Writer and publisher Sandra prepares for active retirement
Arundel’s Sandra Saer has retired at the age of 84, after 30 years of publishing books under her SMH imprint.
It’s a retirement which will start on a high.
She has been named a regional finalist in the inaugural British Book Awards Small Press of the Year.
The regional and country winners, as well as the overall Small Press of the Year winner, will be announced at the London Book Fair on Wednesday, March 13.
Sandra is delighted as she plans an active retirement.
“I am not retiring from life! Retirement comes when you get older, but it doesn’t mean that you have to give up, though sadly a lot of people do.
“It just means that you slow down, and when you slow down amazingly you start to see things from a different perspective.”
Thoughts of stepping back crept up on Sandra last year when she had a family party to mark both 30 years of publishing and also the publication of Star Sandwiches And Moon Custard, her second children’s book, written many years ago for her four children, when small, chronicling their family happy years in Ireland.
“We had a wonderful party in Arundel and it was such a happy occasion and I said to myself ‘Why don’t you just stop?’ and I said it out loud. And one of my boys said ‘Good idea, mum!’ I glared at him and then I thought it actually was a good idea.
“It was sad, but I do feel my age. Increasingly I feel my age!
“But slowing down will do me good. I have just had a lovely holiday on the Isle of Wight, and I said to myself ‘You have still got those Beatitude plays that you are working on!’ And so I did. I worked on them to good effect. There are still things I want to do!”
Looking back, Sandra says: “As a small publishers we have published books that would never have seen the light of day, books which would never have been published if we had not taken them on board.”
Sandra suspects they numbered 17 in total, beautiful books which she believed in, edited and marketed: “That was my goal, and I have achieved it.”
Perhaps her favourite was An Exaltation Of Skylarks by Stewart Beer (1995) with a preface by Richard Mabey, a 2,300-year anthology of Skylark prose and poetry – the only one in the world.
Also taking pride of place is Sandra’s own Jostling With The Pears, the third part of her trilogy of writings inspired by 28 years living in her beloved Pear Tree Cottage, and in its garden, in Watersfield.
Parts one and two are out of print, but she still has some copies of Jostling, memories of very happy times: “I brought up my children there and dug and planted and harvested the garden. It was such a wonderful time of my life.”
The book and others are available through Sandra’s website – www.smh-books. co.uk – which she will retain for book sales postretirement.
“I will also continue to use it as a long, elongated blog on which I will be able to put news of myself to bring things up-to-date.”
High among her priorities will be to work to clear the name of George Bell, bishop of Chichester caught up in child abuse accusations.