Non-Fiction
I became a writer in a fairly unconventional way. It is something I never imagined I would be doing. To my friends and family, I was always, ‘Alice, the tennis player’.
At the age of 18 I had been awarded a tennis scholarship to America and was about to sign a contract when I experienced pain in my right hand. Three months later I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). RA is a chronic autoimmune illness that affects the joints and there is no cure. I have never picked up a tennis racket since.
The diagnosis felt like a death sentence. I went from a happy, carefree teenager with an exciting future in America to someone sad, stripped of confidence, in relentless pain and terrified of what lay ahead.
Six years after the diagnosis, and having finally accepted that my life had taken a different turn from tennis, I met someone who encouraged me to write my story. Firstly, he said it would be good for me to have a creative project, but just as importantly, it might help anyone else who felt alone and vulnerable, not just those with RA. We all have dreams but what I have learnt is that life is not always mapped out according to them.
After eighteen months of work, I sent the final draft of A Will To Win to an agent, Clare Alexander, at Aitken Alexander Associates Limited, and this was the beginning of my writing career and a new exciting future.
After A Will To Win was published I wrote M'Coben, Place of Ghosts which was published in 2003. My grandmother was a central figure in my life and her story spans an Edwardian childhood and a life in southern Rhodesia where she and her husband turned a vast wilderness of untamed veldt into their home. It is more than a tribute to my grandmother. I believe it captures the spirit of an extraordinary generation, but also sadly shows a Zimbabwe on the verge of self-destruction and terrible change.
I have really enjoyed writing non-fiction and the experience
gave me a great platform to go into fiction. Though I now write
novels, Another Alice and
M’Coben, Place of Ghosts will always be
special books to me.
