Kindle & Kobo - the risen and the rising up!

 

Made a second leap of faith and uploaded Sons of Africa to Kobo; need all the ePub exposure I can get my hands on before the sequel, Empress Gold pops its head above the parapet. Been with Amazon Kindle since August last year and can only sing its praises; what a ride it has been, what a great company to deal with and what hopes and aspirations have sprung from Amazon’s guidance and valuable insight.

However, now is the time for me to move up a gear, so climbing aboard a second platform just had to happen, and has, with much excitement.

As with those at Amazon Kindle, the folks at Kobo bent over backwards to get me up and running; my book is live and though tentatively, Sons of Africa is starting to move off Kobo’s shelf. Before the year is out, along with Sons of Africa, Empress Gold will be available for download to both Kindle and Kobo eReaders.

Good on you all for your choice of reading and thank you for your support; whichever brand you read from, be it Amazon’s fabulous Kindle or the magic of Kobo, I sincerely hope you stay with me – another five books have already reached the nursery stage – each one of them unique – all of them winners.

Talk to you soon – have to catch up with my design boffins about the new cover for Empress Gold.

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Wanderings or Wonderings?

Often, people ask me what drove me down that rocky road to writing stories and there are a thousand answers to choose from; most of them used, most of them contrite and supposedly clever, but the real reason? I’m not much good at anything else. And anyway, I genuinely love the art of cobbling together interesting stories; to leave behind perhaps, a trail of tasty crumbs...

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To The Sky!  A young boy’s antics in old Africa:

... Didn’t take long for me to reach full speed; reckon it must have been all of eight miles an hour down the hill to Willie’s house – our crash-out zone at the bottom. But hell-for-leather I went at those cursed and buckled old pedals; the chain kept slipping so that at least twice, my tender, teenage parts were flung against the crossbar.

‘Faster!’ The ground crew shouted and we shoved and pulled like demented rats up a drain pipe.

By now, Gilbert’s face had turned as pale as any black kid’s face could manage, but his grip on the half crown piece was unrelenting. Frozen to his imaginary stick and rudder pedals he willed the beast to fly. The homemade bamboo wings were forced upwards at a sickly angle; the skate wheels screeched and clattered over the tarmacadam and firmly fixed to the tailplane, Junior shoved for Mother Africa and screamed, Geronimo! whenever he caught his breath. Bob got a fit of the giggles and infected us all. Thirty yards from the bottom I hit my almost non-existent brakes and Gilbert wet himself. We were going in. Big style. Willie’s dog shot out from his driveway, barked his brains out and snapped at my front wheel. I kicked out at Ponkie (I know, strange name for a dog), but instead of the dog I found the spokes of my front wheel. Up I went and still at maximum thrust, ejected from my seat.

I saw things, wonderful things; the sky was underneath instead of above, sort of in slow motion. The trees were upside down then sideways-on and Bob was laughing even louder. I think at this point the wings came off and what was left of Gilbert’s plane crashed through the front of Willie’s garden.

Three weeks later, when all of the parental dust had cleared, we once again joined forces and for another two-bob, with his left arm still encased in plaster, Gilbert foolishly stepped inside our very unseaworthy home-built river boat...

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