The Accidental Way to Becoming a Published Author

Please welcome Lauri Kubuitsile back to The Blood-Red Pencil on her blog book tour for her Kate Gomolemo Mysteries series.

My first published book was The Fatal Payout, the first book in my Kate Gomolemo Mysteries series. The entire process, from writing to getting published, was a textbook case of “How-not-to-be-a-Writer”.

In my thirties, I found myself owning a small printing company that published our local newspaper. I never really thought about being a writer although I wrote articles and an editorial each fortnight for the paper. But then we were changing formats and were afraid we’d get lost in the crowd and I had the idea that I would write a serialised novel, a thousand words each issue, to try and hook our readership to pick up the free paper. I’d never written a novel before, I hadn’t even written a short story, but I was undeterred. I didn’t know enough to know I didn’t know enough.

There was no plot plan, no character sketches. In most instances, the Thursday night before the Friday deadline, I’d quickly sit down at the computer and bash out my thousand words and hope I’d have something again the next time the deadline came around. Where the story was going, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it had to go. Every other Friday without fail.

Eventually I finished it. Readers were now used to the characters so I continued book number two (Murder for Profit), then book three (Anything for Money) and finally book four (Claws of a Killer). When The Fatal Payout finished in the paper, we had people calling the office asking for the parts they missed. My manager suggested I send the story off to one of our local publishers to see if they might consider printing a few books for our readers.

I did no research. I followed no submission guidelines. I just found the email for Macmillan in the yellow pages and sent the manuscript off.

A few months later I had a publishing contract. Another few months and I was at a book launch at one of the big chain bookstores in Gaborone with all the big-wigs, including the vice chancellor of our university, the MD of the bookstore chain, and the former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education. The guest speaker was the head of the national library services. To say it was surreal would be an understatement. Most of the night I hid in the nonfiction section of the bookstore in the hope that no one would find me. When I undressed to go to bed that night, I realised I’d worn my shirt backwards the entire evening.

That was 2005. It seems like yesterday. Since then the book has gone on to be prescribed for all junior secondary students in Botswana. It has sold almost 50,000 copies; the royalties recently paid for my new swimming pool.

But I remember that night, after the launch, we (my husband and kids and I) were back in the hotel room. They were asleep and I got up and took out my book. There it was: my name on the cover. Me. An author. Since then I’ve had seventeen paper and ink books published, and it’s always exciting, but nothing like that first one. I did every single thing wrong. I wasn’t meant to be a published author, but somehow, against all logic, I am.

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Lauri Kubuitsile blogs at Thoughts from Botswana

And her most recent books are:

Murder for Profit

Anything for Money

Claws of a Killer