Money Where My Mouth Is!

So close now. The light at the tunnel’s end is more than just a tiny sparkle. Completion looms, though hard for me to get my head around. The first ‘proof’ from the designers emailed in yesterday and I’ve got to say it looks impressive (toned that down from awesome). Been reading through for one last time and picked up on a couple of spacing errors, but nothing serious – will sort them.

Amazed by the Kindle’s versatility and yes, like you, I’ve heard the pros and cons a million times. However, what a boon to those of us with failing eyesight – leave your specs on the table and just crank up the font size to exactly where you want it. Now that’s something a paperback can never aspire to.

Guess I’m getting a little bit nervy – Sons of Africa will soon be out there for everyone to like, loathe, or hopefully fall in love with. Whatever happens, it’s on its way – warts ‘n all. I wish it well. It is after all my best effort, if only a story of Africa...

*

To Great Mining Men - A Tribute!

Over the years, many names and faces have been put to memory – most were of friends, some were not. However, a few, like great forest trees stand well above the rest. Men of courage and forethought, men who started with little and often died with less – men who dared to dream...

This piece, I suppose, is pretty self indulgent, but what the hell. So here I’ll raise my hat to one of those old timers:

Leo Goddard, mentor and friend. Taught me most of what I know about prospecting, rigging up of mining equipment and how to use it. From panning off rock samples to blowing the worn-out iron shoes from stamping mills with a quarter stick of dynamite. His stories never bored me and he always gave freely of them, taking me back to earlier times and the mining exploits of his own father. Always smoked a pipe and wore a floppy bush hat, and leather gaiters above his boots, to hold off grass seeds more than snakes, he laughed; always with that Goddard twinkle in his eye.

To me, one of Africa’s greats – what would I not give for one more hour...?

*

Old Africa - Another Glimpse!

Hi – a couple of posts ago I left you standing on the veranda of the old Birchenough Hotel; talked about old colonial-style furniture and eager dining room staff. What heady days they were and oh how much I miss them. Some of you may well remember the hand-cranked petrol pumps –two glass cylinders; one fills up while the other one empties?

I guess my being the hotel barman at sixteen would nowadays raise a few eyebrows, but I learned about life. Pouring drinks for thirsty travellers then waving them back on their way – usually with a slight wobble in their walk as well as their motor cars. We knew all the towns, villages and the distances between them. Even after thirty years away I still remember the time it took to reach them; the dips, bumps and twists in the road – can still hear the whine of tyres on hot tar. Nowadays, on those same roads it’s a case of ‘mind the potholes’ or at night, play the game of ‘let’s all drive without lights’ – saves on replacement lamps, I suppose. Guess that’s where the term, Dark Continent springs from...

 *

A Never Ending Story!

Hi. Once you’re hooked, this writing thing never ends. Yes, I’m glad my first book is finished, but at the same time worried about the characters left behind. As I’ve already told you, the sequel, Empress Gold is well under way and some, though obviously not all the characters, have been rescued from Sons of Africa – those spared have aged some twenty years and are therefore portrayed as older and hopefully wiser, as one would expect. Hope they’re up to the adventure; gets pretty hectic in places. Zimbabwe has changed and not all for the better. Will drop out snippets as I go along, but not too many as to spoil the story for you. Lots of plausible action, good old-fashioned conflict and some seafaring stuff as well – just to sort of balance things out.

My prime objective is to take you there. Believe me when I say this one really works on the reader’s inner sense of adventure. When all is said and done, isn’t that why good books and comfy armchairs were invented? Without them, how would you get to Africa?

*

Journey's End!

Hi again. Just finished reading through the last two pages of Sons of Africa. Believe it or not, I couldn’t hold back the tears. Really got to me; reckon I’ve been struck with some sort of literary bereavement.

After months of pleasurable torment, rabid debate and sleepless nights, the book is finished. No banners outside my house, no banging of drums. Just a brandy and a smile from my wife, but the smile and her gentle nod say it all.

Time for me to move on...

*

A Long Way Back!

Hi. Nostalgia pie for lunch today. Happens more and more these days, guess the years are ticking by. Drifted on back to when I was sixteen; working as barman at the Birchenough Bridge Hotel, in the then, Southern Rhodesia. Small, sort of sad-looking colonial stopover, built from tin and bricks on the west bank of the River Sabi.

From the manager down, by ten in the morning, we were all drunk, but we blamed the heat. Gin and tonics and beer were our salvation, and boy oh boy by ten o’clock it sure was hot. We were, all of us, somewhat weird I guess – the stuff off old books and shaky, Humphrey Bogart films; rooms with slow-turning, ineffectual ceiling fans, mahogany dining room chairs that creaked but never broke, white waiters’ suits and though always starched and shiny, worn to bare cotton bones around the collars and cuffs. Like white sharks the waiters cruised amongst the tables, ready to lunge for empty plates and whisk them away to the kitchen wash house...

*

Ps: one more week of editing headaches. The story’s starting to shine – good punctuation is, without any doubt, the key to that final door.

*