A Day in History - 2001/2002


By 2001 I had become fairly organized in my writing and tract publishing and I felt it was time to put some structure into the whole creativity business. I established Splendour Communication Network – an organization focused on publishing God’s love, mercy and grace through print. I had a group of friend join me as distribution partners and I committed myself to send monthly newsletters to show progress on what we were doing at the time as well as share a word of encouragement.


First Newsletter to distribution partners (2001)
Sometime that year, my dad brought home a Christian novel series – The appromattox saga by Gilbert Morris. I remember literally having loads of quarrels with my siblings – each one of us trying to read the books at the same time. It was ridiculous. We had different book marks to show where the other person stopped- simply ridiculous what impatience can make you do. 

Anyway, somehow between all that buhaha I finished reading the first book in the series – A covenant of love, and was so inspired by the message of the book. The characters were so real, the dialogue relevant the underlining message was crisp. When I finished the last page of that book I knew for sure what I wanted to do.


In June of 2000 I started writing my first inspirational novel – Debbie’s diary. I can’t remember for sure how long it took me to finish that manuscript but I do remember the feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment that settled on me when I typed the final words – The End.

Now the Manuscript was done, what next. I began to research book publishing and started sending out letters to agencies to represent my work and directly to major publishers within and outside Nigeria. But the more I sent out book proposals the more rejection letters I got back in return saying they weren’t interested in my work.


By Oct 2002, over one year after I had completed my manuscript I received my last rejection letter among the nah saying of well meaning friends determined to help me see that being a writer in Nigeria had very little financial rewards. 
To a large extent they were right, the reading culture was poor, the target market limited to educational books but what they didn’t realize was I wasn’t just doing this for money, I just needed to express myself.

Late 2002 I took a decision to take my fate into my hands and not depend on established publishers. Since I believed my book was worth reading I was going to self publish...To be continued. 

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