Waimate author Janet Wells is celebrating her debut novel with a launch at the Waimate Hotel.
Her novel Taming the Wild Grape details one man’s dream to create a legacy in the newly settled land of Ohio in the 1800s.
Mrs Wells started writing the story about four years ago. It all began because of family research.
‘‘I’d written a factual booklet on my own family during Covid when everyone decided to suddenly hit their computers, and suddenly had all this untapped writing talent.
‘‘I’d dabbled with a bit of writing but never considered myself a writer.’’
Mrs Wells said while researching a ‘‘twiglet’’ branch of her mother’s side of the family tree, she discovered a tenuous link through her mother’s great-great-great grandfather to a man called Gustavus Storrs Pelton.
‘‘I was curious because the names sounded cool and I wanted to find out more.’’
She began digging more and more and discovered that Gustavus was the grandson of a man called Josiah Pelton.
‘‘I was led to an 1895 book written by Jeremiah Pelton that detailed a 600-year period of the Pelton family. It was like finding a treasure trove.’’
From this book Mrs Wells continued her research and uncovered the story of Josiah Pelton and his purchase of land in Ohio in the 1790s.
‘‘Josiah and his son travelled 600 miles from Connecticut to Ohio and began clearing the land as it was densely wooded and covered in brush and wild grapes.
‘‘At the end of the summer Josiah went back and left his son alone in the wilderness, in a 25sq mile town that had no population. That’s what got my attention.
‘‘I started thinking more and more about it, researching and thinking which way would they have gone or how would they do this. Before I knew it I had copious notes and a rough idea of what I wanted to put in the novel.’’
Mrs Wells said she knew it would have to be in novel form even though it was all based on fact but she had to fill a lot of the gaps herself.
Eventually it led to Janet and husband Graham visiting the town her ancestor had established when they visited the United States on holiday.
The town, Gustavus, was said to have been quite a bustling place with rows of shops and blacksmiths’ premises around in its heyday.
When Janet visited she said it was nothing like she had pictured during her research.
‘‘I thought there’d be more of a town centre left.
‘‘There was a big plaque acknowledging Josiah’s story, a church, town hall and a very elegant Georgian mansion.’’
Her husband said the town would have been no bigger than Chertsey.
‘‘I could understand why people in Ohio didn’t know it even existed because there wasn’t much.’’
Mrs Wells said the book was very much about real people who would have lived there at the time.
‘‘The names of characters really won’t mean a lot to anyone else. They might think ‘that’s a cool name or character’ but these were actual people.’’
She said ideas would come to her at all times.
‘‘I feel like sometimes the main character is in my head talking to me. I wake up, furiously scribble everything down, go back to bed, wake up and think ‘s…, did I write all this?’.’’
The title of the novel even came to her in her sleep.
Mr Wells said that there were nine varieties of wild grape in Ohio and funnily they were still having issues taming them today.
Having never published a novel, Mrs Wells found the process a bit daunting to begin with.
‘‘I didn’t really expect to publish as soon as I did, but I started checking companies and how to go about it. Xlibris NZ called me straight away and they were very interested.’’
They opted to go down the road of supported selfpublishing.
‘‘For about the first month I was physically sick most days thinking it was a scam.
‘‘They were ringing up all the time wanting money for this and money for that . . .if you pay this amount we will do this and that.’’
After a trip to the Waimate Library, Mrs Wells was reassured that Xlibris was actually quite a good publishing company and that it was very legitimate.
But that did not stop the sales pitches.
There were promises to take the book to the five major book fairs and guarantees to get her on the New York Times bestseller list.
‘‘Once I got over the egostroking, I thought, ‘let’s factcheck this’ and I asked them ‘had you actually read my book?’ to which they replied ‘Oh, we’ve read the synopsis’.
‘‘That made me realise I had the power to say no to all those add-ons.’’
Mr Wells said it was all about keeping your feet planted on the ground and being realistic.
‘‘When you finally start saying no, they cut the price in half.
‘‘When we finally signed with them they said ‘you’re a tough lot to deal with’, and that’s because we made sure we knew our stuff.’’
Mrs Wells hoped tosell 1500 copies to make back the money they had spent to publish the book and is already working on two further books to continue the story of Josiah Pelton and Gustavus.
There will be a book launch at the Waimate Hotel on September 10 from 2pm to 5pm.
