By: Staff Writer
August 26, 2021
A Barbadian author hears her characters speaking to her then she goes and writes down what they told her and transforms these conversations into short stories and novels.
Cherie Jones, author of the new book, “How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House,” told Caribbean Magazine Plus how the creative process with her starts when she begins to create characters for her short stories and novels.
Cherie has been writing since a little girl growing up in Barbados, “From since I was about five or six I have been writing short stories.”
Ms Jones added about the new book: “So the book actually started as a short story, but basically I kind of just heard the voice of one of the characters in my head. At that time I was living in London and one evening on my way home I heard from this character and it went from there.”
“I actually see something in my head, I actually see something being played out or its most likely a character telling me a story and I pick it up from there.”
Cherie was living between London and Barbados most of her life, but now stays in Barbados where she will be participating in a live reading of her book at the Black Rock Books Bookstore this coming Saturday.
Further explaining her experience in London, Ms Jones added: “I actually was living in London in 2008 when this story actually started as a short story. So I have been in London and back and forth for a number of years, kind of between there and Barbados. So that was one of the one of the points in time in which I was actually living and working in London.”
The difference between changing How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House from a short story to a full-fledged novel was in the “distillation” of thoughts into a broader frame of work, Ms Jones said as writing novels gives her more range to explore and build the story as opposed to getting right to the point of action in a short story. “It takes a lot more in terms of the development of the thoughts and ideas, or rather there’s more room to do that than there is with a short story.”
“How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House” can be bought at Black Rock Books in Barbados where she is having a public reading this Saturday as well as on Amazon and in selected bookstores in Trinidad.
“Basically, anyone who wants the book can look for it online and get their hands on a copy,” Ms Jones added.
