From Elation to Desperation

From Mothers Day Facebook post 10 May 2020

Those that have been following The Telling Time's progress from the start will know that my artist and beautiful friend, Catherine Farquhar has painted the most gorgeous canvas for my book cover, and that a PERSIMMON tree features prominently. I chose this tree because of its significance within the story — or so I thought until last week . . .

Imagine my sinking feeling when I realised I had somehow morphed Gabrijela's POMEGRANATE tree into a PERSIMMON — Pomegranate's grow well on Korčula, Persimmons less so.

By way of explanation, the mistake came about due to the delay between writing the Gabrijela chapters, set on Korčula, and the chapters following her arrival in New Zealand. Additionally, when out walking at the time of writing the New Zealand chapters, I came across a striking Persimmon tree in a neighbour's backyard. My mind somehow did a cartwheel, tricking me into thinking it was Gabrijela's Korčula tree. Over the months I watched my neighbour's tree, noting the seasonal changes — detail that I carried through to the novel. But realising 'how' the mistake had come about didn't provide a solution. The point was I now had a case of MISTAKEN IDENTITY which needed fixing!

And so this is how last week's scramble played out. First I made a frantic check on the internet for facts about both trees. Then I asked myself how did you manage to confuse them in the first place? Luckily, it was this question that formed part of the solution — my own confusion could have been Gabrijela's too ....

From there I went back to the paragraphs where I'd made mention of both trees and re-crafted my words so that everything made perfect sense again!

PLEASE SIDE WITH ME, Tell me you can see how I might have made this mistake, after all:

·      Both trees begin with P

·      Both have fruit with the same orb/globe shape

·      Both fruits ripen to beautiful rich colours in the orange/red spectrum 

·      Both trees ripen in autumn

·      And both seem rather exotic (or at least to me)

 And so, for those who have read RIGHT TO THE END — (maybe with a mothers day tea/coffee/glass of wine in hand) my hope is that when you finally hold this novel in your hands, and when you come across the references to these trees, you'll remember this post with a knowing smile at your secret insight. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!