Writer still on a high after win

Though Brian Franklin loved and was engaged reading and writing from early childhood, he is still trying to digest the fact that he was adjudged the top entrant in the 28th Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Competition for his fiction entry Steal The Fish From The Devil’s Cou Cou.

Days after being rewarded for his literary ability and his promise as a budding author by a team of esteemed judges, and walking away with the coveted $10 000 winner’s prize, he is yet to come to terms with his success in the competition.

“When they said I won it, I was in disbelief. Even up to yesterday, I was expecting a call from somebody saying, ‘No, Brian, they made a mistake’. It is an incredible feeling,” Franklin said, as he flashed back to his early primary school days at St Cyprian’s Boys’ School.

Back then, his mother – a primary school teacher – and his father – a senior civil servant who also loved writing – regaled him with stories of their everyday life experiences.

“When I was a little boy, my mum loved to tell me stories about when she was a little girl. She and my dad would read to me. My dad would talk to me about cutting canes with his dad. He would embellish some things, like coming home at night from university and how it would be really dark around Six Roads, St Philip, where he came from, and it really had all the elements of storytelling in there.”

As young as he was, his interest in storytelling was already fermenting, being fostered by his parents’ stories and enhanced further through the books they often bought him.

Loved storytelling

“I just loved reading. I loved the world that you could enter and exist in. Leading from that would be to try to create my own world, even if it was just to retell a story of what happened to me during the day. I kind of loved storytelling from a very early age,” Franklin said.

Not one for short stories, because he reasoned “a short story is over too fast”, from early he opted for books, choosing to buy them instead of comics with the money his mother gave him to spend at the bookstore.

The 37-year-old author made his first significant attempt at writing stories around age ten, his first attempt being the 37-page

Adventures Of Benjamin And Jack, about “two brothers who were going on an adventure in North Africa on the trail of a dragon”.

Craft of story-telling

He remembered his excited parents wanting to get it published, but he pushed back on the idea, telling them: “I am not ready for that. I want to get better at the craft of storytelling.”

The idea for the title of his winning manuscript Steal The Fish From The Devil’s Cou Cou was born out of a casual conversation with someone “To illustrate a point she was making, she said, ‘If you steal the fish from the devil’s cuckoo, he’s going to come for it,’ and I loved it.

“As I was writing and I was thinking of that line, it kind of converged with the event in the story, because at that point I had no idea what to call the book.”

Franklin added: “The main character of the story is Yuisa, part of a minority in the world, and they’re going through genocide. They’re being occupied by a foreign force and they’re being, quite frankly, killed off, because they’re blamed for a previous war and they are being villainised and being exterminated. So the meaning of the phrase, as applied to the title, comes from these forces stealing their land; stealing their people’s lives.”

Franklin shared that the winning manuscript, which is part of the 289-page book that he hopes to publish, was the culmination of about ten years of hard work.

He confessed his engrossment in writing a book is “lonely”.

“It is just you and the words, you need to be focused and I have to get away from people,” he said, adding: “To write a novel, you have to be consistent. I always tell people that when you’re writing, it’s good to write in a safe place. If you have a particular room in your house or on the patio or someplace to go to, you can always try to be there because that’s where the muse is going to find you whenever they turn up with inspiration.”

Quiet space

Working by day as a manager in the technology department of CIBC Caribbean Bank, Franklin can be found in the wee hours of the morning writing in his quiet space at home while his wife Alyssa sleeps.

Even when they travelled overseas on holiday last year, with his wife’s consent and encouragement, he found that time alone to write every night after she went to bed.

Alyssa was “very proud” sitting in the audience at the Frank Collymore Hall while sharing the big moment with her husband of four years, as he stood on stage being thunderously applauded while accepting his prizes.

She had supported him, giving him reassurance in moments of doubt.

“I didn’t have any expectations or any hope at all for this award, but Saturday night she was like: ‘I’m married to a celebrity’,” Franklin mused, expressing gratitude for her encouragement throughout the journey.

When he was having second thoughts about submitting the manuscript for the competition, it was from Alyssa that he got the encouraging words: “Brian, don’t worry about it, man, you can do it. I’m sure you can do well. I’m sure it’s not crap, as you are calling it.”

What’s next for the award-winning writer?

“Well, there are two things. I’d really want to work with an editor on this one and try to move it towards publishing. That’s what I’d like to try to do with this story.

“I am also working on another story that I started before, in 2022, but I put it on pause because Yuisa and her story would not let me go. I don’t have a title for it yet, but I started it and had a young man as the main character. My writing group read the first couple of chapters and loved it. My wife also liked it. She was like: ‘Brian, let us finish this thing.”

He plans to “return to that story this year and try to finish it at the end of the year”.

When they said I won it, I was in disbelief. Even up to yesterday, I was expecting a call from somebody saying, ‘No, Brian, they made a mistake’. It is an incredible feeling . . . (GC)

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