See that black and white face pasted above? That bearded, contemplative and deceptively handsome bloke that caught your eye the moment you landed upon this site? Yep, that’s me.
Though I have to warn you, I’ve been “Photoshopped”. In real life I’m actually in colour. All the other stuff is true though, but only so far as my face is concerned. Everything from the chin down is still bearded and contemplative but impressively normal, apart from my having adult ADHD.
Unfortunately I am an almost completely unknown entity in the world of literature. In fact I’ve had a rather bland but varied “career”, if you can call it that.
I’ve rolled ice-creams, performed in plays, served pies, sold books, aided a department store Santa, sold clothes, been fired, packed cosmetics into boxes, sold more books, operated theme park rides, tour guided, taken pizza orders and none of the above in that exact order…
Somehow amidst the confusion of my adult life I ended up a solitary projectionist for a large cinema chain in New Zealand and have been so for the past eight years.
A projectionist is sort of like The Phantom of the Opera of every Cinema Complex, only we don’t all have deformed faces or appreciate Andrew Lloyd Webber. We are the ones who have sacrificed our love for movies so that others may love them. I’ve seen so many movies now it takes a really good one to make me go, “Wow!” But I must confess, the type of movie that makes me say "Wow!" usually involves Spaceships or doughnuts, so best not to ask me for movie advice any time soon.
But anyway, after many years of being “the man in the box”, which I’m afraid isn’t as cool as Doctor Who makes it out to be, I was replaced by machines and made redundant, leaving me to become a full time dad and opening wide the opportunity for me to do what I've always wanted to do - become a writer.
Being the not too distant cousin of two popular Authors (Joy Cowley and Pauline Gedge) it appears I've inherited that particular gene that makes one's fingers cry out for a keyboard. I think I’ve wanted to be an actual writer, one that actually makes a living from writing, since I was about twelve. But some way or another the many voices saying that I couldn’t and the mountain of life situations that “distracted” me from my dream just got in the way. But I’ve had some small success as a blogger over the years and have even had the odd film review published on stuff.co.nz. Heck, I even got a short story published once! But I’ve never pushed so hard that a book popped out.
Well, all of that is hopefully about to change.
Apart from all that time alone with naught but my thoughts and prayer life to keep me company I somehow managed to become a Dad and that was when the creative chaos of my brain started to actually make sense… suddenly I had an audience to create consistently for – my kids.
And so The Vocabuverse was born (Note, not all of my dictionary is for children, parental guidance is recommended! Read here for details).
I have also written a bunch of Children's Stories which I hope to publish in the coming months.
So to lay it all out on the table, here’s my humble and naïve plan:
· Use the internet to create a fan base
· Focus on my dictionary and children’s stories until I get some traction
· Retire and finally write the novel that’s giving me indigestion.
Sounds easy enough.
God Bless
Kerin Gedge
If you have any questions or would like to submit a word for me to define email me at: thevocabuverese@gmail.com!
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This is such a cool idea, I love your dictionary.
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