gaylynn travis
How often have we heard that everyone has a book in them?
How often does anyone do anything about it? Gaylynn Travis has had the nous to do so.
Hers hasn't been a quick road to publication. Her work's a children's story she began writing when her own family were growing up but shelved three chapters short of typing those words so satisfying to all authors ... "The End".
Blame J.K. Rowling for The Adventures of Tecan The Mystical Rope being consigned to the bottom drawer. Gaylynn was bowling along writing Tecan's tale when Harry Potter made his debut, wiping other youthful heroes off the planet.
Doubtful Tecan could take on the best-selling boy wizard, she abandoned her own manuscript but when she married Geoff Travis he urged her to finish the yarn he was confident would capture the imaginations of kids in the 8 to 14- year-old bracket.
He undertook to get Tecan into print. That was five years ago. The manuscript did the rounds of established publishing houses but invariably back came the stock-standard reply - they enjoyed it but preferred to deal with published authors, a Catch 22 situation familiar to many would-be writers.
Geoff turned to the internet searching for a self-publishing company. The Travis' settled on one with links to the Penguin stable that allowed them to sell to other publishers while retaining copyright.
The Adventures of Tecan's now out in hard and paper back and for Gaylynn and Geoff the hard part's hit home ... it's up to them to ensure it sells.
Having had a sneak preview we can't see why it won't. Don't expect expletives and sexual undertones, Tecan's a far gentler tale than the controversial work that won this year's New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.
Gaylynn makes no apology for it. "What I wanted was to produce a book that played with children's imaginations, let them get inside a character who takes them on adventures, opening new and exciting worlds."
From catching a cloud with a magic rope the mermaid he saves gives him, to being caught by baddies in a cave chocker with stolen goods, exploring a shipwreck and surviving being "man overboard", exciting worlds are at the core of Tecan's tale.
Where do they come from? Could there be a touch of the Aboriginals' dreamtime buried in Gaylynn's inner being? It's when she's drifting off to sleep that her plots surface. "When I'm in bed my mind becomes Tecan's place, I guess it's the mystique of being an author."
Being a published author's a novelty Gaylynn's still getting to grips with, readily accepting she's a total unknown.
Gaylynn's story is not without its own twists and turns. For starters, she's an identical twin. Not itself rare but what makes her and doppelganger sister, Yvonne, different is they were adopted because their birth mother who already had eight children was unable to cope with two add-ons.
The infant girls' adoption takes another poignant path. The woman into whose care they were entrusted had a spine tumour preventing her having children of her own.
Edith Cadwallader hadn't been prepared for becoming an instant mum twice over. "She only found out a couple of days before we arrived that she was going to be presented with twins and had to knit frantically to have enough clothes to bring us home in."
The twins met their birth mother 12 years ago.
"We'd always known we were adopted and we can both honestly say we've had a fabulous life, that we wouldn't change mum for anything, she's been the most wonderful mother; there aren't many others who can say they are as close as we are as a family."
Like her daughters, Ethel Cadwallader lives in Rotorua and is Gaylynn's most ardent fan.
"She's already sold quite a few books for me, going around her old school friends in the Wairarapa and selling them at the Rotorua pensioner flats."
Gaylynn and Yvonne are everything identical twins are reputed to be. "We can't go too long without each other's company, we have such a bond, this thing where we simply pick up on each other's moods."
However, when it comes to the written word Gaylynn's the pigeon pair's only author.
Twins are a family trait. Yvonne has twin boys and Gaylynn's certain she lost a twin she was carrying along with the daughter she gave birth to.
A shared characteristic is that both have made bad marriage choices, Gaylynn remedied this when she married Geoff, he's her third husband and it was their sons who played matchmaker.
"They've been best mates for ever and kept trying to get us together but I definitely wasn't interested, I'd lost faith in my judgment of men but in the end their persistence paid off."
Will there be more Tecan adventures? "Yes, I've started the sequel, at least some of it will have a Rotorua setting."
That's good news for the two youngsters who reviewed Tecan part one for us. Tecan's cloud-catching activities captivated the younger, the older thought it "cool ... exciting" - high praise from kids of the internet and Xbox generation.
Copies of the book can be ordered by emailing gltravis@xtra.co.nz.