Letting Go Ain’t Easy!

At last! Empress Gold is finished – done and dusted, uploaded and already I miss her. She’s on her own, out there on the internet jostling for recognition and there’s no way back. I pretend it doesn’t bother me, but it does. Just a book I tell myself; one amongst Amazon’s millions, fighting, hopefully upwards, through the Kindle rankings. I guess that’s why writers don’t stop writing... We can’t let go.

I’ve started book number three and feel better already – going back in time to the eighteen hundreds, a pre Sons of Africa standalone (perhaps); some thirty pages in and enjoying the excitement. Delving into untold happenings and hardships has really got my heart pounding. The title is set, but as yet, I cannot tell you what it is. A tale of epic proportions, one which I hope will sit comfortably amongst the colonial skulduggeries of Africa’s great adventure stories. Got to stop, old Africa’s crooking her finger and demands that I follow. Hope you all stay with me.

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A Couple of Short Extracts from Empress Gold

Hi - Empress Gold now in final stages ( hooray!), so here are a couple of short, non-spoiler excerpts. Will keep you posted - thanks for your patience.

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'Friday. They want you out.’

‘Who the hell are you? What are you talking about?’

‘Comrade Pasviri will be with them. Prepare yourself.’ The phone went dead.

Lee stood up from his desk, his mind raced, trying to tie the voice to one of a hundred faces and while filtering through the possibilities he projected his anger beyond the office window.

‘Bastards,’ he cursed, ‘thieving, bloody bastards.’ Hoax or otherwise, like a mental leech the caller’s voice had already worked its teeth beneath his skin.

Twenty-plus years had come and gone since the death of his father, from then on he had run the Empress Deep on his own. Pedal your own bicycle his old man always insisted. Lee frowned sharply and the crow’s feet at his temples puckered with annoyance. He was forty-seven, most men would have already slipped sedately into middle age, but still his stomach was iron-flat and his resolve was that of a rebellious thirty year old.

A dark foreboding sky hung above the Empress Deep. A mating pair of Martial eagles soared in close to the cloud’s edge. The late shift had assembled at the shaft head, one by one the miners stepped inside the conveyance – then the banksman drew down the steel door and for the umpteenth time Lee heard the shrill ring of the shaft signal bell and watched the metal cage with its thirty men drop like a stone to the dark throat of the mine. Reluctantly, he brought his anger under control and picked up the phone  - he dialled an outside number...

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Second Extract:

...Roberto held the Cessna’s image within the narrow eyelet of the launcher’s sights and he marvelled at the pilot’s stupidity. With the aircraft less than a mile out from the clearing, he fully depressed the trigger on the grip stock to uncage the missile’s seeker electronics. The missile’s infrared tracking sensor picked up the aircraft’s heat emissions and illuminated the launcher’s red ‘locked-on’ light. An audible buzzer sounded and Roberto applied slight lead to the oncoming target.

Within that next brief moment, the missile’s onboard power supply ignited the throw-out motor and with a thrust speed of over 30 metres per second drove the Strela-2 clear of its launcher. Both the forward steering guidance and four, rear mounted stabilizing fins unfolded as the missile left the tube. At five metres out, the rocket’s sustainer motor activated and accelerated the missile to its maximum speed of 430 metres per second. Tethered by its thread of silver smoke the missile lifted phoenix-like above the lagoon, the rumble of its motor dulled by distance and the drone of the approaching aircraft; the harrier for the goose – the falcon for the dove.

Enraptured by his sole possession of an open sky, the pilot again banked steeply, then at a lower altitude he levelled out and dipped the Cessna’s wings, first to port and then alternately to starboard. The act itself was inflammatory, another vindictive show of the pilot’s growing bravado. He was the conqueror, the victorious hunter-killer pouring scorn upon his aggressors. Comrade Pasviri would reward him personally for his skill as a reconnaissance pilot. From his port-side window the pilot laughed aloud at the confusion being acted out far below him. It was then that he saw the missile and the laughter died in his throat.

With realignment ability of nine degrees per second, the Strela’s AM tracking sensor stayed locked on to a powerful source of black heat growling from the aircraft’s twin exhaust ports. In a vain attempt to avoid destruction, the pilot rammed the yoke fully forward, forcing the aircraft into a steep dive. That loss of control drained his courage and left him floundering; he had lost sight of the Strela, the roles had been reversed. He was now the prey; the claustrophobic child trapped inside some dark room and he screamed out loud, gripped by insurmountable panic.

The missile wobbled in flight as its on-board seeker momentarily lost that powerful central eye of infrared radiation. However, quickly it made minute alterations to the missile’s angle rate tracking system. From beneath, it found the Cessna’s downward flight path; as the Peregrine falcon might flush its prey from the sheer sides of some Welsh mountain, so did the Strela rise from below in deadly pursuit of its quarry.

It struck the Cessna’s fuselage at its lowest point, amidships of the aircraft’s exhaust outlets – detonating the fragmentation warhead just a metre forward from the pilot’s feet.

Most of the blast energy was absorbed by the solid mass of the Cessna’s engine, but to the rear of its mountings the flimsy metal bulkhead had been ripped through. Fanned by rushing wind, acrid smoke from burning oil and avgas forced its way inside the cockpit.

Flung against his harness by the explosion, the pilot was left confused and disorientated, then the violent shuddering of his stricken aircraft and the ingress of terrible heat snapped him back to full awareness.

Where once his legs had operated the steerage pedals, now, through a ragged hole in the floor a furnace roared where his feet had been – it was then, like starving wolves to the stumps of both his legs did that gnawing pain engulf him...

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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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