Sketches of an African Childhood, 1: Biltong Days

When I was a child in Africa, I embarked on a lifelong love of Biltong. At that time, we lived in a little Zimbabwean town called Masvingo (pronounced "Mah-sheengo," the sh whistling slightly). Every Saturday morning, we drove to town--a single street lined with shops of various kinds. They are all rather vague to me now, all except one: the butcher's.

The place itself contained the standard glass counters displaying meats in various states of mastication. The butcher, however... Ah, the butcher! Now this was what all butchers should look like! A massive man, towering seven feet above a small boy, his immense girth wrapped in an apron that looked like a herd of cows had exploded there. Atop his giant, carnivorous body rested an equally impressive head, the essence of butcherliness: red, round and jowelled, with an abundant moustacheless beard.

Shocking blue eyes and a grin greeted us as we entered. "Ah, Errol!" he cried in his almost impenetrable Rhodesian accent (like the South African accent, but sharper).

My father returned the greeting in his usual quiet way. The giant butcher, whose name I have forgotten, turned his sky-blue eyes on me. "So young man," he said. "What can I do for you, eh?"

The moment had come. All the way to town I had been holding the green plastic ice cream container. Last Saturday, the container had been full, growing steadily lighter through the week, until now, empty, washed, dried, it stood ready to be refilled. I raised this hallowed receptacle to the giant butcher and murmured, "Some biltong please."

He grinned. "All right then!" Reaching over the counter and down to where I stood, he plucked the container from my hands with fingers that I imagined had wrung the necks of innumerable beasts. He lumbered away towards the back, where in the dimness hung great ropes of sausage and slabs of beef, air curing under a fan.

The giant butcher took down one of these slabs and bore it to the slicer, working it back and forth as the blessed slivers fell, until at last the ice cream container was full and overflowing. The butcher pressed the lid on tight and handed it down with a broad smile. "Enjoy your biltong, young man!" I nodded and thanked him, cradling the container in both arms.

So my week was reborn. Every afternoon that week I lay propped up on my bed with a copy of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in the Mystery of the Moaning Cave. As I followed Jupiter and his gang through the Hictchcockian twists of their adventures, I dipped regularly into the container of biltong tucked by my side, and began again the cycle that drew me inexorably to the next Saturday and the shop of the giant butcher.

Many years later, I learned how to make Biltong myself. Cut strips of good lean beef with the grain. Dip in apple cider vinegar, then in a mix of coriander, pepper and salt, cloves, and brown sugar. Allow to rest for six hours, then wash in vinegar again and hang to dry in the air for a week. Slice up, or eat straight off the strip, as the original Dutch Boer settlers did.

Knowing all this now, however, I do not believe the knowledge could possibly have enriched me then. During those afternoons, life achieved a kind of perfection, with Hitchcock's plots leading my imagination, with the warm, dust-dry air off the Zimbabwean veld washing over me from the open window, and the slivers of Biltong--peppery sweet and salty on my tongue--tasting like belonging itself.

More About Sartish

The heart of my next novel is Sartish. I first conceived of him during rewrites of The Nightmare Tree, when I imagined someone who had defected from the pirates and joined the People of the Wind. At the time, this was an intriguing idea--the grain of sand that irritates the creation of a pearl.

The pirates are those whose capacity to dream has been drained from them to feed the Djinn's Nightmare Tree. Once they are "empty," they are sent to nearby islands, where they live out the remainder of their lives in a state of partial humanity.

On a few occasions, however, the pirate king Hodoul comes to the Djinn's island and barters for the life of an individual before they are emptied. His reason for doing so? To find an heir to his throne, someone he can mold in his image. He realizes that such a person must possess some remnants of their humanity, without which they are merely a drone.

Hodoul rescues Isabella Couteau, the heroine of The Edge of Mysterion, in just such a way. Before her, he brought Disagree and Sartish from the unmarked island (the Djinn stronghold) before they were "empty."

Sartish, then, is like a son to Hodoul, and for him to betray the pirate king... Well, let's just say that's its the stuff stories are made of. As to where Sartish came from, how he ended up in the Nightmare Tree and became one of the pirates... More on that next time.

Some Initial Thoughts on the Next Book

Yes, you heard right. Having sent The Edge of Mysterion, the sequel to The Nightmare Tree, to the publisher, and having had it accepted for publication (yay!), I am now giving some serious thought to the next book, which I have tentatively entitled Sartish.

Guess who the main character is? Yes, this book will focus on the indomitable and troubled young man who helped Jonah escape the Cyclops in The Nightmare Tree (that, at least, was who Jonah thought he was--he was actually a Djinn in disguise). Sartish appears as a secondary character in The Edge of Mysterion, as a kind of foil for the main character Isabella Couteau. The third book will place Sartish front and centre, focusing on his struggles after the events of The Edge of Mysterion, as well as filling in his back story.

Here are some initial thoughts, in point form.

• Sartish will be a tragedy of sorts, in which the good character that is Sartish is overcome, at least temporarily, by his greatest flaw: a refusal to believe in his own worth and goodness.
• The main timeline will focus on Sartish and the New Elder's (aka. Jonah's) quest to liberate Monvieil's Island (Jonah's headquarters) from the occupation of the pirates.
• The problem is they have no military strength to accomplish the liberation, and the People of the Wind have no ability to fight for themselves once they are liberated.
  
• Therefore, Sartish and the New Elder must seek the aid of Sultan of Zanzibar, a large island in the North of Mysterion. The Sultan has an army that is alone strong enough to defeat the pirates.
• To get to Zanzibar, they must enlist the aid of the Lone Arabian Sailor who died many years before. They must raise his soul from the City of the Dead and following him to Zanzibar, where he will vouch for them to the Sultan.
  
• Intertwined with this timeline are accounts of three other periods in Sartish's life.
• First, there is the story of how the Djinn succeeded in tempting Sartish in the first place.
• Second, there is the story of Sartish's first life in Mysterion--his apprenticeship to the pirate king, his escape to join the People of Wind, and his return to Lethes.
• Third, there is the story of the encounter between Sartish and Jonah in Lethes, and Sartish's return to begin a second, redeemed life in Mysterion.

This could quite complicated, but I am hoping that I will be able to keep all the timelines straight and consistent with one another. However, I am excited about the possibilities that this novel holds. In it, I hope to explore the notion of death in Mysterion, as well as looking at the question of goodness and what it means to fall short of the glory for which we were created.

The Poetic Process (Part One)

The mountain ash tree in our yard has been turning red for the past several days. It is such a striking image that I think I will write a poem about it. This is usually how poems come to me: through striking images that lend themselves to metaphoric thought. Since I have this blog, I would like to share with you the process that leads to a poem. I will try to update the blog along the way, so that you can see the versions of the poem as it evolves.

So far, this image leads me to thoughts of a beautiful loneliness. The tree holds its leaves long after other trees are bare. I am reminded of Shakespeare's sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

The beauty of the ash tree holds out against the winter, and that holding out somehow intensifies that beauty, which climaxes just before it disappears.

A New Poem

Snow Falls Through Lamp Light

When caught descending, it hesitates
Acquiring an impossible stillness;
Before the wind’s weight drives it on
Out of light, down to this unlit earth.

Snow is born in a higher darkness,
You shape it in perfect blindness;
Holding it in the womb of your silence
Until it breaks the border of light.

Exposed, we see ourselves, but in part:
Imperfectly caught in history’s radiance.
And then only for the span of a breath.
For when you pull time’s lightness down,

We cannot begin to resist that weight.
Not quite light enough, our frailty
Hangs back, defiant, in the wind
Or some collusion of circumstance

Until suffering compels it to reveal...
No, not to this passing stranger, who
Hurrying home, pauses by a street lamp.
He’s yet too early to receive that vision.

But even he, if he closes his eyes, can
Imagine uncountable faces gathered
In drifts across the silence of your earth,
All still, all listening, as eternal day breaks over.

"The Nightmare Tree" has won an award!

I was the last to find out about this and then quite by accident. I Googled the title of the book and found out that it has won a Bronze medal in the Independent Publisher Book competition for Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction. It was very satisfying to see, but I didn't quite believe it until I called the publisher. They were pretty embarrassed about not calling or emailing me about it. It seems to be true that the author is always the last to find out what's going on with his own book...

Another amusing detail. In its category, my book lost out to (among others) a book entitled, Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend and another entitled, The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel. It was rather disheartening... :)

An Update At Last!

Well, I finally got to updating my Blog after months of absence. The good news is, the sequel to The Nightmare Tree is done in its roughest form. At this point, following Stephen King's excellent advice in his great work On Writing, I have set the manuscript aside for a few weeks. Then I intend to come back to it with editing pen in hand and "kill my darlings." Real writing, it is side, does not lie in writing but in rewriting. I couldn't agree more...