Hey fellow inmates!
What we’ll look at today is the journey of my debut novel. What inspired it, the joys and trials faced from its conception to publication.
I want to tell you in detail about my first baby, The curse of red bottom heels. As l have already mentioned, the book was co-authored by myself and a former classmate, Ndaba Mpofu. It was published during our last year at The National University of Science and Technology that was October 2018.
Authors of The curse of red bottom heels, Fikile Nomadlozi Nyathi and Ndabezinhle Mpofu
Reason for writing
Having discovered that Ndaba and I love writing we figured it would be cool if we did write something together. This was in 2015. We however, started the writing process in 2017.
Choice of themes/topics
When we sat down to discuss what we were going to write about, we settled on blesser relationships. This was because at that time it was a very topical issue. The idea was to write about it in a fictional way. That was not just it, we also decided to reveal the consequences that then come with such relationships; not only on the ‘couple’ hehehe but to people around them as well. The most major themes in the book are; blesser relationships of course, student-lecturer relationships, abortion, friendships and infidelity.
The purpose of The curse of Red Bottom Heels
The whole idea is to spark up conversations and comment on overarching social problems. The book acts as a mirror of the society, to say that these ills are happening in our societies and lets normalize talking about them publicly. This ‘problem novel’ is characterized with questions at the end of each chapter to help spark these conversations.
What inspired the structure of the book?
Characters in the book communicate through letters, which makes it an epistolary fiction. Ndaba and I decided that the characters were going to be two girls starting off at different universities, hence them communicating through letters was an interesting idea to us. This also made the writing process easy.
Each chapter has two letters by the characters, a narration and a set of questions. The narrations give more information that the letters do not give, hence; building on to the picture. The questions at the end of each chapter as already mentioned, are meant for discussion about the particular issue raised in the chapter.
Challenges faced
We did face some challenges and the most traumatic one was money, shuuuu hayi!!! The publishing process in short is comprised of the following steps, 1. writing, 2. editing, 3. design (book cover and typesetting), 4. proofreading and 5. printing. Thankfully, we had steps 1 to 4 covered. As publishing students ourselves were able to typeset ourselves, well credit goes to Ndaba really. Being part of the ZANA association, we got help with the editing part from fellow members. Now funds for printing guys, not forgeting that we were intending to have a book launch. But uJesu ukhona *dances the shi shi style.*
Another venue was of securing a venue and catering for the launch. I will never forgot those days, I’m still traumatized from the prices they told us. Anyway, with the help from the publishing department, we got the venue at NUST campus, whoop whoop! Our guests were also fed, AMEN!
How did we overcome differences in opinions?
Throughout the whole time we did have different suggestions on a lot of things but I am glad were able to overcome them without any drama. We were able to come up with something that made the both of us happy.
Book launch
This was both a nerve wrecking and exciting day. Support from NUST, family and friends was overwhelming. Sad story, the outfit I wore that day was not the one I had planned. On the day, the dress I was meant to wear bailed out on me. I’m still not over it.
NUST V.C Dr M Dlodlo was the guest of honor. He officially launched the book.
I also don’t remember eating that day…
More pictures from the book launch:
Fikile Nomadlozi 
This was an amazing achievement. Great credit to you for the effort and resourcefulness; before getting to the drive you had. I expect to hear of more works from you 🙌🏻
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I loved the interpretation of the musical it was brilliant just unfortunate it was cut short. It was an amazing book that you wrote. I’ll be waiting to read more!
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Thank you so much Clem
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