Barcelona - RESPIRA YA SE PASA - a literal translation here ´Breathe until it has passed´.

Hello Anxiety! I think I love you!

I have to deal with the fact that when it comes to my favourite bit of work - writing - I am not a calm person. I probably should be, but I am not. 

Three months ago, my world changed; I went from being a writer of articles published by newspapers and magazines in various countries and a writer of novels - rejected by agents and publishers in most countries - to a novelist with a publishing contract. 

My life prior to three months ago was full of anxiety of the 'will-I-ever-in-my-lifetime-find-an-agent-who'll-in-turn-find-me-a-publisher' kind. 

You'd think winning a massive competition (in my category) like the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award would be enough to soothe the old anxiety, but no - now I've found another reason to be anxious, and it's this: I am just one writer in a world full of talented writers, millions and millions of them. How will I ever persuade people to read my novel The Hidden? It seems like a task of such enormous proportions, I just feel completely overwhelmed. I've never felt overwhelmed by novel writing, the plotting and planning and writing so this new 'state of overwhelm' is a kind of Alice in Wonderland scenario for me. 

How do you deal with this feeling of anxiety, a feeling that says 'you have the longest, hardest road ahead of you.....you are going to have to help persuade many, many, many, many people to read your novel and you're going to have to accept all the things they say about your story - good and bad. Not only that, while all this is happening you're going to carry on writing your next thriller 'A Strange Girl' and the plot must be brilliant, clever, perfectly formed and all this must happen in the next six months.'

Tonight I have been thinking about this, and thinking deeply about it too. I have been thinking that I am probably a little bit addicted to anxiety, or rather that quite a long time ago - when I was a young girl, anxiety became the default definer of my life. And that without it, I am a little bit lost.

Was it John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, who said 'anger is an energy'? I think it was, though correct me if I am wrong. (Sorry I am not going to Google it!)

So maybe that's it! Maybe I shouldn't get anxious about anxiety, I should say 'hello anxiety, I think I love you'. 

I still adore my story, The Hidden. When I read it, I feel this lump in my throat because I remember so vividly the emotion and anger I was feeling when I wrote it. 

I wrote it for all women who are caged by a life they do not want, as a kind of therapy for myself, because at the time I was writing it I was going through a particularly devastating, horrible period in my life. I was trapped geographically, physically and emotionally as well as financially by an awful set of circumstances. My life at that time was filled with anxiety, but my anger was my energy and writing The Hidden was my release.

Hezba was the essence of all I was feeling; Aimee possessed the coolness and dignity I wanted to have at that time, but didn't have. The Hidden is an angry story but there is resolution, and in that resolution calm is restored......for the time being.  

Dancing the flamenco with my readers

Yesterday, after hours spent wandering the streets of Sevilla, eyes wide at the beauty of this city, I came home to my apartment to spend my allocated hours doing the final, pre-publication proofing of my novel The Hidden.

It was a strange sensation; feeling in every pore of my being the sultriness of this city with its heat, flamenco bars on every corner, and super-talented Spanish guitarists busking for austerity euros, as tourists and locals alike drink their cerveza and eat their tapas; and then diving back into the proofing of my novel - set in Cairo with its spies, terrorists, prostitutes and wannabe dictators, with its raw life on the streets, a sort of mirror image of life here.

I got to thinking there is a remarkable similarity between these two narratives going on at the moment; the real-life, in-the-now Sevillano narrative and the fictional Cairene narrative of my novel.

And then something happened.....

I connected with and came across a small group of readers, through social media, who told me how much they loved my writing. At that point, everything made sense.

This small group told me they loved my stories, and thanked me for 'taking them away' into another world, a place where they could learn about life from an electric perspective, raw to the bone.

I fell in love with this group of readers; these wonderful individuals who took time to tell me what they thought of my writing and my stories.

So I am dedicating this blog post to them. I don't want to name names, because I don't want to embarrass them but now is the time to get personal and write them a little message, within this 'message'.

So here it is:-

"To my dear readers, thank you for loving my stories, thank you for reading them....I used to write novels with no reader in mind, just this crazy, driven desire to understand the world by running a microscope over the minutiae of human experience, in different locations, in different times. I was always driven to do this and it was probably a selfish experiment, something to do with therapizing my own inner craziness, trying to come to terms with why I am such a traveller, in need of foreign languages and foreign cultures, like a junkie in need of heroin.....

"But now, I am going to write all my future novels with you people in mind and dedicate my writings to you. Thank you for dancing the flamenco with me."

Scrap-booking my Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Seattle event speech

I'm on a research trip now in Sevilla, Southern Spain. It's almost violently hot and most days are spent hiding out in my air-conditioned apartment, plotting and planning my current work-in-progress, another thriller, while sensual nights are spent eating up the Sevillano atmosphere - more on that, with photos, in my next post.

Sorting through papers today, I found the speech I wrote at the Edgewater Hotel, Seattle at 4pm on the day of the ABNA '13 event - Saturday 15th June. I wrote it on the hotel computer and so had no record of it other than the printed pages I would read from - running late I didn't think to email it to myself - just printed it out to read when my five minutes of scary 'fame' came.

I am posting it here in its entirety, to scrap-book it, for myself. I have always found the inspiration behind stories and novels intriguing. I am propelled by a desire to know why people do what they do. I am insanely curious, always have been.....and hope to always be this way.

I am the person who will have chats with little old ladies at bus stops and in those precious five minutes, while waiting for the bus, I usually manage to get people's life stories out of them. I think I have a knack for it - the journalist in me, but the bottom line is I find other people far more fascinating than myself. This scrap-book entry is a little bit of archival spot-lighting........I want to remember the ABNA 2013 moment forever, and make no apologies for it.

I have no clue who reads my blog - if anybody - but when I post I write for myself.......the fact that it's a sort of diary entry, permanently stamped into the digital encoding of the world, makes no difference to me. So, here it is:-

"I want to thank Amazon Publishing for their warmth, support and amazing hospitality, for their total professionalism in helping to get my novel ready for its October 2013 release, and for totally getting my story. Their respect for authors and their generosity of spirit has made this experience totally

mind-blowing.

I want to thank Publishers Weekly for their incredible review of my manuscript. It has kept me going, and on a permanent high, since I read it all those weeks ago at the semi-finalist stage.

I want to thank my amazing family who live and breathe my novels with me, for their patience, love and support.

The Hidden began as a trip to a local bookshop in Melbourne, Australia, one of my daily visits, many years ago. I discovered a beautiful book about harem women who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. It fascinated me, and plunged me immediately into a two-year obsessive research journey into the lives of these harem girls who lived in the palaces of the time. From there I dived into the political history of Egypt, the 1919 Nationalist riots and the stranglehold of the British over the Egyptian people.

I started asking questions. Would it be possible for a harem girl to break free of the traditions imposed on her and live a different type of life? In 1919 Cairene Women were protesting in the streets against the British rule, so things were changing.

From there my research took me deep into the Egyptian underworld, the world of espionage and terrorism. I found myself in war-time Cairo living the spies and the prostitutes in the brothers there. I made friends with the soldiers and listened to the stories about counter-espionage, the impending German invasion and who was going to make it out alive. I lived in this world for two years as I bought every single non-fiction book I could get my hands on about the era. I lived in second-hand bookshops and unearthed some amazing stories.

So The Hidden was born. I wanted to write about what draws people to certain types of lives. I carried on asking questions; why would someone plot to assassinate a king? Why would a young man join a terrorist group? Why would a family try so hard to keep the story of their lives so secret? Why would a young girl, the daughter of the sultan of Egypt, want to challenge every single tradition she had grown up with?

My fictional harem girl Hezba wrote a diary about her life in 1919. Her only legacy to the daughter she never knew is this diary. Her daughter was raised without an identity of her own. It was hidden from her. Her mother spent her whole life fighting against the identity forced on her. The Hidden isn't just a political thriller, it's a story about identity, about nationality, and about the sins of our ancestors and how their actions become genetically threaded through to future generations.

I adored writing this story. I lived it through my research, through writing it. It helped me deal with my own issues of nationality and identity.

I pitched it many publishers but it was rejected many, many times. Eventually I self-published it to Kindle Direct Publishing and the response was amazing. Then I entered the ABNA competition and here I am.

So to end, I just want to say again thanks to Amazon, who made this all possible. They got my story. Writers have it tough. I was prepared to carry on writing to the end of my life with no publisher in sight, but now, well.......I am just so happy. Thank you."

Lovers of thrillers & suspense novels - here's your reason to buy The Hidden

All 25 semi-finalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) 2013 received a review of their novel, as part of reaching that stage of the contest.I am so grateful to Publishers Weekly for my review. In case you didn't know I went on to win the contest in my category. My novel will be published on October 22nd 2013 by Thomas & Mercer in the US. If you love thrillers and suspense novels (as I do), I'm sure  you'll love The Hidden. You can pre-order by clicking here. Don't forget to send me your thoughts when you've read it. I am grateful for all reviews and comments, and if you contact me through my website I'll send you a reply. Thank you. 

ABNA Publishers Weekly Reviewer

This sophisticated, first-rate mystery novel/political thriller takes place in Cairo, Egypt. It alternates points of view and shifts time frames to create an outstanding narrative with nail-biting suspense. Yet, it is much more than a clear-cut thriller.

It offers a penetrating account of Egyptian culture, the role of women in society, and the profundity of love. The story begins in 1940. Haran Issawi, chief advisor to King Faruk, discusses with his top security men newly discovered intelligence of an assassination plot against him to be carried out by the Group of the X, a proletarian nationalist organization that seeks to overthrow the Egyptian government.

Meanwhile, Aimee Ibrahim, the young and alluring widow of Azi Ibrahim, an academician who was mysteriously murdered, is asked to come to the university where Azi taught to collect his belongings. A parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string entices Aimee. She opens it and discovers her mother's diary, written 20 years ago. Aimee never knew her mother, Hezba Sultan, who was born into royalty as the only daughter of Ali Sultan Pasha. Now, with this relic of Hezba's past in Aimee's possession, she speculates about what secrets it may reveal. Aimee also wonders why Azi had Hezba's journal and why it was hidden at his office.

Aimee is invited to the launch party of a poetry book written by the university's up-and-coming literary talents where she meets Farouk, who is the editor of the Cairo newspaper, The Liberation, and, unbeknownst to Aimee, one of the notorious "ringleaders" in the Group of X. Even though the encounter irritated Aimee -- she didn't like the way Farouk stared at her -- she couldn't stop thinking about him after their goodbyes. Farouk, too, was enchanted. Their friendship blossoms, yet can they trust one another?

Hezba's flawless diary entries are incorporated into the novel, and they welcome readers into the fascinating yet brutal world of Egyptian harem life in the early 20th century. Hezba's writings tell of her nature as a defiant, impatient and desperately unhappy woman who seeks freedom beyond the strictures of the palace and the societal limitations placed on women. Circumcised at age five and married at age 11 to 50-year-old Khalil al-Shezira in a political maneuver arranged by her father, Hezba's joy is her secret love affair with Anton Alexandre, a member of the Rebel Corp which is agitating for revolution against the British occupation of Egypt.

Hezba aligns herself with Alexandre's rebel activity, and, as the novel switches back and forth in time, it becomes increasingly intriguing how crucial Hezba's journal is to the unfolding of events in 1940. This is a novel that keeps readers guessing -- presumed allegiances are not always what they seem to be when bombs explode and characters are killed and truths are revealed. This is an excellent, well-written, and forceful work of fiction.

May 2013

Two men, a family and an hour of Mediterranean reflection.

The cover of my self-published novel The Hidden, now to be published traditionally in all formats by Thomas & Mercer in the USA.

Yesterday evening I did something I haven't done for a very long time; I spent an hour on my own thinking. I walked to the furthest beach in my town and sat on a towel on the sand, staring at the Mediterranean. It was late, about 9.30pm. The sun was setting.

There was a family on my right and two men talking, on my left. I sat on my towel and watched the night birds fly across the sky. I watched the two men, obviously a couple, newly in love, laughing and talking. Their laughter and happiness had the sound of lustful anticipation. They were totally absorbed in each other, totally smitten.

The family on my right, consisted of a mum and a dad, two children, aged around ten and six and an older woman - a grandmother. The man had planted two fishing rods in the sand, the lines thrown out into the shallows and was doing a spot of night fishing. The children were totally absorbed in splashing about in the puddles of water, keeping a respectful distance from dad and his fishing rods. The women had set up a small bbq and were loading it with charcoal, preparing food. Each member of the family was caught up in what they were doing.

No one took any notice of me, sitting there on my towel, staring at the sea, and that was wonderful. I was the quiet, respectful observer of human interaction and it was a beautiful moment. I occasionally wondered if these two groups of people had noticed me looking at them, but I knew I was observing 'respectfully', not overtly.

Every now and again I lay down and stared at the sky, streaked with red and purple, watching the clouds. I was thinking about my next novel, about the characters growing before me in my mind. Then I got to thinking about people; people I know well; people I know through social media; people I have just met; people I have known for a long time.

The couple on my left, the two young men, were Spanish. I could hear them talking. They were good-looking, in their late 20s. The family was probably Catalan; I caught a few Catalan words on the breeze. I was wondering about their lives, their jobs, their backgrounds, what made them happy.

I starting studying the man with his fishing rods for a while. As it got darker, I noticed he had become  very still, standing there staring out at the sea. I wondered if he was doing what I was doing, meditating on a life filled with the exquisite detail of existence; the fish he would catch, the hugs he would give his wife and children, the satisfaction of eating dinner with his family on the beach at dusk.

At 10.30pm I got up and walked across the sand, barefooted, put on my sandals and found the road home. It had been a beautiful hour spent, deep inside the detail of humanity.

Life is pain!

Life is pain. I am one person split by responsibilities, desires, insecurities, feelings; who walks through the day's hours with aching hurts and frustrated plans, punctuated by bursts of happiness (every now and again). 

I go through routines, battered by duty, crippled by the pain of trying, desperately trying to find solitude in a life that has handed me a clearly-defined role to play; that of a female, in a world that is crowded and noisy and never lets up, never offers serenity, never celebrates female-ness, only seeks to define it and cage it. I live in a world that has defined the role of female as 'this' and 'that'. But I don’t want my femaleness to ‘tag’ me. I don’t want to play the role of female anymore. I want to quit.

I am chaotic but I love order and patterns; I hate violence but love writing about it; my novels are filled with male characters whose bodies I inhabit, but I am staunchly pro-women’s rights. I live in a writing world of inner debauchery but in real-life I am appalled by it. I am loving, but I loathe society’s expectations that females should be ‘nice’ and ‘kind’ and ‘submissive’. I love my female-ness and hate it too.

These schisms cause inner pain and this pain bleeds outwardly every single day.

I write to ease this pain and the novel-building/writing helps to soothe the lesions in my inner life. I am in full-on writing mode now…. in between the pain of living. I am writing about a woman whose analytical mind and utter ruthlessness makes her one of the most violent killers this country has ever seen. Her violence thrills me; the way she manipulates and metamorphoses from femme fatale to the testosterone-fuelled aggression any man is capable of, in the blink of an eye. I love her ability to feel absolutely nothing, but see everything, and to plot and scheme and her razor-sharp intelligence. 

Hezba, in The Hidden - http://tinyurl.com/pjhnuwe -  had plenty of this ruthlessness, this driven desire to break down the gender tag imposed on her. My new ‘femme’ character (as yet unnamed) is there, in my mind, smiling at me. She’s beautiful! Why? Because I love male and female beauty – the more unconventional the better - and want to live inside the mind and body of a beautiful person.  But what is making her so exciting to me, as she grows before my eyes, is the fact that she has within her a love of violence that I am trying to understand. And she will make me understand her……

A big rush of energy and ecstasy in Seattle, USA!

I have just got back from Seattle, in the USA’s stunning Pacific North-West, as a guest of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) 2013. My novel The Hidden was selected as the winner in the Thriller/Suspense category of the ABNA. 

The trip was incredible; the landscape, the people, the ABNA ceremony…….it was five days of bliss. I met my fellow finalists, Rysa Walker, Ken Moraff, Evelyn Pryce and J. Lincoln Fenn, as well as the Amazon team who are such warm, down-to-earth, creative and on-the-ball people. 

We finalists were treated like royalty, showered with gifts, taken out to lunch and dinner, hosted at the event and wrapped in this gorgeous warm blanket of respect that I, as an author, have never, ever experienced before. Rysa Walker won the Grand Finalist award for her novel Timebound – congratulations Rysa! But the message from Amazon was clear; all of us five authors will be treated equally in terms of time, marketing and support by the Amazon Publishing team. This is great news for all of us.

I have always been an Amazon fan because I am an obsessive book-buyer. I adore bookshops but when I scour bookshops and they don’t have the books I am looking for I always go to Amazon and have done so since they started out. I am impatient and I want books, I have to have them. Amazon always meets this burning need.

I had no opinion at all of this massive corporation before I met the people behind it, other than it was a great service that fulfilled my obsessive book-buying needs. I wasn’t prepared for the human ‘face’ of this global company, for their obvious love of authors, for their incredible creativity in trying new things in the world of digital and mainstream publishing and selling, for their complete intuitive understanding of my novel, for their vibrancy, normalcy and their incredible positivity and upbeat energy.

My entire writing life has been a roller-coaster of ‘yes, we love you, but……’ to ‘no, your novel is not right for us…..’. I have two folders on my computer labelled ‘lovely rejections’ and ‘standard rejections’. The bottom line is my experience has shown me that publishers are cautious, inward-looking organisations who only appear to ‘risk’ investing in established names. I was blown away by Amazon’s forward-thinking philosophy when it comes to authors, based on their respect of them.

I don’t want my blog to sound like an advert for Amazon. I am just diarising my experience in Seattle, five days I will remember for the rest of my life.

But I will say I love companies like Amazon, who take risks, who are super-creative, who drill down deep into ‘what people want’ and provide them with it, and companies who dare to challenge old and tired market models and try something new. My love of this type of creativity extends to solo-operators – writers, artists, musicians, photographers, designers, illustrators – all creative people, and businesses or non-profit organisations, small or large; in fact anyone who challenges the status quo.

While I was in Seattle I went to the EMP museum http://www.empmuseum.org/ next to the Needle. I was enthralled by the story of Nirvana, the post-punk ‘punk’ band who was from the Pacific North-West region. I got totally into the story of these types of musicians who did everything themselves in the beginning; from booking their own gigs, to designing their own posters and magazines. There’s a great energy in Seattle. I adored it and hope to return one day.

On the plane back I wrote some more notes on my next thriller, writing notes in pencil in my Moleskine notebook. I’m excited now about having my feet on the ground and going back inside my head into the dark world of thriller-dom.

While I write this novel you can pre-order The Hidden which is going to be published by Thomas & Mercer in Seattle, from Amazon here…..http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-Jo-Chumas/dp/1477848193/ref=sr_1_2_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1371732758&sr=8-2&keywords=Jo+Chumas

It will be out on October 22 2013. When you’ve bought it and read it, write to me, talk to me. I love my readers and will listen to what you have to say, I promise. 

My letter to a loved one, written from Cairo, September 2006

Hi, I tried to call you before, but I could only hear your voice vaguely. I hope you are ok.

Our news follows: -

I have changed our flights and we are leaving tomorrow. Cairo is too much for Tali. He is not interested in the things I am interested in and to be honest is being a pain in the arse. But I can understand it.

I have dragged him in a lightening fast three-day tour of Cairo – a literary tour, which I based around my novel. We got this wonderful female tour guide called Seham. I told her about my novel and all the places I wanted to see – based on the areas I wrote about. She took us to all the wonderful bits – Islamic Cairo, the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, Coptic Cairo, Garden City, the Muski, Bulac, Abbassiya, Heliopolis, Zamalek, Giza. These were places were all the action took place in my book. She was very interested in my book and impressed that I knew so much about Cairo – (remember all that research I did and all the books I have on the political upheaval during the 20s and 40s!).

I totally love Cairo. It is amazing. I will write about it in more detail later. Tali got totally freaked out by the intense crowds, the noise, the pushing and shoving, Islamic Cairo and the abattoirs, markets and cafes, but I have to admit that I was freaked out too, so I can only imagine how hard it must have been for him.

OK, in summary we saw:-

• the Pyramids of Giza, Cheops, Khufu etc
• We went inside the Pyramid of Khufu
• We saw the Sphinx
• We went to the Pyramids Light and Sound show at night
• We went to the Egyptian Museum
• We went to the Muski, Khan el Khalili bazaar and the famous 200-year-old café where writer Mafouz wrote his novels while having shisha and drinking Egyptian coffee. This café – famous and even more famous for being famous is so super-brilliant, words cannot describe it. I took photos. It is called Fishwahi’s and has been in the same family for 200 years. I had henna done at Fishwahi’s, I had grape shisha (brilliant) and Egyptian coffee (brilliant), all the while talking to my new Egyptian friend Seham – the lady tour guide.
• We went to the Al Azhar mosque – went inside, took photos
• We bought a shisha pipe for you at the Khan el-Khalili bazaar – over 1000 years old bazaar.
• We went to the Northern Gates (1000 years old)
• We saw the City of the Dead (cemeteries where the tombs look like houses and people actually live in them, because they are so poor they cannot afford real houses
• We saw the Egyptian Museum – the mummies tombs
• We went to a Perfumery and smelt pure Egyptian perfumes, like the lotus flower, frankincense etc. I bought some perfumes (of course)
• We went to Coptic Cairo which is 2000 years old – brilliant
• Went to the Hanging Church, the Synagogue and saw where Mary and Joseph stayed
• We went to a papyrus shop and watched it being made (of course, we bought some prints for framing)
• At the Muski bazaar, I bought some headscarves out of necessity to wear
• We saw a 1800 year-old castle, on the Muquattam hills used to spy out invaders of the crusaders – pre-Islamic times.

 Our flight tomorrow is at 8am and so it’s a very early start. We are going straight to Mum’s. I will try and set up wireless internet straight away.

I hope you are well and that you are having some success at last in LA.

Email me soon.

Love US XXXX

 PS......I have bought lots of books, black and white prints of photos from the 1920s and 1930s of Egyptian scenes

Finally………..dreams do come true. A publishing contract with my name on it.

http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

But first, some background……….

I loved writing stories when I was a little girl. I never thought too hard about the stories I wrote. I just wrote them. It was the same with my diary. I never stopped to analyse my thoughts as I wrote them down, never hesitated. I never actually thought of my writing as anything more than a way of expressing the deepest, darkest secrets in my heart.

I had few people to talk to when I was growing up. I wasn’t good at much at school, didn’t enjoy it. Languages and English saved my ennui. I was only a star pupil in one subject, writing in English. But that didn’t hold much kudos. 

Being a good writer (for a girl) wasn’t celebrated. It wasn’t congratulated. I knew deep within the fibres of my seven-year-old self, that we girls were being primed for marriage and a ‘hobbyist’ career that would support our future husbands. Secretly, without even knowing really what I was feeling I was disgusted and determined that I would suffer no such fate.

I got top marks for writing stories but serious subjects like biology and maths were beyond me. 

So I was ignored. I liked that. It gave me the space I needed to watch and wait.

I got down to my favourite pastime, observing human nature. Writing my diary and coming up with stories inside my head was my sanctuary. Writing in my notebook made me feel safe. Thinking up stories was my private territory. It was an experience no-one could take away from me. It was all mine! The world could be disintegrating around me but living within the pages of my notebook meant I was able to breathe and protect myself from the harm I saw.

I read as much as I could too, when I was little, and still do. My favourite authors were - and are - not put on pedestals, not adored, not given any more status other than that of a storyteller. 

That’s all they were - and are - to me. But I knew - and know - that being a storyteller was - and is - an important job. Perhaps I could be a storyteller one day too.

I wrote my first full-length novel 16 years ago, having spent years writing articles for newspapers, a committed hack during the day, filling hundreds of notebooks with my thoughts at night. 

I finished my first 55,000 word novel in 1997, and sent it off to my chosen publisher. They liked it but rejected it. I wrote another, sent it off to the same publisher. They liked it and asked me to revise it. I felt this enormous sense of pride that someone had liked my story enough to ask me to revise it. I revised it and revised it again but they still rejected it, asking me to write another story.

I did as I was asked but they rejected my third novel. This time despair set in. I decided to abandon this publisher (who were very specific about the genres of stories they published) and write the story I really wanted to tell. 

I started researching my plotlines for The Hidden and gradually my novel started to take shape. I completed it – a weighty 140,000 first draft, a fully researched tale of political intrigue set in 1919 and 1940s Egypt – four months short of the 9/11 bombings. Writing The Hidden was a joyful experience of hard-core research into the political, economic and cultural trends of early 20^th century Egypt. 

I became obsessed with the era, the country, the politics, the lives of people who actually lived during that time…….I lived the story in my mind as I wrote and for the two years (with breaks) I was writing it, was living this strange double life; mother to two small children living under the Australian sun, sweltering in 40 degree heat and exhausted from the demands of young children, but simultaneously walking the streets of 1940s Cairo, living out of dusty biographies, old archived newspapers and non-fiction documentary accounts of life in the harem, soldiers out in the desert, living the life of men and women in the midst of revolutionary action.

Over the years I pitched my story to hundreds of literary agents and publishers but was rejected over and over.  And then the rejections turned into silences. Email pitch after email pitch to literary agents in the UK and the US garnered nothing but a heart-breaking silence, and silence is far, far worse than rejection. 

Many, many years passed and I wrote another novel After Rafaela, a story I love. The Hidden was resting quietly on a computer pen drive. Every year or so I would dig it out and revise bits of it, do some more research, go back to the place where I felt alive and in charge.

Then came the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 competition. I submitted my full manuscript version of The Hidden in time for their January 2013 deadline, a final version edited slightly for the Award. 

I had zero expectations. I have never won anything in my life so I didn’t hold out much hope for my novel. But I was wrong. I’m still in shock. The last four months have been amazing. I have moved through the selection process and with each announcement that I was still in the running came this relief and happiness that my story was worth reading. Strangers were acknowledging the appeal of my story. There is no greater praise than good reviews from strangers.

When I got the call from the States that I had been selected as the Finalist in my category, I was walking down a Catalonian mountain and I answered the phone with a resounding ‘Hola’. I didn’t even look at my phone to check who it was. 

It was ABNA was on the phone and it was me they wanted to speak to. They are going to publish my novel, they told me. I screamed. I was the Finalist in my category. I couldn’t believe it. 

After a long phone conversation with the lovely ABNA people I screamed some more and went to find the nearest bar where I ordered cava. All I have ever wanted to be is a storyteller and take people away with me on a magic carpet of fantasy to a place where they can forget their troubles and live out another reality for a while. I would carry on doing this with or without a publishing contract.....this is the story of my life.

The Hidden will be published in a few months. I hope you enjoy it. I am working on ideas for another thriller and I want to bring you some amazing stories for a long time to come. I want you to join me on my journey. The act of storytelling is – to me – simple, pure, blissful. It involves the process of creating a story that tantalises and excites. It involves a relationship with readers; a strong and intimate relationship. Each part of the dynamic is crucial. It’s a dance of mystery and love, whatever the content of the story - thriller, horror, murder mystery, romance....... I am a shy person who prefers to be alone, but I love people and love hearing their stories. This is the split synchronicity of my personality. Writing stories is my way of connecting with the world. It's all I can do. My readers are my partners and my lovers........I owe you everything! Please read my excerpt and vote for me. The selection of the Grand Finalist in Seattle next month is down to Amazon customer votes. Please share this page with your friends and support me. Thank you. Jo xxx

Sunshine, lemons, hope and the beauty of simplicity..........

My friend Lisa from MoreSouth - http://moresouth.com/blog/ - asked me to comment on her blog about lemons. So here goes. Thanks Lisa.

Lemons are very much on my mind at the moment. The lemon plays a major role in my work-in-progress novel 'Honey Lemon'. To one of the central characters - Inez - lemons are sacrosanct!  To Inez the lemon symbolizes hope, life, vitality; it symbolizes sun. Inez sees her lemon tree as her protector against all things evil. Inez feels her life in 2013 Spain is falling apart. She clings to hope for better things for the future. She is young and without qualifications. She works in a low-paid job. Her problems are those faced by so many of her friends.

Then she meets Luis. Both she and Luis are young Cubans, living in Barcelona. Both work in menial jobs with no prospects; both have lost hope that they’ll ever have a better future. They are strangers to each other and feel adrift in a modern Europe gripped by recession.

Apart from their nationality, they have one thing in common; Ines sings to her lemon tree each morning before she goes to work at the bakery deliciós close to Gracia, believing her lemon tree holds the secret to her existence. Luis, a porter at the Hotel Central close to the Ramblas, is addicted to the taste of organic honey. He worships honey and saves as much of his low pay as he can afford to buy the best he can. Both feel lost in the midst of menial work, low pay, struggle, disconnection, loneliness and fear.

One cold February morning, Ines and Luis meet. They become friends, then lovers, and over the coming weeks challenge each other to find out the reason for their love affair with the lemon tree and organic honey. What they discover surprises them. They discover not only a common heritage, a joint past, a new hope for living and the key to a life full of promise, they discover love and connection with their own history and within that the reason for their own being.

'Honey Lemon' is a simple love story about connecting with our ancestors and living true to your dreams. 

I wanted to write a novel about symbols, about simple things that inspire us, about the disconnection many of us feel with what is truly important. That's one of the reasons why I love Lisa and Haim's business MoreSouth – which is about the simple, yet powerful act, of eating beautiful food, and nothing feeds the spirit and soul more than delicious food shared with family and friends xxx.

On stage or in the shadows……

I read it everywhere…….to be successful you almost have to brain-wash people into ‘wanting’ you. You have to shout about how good you are, how talented you are, how ‘out there’ you are. You have to shout the loudest, the longest, be a bit of a diva. You have to ‘brand’ yourself (your physical self) in order to be noticed.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. On Tuesday night I found out that I had made it to the semi-finalist section of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for my novel The Hidden – 10,000 entries into the competition and now I am in the last five for my category ‘Thriller’.

I’d been nervous in the run-up to Tuesday, knowing that they would announce the semi-finalists on that day. I was ecstatic when I heard but I find it hard to shout about it too much.

But I am so grateful to Amazon for the chance to be read. My novel The Hidden was written after two years of research and was finished in April 2001, just two months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Because the plot involves terrorism, no publisher or agent would touch it at the time. I rewrote the novel 10 times and then it languished on a computer pen drive for many years. I dragged it out of the computer file on a whim in December 2012 and submitted my application to the ABNA competition. Now it is out of the shadows and that’s fantastic. But I still feel more comfortable in the shadows. I want my novel to be read and my words to talk, but I don’t want to say much at all.

This privacy mania comes being a person who does not like ‘diva’ behaviour at all. All I want to do is write my stories. I don’t want to sell myself but my stories. I watch favourite authors on social media and rate them according to how they present themselves. If they go over the top, I stop liking them and it turns me off reading their work. So the same must apply to over-selling yourself as a writer, digitally. 

I don’t mind if people hate me or like me (their choice) but I want them to buy and read my novels. Digitally promoting yourself and your product comes down to the promotion of self, and I don’t want to promote my ‘self’ rather my stories.

Is there a way around this? I am not sure. Because in this digital world everything comes down to ‘personality’. Personality sells. Having worked in PR for many years I know all about this.

My novels are not about me. They are fictional stories that I make up in my mind. Then comes the act of setting the stories down on ‘paper’. Once that is finished I launch them into the world and hope that people enjoy them. It seems like a simple process. Is the digital world simply a way of reminding people these stories are out there? 

On ABNA I am thrilled but I am just one person who exists in a world of talented people; so many talented writers with wonderful stories to tell. To me it’s the story that’s important not the author.

Please send me your thoughts. 

Warm wishes xxx

Luis is a Matryoshka doll

Luis felt as though he was living his life as a Matryoskha doll, a tiny Luis inside a bigger Luis, inside an even bigger Luis. The tiniest doll was the real Luis dancing happy inside a great big dream, but life as the little doll was hot and suffocating too. He could dance happy for a time, but then big Luis Matryoskha would have to go out to work.

He’d seen his papa live like this, repressed, crying out for creative freedom, a poet, forced to work 12-hour shifts in his factory in Hospitalet on the outskirts of Barcelona, for the sake of the family and he’d listened to his papa’s stories of grandpapa and great grandpapa in Cuba with the sun in their eyes and honey in their mouths. Great grandpapa and grandpapa’s honey farm had supported the entire Moreno family through the generations. 

Luis had a little book of black and white photos, and in it grandpappy Moreno was photographed with his bees, feeding the village with his happiness and the organic honey he kept aside for his own personal use.

Grandpappy Moreno had never come to Catalonia and Luis had never managed to get to Cuba. All Luis had from grandpappy Moreno were the black and white photos and the stories from his own papa and his taste for honey, which he didn't understand and which he didn't talk about. People would think him crazy.

Luis was crying silently as he walked down the Ramblas to the Hotel Central, great rivers of tears streaming behind the backs of his eyes, but he was smiling and his smile was frozen. It was a cold March day and the sky was slate grey. People rushed in their black and Luis thought of the uniform of working life and how all people really needed was freedom. If people had freedom, maybe they wouldn't wear black. Luis hated black, hated people who wore black. To Luis, black was death and in Catalonia people were dying.

As he walked he knew he was the biggest Matryoskha doll, smartly dressed, ready for the day, in his grey uniform (no black for him, he had begged his bosses), with all the right things to say, there on his lips, the right smile for the right moment.

He’d risen early, had stood at the window of the tiny one bedroom flat he shared with Ferran, his friend and he’d scooped the honey from the jar and had eaten it straight off the spoon. The texture was warm and comforting, tasting of herbs and spice – it was the best organic honey he could find – and then he’d licked the spoon, forcing his tongue into the silvery grooves. 

This was Luis’s ritual every morning and the only way he could face his own 12-hour shift as a porter at the Hotel Central, watching the bored rich tourists who travelled only so they could box tick countries and places. 

Luis had never felt so lonely. 

Good reviews and happiness

Today, Friday 15th March 2013 (a day that is nearly over) has been a very special day for me. 

Within the space of 24 hours I have received some excellent reviews for two of my novels The Hidden and After Rafaela. The reviews, written by strangers - (and people I will never meet) - expressed a real interest in and enjoyment of my novels, and a strong appreciation of my writing. 

I have sold quite a few copies of my novels but few people take time (or have time) to review my work. Most people (and I do this) read a novel and get immersed in the story. They finish the story, then put it away and move on with their lives. This is natural and normal, after all a novel is escapism and that's where it ends. 

There are a million things in life to interest us and our attention is fractured and scattered. This makes a review even more potent to the writer. I have been writing for a long, long time. I write because to write is pure escapism. I read because to read is pure escapism. Both are blissful, but then the experience is over, and the feeling both experiences leave is put aside as one to file in the archive of memory. 

To read that my writing has affected a stranger in a profoundly positive way is like winning the lottery. A good review makes me deliriously happy. I won't say that it makes writing my novels worthwhile because I would write my novels regardless, but it is special and it is beautiful and for that I am so thankful. 

On being a woman.......

On being a woman……

Being a woman is seeing the world with wide, wide eyes……in awe of everything and tired of nothing, wanting to devour experiences, places, countries, sensations, aromas, and scenes with an energy that burns through me. 

I burn, I burn. 

Everything I want to do, I want to do with passion. I want to see everything in hyper-reality, I want to be the ethereal butterfly flitting across the Earth. 

Nobody can confine me. I live in my own country, a place that has no name and that allows no one entry but me. It's my own inner female country that is beautiful and sensual and free. 

I will walk the Earth without chains; I will make my decisions freely; I will love my children more intensely than any man; I will be encircled by my Earthly family, the communities and friends from one continent to the next who want only to live without fear. I love the money in my life, the way money keeps me safe. I am in charge of everything I earn and I spend it only on things of beauty, that enhance my life and the lives of those I love. 

I love my femaleness, adore my body, my womb, my breasts, my skin, my hair, my eyes, my mouth, the complexity of my mind, my freedom to be whoever I want to be. And nothing will stop me loving the woman I am, not age, not circumstance, not fear.....

I have shed the men in my life who have dared to try and stop me.....I surround myself with men and women who never try to force their will on me or 'tame' me.

No rule or stereotype or tradition or saying or expectation is every going to enchain me. To my female ancestors I am linked. To Huda, to Silvia, to you all, in all countries and across all time I fly with you. To the daughter in my mind I say I go with you…..

To the female half of the Earth I say I love you.....