Coincidence Upsetting

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31969, 22 April 1969, Page 2

Coincidence Upsetting

The “long arm of coin- j ddence” can be an author’s worst enemy, according to a Christchurch writer of romantic novels, Mrs Nora Sanderson.

“You think up something highly unusual, to be on the safe side, and find later that the identical incident actually happened to someone you do not even know. Naturally, they often think you have based it on their experiences," she said yesterday. “All my novels deal with fictitious people and happenings. It is often too easy in a small place for people to imagine they can identify themselves in your story." I Mrs Sanderson’s last book, “Stranger to the Truth,” was an unfortunate victim of coincidence. It was concerned with flying, and some of the dialogue in it dealt with a discussion on what it would be like to crash in an area near Kaikoura. The day the book was released, an aeroplane crash occurred near Kaikoura and lives were lost. None Before

“I picked the area because there had never been any crashes there before. The last thing I would ever do would be to write anything based intentionally on someone else'smisery,” she said.

Situations like this, although pure coincidence, upset Mrs Sanderson. She is afraid people will read the book later, see that it is dated simply “1969,” and be hurt because they think she has written about a true incident.

In Wellington on Friday, Mrs Sanderson met a repre-

sentative of the English publishing firm which handles her novels. He is Mr J. Boon who is leading a trade mission sent to New Zealand by the British Book Development Council. Her seventeenth novel, “Place in the Sun," will be released at the end of May.

Unlike her last two books, which were directed at the American market, this one is set in New Zealand on a back-country farm, and deals with New Zealand people. Mrs Sanderson actually spent her childhood on an isolated farm at Hokianga. although she received her schooling in Auckland. She later became a nurse and most of her novels have a hospital setting. Children’s Stories

In her teens, Mrs Sanderson started to write chil-i dren’s stories. Her mother used to write for a magazine. When her six children were young, Mrs Sanderson managed to write some short stories for magazines and radio. In 1962, one of her stories was refused because of its length, so she developed it into her first novel. Since then, she has written two or three books a year. “I might get an idea or a phrase in my mind when 1 am working round the house and I just write it down. It is important, though, to have a plot because everything else must be related to it.”

A feeling for writing and a liking for people come before a good education in Mrs Sanderson’s view of what is necessary for an author. With her eighteenth book already started, she has no thought of giving up writing. “1 love doing it.”