Lindy Kato (Writer)

I’m late with my blog, at least in most of the world, and that upsets me. There is a god reason though and that is because it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to get my first book online.

Actually it was easy, but to get it to look how I wanted it to… not so much. After 50,000 attempts, it isn’t perfect but my life is being eaten away and I must accept the best I can do. You can’t get it until the 5^th November, I have a local launch because I already have some hard copies which was much easier and there will be a print on demand option as well once I have seen the hard copy to make sure it looks the way I want it to. After all, I put heart and soul into writing it. The reason for the 5^th of November is because the Thatcher Government were trying to thwart my new career by closing the Victorian Lunatic Asylums but blowing up the Houses of Parliament had already been tried.

Here is the back blurb:

Lindy left her office job in London after being shoved from a moving train. Unable to keep a local job due to a skill deficit, her husband suggests she train as a psychiatric nurse. It feels like a desperate effort to keep the bailiffs at bay.

This memoir of her training and career unfolds through her personal experiences and significant historical events as English politicians are determined to close the Victorian lunatic asylums.

Eventually the family moves to New Zealand during the worst storm since 1703, drawn by her husband’s job, which isn’t exactly as promised.

While there are humorous moments, they also face challenging situations and ultimately – tragedy.

This is a little bit of the first chapter so you can see how I write, although if you read this blog you probably know already.

Chapter 1: Desperate Times

London, England, August 1979

I am pushed out of a moving train. It is an accident – I am certain. What happens next is callous and deliberate.

With my stomach pressed hard against the central pillar of the station steps, I feel a thousand commuters kick and stomp me. Someone trips over my prone torso and lands face first on the concrete. They swear at me! No one is stopping to help. The trampling can only have lasted for a matter of minutes, but it felt longer. I’m alone, pinned at the Coopers Row exit, alive but too stunned to move.

There is a mass of blood on the concrete, but nothing feels broken. Astonishing, because my forty-six-kilogram frame has barely any padding. My lucky charm bracelet has punctured holes around my wrist, staining my white Afghan coat a dirty pink where the coat and blood have mixed with the filth from the platform. “Afghan” is the fashionable term for a thick sheepskin; it must have protected me from the initial impact with the platform, and by absorbing some of the kicks.

I usually take the crowded District line tube train which stops at fourteen stations between Dagenham Heathway and Tower Hill, but this morning I fancied a walk in the early sun and caught the faster overground train that stops only once between Dagenham Dock and Fenchurch Street. It easily makes up for the longer walk to the station and it should have been the healthy option!

By the time any train reaches Dagenham I expect to be squeezed in and inhale someone else’s breath. Happily, I got jammed facing the door. As we approached Fenchurch Street, an arm extended around my waist and took hold of the latch. This is a common ploy for a quick exit; it gives a commuter the edge in the race to the ticket collector.

The train jolted, and the arm lurched forward, simultaneously letting the latch go. The door flew open with the platform still a few metres away and the passenger behind (presumably the latch holder) fell against me, pushing me out. I hit the leading edge of the concrete, already horizontal and rolling – akin to a sausage wrapped in sheepskin pastry – until I was halted by the central pillar of the steps. Possibly my twig legs didn’t even hit the platform, held high by the bulk of the coat.

I haul myself up the post. Taking the Coopers Row exit I stagger around the corner to Tower Hill.

The link is https://books2read.com/u/m2ky2d I will get it on Amazon as well when I gather the strength. https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0473756153 strength gathered!

It does end in tragedy but it introduces the book that I NEEDED to write and I couldn’t have done without the support of a number of people; my family and the tutors and students of the NorthTec Creative Writing Diploma https://www.northtec.ac.nz/programmes/new-zealand-diploma-in-creative-writing-level-6 it’s called Bleak Expectations (Diagonally parked in a parallel universe), or at least that’s the working title and it will be out early next year.

It isn’t easy to write a book. It has taken a huge chunk of my life. Desperate Times has been on my mind for two decades, the final chapter (which was the first thing I wrote that wasn’t science) was written in 2005. I didn’t know then that it would become the final chapter of a book, it was just something I was trying to get out of replaying over and over in my head. I’m sure you know what I mean.