ANOTHER HURDLE CROSSED, AND ANOTHER TO GO

Hi,

September has been a busy month getting things on track after the summer holidays.

This week, I can say that I have crossed another hurdle. 

My report from the RNA NWS on The Last Year of Childhood was positive and promising.

This makes me happy, because I have worked for a long time to get things as right as they could be, so that readers would appreciate and enjoy this book.

Good comments from a total stranger, and a body such as The Romantic Novelist's Association, are not to be pushed aside, so I am not going to be too modest about it on here. Well maybe only very slightly...

Here are some of the comments from the critique:

- Greatly enjoyed it
- A most unusual story
- A location and community about whom many readers will not know
- characters are very well defined
- I particularly congratulate you on they way you have captured the dialogue of the characters
- use of their indigenous words also works well
- the context is clear
- I could hear them talking
- The scene is set very well
- Your description of the locations is also very vivid
- All in all, this is a splendid story

My next task is finding a suitable literary agent, who would want to represent such a novel.

The main theme of the book is around ARRANGED CHILD MARRIAGES, and the disaster to young lives when parents ignore the facts of the world in order to preserve cultural traditions. Whilst this novel is set in 1917 Trinidad, the problems of Arranged CHILD Marriages are many, and are happening today in various parts of the world, INCLUDING THE UK.

For many, this is a very current issue, and the rest of us need to think about it and act on a solution, because whilst the world gears towards creating better opportunities for children and young people, child marriages actually halts childhood, in a mentally and physically intrusive and destructive way.

The Last Year of Childhood, tries to demonstrates how tangled knots develop from this one action in parenthood, which instead of enhancing young adults, it actually destroys them. For those young people who face this problem, they need to be empowered from others outside the family who are in a position to help them.  

Thank you for reading! Will keep you posted on progress!

Love, Marilyn xx