From dreams to reality for Chantelle Landman

Many people dream of having their own novel published, but for Chantelle Landman, that dream has become a reality.

Best Friend: Will Alex and Adam Be Together? is the story of four high school friends and how they deal with school, the looming thought of college and university and life. It also focuses on their fears that, as they slowly move on with their lives, their worlds as they know it will come crashing down.

Listed under the Romance genre, the story also revolves around the teenagers’ romance during the final year of school. Chantelle drew her inspiration from some personal experience as well as friends and from life in general. The whole book is a made-up story based on real-life events. “I like to draw inspiration from the fact that I love to give people, especially teenagers, advice about life in general. The average human life has so many stories to tell, whether they are good or bad,” she said.

Chantelle hasn’t always been bitten by the writing bug, but all that changed in 2011. “I began writing a story based on the everyday life that year. I gave the few pages to my close friends to read and they always kept on asking for more. Unfortunately, I lost the story that year. Ever since then, I have loved the idea of being a writer.”
Chantelle then begun work on a horror novel (her favourite genre) but realizing that her novel resembled a Christopher Pike novel, just with her own twist, she began work on her romance story. It took a year to finish but eventually Chantelle was done and the book was published.

“I can now say with pride that I wrote, edited and published my very own book.”
“The first page of the book and the end chapter were the most difficult to write. In the beginning, I had to think carefully about how to write it. I can’t remember how many times I started the first page over and over again before I was happy with it. The end of the story was also particularly difficult as I tried to end it smoothly. Again, I tried a number of ways to end the story without it sounding like an abrupt halt to the end, a process which took approximately two months.”

The book is currently only available online and can be found at Kobo, Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble or Amazon Books.
“The thought of having my own book published has always excited me. Now, today, I feel somewhat accomplished. A person will always come across the one question that they dread most; what did you accomplish in life? I can now say with pride that I wrote, edited and published my very own book.

Now as a published author, Chantelle has wasted no time in working on new material. She is currently busy with two new novels; one revolving around teenagers and the other having a more mature feel.
She encourages wannabe authors to never give up, as writing takes time and effort and to always have fun writing their stories.

Chantelle thanked her mother, Welma Landman, Charles Buthelezi, her test reader and continuous source of encouragement and her high school teacher, Mrs C Fölscher from Sarel Cilliers, who gave her a proper education in the English Language.

With one book already published and more on the way, Chantelle Landman is writing her way to success.