Gail Gilbride Bohle, a past creative writing and mentoring  participant launches Under the African Sun on 25 January. We asked her some questions about her writing and publishing process.

How long did this book gestate for?

This story is the one I’ve wanted to write for 40 years, but I’ve been skirting around it. Finally it got coaxed out of me.

How many drafts did you write? Was it easy or difficult? Tell us a bit about the process, the ups and downs.

I wrote one draft and patted myself on the back.  Then Richard and Jo-Anne prodded me gently and reminded me about a second/third/fourth one! It’s easy to write the first draft. It’s difficult to go back and edit until the manuscript is good enough to send to publishers. Sometimes I dropped the ball. The mentoring programme really helped me to re-focus and carry on. There is no…