Elena Bowman's Interview with Catherine Robertson Souter of the Middlesex Beat

Elena Bowman
By Catherine Robertson Souter

In this land of pioneers and dime-store visionaries, everyone has a dream. From infancy, chubby little heads are filled with stories of those who have made good, with the idea that we can all be someone, do something special. It is, of course, the American Dream.
In some cases, that dream doesn’t come easy. From winning Olympic gold to dishing with Joan at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, some fantasies can’t be bought for any money. And, if you’d ever dreamed of sitting on the sofa next to Ed and chatting with Johnny in front of 10 million people, well, it’s a bit late for that.

Still, there are some dreams, and some dreamers, that won’t quit. No one promised it would be easy to follow your heart, but when you don’t, you will pay somewhere down the line. And, waiting for your own, personal deus-ex-machina to save the day won’t always work. Sometimes you need to take things into your own hands.

For Elena Bowman, of Chelmsford, that day came when her novel, Sarah’s Landing I, a novel she tried two decades to have published was returned to her a year after being optioned by a major publisher.

This was a dream that had dogged her for years. A model Super women, Bowman wrote the book, along with nine others, both fiction and non-fiction, all while working full time as a software engineer and raising four kids. She has seen several short stories published but none of the novels.

“When I got this last rejection,” Bowman said, “My husband said, ‘That’s it. Go publish it yourself.’”

Bowman signed with an internet company, Books On Demand, paid a fee she admits is a bit high, and had a copy of her book in hand soon after. A dream realized.

“You know that time when you are just falling asleep?” she said, “I used to lie there and see a visual of the book in my head, a whole stack of them. It was like ‘whee!’ You know?”

Becoming her own publicist was part of the deal. Bowman arranged for several local bookstores to carry her novel along with on-line sites. While she flinched a bit at the price to self-publish, which can cost from $599 to more than $1,000, the investment did pay off. Her book has been picked up by publisher Hollis Books, and released internationally this pact October.

“They contacted me,” Bowman said, “The editor had read the book and said he didn’t normally like science fiction but there was a lot of romance in it along with the psychic phenomena, telepathy, etc. It’s a romance novel, really, a telepathic love story.”
The first in a series of four full-length novels, Sarah’s Landing-I is the story of a small New-England town and its bizarre connection with an alien city thousands of light years away. The novel is a mixture of styles – a romance, a science fiction novel and a mystery all tied up in one.

Completed more than 20 years ago, this was the first book Bowman wrote. Writing had never paid the bills, but is has long been her creative outlet.

The idea for her first book just popped into her head one day, she said, and she began to write. Spending several hours a day, often late at night, she wrote her works longhand and then typed them up the next day.

“I used to write at night when I was working,” said Bowman, who has recently retired, “I’d be up all hours until my husband turned the lights out on me.”

Each work, while she wrote it, was a complete surprise to her, she says. Since she never did an outline or plot summary ahead of time, she was never sure which way her stories would go. It was as if something or someone was writing through her.

“It’s interesting writing,” she said, “because I really don’t know what the ending is going to be. It’s almost like the characters take over a book. Sometimes I laugh as I type because I can’t believe what’s happening.”

With her unique writing style she soon found the words flowing from her pen (and later her computer). The average book took her only a couple of months to complete a first draft, a fact which she seems almost apologetic.

“I was also raising four kids and working full time and studying at night,” she explained, not seeming to realize that many writers take years to write a first draft.

Bowman is now working on her tenth book, a sequel to another book Hollis has optioned. More of a mystery than the Sarah’s Landing series, The House On The Bluff books tell the story of an old New England home and it connections to the distant past, starting with the Revolutionary War.

Sarah’s Landing I is available locally at the Summer Street Book Store in Chelmsford, the Concord Book Shop in Concord, Willow Street Books in Actor, WaldenBooks in Lexington and Brookline, and at Barnes and Noble in Burlington, Brookline, and Lowell. The book is also available on-line through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.

Or meet the author in person. Bowman will hold a book signing on
November 2 from 7-9 pm at Barnes and Noble Bookstores in Nashua,
New Hampshire.