Until the relatively recent proliferation of self-publishing and print-on-demand services, getting a book published was a mind-numbingly slow process. If I started working with someone in January it might well be June before we had managed to get a publisher on board, even with the help of an agent. The publisher would probably then schedule publication the following summer, or maybe even the autumn. It would then take a while for the book to seep into the shops and into the consciousness of the sort of readers who might be likely to recommend it to other people. Eighteen months, therefore, could easily elapse between the first meeting between me (the ghost) and the author and the book actually starting to rise above the horizon.
As a result it is always rather unnerving when the would-be author is of a great age. People of a great age often have the best stories, but they are nearly always in a hurry, fearful that their health will give out before they have had a chance to see their stories in print and enjoy the excitement of being published authors.
Helen-Alice Dear was only 15 when she left London to visit Bulgaria on a family holiday in 1937. Just weeks after her arrival, she found herself unable to leave and struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile and terrifying environment, first under the Nazis and then the Russians. Her marriage to a Bulgarian man bore her four children but they were often homeless, cold and hungry. Despite these hardships, Helen refused to give up hope and bravely managed to protect and raise four happy children. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she was finally able to fulfil her dream of returning to her homeland. She was a woman of indomitable spirit but as she approached 85 even her strength was beginning to fade.
With the help of one of her daughters I wrote a synopsis and found an agent and a publisher. Things were moving forward smoothly by publishing standards, but agonisingly slowly for Helen as her health continued to slip away.
The book – My Family is All I Have – was printed but still sitting in the publisher’s warehouse when Helen’s daughter rang to tell me that her mother was in hospital and the outlook was not good. There were hurried phone calls and a dash to the publisher’s office where I was able to snatch the first copies of the book from the editor’s desk before grabbing a cab to the hospital in time to line them up on the table stretching over Helen’s bed. Her own youthful face stared down at her from the front covers.
‘Do you think it looks all right?’ she asked, her smile suggesting she had already decided that it did.
The following day she passed away.