Nate Maingard, troubadour

There's a Cape Town-based artist named Nate Maingard, whose material I first discovered 5 years ago while unemployed and really down in the dumps. He has a Patreon and a loyal following all over, lockdowns or not.

Upon a rainy, miserable day when on the way to the Jobcentre in 2015, I suddenly hit on the idea of using a patronage site to get my book out there. This was about the time I first dipped my toes into the world of KDP. I went to the site, and somehow the first thing I clicked on was Nate Maingard's song, The Light's Alive. It went up in my mind like a firework, and gave me the oomph I needed to get started.

Alas, my attempts at gaining a following on Patreon fell prey to my introversion, but this song is still a lovely piece. I have other favourites of his, including Traveller's Song (which he sings with his dad, and sounds epically South African!), and In the Shadows, which I heard and thought, 'Yes! It's exactly like that!'

Fanfic Family Effort!

Some years ago now, my eldest daughter told me about a dream she had. It turned out to be a Harry Potter - LoTR mashup! My daughter and I wrote it up together, and I posted it on Fanfiction.net, as my first-ever exercise in FanFic. To make sure I'm not plagiarising, I'm not going to reproduce it here, but at this link.

As ever with such things, the usual disclaimers apply: all characters and places that appear in the works of JK Rowling or JRR Tolkien remain the property of those authors.

A generation after Harry Potter, a strange and beautiful new pair of twins appear at Hogwarts: Tinuviel and Thorondil, halfelven brother and sister. Their mother was an elf of Mirkwood, their father a wizard from Potters Bar. Being of mixed race, they can see and do things that others can't...

Review: The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter

I saw this book recommended by someone on Reddit a while ago, and since I'm always on the lookout for African-flavoured fantasy, I thought I'd have a go.

In a word - wow! This world is a harsh one, where bloody war has been waged for generations. The magic in this world is realistic, in that it comes with a terrible price, which becomes horribly apparent as the story wears on.
The plot is a revenge tale, where a son embarks on a quest to avenge his father, becoming a champion of his people (and of his social caste) in the process. The story asks very important questions about the border between justice and vengeance, and how each can diminish the other; Also, What price do you pay for vengeance? The protagonist is willing to go all the way, and Winter has no problem showing the high price of that. It's quite a savage tale, and you slowly come to realise that there are no 'Good Guys', though there are good individuals, especially the love interest.

On the question of justice versus vengeance, I had the idea that justice is vengeance civilised and depersonalised. We seem to have lost sight of the idea that justice is meant to be, or was, about giving people their just deserts - which seems to be in conflict with the trendy idea of justice being about rehabilitation. In a society like the one in this book, justice simply does not apply across caste boundaries. To seek restitution, it becomes necessary to go outside the law. The idea of the Rule of Law (as opposed to the rule of monarchs), where even the greatest are subject to it, is one of the crowning glories of Western civilisation, and of the Anglophone world in particular - the kings of England were famously disposable!

Another point is on the nature of magic. In my less-than-humble opinion, magic in most fantasy (especially the Dungeons and Dragons franchise) is far too cheap: all our folklore, the accumulated wisdom of generations, places a truly awful price on esoteric 'powers' that place one outside the reach of the mundane. I pondered the issue here. Historically, the ultimate act of magic was the Mass, where God became supernatural food for deserving humans, and in that case, the price had already been paid by Christ himself.

I was quite interested in the Nguni flavour to the story. I enjoyed reading the words with the clicks for X, Q & C. I can't help wondering how Xhosa speakers would react to the elite titles sounding like Zulus, but I won't go there now!

New Short Story

There's a new short story on my Subscribestar page. I wrote it for the girls when they were wee, but I don't think I ever got as far as reading it to them!

Chapter III Extract, The Ironwood Staff

On my Subscribestar page is an extract from Chapter 3 of The Ironwood Staff. This is a subscriber-only post. It includes something I always thought would be pretty cool, a domesticated lourie, or turaco. These particular ones are native to forests and woodlands in summer-rainfall regions, and are a lot less colourful than the ones found in the temperate rainforests on the south coast of South Africa. They're called 'Go-Away Birds' because of their distinctive nasal call, which sounds a bit like 'Go 'way!' in English.

Spear-sword!

YouTuber Skallagrim has a demonstration of an extremely cool weapon, the Spit, from Zombie Tools. It's essentially a short-handled spear, apparently inspired by the King Chaka's Nklwa, but it also just happens to be very close to the weapon of Thengon Breakspear, from my second book, The Retribution of Thengon.

In the story, Thengon is issued a standard spear, but gets its handle hacked in its first outing. Because he's too hard-up to afford a new one, he makes do with the damaged one, and decides he likes it. He then becomes known as the Breakspear.

Said book is still in production, stuck near the end. I am still working on it, I promise.

New Free short story!

Over at my Subscribestar page, I have a gothic little piece I wrote in the early 00s (as well!), which came to me on a stormy autumn afternoon, when I saw a raven on a lamp-post while driving to Sainsbury's.

A note on something in the story: Velth Powder is based mostly on the ashes of blessed palm leaves left over from Palm Sunday. The name is something I just sucked out of my thumb. I just thought something like that would be useful against undead and/or monsters.