I have never been a full-time creative imaginist who spends hours banging out books. I have had to hold down jobs that have allowed me to forge my path, employing a book cover designer, an editor/proofreader, web designers, animators (for the book trailers for Entwined/United), creative video producers/directors (both of which I am too) and post-production people. It would fair to say that in my toiling, I’ve spent enough money to put a deposit on a house, and pay off a third of the mortgage (if I take into account the cost of housing when I began Oho Ake Books in 2008) and continue to work my day job knowing that my passion is thriving due to my diligence to work as hard as I do.
This wasn’t the case after writing the first draft of Sanctum though. With it done, I entered into a time of complete escapism due to addictions that would balm over the trauma I had gathered throughout my short embodied life. I came back to Aotearoa/New Zealand in late 2002 as a willing participant in a road trip to get clean of my addictions with my closest friend from Vancouver after living abroad for seven years. He would return to Vancouver after six months, I would begin to consider which way to run as all that I had suppressed made itself known to me.
I wrote little over the next six years, choosing to immerse myself in work, embattled romances, lovers and occasionally chipping away at the armour I had shielded my fragile and frightened heart in. By 2008, I had saved up enough money to travel again, for up six months in South/Central America, with the idea of returning to Vancouver for one more summer. Oh my, someone else had other plans for me and I would listen intently…