I am thrilled that Whisper My Secret continues to sell well and attract excellent reviews. Of course, not all of the book’s reviews are positive. It’s perfectly natural that some readers, for a variety of reasons, will not like it. As with positive reviews, I appreciate that the readers have taken the time to post a review after they read the book. However, once or twice a reader has cut me to the quick by claiming in their public comments that Whisper My Secret is fiction. To negate the suffering my mother went through when she was forced to give up her first three children by insinuating the story has been made up is an insult. The irony is that false claims were at the core of what happened to her. And now, her story is fiction?

Perhaps I could have categorised the book as ‘a novel based on a true story’ but that would have put it into a fiction category and I felt that would diminish the truth of what happened. I just couldn’t do that to my mother. It is not fiction and it is not a biography. It is, as it states on the cover, a memoir. By that I mean ‘a historical account written from personal knowledge (or memory)’. The terms memoir and biography are often used interchangeably but a memoir is not usually a full biography. In general, a memoir is about a specific aspect of a person’s life while a biography is a chronological documentation of an entire life.
Ian Jack, writing in The Guardian in February 2003 states:
‘The memoir's ambition is to be interesting in itself, as a novel might be, about intimate, personal experience.’ He goes on to explain that a memoir borrows ‘...the tricks of the novel, of fiction - because it wants to do more than record the past; it wants to re-create it.’
That is what I have attempted to do. The details of some events are imagined and some conversations are also imagined (although based on personal knowledge of the people concerned). This sort of ‘gap filling’ is also done by some writers of biographies.

The book was originally categorised as a non-fiction novel. Unfortunately, Amazon does not have such a category. I understand the disappointment of readers of Whisper My Secret who expect the book to be a biography and do not get what they expect. I feel their pain!  On one occasion recently a book I was looking forward to reading ‘betrayed me’. I was expecting a factual documentation about a historical figure I admired. The publishers had not made it clear that it was an imagined story of the person’s life and nowhere in the book’s information pages was that stated. I didn’t finish reading the book and I probably won’t pick up another by the same author. So, yes, I can relate to those who expected something different from Whisper My Secret.

Luckily, reviewers who perceive my mother’s story as fiction are rare. Almost all readers understand I have put the story together by gathering as many facts as possible through years of research and developing those facts into a story.

​Whisper My Secret is now available in audio!  Ebook and print editions are available on Amazon.

​JB

For a free murder mystery from Brigid George CLICK HERE!

When I was a skinny little kid living in the Australian bush I boldly announced to my mother: One day I’m going to write a bestselling book. To which she replied: One day I might give you something to write about. But I was not interested in a boring adult story. I treated her suggestion with the disdain children are so capable of and I  probably gave her a dismissive look. This might have hurt her because the story she referred to, the secret I only discovered after she died, is a heartbreaking one, the burden of which could have been lightened had she been able to talk about it.

And now Mum’s story (Whisper My Secret) is a bestselling book. To add even more excitement to the mix, this month Whisper My Secret hit the #1 spot in the Adoption category on the Australian Amazon charts. Since its digital publication the book has been warmly embraced by American readers and has been a #1 best seller in Adoption and other categories many times on Amazon.com but over on Amazon.com.au sales have lagged behind. Until now!

As well as America and Australia, Whisper My Secret has also been read in other countries such as United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, India and Germany. My mother, were she still alive, would be embarrassed by such attention being paid to her life story. However, on another level, I think she would be pleased.

The book has gone from strength to strength. As an avid listener of audio books, I was over the moon when the audio version was released in 2017. The audio CD and download is available at Tantor Media and through audible.com at Amazon.
Lots of supporters have contributed to the book’s success including friends, family, readers and fellow authors.  In the initial stages of publication, Whisper My Secret was helped along by Bookbub who kindly featured the book in a promotion free of charge, and book bloggers such as One-ElevenBooks also helped to spread the word. At the moment, Amazon is helping to spread the word by featuring Whisper My Secret in a special February promotion in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Thank you to all my readers and many thanks to those of you who take the time to leave comments in the review section of Amazon and on other sites.

Until next time.   JB :)

For a free murder mystery from Brigid George CLICK HERE!