New Year, Great Aspirations and a New Book!

Firstly, happy New Year to one and all! If you’re anything like me, your midriff will still be in a sorry state of calorie overspill. Don’t think I have ever eaten so much, though woe is me, never could I resist pleasurably produced, good old-fashioned Christmas fare. End of. No more. Not for another twelve months. I promise. At least I think so. Well, maybe…

 

 

Secondly, my sincere apologies for lack of blog content, it’s been a tough few months finishing off my second book; Empress Gold. My editor and proof-reader is halfway through and the finished article should be up and running on Amazon Kindle, Kobo and hopefully, Apple iBook by the end of April, so lots to look forward to. Have stuck an excerpt on here for you; more of a thriller/adventure novel, some of the characters you will recognise from Sons of Africa. It sort of follows on, but will definitely work as a standalone. Anyway, read the excerpt and have a gander at the superb cover artwork. My graphic design expert, Lon Chan has done me proud: a man of masterly touch and great imagination.

 

 

My best for 2013 and your occasional popping in to read my ramblings will be much looked forward to.  I value your interest; would be kind of lost without you.

 

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Excerpt from Empress Gold:

 ... Again, his loathing for what Pasviri stood for threatened to spill out. He was losing control of the Deep. Everything his family had built up was being torn apart; chopped up and flung to the Party elite for them to squabble over.

‘What about recompense? Financial compensation for lost interests.’

‘You’re alive, Mister Goddard.’ Pasviri’s eyes narrowed. ‘In our new Zimbabwe, most men would regard that fact as recompense enough.’ He nodded to his entourage. ‘Leave us. I will join you shortly.’

In the quiet, two men, both of different origins stood just metres apart. Had it been a hundred years previous, rather than the surroundings of a plush office there would have been thick forest and the discomfort of cold guti rain to contend with. Their dress, as decreed by historical circumstance would have been for Pasviri, fashioned from the skins of jackal and leopard and for Lee, a uniform of roughly woven calico, topped with slouch hat; across his chest would hang a soldier’s bandoliers, loaded with British South Africa Company’s, .44 calibre, Boxer-Henry ammunition.

 ‘In our grandfathers’ day,’ said Pasviri, ‘forgive me for quoting the Bible, but kaffirs, as we were referred to were tolerated only under sufferance, the proverbial hewers of wood and carriers of water.’ He took his time lighting another cigarette. ‘Not any more, comrade. Along with your infamous Mister Rhodes, the heady days of white supremacy are well and truly buried – forever.’

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To our Paralympians – who others thought could not, but did!

A small tribute to the world’s disabled athletes; more than most, they give of everything they have...

'Some, as great forest trees stand well above the rest; men and women of courage and forethought, those who start with little and often die with less – those who dare to dream.'

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Well, that’s it. What little summer there was has most definitely come and gone, and like some ignominious lover, left most of us unimpressed.

Watched the last gathering of Africa-bound swallows rev up their engines, lift en masse and with a final, farewell tip of their wings to us on the ground, twitter off to warmer climes.

Die-hard stalwarts; chaffinches, tits and robins grin at me through the kitchen window. Don’t forget our nuts and seed! they shout, and I grin back and give ‘em a thumbs-up. For those who stay behind, winters are hard out here in the sticks.

Already the wind is howling around the chimney pots; hawthorns and blackthorns bend their backs and like little old men cling tenaciously to sodden hedgerows. But all of this is England, my home and though the wind still howls, the world outside my study window is now at peace. I know where I stand. Without rancour, I look forward to our next snow-covered Christmas Day...

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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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Beetles, Bananas and Up, Up and Away!

Early morning; grabbed my dish and with Holly, Jones and Star in hot pursuit, headed for the garden. Purely by luck and by jumping over the lead dog did I make it to the fruit before our three, self-confessed strawberry addicts plunged their snouts inside the foliage. Managed to scrabble up half a dozen berries, but Holly got the biggest and reddest, Jones the most because he’s little and quick and then came Star – good at lifting and chasing off robbers, but somewhat lacking in the brains department, he got none. So I gave him one of mine and now contented, the four of us went back inside for a hearty breakfast.

Filled their bowls with biscuits and other bits and my own with nuts, raisins, Weetbix, bran flakes, muesli, natural yogurt, teaspoonful of honey, chopped banana and, last but never least, my impoverished pile of little strawberries. The dogs gave me their best ‘no fair’ stare and held back on the biscuits, begrudging me my berries.

Anyway, I ignored their slavering, flooded my dish with cold milk and hefted my spoon, ready for breaking through the half-inch thick, yogurt permafrost, but all was not as it seemed.

Where the yogurt ended and the bananas, like calving icebergs stuck up through the slurry, something lived and waved its arms in earnest. Got my glasses and peered into my dish. Clinging desperately to a strawberry, a single, tiny beetle prayed for a fair wind to carry him shoreward. Adrift in that arctic sea of iced milk he stood little chance of survival; with every tremor from my tabletop, waves proportionally the size of two-storey houses lashed his makeshift lifeboat and, had I not seen them, both lifeboat and beetle would have gone the way of the underlying bran flakes, straight to my stomach.

Plastered to my fingertip he went back out to the garden and on the highest sunflower seed head he stood, stretched and began the process of washing down. For that next half hour I watched him preen, clean and brush away his yogurt suit. Soon, he composed himself and then, without so much as a nod or a wave for saving his life, flipped open his cleansed wing casings and blasted off – up into the sky.

He managed twenty feet before a swallow took him. Could have saved myself the bother and eaten the ungrateful bastard myself.

 

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 Another excerpt... ‘Up, Up and Almost Away!’

... For half a crown, Gilbert would, without so much as a second thought captain a papier-mâché submarine to hell and back, so test flying Spitfire One was looked upon as little more than a flap and grunt down the hill outside Bob’s house, but first the money – or no deal. Reluctantly, Bob dug around inside his pocket and pulled out a bright, shining, almost new half crown piece, thrust it into Gilbert’s outstretched palm and threatened death as a minimum punishment should he fail to get our plane airborne. Gilbert promised his best effort and pocketed the coin. He donned his borrowed mining helmet and lowered himself inside Spitfire One’s flimsy fuselage.

‘I am ready,’ he rasped and took a firm hold on his bamboo crash bar.

It was early morning, the sun was big and yellow and a slight east wind was blowing head-on to runway two-niner. Other than the sound of straining little legs on old pedals and the rumble of overloaded roller skates, there was nothing. I pulled, Junior pushed and Gilbert’s eyes flew wider as the wind speed under his eyelids climbed to maximum velocity...

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Flight of Fancy?

I keep looking for the summer; a long, hot day or two, some reassurance, maybe sunburn even, but nothing yet. The rain just keeps on raining, the ground, where I can find a piece that isn’t flooded feels as though it’s floating on marmalade. Everything is sodden; swallows huddle as soggy twos and threes along the telephone wires and stare listlessly back along the route they have just travelled. Five thousand miles from sun to no sun; doesn’t make sense, why not stay where you are and save yourself the bother?

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From a little boy’s life, an excerpt...

... Bob’s house trebled as command headquarters, watering hole and storage centre for egg collections, fishing rods and air rifles, but this particular day we needed none of those. This day would be dedicated to the building of our first and only piloted aeroplane; Spitfire One.

Took us three days, from the original schematics done in the sand, to the final painting-on of her Air Force roundels. We built the frame from bamboo canes hacked from Bob’s garden; the wings and fuselage were covered in greaseproof paper and suitably ‘doped’.
‘We must be crazy,’ I told them, but my pointing this out fell on deaf ears. Come hell or high water, Spitfire One would bear its fearless pilot aloft, or at least glide him sedately across the lawn to the far side of the garden.
‘We need an undercarriage.’
‘What’s an undercarriage?’
‘Wheels to go underneath or it won’t move.’
We all agreed; wheels were a good idea, so back inside the house we galloped and ten minutes later emerged with two sets of roller skates, old Beano books, loads of Sellotape and balls of thick string. Another hour and Spitfire One had her undercarriage.
‘What next?’
‘Who’s going first?’
No one spoke. Squirming and headshaking we all declined the offer of test pilot. The fun had been in the building, the terror we knew, was in the flying.
‘We’ll draw straws,’ Junior piped, ‘those with long straws will be the ground crew – the one with the shortest straw will fly.’
Four straws were brought from the pantry; scissors were found, used, and the modified straws held out at arm’s length.
‘Take one.’ Junior looked at the rest of us and the rest of us recoiled in horror.
‘It won’t fly,’ I warned them. ‘We’re all too heavy.’
Everyone nodded, apart from Willie.
‘It might if it goes downhill.’
We all looked outside; Spitfire One, like a one-winged, no-engine Spirit of St Louis stood waiting in the sunlight, her Beano book double undercarriage with silver-coloured skates now ready for the runway. Midway between her front and rear bogies, a hole had been left where the pilot could sit.
‘Forget it. I’m not doing this.’ I folded my arms and glowered at Willie. ‘You think it will fly so you do it.’
Willie dropped his eyes to the floor.
‘It’s late. My food will be ready.’ He stood up. ‘If I’m not there on time the dog gets it.’ He disappeared through the front door. For the next three days no one saw him.
‘Gilbert.’ Bob suggested. ‘He’s thin and little enough to get in.’
‘What if he won’t?’
‘Then I’ll rat on him and my mother will sack him.’
Bob’s eyes glowed; Gilbert was the cook’s son, in the holidays he worked in the garden. At four feet nothing and weighing half of one of us he was the ideal trainee pilot. We could see him; almost insect-like, whippet-slim and unsuspecting, outside in the garden, watering flowers and whistling. A good puff of wind and he would disappear over the fence. We all stood up and went outside to convince Gilbert that his imminent promotion to test pilot would be his first, tentative step on the corporate ladder...

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Things Are Brighter Now!

Hi everyone, my wife and commander has just finished brightening up my blog. I like it – easier on the eyes and when all’s said and done, the old quote ‘a change is as good as a rest’ always rings true. The elephant background served me well but had become somewhat tiresome and sombre looking, so here we go with a fresh start; hopefully, the writing matches up.

Something about a little boy’s travels springs to mind...

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A small leap forward with An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa...

 ... Took me quite some time to settle in at Mashaba Primary School, but now I had friends, three of them and as a unit, the four of us became inseparable. After school, we met at Bob’s house; me, Bob, Willie and Junior, plus three Persian cats, an owl chick called Spook who always wanted feeding and whatever else we had taken into custody, rescued or traumatised via various methods of capture. Then there was Bob’s Grandmother, Granny Fleming; a dour, but lovely, grey-haired Scot who sergeant-majored the Sunshine Club on a Tuesday afternoon. Religious instruction had long since become her forte. Bob’s Mum played the piano and trotted out her music for us to infect with our singing. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and My Cup is Full and Running Over were hot favourites; and if sung with fervour would guarantee a sneak peek into Heaven, or at least give access to Granny Fleming’s homemade lemonade and rock buns festooned with raisins, cream and finally, a dollop of Granny’s strawberry jam with the strawberries still in it – so we all sang our little hearts out, devoured the buns and lemonade and piled into the front room for fear of missing Superman on the radio...

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