Kloof author Clare Houston turns history, imagination and perseverance into her third novel, Flight of a Rare Bird, while inspiring women to chase their own creative dreams.
There is something wonderfully fitting about the fact that Clare Houston’s latest novel grew from a fascination with history, a lifelong love of books and a determination not to leave her own creative ambitions unfinished.
For years, Clare quietly carried her writing alongside a full-time teaching career, family life and all the everyday demands that come with both. She wrote because she had always written, even when she did not think of herself as a writer.
Today, as a published author with An Unquiet Place longlisted for the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and Titanium Beneath named a finalist in the US-based Cinematic Book Awards, Flight of a Rare Bird marks the return to the historical fiction that first brought her national attention.
Yet Clare still describes becoming an author as something of an unfinished dream. “I didn’t call myself an author until my second novel was received well by readers,” she says. “As I navigate trying to write while working full time, it still feels like a dream I haven’t yet reached.”
Being an English teacher at a local high school, where she works in the Academic Support Unit with bright learners who face barriers to learning. She describes each child as ‘a puzzle waiting to be figured out’.
At home, there is her ‘clever, quirky family’ and her ‘just quirky animals’. And somewhere in between school, family and everyday life, there is always a book.
Her love of reading began during childhood visits to her grandmother’s house, where nothing seemed off limits. A cupboard in the garage held her mother’s childhood books, including shelves packed with old Enid Blyton stories.
“That was my introduction to infinite imagination,” she says.
Her mother would later drop her at the public library while she went around the block, eventually having to park and come looking for Clare because she had disappeared into the books.
“I was reading voraciously, carrying books with me everywhere I went and reading in every spare moment. Reading, I believe, was my single biggest writing teacher.”
Clare began writing creatively at around eight, initially capturing her childhood emotions on paper before later expressing her teenage angst and documenting her travels in her twenties.
But becoming a published author was never part of the plan.
“I wasn’t the best writer in my class at school,” she says. “I didn’t receive any encouragement from teachers and I never thought of myself as a good enough writer to pursue it as a career.”
That changed when Penguin Random House picked up her first novel, An Unquiet Place, in 2019.
“I was flabbergasted,” she admits. “I had been pitching it hard to agents and publishers but I still felt like an imposter trying my luck.”
The novel, set against the South African War, drew on extensive research and explored the discovery of a Boer War journal written by a young woman inside a concentration camp.
Her second novel, Titanium Beneath, moved into contemporary territory, exploring the conflict between environmental conservation and mining interests on the KZN coast.
Along the way, Clare discovered that becoming a published author involved far more than writing. She had to learn about submissions, contracts, rejection and the business of making books.
“Writing is, at its heart, a faith journey,” she says. “You have control over the quality of your manuscript and need to spend months refining and rewriting until it’s as good as you can possibly make it. But then you send it out into the ether and have no control over whether it is picked up or not.”
Prayer, patience and a thick skin, she says, are essential. Her third novel has tested all three.
Flight of a Rare Bird began life as a novella written for teenage girls, inspired partly by the pupils at Clare’s old school, Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High. She wanted to revisit the historical research she had undertaken for An Unquiet Place and explore what the South African War meant for a town that was not itself in the war zone but was profoundly affected by the events around it.
A publisher asked her to expand the manuscript into a full-length novel, only to turn it down once she had done so. Clare put the book away for several years, believing it might remain hidden.
Instead, she returned to it. She rewrote it, taught herself how to publish and make books, and eventually brought the novel into the world.
“The problem child of my career so far, but perhaps the best because of it,” is how she describes it. “I’m certainly a better writer having wrestled it.”
The experience has also taught Clare to embrace the collaborative nature of publishing. Once she accepted that the editors working on her books wanted the best possible result, she was able to listen rather than feel defensive.
“I soon realised they knew double what I did.”
Writing has revealed a resilience that Claire did not always know she possessed. She does not wait for inspiration to arrive. When she has dedicated writing time, she relies on discipline, sitting at her desk and writing something even if she knows she may delete it the next day.
Often, she says, the best writing comes from facing a problem on the page and working out how to solve it. It is not always easy to fit that process around teaching and family.
“The act of writing is an absorbing process that requires emotional resources to be creative. And teaching is the same.”
For now, Clare accepts that the two worlds compete for the same energy, rather than pretending she has mastered the balance.
Perhaps that is part of what makes her story so relatable. There has been no grand leap from aspiring writer to successful author, just years of writing, learning, rejection, persistence and making the most of the opportunities available.
And then there is courage.
Clare borrows a quote from John Wayne to describe it: “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”
“Just do the thing,” she says. “The fear dissipates when you survive the first attempt.”
There have certainly been moments when fear and self-doubt could have stopped her. Instead, she kept writing.
She jokes that if her fourth novel appears within three years, it will be a miracle. For now, she is content to let the next chapter take the time it needs.
And perhaps her own journey is a reminder that creative dreams do not always arrive on the timetable we imagine for them. Sometimes they wait patiently in the background, sometimes they need to be wrestled with, and sometimes, if we are brave enough to keep going, they finally take flight.
Details: Visit clarelouisehouston.wixsite.com/mysite or follow Clare on Facebook: @clare.a.houston and Goodreads
About the book
Flight of a Rare Bird. 1900, Natal. While war tears through South Africa, two young women dare to defy the rigid boundaries of colonial society. Emily, an 18-year-old who prefers a cricket bat to embroidery, dreams of freedom. Anna, a servant with a brilliant mathematical mind, longs for a future beyond the role assigned to her. As their lives become entwined, both must risk everything to challenge the rules of class, love and destiny in a world determined to keep them in their place. R300. Ebooks are available through Amazon.com. Paperbacks can be ordered through Clare’s website.
Clare’s advice for women chasing a creative dream
- You don’t have to stick with the path you started on.
If you’re working without purpose, get out. - Learn to filter criticism.
If feedback helps you grow and comes from someone you respect, take it on board. If it is simply nasty, let it bounce off. - Know what is worth sacrificing.
Some things are worth giving up for your dream. Your family is not one of them. - Don’t cut corners on your creative work.
If you want to be taken seriously, invest in making your product the best it can be. Clare’s advice? Use a skilled human over AI if you want to make something worth selling. - Be patient and persistent.
Nothing worthwhile happens overnight, and if it does, it can probably disappear just as quickly. Keep going.
