UK-based author highlights Caribbean heritage in his novels
Anton Marks has seven novels under his belt with
a number of them drawing on his Caribbean identity. And after visiting Jamaica
for Animecom Fest 2019 in Kingston, he’s more than happy with the state of
creativity in Jamaica.
“Animecom Fest was an opportunity for me to
support the kind of event I would have loved to attend when growing up in
Jamaica. As a writer, my target audience is among the people who attend events
like this. The organiser, Ricardo Carter, and his great team have tapped into a
world trend that will only get more popular on the island,” he said.
Dancehall is Anton Marks’ first book.
Born Anthony Hewitt in the United Kingdom to
Jamaican parents, he moved to Jamaica with his parents when he was nine years
old.
“I’ve always loved stories. I read and enjoyed
comics from an early age and copied their styles in school. I used exercise
books to write serialised tales with drawings for my classmates. I was drawn to
words and how they could convey emotion from an early age. I always felt I had
tales to tell from my unique perspective, so I created the opportunity and took
the leap,” he said.
Hewitt eventually returned to England and made
that leap in the 1990s with his very first book, a crime thriller called Dancehall, under the pseudonym Anton Marks. It was part
of an experiment by an upcoming publisher at the time, X Press Publishers, who
were looking for writers that could deliver what Hewitt termed as the black
experience in an entertaining way. His latest book is the second in his Good II Be Bad series. A supernatural thriller, it revolves
around three mystically gifted female warriors, one of whom is Chinese-Jamaican.
However, the road between these books wasn’t a
smooth one until the more recent invention of online publishing, through Amazon
and other Internet-based entities. The paradigm shift removed many of the
barriers, including the belief that there is a lack of financial benefit in producing
minority specific content. This freedom didn’t come without its own downside,
as Hewitt explains.
“Just because you’ve written and published a
book doesn’t mean readers will find you,” he said.
His advice to aspiring Caribbean writers of
any genre is to maintain three elements – quality, professionalism and
marketing.
“The problem is no longer access, but quality and marketing. Authors like me must keep the quality of their work, writing and the finished product, high,” Hewitt told BUZZ, while encouraging other Caribbean and black writers to remember their heritage as they tackle a range of issues in their books.
— Written by Nichola Beckford