A big welcome to Trevor Belshaw, a long-time friend and contributor to The Pages, and a published writer who is going places.
Trevor, I have had the privilege of reading a lot of your writing, and it covers a wide aspect. I’m a big fan of your children’s stories, and have often marvelled at the way you write with such an authentic child’s voice, particularly when I read Peggy Larkin’s War and the Magic Molly stories. You write short stories, too, and poems, many of which have found their way into The Pages.
Lately Crooked Cat Publishing has published Tracy’s Hotmail, a hilarious read, where again you write with such a convincing voice, anyone would think Trevor was a pseudonym for the real Tracy.
Could you tell us a little more about what inspired you, and the journey from that first idea to publication?
Over to you, Trevor.
Hi Marit. Thanks for the invitation and the lovely introduction.
Tracy’s Hot Mail started life as a nervous post to a writer's website, Writelink, in 2009. I was new to the craft back then and I was looking for feedback and guidance from the more seasoned authors on the website. The response to that first Tracy email was so good that I rushed out two more episodes which got similar feedback.
Flushed with this success I purchased a domain to spread the word about Tracy and in April 2009 www.tracyshotmail.com website was born.
Over the next few months I posted new emails to the domain for Tracy's ever growing fan base. The site was eventually password protected so that long term supporters could read and comment on her latest adventures. After a year or so I found a natural break in the narrative and began work on the sequel, Tracy's Celebrity Hot Mail, which is a still a work in progress. I hope to finish it sometime this year.
In 2010 Tracy was given her own Facebook page to keep her fans updated on her progress and it appeared that it was only a matter of time before she hit the bookshelves. https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tracys-Hot-Mail/138823129474884
Tracy almost ‘made it' on three separate occasions between 2010 and 2011 but something always managed to get in the way and the book remained unpublished. After the third aborted publication attempt I decided to give up on the project but some of Tracy's fans and a few of my close writer friends kept nagging away at me to keep trying and in the end we all got the result we wanted when Crooked Cat Publishing offered to publish Tracy as an ebook.
In late 2011 Crooked Cat gave Tracy a facelift with a brand new cover, they set up a Tracy page on their own website. http://bit.ly/w1SEWS and on January 20th Tracy was finally published.
But who is Tracy?
Tracy is every girl on the bus, every girl who has a boss, every girl who works in an office. She's the girl on the end of every lousy chat-up line. She’s the girl that older men fancy, the girl that has opinions on everything and everyone; even if those opinions are based solely on second or third hand information.
As I mentioned earlier I found Tracy on a bus one morning when my car was in for repair after a minor bump. I didn’t have a courtesy car so had to use public transport to get to work. On the Monday morning I sat behind two late-teen/early twenty-something girls who didn't waste time taking a breath for the entire bus ride.
They gossiped about bosses, boyfriends, rivals and workmates. They chatted about nightlife, drunkenness, mishaps and family. By the time they got off the bus I felt I knew their colleagues and close relatives intimately. Coming home I had the same experience, via two different girls.
The following day I was lucky enough to get the seat behind the same girls I had listened to the day before. This time the conversation was more of a hissed whisper, but it was still loud enough for me to be able to hear. Before we’d gone 200 yards I heard the first gasp of, ‘she didn’t?’ quickly followed by, ‘how could she? and in public too.’
I pricked up my ears and set my brain to auto record.
By midweek Tracy was born. I had taken the almost childlike innocence of one girl, the pure, vitriolic spite of another and the all-knowing worldliness of a third. I added the fashion tastes of one particular girl and the proneness to blonde moments from… well, a blonde actually. Seven girls contributed to the finished article in some way or other. I would like to thank them all personally as they gave me the tools to build the ultimate gossip machine that is Tracy.
The people they spoke about and the situations they discussed didn’t make it into Tracy's world. The majority of it was far too mundane. I did amalgamate two of the most talked about managers to make Mr Blunt. It seems all offices have a character like him. Olivia came from my own head but Tracy's continual description of her as, 'the tart,' came straight from the back of the bus. It was a term used more regularly than any other.
Tracy’s Hot Mail can be bought for the kindle platform http://amzn.to/z7ctWe and for all other e-readers via the Smashwords website. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/123781
Thank you, Trevor, for showing us how people-watching – and listening – can be put to excellent use as a research tool. It sounds as though writing Tracy’s Hotmail was fun from beginning to end, and you have certainly provided the reader with a lot of laughs. Tracy has taken on a true identity, and I’m looking forward to visiting Tracy’s world again.
Tracy’s Hotmail is an excellent read, and if you haven’t got a Kindle, you can download Kindle for PC, to read e-books on your computer/laptop.
