Hi all! My name is Antoinette Le Roux (legally still Keyser, but I have divorced my abusive husband, and am in the process of becoming Le Roux again), and I live in Kempton Park, Gauteng, South Africa. I have been writing poetry since forever, but have never really published anything except on Facebook, Wattpad and my WordPress blog… and more recently on one or two websites as gigs that I’ve done on Fiverr.

My main reason for entering this Marathon is to get my butt in gear: I have known since my elementary school days that I am a writer deep down inside, but received nothing but ridicule from my school peers, teachers… and even my father who has tried to push me into becoming an architect. He used to ridicule me when I tried to express myself singing and he used to tell me that writing is for the “less intelligent”; he made me believe that a woman “cannot make it as a singer or as an author”.

Both my husbands simply made me believe that I am “good for nothing”, the second one even going as far as to call me a “good for nothing mad ‘effing’ bitch”!

Needless to say, when one gets told the same nonsense so perpetually one really actually believes all the verbal crap that gets flung at one…

Now, with my dad, peers and abusive husbands long gone… and with the internet as an awesome resource telling me to my face that all those people were actually liars, I have now decided that it’s better late than never. I am getting into the world of authors, come what may… I know that I can do it, and this Marathon is a great opportunity to show myself that I can because what I really need is the motivation and self-confidence to step out and DO IT!

And here I am then, at age 60, breaking into the world where I know that I belong! I’m coming home so to speak!

Good luck to everyone who will participate, and may we all survive!

Antoinette Le Roux