Guest Post - Aubrey Porter And Imaginary Elephants

I have to admire people who have a go at NaNoWriMo - 50,000 words in a month! It's one of those things I've never tried myself, though I'm generally good at meeting deadlines. Aubrey Porter, mother of two and handcrafter extraordinaire, did, and the novel is now available from Createspace and Amazon.

I'll let her tell you about it. Take it away, Aubrey!

Hi, I’m Aubrey.  Sue has graciously allowed me to write a guest post to let you know about myself and my debut novel, Tsavo Dreams.  So, I’m writing to you from Windy Wyoming where I have been trying to find enough hours in the day to get all the ideas rattling around in my head, down on paper, or wrapped around my knitting needles. 

I have been writing, here and there my whole life, but it wasn’t until I had my two children that something seemed to click.  My children are a huge source of inspiration to so many areas of my life.  My son in particular, was the one to spark the idea of Tsavo Dreams.  He came home one day when he was three with an invisible elephant.  He had found it in a picture at the bank.  He carried that elephant around with him for weeks, talking and playing with it.  His enthusiasm for his new friend led me to write a short story about the incident.  

It wasn’t until years later though when I found National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) that I pulled the story back out.  It called to me, wanted to be something more.  I wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a blog post, a children’s picture book, or something else entirely, but it wasn’t satisfied (and neither was I) with sitting unread in a file on my computer. With NaNo fast approaching I started researching elephants, and found out my silly little story wanted to become something so much bigger than a blog post or a picture book.  It wanted to be a novel.  

I made it through NaNo with a little over 50,000 words and took a much needed break from it for the holidays.  When I came back to it after the craziness of December I realized how much more work I had left to do.  I started back in, working on it wherever or whenever a spare moment presented itself.  I worked on it until it finally felt ready.  Then, I read it to my kids, who are five and seven.  Their reactions made all the hard work worth it.  They squealed with delight when something in the story reminded them of themselves.  Their emotions mirrored what I imagined my main character feeling throughout the story.  The most important thing though, they stopped me as I was reading to them to ask questions, or talk about what was going on.  The story seemed to open their eyes to things going on in the world, both close to home, and on the other side of the world.  

Writing this book has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It’s made me laugh, cry, smile, and sometimes even weep, but it was worth it.  Tsavo Dreams is just the first story to make it out of my cluttered brain, but it definitely won’t be the last. 

If you'd like to buy the book, it's available as a paperback here and in ebook here.