KA Hitchins

Author

What happens when you discover a novel with the same opening premise as the one you’ve written?

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When a colleague of my husband passed him a copy of a London Evening Standard’s book review for Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney this week, I experienced a physical wrench to my gut. Here was a book which sounded frighteningly like The Key of All Unknown. I’m reproducing the review and my book blurb for comparison

Evening Standard Book Review, 3 April 2017

Thirty-five-year-old Amber wakes up in hospital after an accident. But is she actually awake? She can’t move, speak, open her eyes or remember what happened. Obviously.  Hubbie, sis, Mum and Dad all crowd round for chatty bedside visits, believing her to be in a coma, while she can only listen, with that slightly sinking feeling. Gradually the memories begin to drip-feed back. Who’s to say which ones are right? Uh-oh.

 

 

Blurb for The Key of All Unknown

Brilliant scientific researcher Tilda Moss wakes up in hospital unable to speak or move and with no recollection of what happened to her. Determined to find answers and prove she is not in a persistent vegetative state, she travels back through her fractured memories looking for clues. Could someone really have tried to kill her? An indulged younger brother, an obsessive flatmate, jealous colleagues and a missing lover. Everyone has a motive. On the edge of death, and questioning the value of her life, Tilda’s only hope is to unlock the key of all unknown.

 

You might have thought my first reaction would be anger, or a suspicion that my brilliant idea had been plagiarised. But that was not my initial thought. Even though The Key of All Unknown was published in October 2016, and Sometimes I Lie was released in March 2017, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. What if people thought I had plagiarised Alice Feeney? After all, her books seems to be getting all the attention.

I’ve always been one of those people who feel guilty, even when they’ve done nothing wrong. Psychologists might call it an overactive superego, that slice of the mind that acts as a self-critical conscience and deals with ethical conduct and morality. It develops through childhood as we receive rewards and punishments for our behaviour.

I have very clear memories of sitting cross legged in the school assembly hall while the head teacher berated the pupils on a serious misdemeanour, asking for the culprits to come forward and confess to their crime. An enormous wave of guilt washed over me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why was I blushing at the dressing down the Head was giving the school community? And what if a teacher observed my discomfort and wrongly assumed I was to blame?

 

 

Primitive emotions well up unbidden. They are as impossible to hold back as the tide. You feel what you feel. The only thing you can do is ensure they don’t control your behaviour. So I rationalised the ghastly sinking feeling at reading the reviews for Sometimes I Lie as just my childhood fear that people will find out I’m not as clever or as good as I should be.

My husband assured me that any examination of the facts would demonstrate I hadn’t plagiarised Alice Feeney’s idea, and she hadn’t copied mine. I began the book in the autumn of 2015 and signed a contract with Instant Apostle in January 2016 after they read the first few chapters and the synopsis. According to her Facebook feed Alice Feeney finished her novel in April 2016 just as I was finishing my first draft. It’s simply a case of two people having a similar idea at the same time. It proves the words of Solomon

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version of the Bible)

Even if either of us had caught wind of the other’s plot, you can’t copyright an idea. Give two writers the same concept – or a dozen writers for that matter – and they will all write completely different novels.  That’s because the secret ingredient of any book is the author’s voice, which is as unique as a fingerprint.

I immediately bought the kindle version of ‘Sometimes I Lie’. There are some superficial similarities. After all, when imagining a woman in a coma it’s inevitable that descriptions of the sounds, smells and routines of a hospital will be included.  But plot and tone are radically different.  It’s a good read. And so, I hope, is mine.

I don’t want to be in competition with other writers. There are enough readers for everyone. Only I could have written The Key of All Unknown and only Alice Feeney could have written Sometimes I Lie.  It’s only human for me to want my book to do as well as hers. It’s difficult not to see life in terms of an upward climb, keeping one’s eyes on the peak ahead, digging one’s feet into the mountainside in the hope you will reach the summit. But maybe there isn’t a top.

The writing process is all about making oneself vulnerable.  You have to move downwards and inwards first, facing up to the darkness in your own soul, the feeling of being an outsider, a loser, an empty vessel, before you can create sometime of value. Writers proffer what they have – tentatively, fearfully, expectantly. They long for feedback and affirmation. They receive criticism and rejection. They always want to write something better, something that will reach into the soul of another human being with a message that can transcend time, geography and even the language they write it in, communicating with strangers through nothing but the medium of a piece of paper or a kindle screen.

A writer’s value isn’t dependent upon their success. The Key of All Unknown has value, irrespective of sales or Amazon rankings, because I created it. It’s an expression of my humanity and my own mortality.

I’ve never viewed my writing career (such that it is) in terms of a race, with many competitors but only one winner. I write reviews of other people’s books and recommend them to friends. I like to celebrate and promote the success of my fellow Instant Apostle authors and see them receive great reviews and increased sales.

Perhaps, after all, I’m OK with the idea that there’s another book about a woman in a coma . . . But sometimes I lie!

Blogs are like Buses

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Blogs are like buses. Nothing for ages then two come along in quick succession. But it seems important to acknowledge that it’s a year today since the publication of my debut novel. That’s my excuse.

I was expecting to spend 24 March 2016 on social media posting and tweeting about The Girl at the End of the Road, which was being officially released by bookshops and online retailers that day. I should have been enjoying the experience of achieving a lifelong dream, relishing the congratulations from friends and family. I certainly didn’t expect to be rushed into hospital.

 

The previous night I’d gone to bed with some unpleasant blood blisters in my mouth. I must be really run down, I thought, with the pressure of editing my first book, organising a mini book tour for the following months, and beginning my next novel. When I awoke on launch day, I noticed a rash of red spots on my throat and arms which didn’t blanch when pressed. I was queuing at the receptionist’s desk at my local surgery at nine o’clock sharp and was shown straight in.

As soon as the doctor saw me, he telephoned the hospital and told them to be ready to receive me. Once in Accident and Emergency, I was fast-tracked through the system. When asked to change into a hospital gown, I was shocked to see that my legs were covered in a livid non-blanching rash and purple bruises. I must be very ill indeed!

I’ve often speculated what it would be like if I was suddenly faced with a potentially life threatening condition. I’d seen my own father die from cancer a few years previously, and had sat by his side as he slowly slipped away. I’d wondered if he’d been able to hear me, and whether he was afraid or peaceful as he faced the end.

With doctors coming and going from my little cubicle, I felt surprisingly calm. When a registrar from the Haematology Department sat next to my bed about three hours later, I knew from his face that he had discovered what was wrong. He explained that normal platelet readings were between 150 – 400 per microliter of blood. A life threatening reading was anything below 20. My platelet levels were 3. My immune system was destroying my platelets and my blood could no longer clot.

 

 

I was given clotting medication and taken to the Critical Dependency Unit to be observed overnight in case I was bleeding internally or into my brain.  I was told I probably wouldn’t sleep because of the drugs I’d been given. I lay in the dark listening to the sounds of the hospital, and the cries of the elderly lady opposite who kept asking where she was and if anyone was there.

The irony of my situation didn’t escape me. I was half way through the first draft of my second  novel, a book about a woman in a critical condition in hospital. As she lies in bed, she desperately tries to remember what happened to her and questions the beliefs she’s built her life upon. Now I was lying in a hospital bed thinking about the meaning and purpose of my own life.

By the next morning the ulcers in my mouth had stopped bleeding. My blood pressure was stable and I was sent home with high dosage steroids to switch off my faulty immune system. During the days that followed I spent most of my time in bed. But sleep eluded me. Although physically exhausted, my mind was wide-awake. I decided to continue writing my manuscript, tapping away on my laptop during the night while everyone else was asleep. Having just experienced my own life-threatening moment and spell in hospital, ideas poured out of me. Within a week I’d completed 30,000 words and finished the first draft of The Key of All Unknown.

We have to use our imaginations to understand the lives of others. While writing this book, I was imaginatively lying in my heroine’s sick bed, whilst lying in my own. Without that personal experience of hospitalisation and vulnerability, I believe the book would be a poorer version of itself. Things happen for a reason.

I’m delighted to say that I’ve made an amazing recovering. There’s a one in three chance that the idiopathic thrombocytopenia could return, and like all of us I walk the fragile path between life and death. Nothing externally has changed, but I’ve become more aware of my own mortality. I’ve also learned that it’s not the strength of one’s faith that counts, but the strength of the One in whom you put your faith that’s important.

 

 

 

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