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