Emmanuel Kariuki can easily pass for any other man in the streets. His demeanour is almost self effacing. But he has accomplished the feat of penning 17 titles!

And like the renowned authors Mwangi Ruheni and Mwangi Gicheru who were at their peak performance juggling between writing and working official jobs, Kariuki too holds a regular job. Mwangi Ruheni worked as a government chemist and Mwangi Gicheru worked at the Lands ministry and later as an airline official. Kariuki is a civil servant working at the National Museums of Kenya and writes only in his free time.

One of his young adult fiction tiles, The Salem Mystery, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in the adolescent Category in 2003. And its sequel, The Red Coat, was nominated for the Impac Dublin Award in 2010.

Kariuki has nine children's readers and four novels for young adults, three pre-school books and one photo novel by four different publishers - EAEP, Phoenix, Focus and Abantu. Incidentally the photo novel, Nyumba Ya Maithori (house of mercy) which is in Kikuyu language, has been translated into Luganda for Uganda, Shona for Zimbabwe and Swahili for Tanzania. Namibia and Zambia also published it in local languages as required by Unesco who sponsored the project in 2011.

So who is Emmanuel Kariuki? "I am an artist. I have done art in all the post primary examinations that I have ever taken- 'O' levels at Pumwani, 'A' levels at Upper Hill and Undergraduate and Masters Degree at the University of Nairobi," he says. He adds that art is also his career. "I have worked as a designer at Voice of Kenya (now KBC), book designer with various publishers, art lecturer at Buru Buru Institute of Fine Arts and I am currently an exhibits designer at the National Museums of Kenya," he says.

Kariuki's love for the written word began early. While at Nairobi's Government Road (now Moi Avenue) Primary School, his teacher encouraged the class to enroll as members of Macmillan Library. "I have been renewing membership with this library since I was in standard seven which led me to fall in love with books and access many novels at a tender age. I would advise parents to enroll their children in libraries as early as standard one," he says.

But his writing journey began on a rocky note. His first book was a standard eight revision guide for art and craft in 1986 by EAEP. But unfortunately this subject was knocked off the 8-4-4 curriculum and the book failed to make significant sales, he says. He wrote and self published a children's book titled Zebra's Illness in 1990.

The writing bug hit him again in 1992 and he penned a junior readers' title, Safari Ya Kombamwiko. Thinking that people might not buy the title for being written in Kiswahili, Emmanuel translated it into English as Kombamwiko's Adventure and self published again. He soon found out the major pitfalls of self publication. "It was hard to sell and many bookshops would take only five or ten copies of each book and on credit," he says. Once he sold out the initial print run, he looked for a publisher to take over these titles.

Thus Zebra Illness was re-issued as Miraba and Proud Vuno by Phoenix Publishers who have also published Safari Ya Kombamwiko, Ngiri Mganga, and the re-packaged Kombamwiko's Adventure under their junior readers' series.

Kariuki has four junior readers' titles with Focus Publishers namely The Savannah Laughing Stock, Kolo the Soothsayer, Eating Is Hard Work and Python the Investigator.

From 2001 Kariuki ventured into adolescent fiction titles under the EAEPs Pathfinder series. And the results are three titles: The Salem Mystery (2001) and Red Coat (2008) and the Ole Sepei Mystery (2009). In 2011, he authored yet another teenage fiction title, Trail Of Mercy, with Focus Publishers.

In these teen fictions, Kariuki's theme is crime. He weaves young characters around it and makes them emerge as heroes and heroines. The main characters in The Salem Mystery and the Red Coat are two young adults, Kahiu and Opiyo, who upstage the police in murder and burglary investigations. In the Ole Sepei Mystery, the heroine, Eva Mwasimba, goes through a harrowing experience in busting a theft and a murder in her school. And In his latest title, The Trail of Mercy, Kariuki delves into the inner city themes like street gangs, crime and deception. The story, told through two youths, Morris and Susie, starts at a youth club in Bandani estate where they live.

The protagonists are mandated by other youths to scout for an institution where they can do voluntary work. And this is how they come to discover a little known children's home tucked in a corner of Bandani. The director, Mama Mercy, has no time for them because they have no money to fund projects! Their plea to do social work like cleaning the home and playing with the children is turned down.

Perplexed, the pair sets out to learn more about Mama Mercy's little outfit. And this quest brings Morris and Susie to a brush with danger in a chase that ends in a shattering climax as good prevails upon evil.

In these adolescent fiction books, Kariuki engages the youth in an entertaining manner and especially with crime and investigative stories. "I feel that my readers can identify with the crime-busting characters I create as they learn the virtues of persistence and focus in every aspect of their lives," he says.

Kariuki has some advice for new authors who often rush to get published. "Revise your work several times before submitting it to a publisher." He discloses that he revised Red Coat more than five times after finishing it, before handing it to his publisher!

And what makes him tick given his impressive books output? "Start by writing anything every day, even your daily observations and mishaps as you go about your chores. Pick an interesting paragraph from these writings and expand it every day even if you do not have an idea how your story will end. As long as you write everyday, you will develop a unique style," he advises. This way, one can perceive a major thread weaving through the account and the story will drive itself to a logical conclusion.

Kariuki advises young authors not to waste time dreaming of writing but to jot down things even at a doctor's waiting room or in a traffic jam. He says that he carries a folder in matatus and buses and makes entries to his texts as ideas come.

But he laments that the local publishing industry does not treat fiction the same way it markets texts books. Fiction therefore performs dismally in the market, perpetuating the myth of a literary desert. He observes that publishers are totally absent from television, bashes, market places, conventions and major events where there are opportunities to sell their latest editions. Many people are not even aware that "a Jomo Kenyatta Prize" happens every two years, he says! "I think if publishers arranged with events organisers to have authors in tow for signing their works, people would buy and read fiction."

A marathon runner, he says, can make a million shillings in two hours, yet a writer may take four years to produce one title and earn only Sh20,000 per year from it. "Our publishers need to compete against each other aggressively as is happening in the banking and mobile telephony industries," he says. Local publishers are too dependent on joint marketing ventures, he laments. This stops them from trying new marketing methods or treating books as "fast moving consumer goods." He notes that local publishers are venturing into the rest of East Africa and beyond but he thinks that the driving force is only textbooks. "So, enough said," he says.

kkariukij@gmail.com