...wrote and self-published a book’
courtney Kron and her husband, Alex, hadn’t been in the UK for very long when Covid-19 made its presence felt. After their move from Cape Town, the only thing they had planned for 2020 was to find their feet. ‘I’d been working at a pub when lockdown was imposed, so for three months I was without a job,’ says Courtney. She didn’t leave the house at all for long periods, even though people were allowed to go for a walk every day in the UK.
Courtney has always been an avid reader and began writing from the age of 15. She says her stories often reframed how a particular scenario had played out; as she got older, these scenarios changed to love and adventure stories. ‘During lockdown, I had to get resourceful: for instance, I tried to wax my own legs, and it was so traumatic I ended up walking around with one waxed leg for a week! But I wondered how I would have written this for a story, and that ended up being my opening chapter.’
The story poured out of her and, 10 days later, after writing from 9am to 3am every day, she came out on the other side with a book.
All that was left was to find an agent and she’d have her pick of publishing houses, right? Well, no. ‘It’s not as easy as it used to be,’ Courtney says. ‘I spent two and a half months researching how to get a book published, because going through an agent is not only very tedious, but also soul-destroying – it can often kill your drive to get published.’
Instead, she chose the selfpublishing route. Angel’s Hero: Through Fire & Flame is now available to purchase through Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing. Courtney says she’s been pretty pleased with the interest generated thus far. Her parents, who are in SA, were among the first to buy it. ‘I’m not sure whether to be excited or mortified. It’s a romance novel, after all, and there are some risqué scenes,’ she says with a laugh.
The story follows Angel who, after the death of her movie star mother, leaves her home in the UK to visit her best friend in Maine, USA. There, in a small harbour town, she meets the sheriff, Conner Grayson. When a series of events alerts him to a potential threat, he becomes her protector.
The end of lockdown doesn’t mean the end of Courtney’s writing: she hopes to finish her second book next year and make a serious career move towards being an author. ‘Lockdown made me realise that I do have it in me. This is something I can do.’