Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

[tuffstuff]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

WELCOME! wow- i check out u website- nice very nice. altho i neva hear bout u works before and not really interested in historical stuff, i like the lovers leap theme, so mite look into that more!

U been nurturing that story for donkey years mr smith!! how dem receive it in Jamaica? BTW, the book has patois in it or is written in queen elizabeth style?

how hard was it for you to break into di book thing? u did have contacts and such to get in? u did the workgroup thing with dem or u just use editor. come man tell we everything!!!!

[msportmore]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

A big warm Jamaican welcome to you Horane.

Thanks for joining us.

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Reggae Silver is my first attempt at contemporary fiction - the four others are all historical fiction. I do have three other complete manuscripts on contemporary fiction and two historical yet to be published.
Reggae Silver is a touching story. I made a pledge at the beginning of my writing career to take Jamaican stories to the world.
Reggae music is the first subject I thought I would undertake to write on, the fact being it's Jamaica's largest invisible export.
Here we have a product which the world has accepted, and here we have a situation where many foreign writers have been exploiting to their credit.
Jamaica has writers; but the difficulties and challenges in publishing make it strenous for them to get published, if they ever will any at all.
The few of us who have been able to get published must tell our stories for our children and for the world.
I sang with a reggae band in my teen years and saw the challenges. Coupled with my experience in living abroad, I decided to construct a story to incluide all the elements associated with the music. I bring in all the different facets, the sights, the sounds, the faces, the characters, and of course the biggest challenge of all, to make Reggae Silver, a persistent and ambitious young man, though behind bars for a crime he did not commit, walk out of that jail and sings his heart out to the world and fulfill his mother's wish to become the biggest superstar out of Jamaica. But first, the challenges - a lesson for us all and some of us who're a little impatient.

[dahjah]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

when did you feel you wanted to be writer?

What difficulties were faced in finding publishing?

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Thanks Portmorte. The warm welcome from all of you means so much.

[Pepper]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

How much of Horane is in Reggie?

Did you do extensive research on the music industry before you wrote this novel?

Thanks for your responses Mr. Smith. I have to leave, but I will check in later.

[msportmore]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

what source do u use for the history in your novels? history books? the net? people? a likkle a dis, a likkle a dat?

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Shortly after that experience at lover's Leap, I knew I had to be a writer. In my early teens, I was imitating Dennis Hall reading news on JBC-TV. I ended up in journalism, and spent 20 years in it.
Believe it or not, it took 20 years for me to get published. My first manuscript was written in 1979, and is still unpublished. The difficulty is finding a publisher who's interested in what you are writing about. It's even more challenging when you write about the Caribbean or Jamaica. Stephen King can write about anything and get it published. When you don't have a name it's different.
My problem was this. Publishers were telling mt to get an agent, as they don't accept unsolicited manuscripts. Agents on the other hand were telling me that they aren't taking on new writers. Catch 22! I never gave up. I kept hammering and hammering until I found a publisher.

[mountaingal]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

how easy or hard was it for you to write patwa in your books?

[Shefreen Clarke]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Welcome to the board Horane. Your books look interesting.

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Sources:
Every likkle ting. De internet, library, textbooks. I use fact with fiction so as soon as I have a background of the history, it's cool runnings.
In the case of Lover's Leap, I got a lot of stories from my grandfather. Port Royal is the same thing. I heard so many tales of piracy that it was quite easy.
But then, if yiou've read Port Royal, you will notice that's not all about piracy. What a lot of people don't know is that PR was the major slave trading port in the western Caribbean. As a Jamaican writer, I thought it was my duty to bring out that fact. So here we have a story involving pirates and slave traders.

[msportmore]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

have u thought about writing a book with a compilation of short stories? how well do u think such a project would be receieved?

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Patwa.
Reggae Silver is the first of my books to include patwa. My first draft had limited places where it's spoken. My editor insisted that I use it for, which I didn't really object to, as I had planned to begin use it.
What I did though, is to tone down a little bit so my international audience can at least understand some of it.
Here's what I did. Where Jamaicans are talking it's all patwa, but whenever a Jamaican is talking to a non-Jamaican it's standard English.

[Horane]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

Short stories.
I must admit I've never tried that, except a book of bible stories I want to compile. In all honesty, I really don't like short stories although my high school teacher did write on my testimonial "he excels at shoert story writing."

[mountaingal]

Re: Feature Guest - Horane Smith Feb. 13, 2004

do you talk a lot with other Jamaican writers? who, Jamaican or otherwise, are your favourite writers, fiction or non-fiction?