Remember the theory of the 'six degrees of separation'? Well, I met Dinah who met Bruna who took her to Bangladesh and introduced her to Ali who was running a small home-school for children with disabilities there...
The detail is in the preface to A Blonde Bengali Wife, but put simply Dinah fell in love with the country and the people in exactly the way I had done. More so, she was totally inspired by the work Ali was doing on the island of Bhola, and came home with the plan to set up a charity to support him. Thus was born Bhola's Children and a lifelong relationship between us and them.
Still no sign of a publisher - but did it matter now?
Well, some more excellent rejections ('great book but we've just taken on one about a female cyclist in Sierra Leone' or 'if only the author was famous we'd snap it up' and - my personal favourite - 'there's just not enough sex or violence. Can she jazz it up a bit?') when I met, purely by chance Zetta Brown of LL-Publications who heard an outline of the story and asked to see the manusript in full. She liked it, she offered a contract. And finally...
it's been a very long journey but the diary which became a book which was instrumental in establishing a charity has its formal LAUNCH TODAY. More details tomorrow!