About Consuelo Roland

WHO IS CONSUELO ROLAND?

Consuelo Roland is a writer of narrative fiction with a passion for stories, films, photographs, animals, gardens and the world of nature. She is married, has a son at university, 3 dogs, a cat and a parrot.

My writing career is my second career. After many years in the Information Technology (IT) field I embarked on a long delayed lifetime dream; to become a published writer. My breakthrough came when I was accepted onto the University of Cape Town (UCT) Masters in Creative Writing program. A short story called BLACK MOON RISING, about an undertaker who moonlighted as a guitar player in the music bars of Kalk Bay by night, formed part of the application portfolio. This story became the basis for the novel THE GOOD CEMETERY GUIDE.

I have been crazy about books ever since I can remember. As a child I was always disappearing to read and being hauled out to play. My earliest recollection of a state of complete satisfaction is of going with my father to the waste paper dump at the paper mill where he worked, and being allowed to take a boxful of comics and books home. My first writing attempts were made in a diary with its own little key, an eleventh birthday present.

During the years I worked in the corporate sector, poetry became something of a compulsion; poems were scribbled down while stopped at robots, waiting at airports, sitting on aeroplanes, whenever free moments presented themselves. I believe it was the poems that stopped the writing muscle from atrophying completely.

A work colleague mentioned the UCT creative writing program which a friend of hers was busy with. At a certain stage, everything fell into place, as if the external world were conspiring to help me become a writer; if I wanted it enough.