In the first weeks of the pandemic lockdown, the small seaside town of Deal on the east Kent coast was eerily quiet. There were no cars on the road, very few people outside. Shops, bars and restaurants were closed, and suddenly you could hear the birds singing, the waves on the beach. It was also gloriously, unseasonably sunny.
Then the peacocks arrived.
Four of them, strutting casually down the High Street, stopping to look in the windows of shops. Rebecca Murphy had her front door open because of the heat, so when they walked past, she ran out bare-footed, calling her partner Joe Harris to come follow them too.
An English and maths teacher by profession, she is also a trained artist and during lockdown, she’d spent a lot of time drawing. “From working mainly in sort of charcoals and black and whites, I suddenly had this kind of rebirthing and I was starting to use colour. So I was using a lot of oil pastels, I was sketching and taking photographs around Deal and then coming back home and creating big, colourful images of the surrounding environment.”
Over the next few days, the peacocks were everywhere.
People shared photographs of them on social media: having a curious look around a car repair shop, strutting into an office that happened to have an open door, surveying the street from the roofs of houses, walking single file across the train tracks.
From that first evening, Murphy began drawing these unexpected visitors. “I was using watercolour and pen and ink – materials I hadn’t really used before. And of course, because the birds are so colourful, I had to use colour. And before I knew, I had a whole pile of drawings of these birds in all these surreal settings, and thought, ‘What can we do with these?’ Then we came up with the idea of writing a children’s story.”
Harris has worked as a psychiatric nurse and care home inspector, but he’d always written. “I was one of these poets who writes endlessly and stores notes, scraps and bits of paper under the bed. They never saw the light of day. Then, about six or seven years ago, I just started putting it out there. I did a bit performance poetry, put together a little collection of nonsense poems called Soggy Biscuits.”
He also started a satirical magazine called East Kent Mockery, which he sold locally. Which meant he had contacts with printers, and knew how to design pages on his computer. Between them, they had all the skills they needed to get a book out quickly.
“We also didn’t have any anything else pressing that we have to do at that time,” says Murphy. “We were in lockdown.”
So they made a book.
They announced Four Peacocks Go To Town on social media and took advance orders to cover the printing costs. The first edition of 200 hardback copies sold out in two days. A further printing of 400 paperbacks has also sold well. And suddenly, the couple realised that this was more than a Covid-induced hobby. It was a new career.
“The bit we’ve had to learn more than any other is the advertising and marketing side,” says Harris. “That’s what takes the time. If you want to spend 10 percent of your life writing and 90 percent of your time marketing, then go down the self-publishing route!
“That’s been a really steep part of the learning curve for us: writing press releases, getting in touch with radio and TV. But if you don’t invest in the marketing side, you could find yourself with a quite painful loss. It’s a tough getting your book seen and noticed.”
Tough, but not impossible.
They were covered on local TV and radio and in the local press. And they’ve sold the book in local shops, through social media and via a hastily built website. “We’ve sold copies to Australia, the US, Singapore, Germany, France, Spain. The birds have flown all over the world!”
It was a timely tale, Harris points out. “We came on the back of what was a real story and we captured that lockdown moment. So in terms of sales, we’ve been really lucky. If you were publishing a book for the first time and didn’t have that ready-made audience, I wouldn’t suggest printing more than 200-250 books. I’ve still got a couple of boxes of my first poetry book under the bed! And that’s fine. I did that for me.”
“It’s about starting off small,” adds Murphy. “Test the market. We already had those pre-orders. But if you’ve got a strong story and something unique to offer, then go for it!”
They are not planning to return to their old jobs.
Murphy is now doing an MA in Illustration, hoping to fulfil a long-held dream to become a children’s book illustrator. “She can work for other authors,” jokes Harris. “I won’t get too jealous!”
He’s planning a side-business helping other writers self-publish their books. “Having that space [in lockdown] has given us an opportunity to recalibrate everything. And think about what we really want to do.”
They’ve just published second book, Four Peacocks At Christmas, and plan to produce four peacock stories in total. But they also have concepts for other illustrated books, other stories. “We seem to have numerous ideas,” says Murphy happily. “The creativity hub is constantly whirring away.”
“We work harder now than we ever did as a teacher and a care home consultant,” adds Harris. “Finding the boundaries of where to stop each day is so hard.”
That elusive work/life balance
The day before our interview, the couple had worked on a new idea till 2am. But they know that isn’t sustainable. So they’re now choosing to get outside more, and walk.
“That’s when ideas start to percolate,” says Murphy. “Or you find other perspectives or angles. A really long walk in nature helps enormously.”
They’re planning to buy a camper van, now that their work is flexible. “Then we can just head off for a few weeks at a time and get away,” says Harris. “We’re painfully aware of the need to get that balance right.”
As for the peacocks, it turned out that they live in a village just outside Deal, in a house with extensive grounds. As the cars came back on the roads, businesses reopened and people thronged the High Street again, they stopped making their trips into town.
Rumour has it that their owner has also bought four peahens to keep them closer to home.
Sheryl Garratt is a writer and a coach helping creatives to get the success they want, making work they love. Want my free 10-day course, Freelance Foundations: the secrets of successful creatives? Click here.
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