Introducing ... April Vine

I’m South African by nature, born and bred, and I’m an incurable writer. I wish I could remember the definitive moment when I realized I wanted to be a writer. My mum’s always been an avid reader – amassing hundreds of Barbara Cartland historical novels. My late dad, an obsessive book buyer, whether it was a thesaurus, an Enid Blyton adventure or a Reader’s Digest book about birds. Books were part of the furniture at our house.

I loved the escapism they offered and began to write stories about my friends at school. I’d give them exotic names and adventures in faraway places. They’d wait quite eagerly for my little homemade, stapled renditions of books. When I reached high school, I changed genres and switched to romance : ) If one of my friends had a crush on a guy, rest assured I was going to write a full account of their romance with a guaranteed happy ending. I was extremely popular. I made all my friends romantic dreams come through on paper! :)

About some fifteen years ago, I queried M&B, had a full requested but was rejected - albeit with great personal feedback, too much plot for one. I then took time out to have babies and even though I wrote consistently, none of my books ventured outside my computer. I picked up the submission process again in 2007 and submitted a book to The Wild Rose Press. Just my luck the book landed in the wrong editor’s inbox, the erotic romance editor to be clear, but she liked my voice enough to want to work with me and recommended I read a few erotic romances to get a feel of what she was looking for.

Up to that point, I must admit I didn’t even know erotic romance existed. I fell off my chair reading my first one and blushed a hundred shades of red. But my husband, my rock, advised I try it before I knock it. And well, I became hooked on the freedom to explore the more physical attributes of mankind. Subsequently I managed to publish three short erotic romance stories and am working on a few more for submission.

For me the hardest part about writing, anything for that matter, is writing! It’s the strangest notion in the universe. There’s nothing in the world I want to do, or can do, yet every day I talk myself out of actually doing it. It boils down to a very bizarre battle between my butt and the chair. True too is the more you write the less arduous that battle becomes. So my advice to anyone with a passion to write, and advice I try to follow myself, is just write it, even in its most base form, a dirty draft. All you need is something tangible to work with, and from there anything, anything is possible.

“I never met a writer who wanted to be anything else.” — Natalie Goldberg

Happy writing!

You can find April's novels at The Wild Rose Press. She also has a website at www.aprilvine.co.za.