I arrived in Great Britain in July 1965 to join my parents in Newport South Wales. My parents separated and subsequently divorced in the early ‘70’s and I moved with my mother and sister to Coventry, West Midlands where I completed my schooling and studied for 2 ‘A’ Levels at the local College of Further Education.
I moved to London around 1977 and worked for a few years as a Clerical Officer with the Metropolitan Police. I left in 1980 to have my first child.
In 1981 I embarked on a full time BA degree course in Social Science; specialist subject in Psychology and Criminology, gaining a 2:2.
I am currently employed as a Centre Manager for a local charity based in Stratford East London, just 10 minutes walk from the former Olympic Park – renamed – Queen Elizabeth Park. I had a fantastic summer working as a Games Maker volunteer and attending many of the sporting events at the Stadium (including Super Saturday) and other venues.
It has been my desire to write a novel since the age of fourteen years old. Despite making a couple of attempts at writing in my 20’s and 30’ but the first two manuscripts remain uncompleted largely due to juggling the rigours of full time education and employment with the role as a single mother of two sons (now aged 33 and 24) and a daughter (aged 15).
I was a member of the Newham Writers Workshop and my work was included in their anthology in 2004. Yet, despite previous attempts at writing, I was not been able to fulfil my lifelong desire to write a complete novel until in 1999, a year after the birth of my daughter, when the plot of ‘Can a Dead Woman Weep’ (CADWW) from beginning to the end was formulated in my head. I am quite pleased that I have now managed to transfer all the information from my head into two novels, the first published in August 2013.
At least 85% of CADWW was completed by 2004 and I remember proudly writing to the Woman’s Press, submitting sample chapters from my 230,000 words manuscript and expecting a positive response from them believing that the publishers of ‘The Colour Purple’ were bound to publish my work.
Admittedly, I am not too good at dealing with rejection, so consequently I have not made a huge amount of submissions to publishers or literary agents; maybe 3-4 publishers and a few agents. I loathed the return of the manuscript when it was clear that the sample chapters were just merely removed from one envelope and placed unread, back into the s.a.e.
In hindsight and after many substantial revisions of my work I can now appreciate the reasons for the previous rejections. However, a few years ago, I did receive a personal response from Caroline Stofer, Fiction Submissions Editor for Headline publishing group which reads ‘I read the sample chapters of your own novel Can a Dead Woman Weep with great interest and enjoyment. I think that you have a strong authorial voice and an ability to create believable and sympathetic characters. The current market for women’s fiction, however, is incredibly competitive and I did not feel that your story was strong enough to stand out in such a tough environment, particularly in view of its length, which is about 100,000 words longer than the books we publish’
Due to many personal and professional reasons, I did not complete CADDW until April 2010, and apart from submitting it to MacMillans New Writers I have not attempted to submit it to a mainstream publisher.
In 2012 I was so inspired by the Olympics and Paralympics and the success of the Games Makers that I felt it was about time that I either ‘give birth’ to this novel or move onto another, so I decided to submit Book One of my novel for a manuscript assessment by the Writers Workshop.
The overall critique was so positive that after some revisions, YPS was engaged as the publishers of choice.
Olivene Marie Howell
August 2013
