Sonia’s ‘Curtain Call’ consolidates her writing

One of Gibraltar’s best loved personalities and founder of the Bosom Buddies charity, which has been raising the profile of breast cancer survivors for the last twenty years, Sonia Golt is also a prolific writer who after winning many awards abroad for her poetry, her writing and local charitable achievements, has now focussed her writing into a ‘whodunnit’ romantic thriller recently released as her novel ‘The Curtain Call’.

The Chronicle reached out to this seasoned writer, just turned eighty years young, who has challenged herself and poured her heart into a romantic crime story. Did she set out to tease her ever- fertile imagination or was she also testing her stamina as well? “Probably the former, I am a lucky person in that respect. I am pretty creative and my imagination runs well beyond what I could possibly get to do. I like to visualize and I do that for everything that I plan, be it a book a poem or a show. ‘The Curtain Call’ plot took me to the States, probably because I have lived there.”

“The only slight problem was that I chose to write about a place that I hadn’t visited or heard much about so I had to do a lot of research on the law in that particular state, because in my story there is an abduction and a committal so I had to look up state laws. Coming back to your question my stamina is still there.”

“I’m not an author who sits down to write at a particular time. I am an author who has to be inspired. Maybe I’m watching TV and suddenly I have an idea so I rush to my computer and spend maybe ten minutes or half an hour putting down what I don’t want to forget and that is basically how I later develop my work.

When I get involved in the story later, I can spend hours writing and in this my first thriller that is exactly what happened. This is a romantic novel about obsessive love. Love has always got to be around my books because I’m a Cancerian and am into that.”

Theresa is the main character in the novel and we wanted to know whether she was born fully formed as a character, or did her traits develop as the story progresses.? “I developed her character. First I picked the name of a late friend of mine who because she passed a long time ago, I couldn’t remember her character, so I developed a new character. She was going to be anxious, a sweet girl, well liked etc, so that was how I developed her character. She is a thespian but that is the only thing that compares her to me. I wanted to challenge my mind and because I reached my eightieth, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and do things in a different way. I am not a typical writer and don’t have lots of notes lying around. When I write, if I have to research something, I will copy paste it into my page as notes and from there use it to develop my storyline.”

All crime mystery books have subtle clues dotted around the story. That is an integral part of writing in order to engage the reader constantly and thicken the plot, so to speak. Does the laying of the clues happen after the story is told, or are they an embellishment that goes in tandem with the plot’s development ? “I think it’s a bit of both, for example in this story there is a person obsessing and always spying on Theresa, I realised that I could not disclose the gender of that person as it would give away the mystery. So I had to go back and adjust the story bearing that factor in mind. Mostly I would pick up on something like that but my daughter, who is my first editor, always looks out for me so that I don’t give out premature answers and spoil the plot. for readers.”

In the last month she has sold one hundred and fifty books and as she has printed three hundred it seems to be selling really well. “ I’ve been very lucky with the press and TV and my friends who always buy my books. Once the initial sales are made, sales will trickle down to a few because there aren’t enough places locally where you can do book signings. But I have to be thankful that this one is going well and I’m getting good reports about it.” Every book is different and Sonia has successfully published eight, so she sent this one to UK editors Austin Macauley who reviewed it very favourably and wanted to publish it. However there are always restrictions to what a writer can, or can’t do once they tie up with a publisher.

“It was considered and I nearly accepted, however when I wrote back to them saying I wanted the freedom to work the book over here in our small community, which has a different way of responding, I found that I didn’t want to lose the power of selling to my community, because the publishers decide how they want to market the book. I couldn’t agree to those restrictions and I didn’t sign.”

“I am very thankful to all those people who helped me, particularly Brian Reyes and Alice Mascarenhas, Humbert Hernandez, Mark Montovio, Audrey Alecio and especially my daughter Sam for the editing. It takes time to write a book and one hopes that people read it and report back, so that one can learn from the feedback. It is not for monetary reward that we write. £5 out of every book sale will go to cancer charity. The book retails at £15 and may be bought at the Gibraltar Heritage Trust, Bookgem and Rock Photos ICC.

Sonia can also be contacted via social media and will be very happy to talk about her new romantic thriller ‘The Curtain Call’ after all, writers can only get validation if they are read and their writing has an effect on a reader enough to acknowledge the writer’s efforts. All feedback is good feedback.

I enjoyed finding out all about the story of Theresa and the journey of her author who I strongly suspect, will already be dreaming about a sequel, or a poem, or the next Bosom Buddies show? Who knows, the indefatigable Sonia Golt is a reliable national treasure and will not keep us waiting too long for an answer.