Not only is
Zoë a terrific writer, she is also a talented photographer, a (very) fast
driver, a sailor, and a target shooter. So, with that, let's (respectfully) welcome Zoë Sharp.
–-Jeff (borrowing from Stan's introduction)
________________________
Getting From There to Here
Have you
ever stopped and looked around you, and wondered how you got from there to
here?
I’m not
talking about those momentary lapses during familiar journeys when the
autopilot takes over, and you suddenly realise you’ve missed your junction on
the motorway. Nor am I indulging in some deep cosmic navel-gazing.
Instead,
I’m asking the question on a more down-to-earth level—when you first became
aware that there was this nebulous thing called ‘a career’ and that you were
expected to have one, what did you imagine you would become?
 |
| Caroline Bradley |
Being a
horse-mad child, I naturally wanted to emulate my show-jumping heroes—or in
this case, heroines—and in particular Caroline Bradley, who really set
light to the sport until her tragic death in 1983 at the age of only
thirty-seven.
Sadly,
being jumped up and down rather a lot on by very large horses with very big
feet soon proved to me I don’t have the nerve for the really big fences,
although being a riding instructor is still more or less my only professional
qualification.
 |
| Clare Francis |
I was
brought up on a boat, so naturally sailing featured strongly in my early life.
I was fascinated by the achievements of transatlantic yachtswoman Clare Francis, devouring her non-fiction
works about her voyages, not only several times across the Atlantic, but in the
Round Britain Race, the Azores and Back Singlehanded Race, and the Whitbread
Round The World Race. And then her highly successful career as a novelist.
Writing, as
well as sailing, was one of the mainstays of my early life. Having opted out of
mainstream education at the age of twelve (I was a horribly precocious child),
I eventually wrote my first full-length novel at fifteen. My father loyally
typed it up for me, complete with carbon copies, (cue peals of laughter from
anyone under thirty), and it did the rounds of the major publishers, receiving
what are known in the trade as “rave rejections”. Looking back, most fledgling writers today would be
incredibly heartened to get the kind of encouraging criticism I received, but
at the time I was devastated. I assumed that particular door would remain
forever closed to me and looked round for Something Else.
That
Something Else included a variety of jobs, some of which I’m not really able to
talk about, but suffice to say that during that time I picked up one or two
useful skills, including the ability to hit a moving target with a
large-calibre rifle at 300 metres with open sights. (No, really—don’t ask.)
Still the
writing side of things never quite released its grip on me.
 |
| Michele Mouton |
As soon as
I learned to drive, cars became my passion. I bought an elderly Triumph
Spitfire, rebuilt it, resprayed it, and drove it as much in the style of the
great Group B World Rally competitor, Michèle Mouton as I was
able, considering she had at least ten times the horsepower and four-wheel
drive. I would have loved to follow in her footsteps, but elderly British
convertibles with no ground clearance were not the most competitive vehicles in
which to attempt serious off-roading.
 |
| Change of course |
That
passion for cars never faded, though, and almost by accident I fell into
writing about classic cars, which combined two loves very nicely. I started
doing a few reports for one of the local historic car club magazines. Before I
knew it, I was freelancing for the mainstream press, winging it, and praying
nobody asked me what qualifications I had for the job. Fortunately, it took one
of my commissioning editors four years to do so. By then I was able to tell
her, “Well, you’ve been paying me to do it for the past four years. Does that
count as qualification enough?”
It did,
apparently.
And I might
have put aside my fiction ambitions indefinitely, had it not been for the
death-threat letters I received in the course of my work, which had two
immediate effects. The first of these was that I took a sudden and very keen
interest in learning a great deal of self-defence dirty tricks—erm, I
mean tactics, and the second was to try to make sense of the whole thing by
writing it out of my system.
The result
was KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one.
Now I look
back on it, the whole of my life has been useful preparation for getting to
this point. Every skill I’ve acquired—every bit of information I’ve picked up,
or journey I’ve taken—has informed my writing in some way. No experience,
however nasty it might be at the time, is ever wasted.
And I
realise that although I may have come to it by a somewhat circuitous route, I
am in the incredibly lucky position of having achieved my childhood ambition.
I am what
I’ve always dreamed of being—an author.
What about
you? Are you where you hoped you’d be when you first set out? And if you’re
doing something completely unexpected (but which you enjoy anyway), how did you
stumble onto that path?
And if
you’re doing something you don’t enjoy, can you see a way to change course in
the near future—a means of getting from here to there?
Good
reading,
Posts
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