November 2016

SQUAD GOALS HOW TO SET UP YOUR AUTHOR STREET TEAM

The Eastern storytellers!

ASIAN AUTHORS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT

RACHEL MORGAN letting her imagination take flight

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 1

ditor

A message from the

Reading FOR THE LOVE OF

Last month we celebrated Authors Magazine’s second birthday, and next month we will be celebrating Christmas. So, what do we celebrate in November? Books, of course! As usual, I have accumulated another heap of to-be-read titles this month, despite the fact that I haven’t yet made a dent in October’s. The universal problem of a bookworm!

This month, I will be sinking my teeth into the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R Ward. I have been recommended this series more times than I can count, and I have put it off for far too long. I will also (finally!) be reading J.K Rowling’s “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” which I spotted on a friend’s bookshelf during a recent coffee visit and which I snatched up straight away with promises of it’s safe return! My more serious reads this month include The Shack by WM. Paul Young, and Night Train to Lisbon

by Pascal Mercier.

I have, of course, already read The Faerie Guardian – the first in the bestselling Creepy Hollow series by our November cover girl, Rachel Morgan. Rachel, who is a front-runner in the indie revolution, kindly took time out of her busy schedule to chat to us about books, babies and branding.

Also in this issue we feature a man who has only recently hit the author circuit, but whose books are steadily building a firm fan base. EM Bosso is our Author Focus this month.

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Top articles in November include Tallulah Habib’s feature on Author Street Teams, which offers valuable insight into what constitutes a good squad, and Graham Van Der Made’s exploration of Asian literature we should all be reading. Thanks to Graham, my to-be-read pile is now teetering so precariously off my bedside table that I’ve had to banish the children from walking anywhere near it for fear of serious injury!

November also marks only two months remaining to complete your Reading Challenges for 2016! I am short 25 books out of my target of 100 and I am racing frantically to finish! Whatever your reading goals are for 2016, I hope you are having better luck!

For now, it’s time to put your feet up and enjoy our November issue.

What reasons do you have to celebrate this month? Tweet us @ authorsmag and let us know!

Melissa Delport

Contents COVER FEATURE

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RACHEL MORGAN Letting her imagination take flight

ARTICLES

PUBLISHER

12 18 26

SQUAD GOALS How to set up your Author Street Team FIRE QUILL PUBLISHING From a spark to a flame THE EASTERN STORYTELLERS Asian authors you should check out

Lesiba Morallane EDITOR Melissa Delport COPY EDITOR Ian Tennent ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION

REGULARS A Message from the Editor.........................................................02 Budding Authors.............................................................................16 Authors Flash....................................................................................20 Sallys Sanity The best of British..............................................................................22 Author Focus EM Bosso..............................................................................................28 Justin Fox Kalahari Dreaming............................................................................30 Recommended Reads...................................................................32

Dineo Mahloele LAYOUT AND DESIGN Apple Pie Graphics

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: © Gavin van Haght

Tel: 079 885 4494 CONTRIBUTORS Melissa Delport Tallulah Habib Sally Cook Justin Fox Graham van der Made

AUTHORS MAGAZINE: PO Box 92644, Mooikloof, Pretoria East Email: team@authorsmag.com To advertise online please email team@authorsmag.com or contact Ms Dineo Mahloele on 084 299 6812 DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in this magazine are intended for informational purposes only. Authors Magazine takes no responsibility for the contents for the contents of the advertising material contained herein.

All efforts have been taken to verify the information contained herein, and views expressed are ont necessarily those of Authors Magazine. E&OE

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RACHEL MORGAN letting her imagination take flight Rachel Morgan is not just a pretty face. The thirty-year-old author of the bestselling Creepy Hollow series and the contemporary romance Trouble series holds a degree in genetics and is flying her flag high in the indie revolution.

Photography © Gavin van Haght

FUN FACTS ABOUT RACHEL: Fairy or dragon? Fairy. (Come on. I have an entire series based on fairies. I kinda have to be loyal to them.)

Creepy or Cute? Cute. (I’m not sure what the context is here, but in real life, creepy is never good, is it?!)

Hats or heels? Hats. (Heels, as my character Violet would tell you, are better for weapons than for fashion.)

Music or movies? Movies. (Because movies have music, so you get both. Muhahaha!)

Are you more like Violet or Calla? Probably more like Calla, although to be honest, I’m not particularly like either of them!

If you weren’t writing what would you be doing? Um … maybe designing book covers for people who are writing. (So again, nothing to do with what I studied!)

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The traditional publishing world has lost a lot of clout over recent years, with many authors selecting the indie or hybrid model of publishing. The benefits of the digital age and independent publishing platforms such as Amazon’s Kindle and CreateSpace mean that a traditional rejection letter is no longer the knoll marking the end of an author’s career.

While it is relatively easy to publish a book, marketing and building a brand is not quite as simple. In the world of author marketing, however, Rachel Morgan is at the top of her game.

Melissa Delport was thrilled to catch up with Rachel for our November cover profile.

Rachel, you started writing at a young age. What sparked your creative mind and your passion for writing?

This isn’t the most exciting answer, but I think I was born with that creative spark and passion! I’ve loved telling stories for as long as I can remember. Even before I was old enough to write, I dictated a story to my mother so she could write it down for me. I entertained my younger brother and sister with Barbie-enacted stories, and then wrote short stories during

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high school for my two best friends. But I do have several authors I can thank for their part in influencing my growth as a storyteller. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books were the first I remember reading, and they instilled in me a love of adventure stories. Philip Pullman’s The Northern Lights introduced me to fantasy, a genre I have adored ever since.

I also read my first cliffhanger ending in that book, which was both a shock and an inspiration (as anyone who has read my Creepy Hollow series will tell you! Sorry about all those cliffhangers, guys ...). J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series taught me a lot about creativity and foreshadowing (a concept that was new to me when I began that series as a young teen). And then there’s Twilight. Love it or hate it, that was the book I was reading when I decided to take the leap, leave my master’s in Biochemistry, and pursue writing as a career. So I’ll always be grateful to Stephenie Meyer for that.

I adore your author branding – the bird and your tagline work very well together and are instantly recognisable. How did you come up with the tagline “Let Your Imagination Take Flight”?

For me, stories are all about escaping the stresses and responsibilities of the

real world for a little while. When you’re reading a good book, it’s as if your imagination transports you to another realm. That’s what I strive to do with my stories. And hopefully, if I have succeeded, readers’ imaginations really do take flight when they’re immersed in one of my books!

You hold a BSc Agric in Genetics from UKZN and have jokingly claimed that shortly after completing it you discovered you weren’t ‘grown-up’ enough for a real job, and returned to your passion for writing. Do you have any regrets about the course that you studied or the fact that you haven’t used the degree you attained?

No regrets at all! I may not have used the majority of what I learnt at university, but my degree did allow me to teach high school Mathematics for several years (which I greatly enjoyed), and my experience at UCT (which I attended before UKZN) partly inspired two of the Trouble series books. Besides, I wouldn’t have met my husband if I’d done a different degree, and that would have been terribly sad!

Let’s talk about the Creepy Hollow Series.

The world building is incredible! How did you come up with the idea and how much time did you spend plotting this incredible setting before putting pen to paper – or fingers to keys?

Thank you! The initial idea came from the name itself, Creepy Hollow, which just sort of appeared in my head one day. I knew it would be fantasy. It kinda sounded like a forest, the sort filled with magical creatures that were probably dangerous. And that meant I’d have to have characters that could fight the dangerous creatures. Those characters turned out to be faeries—the humansized, kick-ass kind, not the miniature kind with wings. All the rest of the details slowly filled themselves in over the course of several months.

You opted to release nine books in the series, following the antics of three exceptional characters. Why this structure?

I originally planned the series to be a trilogy, but while I was writing the first one, I began to think of how the series might continue beyond the third book. I didn’t decide for certain back then that I would continue, and when the third book released, I called it the last in the series,

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but at the back of my mind, I planned for the possibility of more. A year later, I was ready to return to Creepy Hollow! And not just for one more trilogy, but for two.

I had known for a long time who the main character of books four, five and six would be, but by that point, I also had a plan for a potential main character of books seven, eight and nine. Apparently I’m a fan of the trilogy structure ;-) You have also published and planned for a few Creepy Hollow novellas. Novellas have become hugely popular in recent years, particularly in the fantasy genre.

Why do you think that is, and how many novellas will you be releasing?

The pace of life is faster now than it used to be. It seems as though we’re always trying to fit more and more into the same amount of time! I think that might be one reason why novellas have increased in popularity. You can read a full story in less time, leaving more time for other activities (or other books!). From the marketing and promotion side of things, the more often an author publishes, the

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easier it is to maintain visibility amongst the millions of books being produced every year. This is no doubt another reason we’ve seen an increase in shorter works over the past few years: they can be written and published faster than novels.

I think novellas and short stories are great tools to further flesh out a detailed fantasy world. The backbone of my series is made up of novels, but if I want to explore the stories of some of the secondary characters, I use novellas. So far I’ve published one, I’m releasing a second one this month and I have a third planned for some time in the future. But it’s entirely possible there might be more than three!

The Trouble series is a contemporary romance series, with four books already published. How do you shift your genre gear so effortlessly, and do you find it easier or more difficult to write romantic novels?

I’m glad I appear to shift genres so effortlessly, since it certainly doesn’t feel effortless! There’s a reason I took an

entire year off from fantasy and wrote three romance novels before returning to fantasy for a year and a half, and then going back to romance. I think I’d find it very difficult to shift back and forth one novel at a time! Writing is such an immersive process. I have to be completely in the zone, which means once I’m ‘living’ in the Creepy Hollow world, it’s difficult to extract myself from it and dive into a contemporary romance setting. I find that reading in the same genre helps a lot.

When I’m writing fantasy, I read fantasy (or other speculative fiction). When I’m writing romance, I read romance.

Is it easier or more difficult to write romantic novels? Funny you should ask ;-) I thought it would be easier to write contemporary romance. I mean, it’s the real world. You can use existing settings and terminology. And it’s ‘just romance,’ right? Ha! Wrong. I discovered soon enough that for me, the thrill of action scenes, life and death situations, magical made-up settings, and complicated endof-the-world plots keeps my fingers flying across the keyboard much faster than contemporary romance.

You recently decided to re-brand your author identity for your romance novels, and are now using the pseudonym Rochelle Morgan for the Trouble Series.

What prompted this decision and how do you ultimately hope it will affect your career?

My Trouble series has never sold as well as my Creepy Hollow series, and I eventually realised that in order to give the romance books a real chance, I needed to put a little more distance between them and my fantasy books.

The way the online retailer algorithms work means that because of the success of my fantasy books, my romance books are being shown to fantasy fans, a lot of whom may not be interested in romance.

I needed to get the Trouble books in front of the right audience, and the best way to do that was to move them to a different name. Ultimately, I hope this will help me to better serve my readers, giving fantasy fans what they want and romance fans what they want (instead of promoting everything to everyone).

Let’s talk about your decision to independently publish. You have mentioned that you wouldn’t sign your rights over to a publisher, even if you were offered a traditional contract. Why is this?

Never say never ;-) If the right contract came along, I would certainly consider it, but it would have to be very good.

A print-only deal, for example, which is what plenty of indie authors dream of! But there’s just so much about the independent publishing route that appeals to me. Not just the higher royalty rates, but the control and flexibility. I am completely in charge of what I want to publish and when I want to publish it.

There are plenty of authors who only want to write, and that’s totally fine. I, however, actually like doing all the other tasks that are required of an indie author.

I enjoy figuring out how ebook formatting software works, or putting together a marketing plan, or tweaking the design of my book covers until they’re exactly the way I want them to be. I’m a bit of a control freak, so the indie route works well for me ;-)

Can you give us a run-through of your average working day? Do you have a set routine, or do you dedicate different days to writing, marketing and such?

I wish I had a set routine! I’ve been planning to have a set routine for years, and somehow it never happens.

Somehow it’s almost midday and I’m still in my pajamas and I’m filling in a form that I found in a new Facebook group for a marketing opportunity that’s so great it just can’t wait until later for me to attend to. And then, of course, there are those promo graphics that I must do right now, and the twenty emails I need to go through, and the post office receipts I need to file, and the sales data I need to add to my spreadsheet. And then it’s 2 a.m. and I’m still writing because, let’s be honest, I probably didn’t start until after dinner!

Okay, so it isn’t always that bad, but I definitely don’t have a set routine I follow every day. I generally go through cycles.

The closer I get to a deadline, the more hours I spend writing, until I get to the point where I’m writing every moment of the day. But then after I’ve published a new book, I’ll spend a week or two catching up on admin and marketing, and I won’t write at all. Somehow, this up-anddown, non-structured process seems to work.

You are married, but have no children yet.

Do you use your favourite baby names in your books?

Ha ha! I don’t think I have favourite baby names yet. And if I did, I wouldn’t use them in books because then I wouldn’t be able to use them for the actual babies when they eventually come along!

You are an incredibly prolific writer and in the not too distant future you will release the last of the Creepy Hollow books. Do you have anything in the pipeline that you will be working on when that time comes?

To be honest, I’m a little bit scared of AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 9

reaching that point. For so long, I’ve known exactly what I’m going to write next. But once Creepy Hollow is finished, endless possibilities lie ahead! It’s both exciting and terrifying, but I’m looking forward to choosing one of the many ideas buzzing around at the back of my mind.

Your marketing strategy is remarkable and you create all of your own promotional material, which is no easy feat! Many authors who opt to create their own graphics and covers are left wanting, because it is an art form in itself. Did you study any design courses or are you self-taught?

I am self-taught. YouTube tutorials are quite useful (and Photoshop is a great source of procrastination for me!).

You are very active on social media. How important do you think it is for authors to connect with their readers on these platforms?

While a social media presence is important, it’s actually less important than a lot of authors think. The reason I say this is because there are authors whose books are very successful who don’t have a particularly active social media presence. They keep on producing great books, and readers keep on buying them. However, it’s something that is greatly appreciated by readers, and it’s something that I enjoy, so I’ll keep on doing it. (I work alone at home with just my doggies for company, so I need some social media interaction in my life!)

What advice do you have for other indies out there, struggling to get themselves noticed?

Rachel lives with her husband and three miniature dachshunds in Cape Town. You can find out more by visiting her website at

www.Rachel-Morgan.com

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I know this has been said before, and it isn’t what a lot of people want to hear, but you really do just need to keep writing. There’s no point in going all out with marketing when you’ve only got one book published (unless that’s the only book you ever plan to write. Then by all means, put everything you’ve got into promoting that baby!).

My series only took off after the release of the third book, and it’s the same today for new authors. Readers are more likely to give an author a chance if they can see they’ll get more than just one book from that author. So my advice is to write a series (not just standalone books) and to write in a popular genre that you also happen to enjoy (no point in writing something you can’t stand!). Other than that, it’s a great idea to reach out to other authors in your genre and get involved in group promotional activities.

...read an excerpt My assignment tonight is cuter than most. He’s asleep at his desk, his cheek stuck to the open page of a textbook. Strands of sunbleached hair lie across his forehead, and his lips—which I may or may not have been admiring for the past half hour—are parted.

I slide off the window seat and creep across the room. It’s bigger than I first thought: with couches and a television arranged to form a separate sitting area, it’s more like a hotel suite than a regular bedroom.

Great. More places for things to hide.

I shrink into a shadowed corner and wait. For what, exactly, I’m not sure—the Seers never See more than a glimpse of what may happen. The boy’s steady breathing fills the room. A breeze lifts the curtain, and I catch the flicker of a streetlight on Draven Avenue.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe— There she is! With a hiss, the serpent woman streaks across the room, lamplight reflecting off her scaly skin. I stretch my arms into position and feel the prickly warmth of the bow and arrow as they materialize in my hands. I pull back and let go. The arrow flies across the room in a shower of orange-gold sparks, finding its mark in the reptiscilla’s shoulder.

She cries out, stumbles, and twists in my direction. Her black eyes bore into mine. “It’s happening already,” she whispers.

She rips the arrow from her shoulder—a move that must have really hurt—and lunges for the boy. I toss my bow aside and dive toward him too, knocking his sleeping form to the floor. He’s awake now, which isn’t ideal, but at least he can’t see us.

I roll off him and spring to my feet, just in time for the reptiscilla to throw herself at me. We’re on the floor. She buries her fangs in my arm, but I barely register the stinging pain. I hear Tora’s voice in my head: Bend your knees, arch your back, thrust your opponent right off.

I hurl my body over and pin the reptiscilla down by her throat, my free hand already reaching into the air for another arrow. I bring it down swiftly, straight toward her heart.

But she’s gone.

Thankfully. I hate it when I have to kill them. With a heavy breath, I collapse against the nearest wall, still gripping the arrow. The cord that held my hair back has come undone, and tangles of purple and dark brown fall in my face. I push them away and begin to feel the tingling ache of the reptiscilla’s bite.

“What … the hell … was that?”

I raise my eyes.

The boy is looking at me.

At me!

My heart stutters.

I mentally feel for my glamour, the magic that should be making me invisible right now.

It’s still in place, I’m sure it is. So how can he possibly see me?

This is bad. This is very bad.

A few feet away from me, the boy pushes himself up onto his knees.

“What just happened?”

“Um …” Crap, I am going to lose so many points for this.

“And what the hell is that?”

I follow his gaze to the arrow in my hand. It sparkles with its own light, as though made of hundreds of tiny white-hot stars. I can see how that would look weird to a human. I let go of the arrow. It vanishes, causing the boy’s eyes to grow even wider.

“Well, I should really be going.” I stand up, hoping my stylus is still in my boot.

“Wait.” He gets to his feet. “Who are you? What are you doing here?

What was that … thing?”

“That thing?” I casually reach behind me for the wall. “Oh, you know, just a product of your subconscious. And all that ice cream you ate earlier. Indigestion can make for some interesting dreams.” I cringe internally. Dreams? What idiot would buy that explanation?

His eyebrows draw together. “I guess that could make sense. You are way more attractive than any real-life girl who’s managed to find her way into my bedroom.”

This is not happening.

I slide my hand into the top of my boot and retrieve my stylus. “You need to wake up and carry on studying,” I tell the boy. Then I turn to the wall and scribble a few words across it. The writing glows and fades, and a portion of the wall melts away like ribbon held too close to a flame. “Goodbye,” I call over my shoulder. I step into the yawning darkness, holding two words in my mind: Creepy Hollow.

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SQUAD GOALS

HOW TO SET UP YOUR AUTHOR STREET TEAM

by Tallulah Habib

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Author street teams are the current big thing in book marketing.

Think of your street team as your personal gang, ready to take your books to the masses - only, with fewer knuckledusters (one would hope).

What is it?

Street teams are not a new concept, but the popularity of social media has made them even more necessary over the last few years. They originated in the music scene, sometime in the 90s when the big mainstream distributors refused to market certain genres (like rap and punk) because of their bad reputation. The artists took the marketing upon themselves, turning to their fans and offering incentives to those who promoted their work to others.

In the mid-2000s, authors adopted the term (and the strategy). It was the dawn of the social media age and something else started happening: more authors started using internet services to self-publish. Lulu was founded in 2002, in 2005 Blurb appeared on the scene and, that same year, Amazon bought CustomFlix, which became CreateSpace.

Authors were faced with the same challenge that musicians had been. If you’re an independent creator, who doesn’t have the same mega budgets as the big publishers, how do you get seen?

The obvious answer is: by appealing to those who already believe in what you’re selling, your passionate fans. Using social media as an amplifier for traditional word-of-mouth, authors were able to reach more people than ever before. And the best part was that fans were more likely to be connected to similar people, with similar tastes, on social media. This gave authors direct access to the markets they were after, without the need to pay for advertising.

Over the years, the idea of reaching those key people in the centre of communities has been overhyped. These folks are known as “influencers” and even big brands now compete for their attention. Famous book bloggers, Youtubers and Instagrammers get sent loads of novels every week on the off chance that they give them exposure. (Ever wonder why they all seem to be reading the same novel at the same time? That’s the publishers sending them those books and even, in some cases, paying them per picture or mention!)

As a result, people have become jaded about mentions by well-known names and this mid2000s concept of harnessing the real passion of your own fans is seeing a resurgence. There’s nothing wrong with trying your luck getting exposure from the bigger book reviewers, but appealing to the everyday people who represent your specific reader can work just as well.

How Step 1: Decide what kind of team you want Do you want a team for just a single launch? Or do you want a team that will stay with you for the rest of your writing career? This will influence what kind of people you recruit, how much time you invest and how you set up your team.

Step 2: Create a “clubhouse” You want to have a central place to communicate with your team and it should be up and running before you start recruiting. A private Facebook Group works well for this, but it can be anywhere that team members can find information, exchange ideas, ask questions, and give feedback.

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Step 3: Draw up some rules

don’t have to ask for them every time.

You don’t want a huge, intimidating list that requires a lawyer and a magnifying glass for the small print. What you do want is a simple code of conduct. For instance, Alison Bliss includes the rule: “Do NOT under any circumstances respond to a negative review on any of my books.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Please be respectful of that.”

Step 6: Recruitment (finally!)

Step 4: Set out your expectations You will probably include this in your invitation to join, but it’s worth having it up somewhere in your virtual clubhouse for members to find at any time. Being clear about your expectations also makes it easier to avoid disappointment in the future.

For example, one of Bliss’s expectations is, “Provide HONEST reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads the FIRST WEEK the book releases, which can help it rise to bestseller stardom.”

Author Karen Tabke includes, “Talk the books up and share promo materials with friends & family to spread the word.”

Step 5: Create promotional items Self-publishing company, iUniverse, suggests, “you will want to equip your street team members with promotional items they can use while canvassing the streets and stores to hype up your work.”

Some ideas they have are bookmarks, postcards and fliers. In this day and age, though, it’s more important to make high-res photos of yourself and your book covers available, so it’s easy for your team to feature you on their blogs and social media. You can take this one step further by designing (or having someone professionally design) some correctlysized website banners and social media images. Sites like Canva.com provide basic layouts for these items for free.

Make these easily accessible from your “clubhouse”, so that your team members

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The first people you’ll want to recruit are your most passionate fans - including friends and, yes, your mum. These are your most loyal core and they can check out if your rules and expectations are fair and doable before you reveal them to strangers.

Then you’ll want to recruit from your already-established pool of fans: people who subscribe to your newsletters, people who follow your blog and people who enjoyed your books. You might even want to put a paragraph on the last page of your e-reader editions, inviting people who enjoyed the book to join your street team.

After that, especially if you’re looking to make a big splash around one particular launch, you can try to target fans of the genre you’ll be promoting. If they’ve never read your work before, you can give them a free advanced copy of the book. Just beware: there can be a thin line between organising a group of fans who want to support you and “merely trading giveaways for favours,” as author Johanna Harness puts it in an interview with Dan Blank of WeGrowMedia. If your street team’s opinions come across as disingenuous, you might as well not bother.

One thing you must never do is add people to your street team without their explicit permission. Street teams should be 100% opt-in. That means that simply adding your Facebook friends, uploading your entire mailing list or punching in the email addresses of everyone who sent you fanmail is a no-no. Being a member of a street team comes with expectations and people might get upset if you automatically assume their willingness to meet these expectations.

You might want to vet your street team Believe it or not, there can be such thing as too much interest. A community is a lot of work to manage, especially if you are looking to build a long-term team. You’ll want to make sure that this work pays off.

One method that many authors use is a Google Forms application form. Firstly, if people are too lazy to fill in the form, they’ll probably be too lazy to help you, so the form acts as a gatekeeper in that sense. Secondly, it helps you learn more about why people are interested in joining and whether they’ll be a good fit for your team. iUniverse’s street team guidelines suggest you should ask for their name, email address, geographical location, social media accounts, follower numbers, whether they’re members of other street teams, what they’d do to promote your books, and what the last few books they read were.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be this complicated. The main thing you’re doing is weeding out chancers who have no real interest in anything but free stuff.

Step 7: Reward your team for their help Aside from saying “thank you” for the time and effort that team members put into promoting you, incentives are a way to keep your team active in between big launches Some authors use complex reward systems such as points handed out for each act of publicity with a mega prize at the end of every month. These kinds of incentives are a bit of a mission to run, but they do ensure that those who help you the most get the biggest reward.

Other authors run challenges or missions for their street teams every once in a while, and award prizes to the members who contribute the most to this specific challenge (for example tweeting about

the book, recruiting Facebook group members, or leaving reviews).

your book on social media. Follow that hashtag across platforms.

The most low-maintenance kind of incentive is the one that’s made available to everyone in your team. Some ideas: free eARCs (digital advanced review copies) of your books, short stories related to your novels, early extracts of upcoming work. These kinds of prizes appeal only to dedicated fans, so are a good way of disincentivising people who are only in it for the prizes. The problem is that in this case there’s no real reason for any fans to go above and beyond.

● Set up a Google Alert for your name/the name of your book to track blog and news site mentions.

Over time you will work out the rewards system that works for you. The most important thing is to avoid over-promising and under-delivering. Make sure to follow through on everything that you say you will do in order to build trust and loyalty.

Step 8: Keep it going It’s easy to be excited with your team and passionate about your latest launch in the weeks around a new release, but what then?

“You have to demonstrate the kind of daily/ weekly commitment you expect from your team by engaging with them regularly, saying thank you and sharing good or bad news before anyone else tells them,” publishing company, Ellechor Media, advises.

● Give your street team (or even each team member) a custom link to use when directing people to your website. You can then monitor the number of people clicking on that link in Google Analytics.

Before long, you’ll be able to tell which marketing methods are the most effective and concentrate your efforts on steering your team towards those.

What not to do A lot of running your team will be trial and error, but these are a few things to be certain to avoid from the get-go.

1. Don’t speak about your street team too much Even though you’re not paying cash for your team’s opinions, if the general public hears about any incentives that you give in exchange for their publicity, it might look like you’ve bribed them for their praise.

Leave it an exclusive, behind-the-scenes, club that only the most passionate get invited to.

2. Warn your team off re-shelving

Think of some ideas and events that can maintain interest in between your big pushes and add them to your diary. In pen.

Your fans are going to get excited when they see your books out in the wild, and they might be tempted to put them in a place of prominence.

Step 9: Monitor your team members’ activities and measure their success

“Jane” from Dear Author explains that this behaviour is actually quite destructive, “For each book that has a placement outside the shelving area of their respective genres, the publisher pays a fee to the bookseller.”

If you’re going to be sinking so much time into your team, you want to make sure that it’s worthwhile. Don’t just rely on your team members telling you what they’ve done. Set up some basic digital tracking too. ● Create a hashtag for your book and ask them to use it whenever they talk about

Your team’s actions reflect on you. If your team members go “rabid” and start bashing other authors, or readers who leave negative reviews for you, people will associate those actions with you. Make it clear upfront that this kind of behaviour is not okay and emphasize a need for civility in all things relating to your author brand.

4. Be careful of asking too much, and of implicitly promising too much in return If members of your team become too invested in your success, they may start to feel a sense of entitlement. They might feel like they’ve earned the right to suggest what you should be writing or to greater incentives. These kinds of fans can turn on you if they feel like you’re not delivering on the promises they believe you’ve made. They might not break your legs Stephen King-style, but they can start to tear you down in public forums and turn that passion you were trying to harness against you.

Always set clear boundaries and expectations, and don’t make promises unless you’re certain you’ll be able to follow through on them.

5. Don’t lose hope if there’s no immediate payoff Building up a loyal and dedicated street team requires a lot of time and energy before you see any benefit. You need to keep at it, and earn your team’s loyalty, before you see the financial gain.

There’s a rhyme and reason to how books are displayed in shops, and interference by fans might do more harm than good.

3. Don’t tolerate “rabid fan” behaviour

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 15

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budding AUTHORS

Here at Authors Magazine we celebrate Authors young and old! Our Budding Writers section is a showcase of young talent across the globe. We accept poems and stories from children aged 5-12. To submit, please contact us through our website.

The Adentures of a Leaf Hello, I am a Maple leaf. I live in a huge, hollow Mapel tree full of my brothers and sisters. My Maple tree lives in a place called St Mary’s. All my brothers and sisters decided to name our tree The Maple. The Maple was planted behind a huge building called Chapel. Every morning I looked at a big cross that had a man on it. I always wandered if he was real or not. Is he? On a Tuesday I love watching all the girls in blue and white dresses go into the chapel.

Tonight was a disaster!!! I was blown away to a garden. In the morning when I woke up a blue and white monster picked me up! She took me to a big, blue, noisy place. Then she put me on a table, I was so scared because I thought I was going to be eaten! Just then they put a huge white thing on me then rubbed me with a big, blurry red thing. It really tickled but I was still scared.

When they took the white thing off me another blue and white monster put me in a bush.

Another raining, thundering storm came and blew me away. The next sunny morning I woke up more scared than ever but I saw the most weird things.

They were wiggling in water. When they got out I saw they were girls. I thought they were really fascinating.

A few minutes later the wind blew me away. I was so scared of what was going to happen next that I fainted. I woke up because I could hear the sound of cheering. So I looked up and discovered that I was in the shade of The Maple and it was my brothers and sisters who were cheering. I was so happy that for the whole day I told my story.

Isabella Alves, Age 9

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 17

flame

from a spark to a

by Melissa Delport

A new player has emerged in the SFF market – a publisher which operates unlike any other. Fire Quill Publishing (FQP) was borne of one woman’s desire to bring speculative fiction, especially that written by South Africans, to the masses.

Founded by Erika Bester in 2014, the publishing house has grown considerably over the past two years. An accomplished author herself, Erika keeps her finger on the pulse of the latest marketing trends, and blends the traditional publishers’ marketing strategy with an indiecrossover style of branding that is paying off in spades.

Erika is best known for her Dragonian Series books, written under the name Adrienne Woods. Carlyle Labuschagne, the company’s co-founder, has a list of accreditations of her own.

The author, who also writes under a range of pseudonyms, is well-known as the founder of SAIR Book Fest. She paired up with Erika in the early stages of Fire Quill’s development and the dynamic duo have been working together ever since.

According to Erika, Fire Quill is looking for speculative fiction that has excellent story, unforgettable characters, and plotdriven premises. As long as we fall in love with your characters and can’t wait to turn those pages, you’ve found the right publishing house for your book. We do consider all genre submissions – from fantasy right through to historical fiction.

How did FQP come about?

My personal experience as an author trying to operate on an international scale wasn’t a good one. It’s a nightmare trying to deal with people online only. It lacks the personal connection, the sitting down for a cup of coffee, talking through your concerns, etc, and it’s not a great start for

18 | AUTHORS MAGAZINE

any author who wishes to publish a novel traditionally.

How did you meet Carlyle and why did you elect to go into business together?

We met through mutual friends and it was a publishing match from day one. We each have different strengths and bring a different dynamic to the table. We learn from one another, and, in my opinion, make the perfect team. I couldn’t have chosen a better person to go into business with!

What do you ultimately hope to achieve with FQP? As our logo says, “authors are our

business, books are our passion”. We want to publish amazing stories and nurture happy authors. As a businesswoman, I would like to expand the FQP Brand.

In the future we will be expanding our services to design, as we have a wonderful designing team on board. FQP Design will become part of their daily duties, helping indie and hybrid authors with beautiful covers and professional layouts etc. We are also working hard on subsidiary rights networking and have a few manuscripts in the hands of executive producers.

Once we have sold the rights to our first screenplay, we will make it public. We are also excited about the opening of Fire Quill U.S, which will operate out of the U.S.A. There are mountains of legal paperwork to get through, which takes time, but we are overcoming obstacles on a daily basis and making useful connections who are assisting us to expedite the proceedings.

We have been so very blessed and over the next ten years we plan to grow from an independent small press publisher to a fully-functional international publishing house.

children’s novel coming soon. It’s called Lumin and is an incredible story, encouraging children to see with their hearts rather than their eyes, and the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. I’m looking forward to this one.

Just off the Path, written by Wes Sullivan who lives in the USA, is a beautiful retelling of Hansel and Gretel, and other popular fairy-tale characters. There are so many twists in the tale and outcomes you simply don’t see coming. I love this story so much I can’t wait to share it with the world.

Are there any exciting releases we can look forward to in upcoming months?

So many! We have our first illustrated

We also have Moonbeam, the first of the Dragonian Series spin-off tales scheduled for release on December, Secret Love, the second novel in the 4Ever series releases in December, and Hinder, the first in a paranormal series entitled Guardian of Monster, which will have a total of twenty-one novels under its umbrella, coming out soon.

Another hilarious rom-com, It had to be You, written by South African author Melissa Kate and which had me in stitches, has also recently been signed.

In publishing there truly are too many books and not enough time, but I’m very excited about all of our up and coming titles.

Fire Quill Publishing is located in sunny South Africa. They strive to only publish and distribute pre-eminent novels, and work to offer superb marketing services to authors. Each division is run by a team of experts in their respective fields in order to make your experience in the publishing industry as fun and exciting as possible, whilst still offering the highest quality and professionalism.

Fire Quill Publishing operates internationally, and supports international authors. Please visit their website www.firequillpublishing. com for more information

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 19

The Tavern on Trobex

In the Beginning

By Kathy Strapp

By Helga Pearson

The First engineer on the starhopper, ’ Serenity’, was human, female, and gorgeous.

We had just completed our mission and it was party time on Trobex. Our captain was a Dometrian, complete with spikes and blue skin. He was a hard man, but fair. He had a tankard in one huge fist, as he told a bawdy story about a capture on the planet Rhees.

The crew were gathered around, laughing. One unipod was already tipsy. The water tank had been set up for the splashing Aqua crew.

The fliers were perched on struts above the bar, already becoming unruly.

The captain handed First a cup.

“Tell us your story Human. What’s a nice girl like you doing on Trobex?”

“I was kidnapped on Earth”. Her tone was matter of fact.

“They never told me where I was. The people set up an entire Earth-like city for me.

The men were incredibly handsome and attentive, and soon I was in love.”

She paused for a long swallow from her cup. Her eyes were remembering the past.

“I thought I was in heaven! I was given elaborate gifts of jewellery and clothing. I assumed I would live there forever.”

“What went wrong”? Asked the ship’s cook, his beak was open in anticipation.

She gave a bitter laugh.

“It seems that on that planet, the men bear the children. It is a place where children are rare and precious. They needed a human to breed with and my lover was pregnant.”

With a wry grimace she concluded.

“I was drugged and shipped off their planet like baggage. When I woke up, there I was, in a bed at Starhoppers International. They had never seen a human before.

So they trained me to join the starhopper Fleet, and here I am!”

Then she bought a round for everyone.

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I’m remembering Billy’s face. I’m not sure why. Why now? In my head, he’s always smiling at me, with those goofy, yellow teeth and watery eyes. Shit don’t feel right man, lying here on the floor in some dirty bathroom with the smell of piss and Kleen Green ruining my high.

Why am I thinking of Billy? I look at the needle in my arm, dangling from my vein, smeared with blood. My blood. It’s messed up, it’s all messed up. But I can’t stop the pictures coming. There we are, sitting on the cinder block wall behind my house, Billy and me, just kids swapping lies about how great are. From his back pocket, he pulls out that hash roach, no bigger than my thumb and lights it. Billy takes a drag and hands it over to me. That very first hit, the one that made all fear and the pain go away. “Thanks Billy.” That’s what I said - that’s what I say now through numb lips as it all goes cold and I begin to shake uncontrollably.

Every month we feature 250 word flash fiction pieces as submitted by our readers. If you would like to submit a flash fiction, please email us with “Flash Fiction Submission” in the subject line.

Ashes to Ashes

The Creep

By Charmaine Theron

By Peter Holliday

The wind howls and the trees bend unwillingly. The sun gathers speed and rises above the summit, scarring the unblemished blue of the sky with crimson tears. Below a craggy mountain almost touches the heavens above. Here a deep cave lies, concealing the eternal ashes – undisturbed for over a hundred years.

I’m late for math again. I get the look from Creep; anger over understanding equals exasperation. The class sniggers. In front Lorraine whips her head around and they stop. I’m an Aspie and new to this school. I get lost at school at least twice a day.

Beneath the ashes a minute spark ignites, sending wisps of smoke up into the stuffy air. The ashes breathe. Rising.

Falling. Tails of smoke twirl and dance, and out of the ashes rises a fiery creature.

At the base of the mountain stands a man – waiting. The sun is now high above him. Perses shifts his position and shields his eyes from the glare. Turning to the ridge, he climbs the forgotten swathes and weaves his way toward the cave.

Outside Perses hesitates, then steps through the opening.

His heart beats faster; his brow glistens with sweat. No matter how many times he has been at the resurrection, the exhilaration and fear overpower him. He edges closer, reaches out his hand and holds his breath.

The Phoenix watches the man intently with sapphire-blue eyes. Perses exhales – he has made the connection. He lowers his hand, reaches inside his pocket and pulls out an Amber Stone.

Suddenly the trust is broken. The Phoenix beats its flaming wings and screeches. Perses hurls the stone which hits it squarely in its chest. Cold ashes fall to the ground.

Perses swivels on his heel and looks briefly over his shoulder, satisfied.

This time it was easy

“Take your seat,” says Creep.

I hold my books in the crook of my left arm and with my right hand I clutch onto my grey longs; hand me downs from my brother Rob and still a size too big. And Mom has bought me the biggest and oldest cell phone on the planet: ‘The Brick.’ It is all she can afford. The only place I can put it is in my right trouser pocket. Forget about Aspergers, gravity is now my biggest enemy.

I walk towards my desk, Lorraine holds out her hand and smiles.

Love takes over and with my right hand I give her’s a squeeze.

Led by ‘The Brick’ my pants fall with a thump around my ankles.

I follow them to the ground a moment later. My books scatter and Liane Holliday-Willy’s, ‘Pretending to be Normal’ falls the furthest. I crawl after it. It’s my Bible.

At the same time I try hitching my pants up. My phone rings. I lose it and tear the thing from my trousers. I fling it–anywhere.

It hits Julia Menzies left breast and then lands at Creeps feet, still ringing.

Lorraine takes me to my safe place, a broom closet near the staff room.

It’s morning. Lorraine, Julia Menzies and Julia’s mom meet me at the school gate. They hand me a shopping bag. Inside is a pair of grey longs–school uniform.

“They should fit,” says Mrs. Menzies.

There’s another box inside. Oh my God it’s a tiny Nokia!

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 21

by Sally Cook

THE

BEST OF 22 | AUTHORS MAGAZINE

BRIT

TISH

So I’m pretty hard on Britain. With good reason at times: the relentlessly drippy weather, the lack of space - indoor and out - the stiff upper-lipped locals with toxic teeth, health and safety hypersensitivity, wayward-wheel supermarket trolleys, the deafening Heathrow flight path. I bang on a lot about how different life is on mud island. And it is. No big revelation there, innit. But there is good. I do enjoy many things about life here. I thought I’d share the best of Britain, from a Saffa’s perspective: 1) The NHS. Ok, so the National Health Service here is like Marmite.

People either love it or hate it. It’s mostly the migrants like us who love it. And it’s the locals who think it’s shite because they’ve got nothing to compare it to. In my opinion, the fact that the state pays for all of your medical treatment – whether it’s a bunion, a boil or a baby – is bloody (no pun intended) marvellous. Coming from a third-world country with no state-funded healthcare to speak of and a medical aid industry that makes a killing (pun intended) from the middleclass it’s a no-brainer for us to embrace a state-funded service that gets it right most of the time.

2) Security. This one is bound to be raised. Or not raised is more apt in this context. The absence of burglar bars, firearms, alarms, panic buttons, razor wire, armed response, electric fences, guarded entry, gated communities. It’s not to say that crime doesn’t happen here. Of course it does. It’s just not in your face all the time. People don’t live with a panicked vigilance to crime. It’s refreshing to sleep with the windows wide open. I creep downstairs in the early hours often. But it’s to check that I didn’t leave the oven on. Not to see whether there’s human-shaped shadow lurking in the darkness.

3) History and tradition. The Brits do love to bask in a significant historical moment. They go positively ga-ga for a bit of pomp and ceremony. With bunting and a wind-band, of course. Buildings and architecture are revered, as are statues and monuments. And everything is old. Like proper old. We’re talking centuries old. There’s a real passion for history here.

And how it impacts today. It’s pretty cool to have such a sense of respect for the bygone era and the diligent preservation of historical artefacts to share with future generations. I mean a woman recently who received a 7-month prison sentence for urinating on a war memorial while she was on bail after urinating on it before. Actual jail time she’s getting. With robbers and abusers and murderers. This war memorial is that important, and rightly so. In SA, we seem to be smashing or burning ours. Makes for a nice change.

4) Parks and recreation. It has to be said that there’s nothing more pleasant than a well-manicured bush in a park full of well-manicured bushes.

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With flowers and fountains. It’s all so civilised. The children’s playgrounds are immaculate no rust or ramshackle. The sand gets combed daily by the council.

Climbing frames, zip-liners, pirate ships – it’s all here. For the children. And for the adults? All the wifi, coffee and cake you can debit your card at.

5) Walking culture. In South Africa we drive everywhere. Here, we walk - to town, to the park, to the river, to the station, to the pub, to the hairdresser. To a curry night with the girls, or a braai with mates, it’s just what people do.

And you don’t need pepper spray or a walking buddy either. I march home on my tippy-toes (for those who’ve seen me walk) from the station, along the river, under the bridge and I don’t look over my shoulder once. I used to, every 10 seconds, until I released that I’d become the threat. To other people, who had started to give me a very wide berth. A twitchy white woman with a spastic neck lurching forward and backward in a nervous gait must’ve been a pretty scary sight.

6) Education. State schools are free. And depending on where you live, they’re good. Really good. The teachers work hard. They don’t get paid like someone in Zuma’s cabinet, but then they’re not on the breadline either. Education is proper here. It’s competitive, in the classroom and out. I’ve mentioned

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before about how my daughter is 4 and she can read. She’ll be doing my tax return in a year or so. I do worry though about where the play went. And the sports. But this is what the world looks like now. And unless I homeschool my kids - which is about as likely as Donald inviting Syrian or Mexican refugees to take up permanent residence in Trump Towers - I go with it and hope for the best for my kid’s education. Which is pretty much my own attitude to my own education all those years ago. The point is - with a British education it’s not going to be long before my children will be a lot more clever than me. Without Google backup.

other neighbours – you’ll need a car. Here if you don’t have a car it just means you live in London.

Trains, tubes, buses and taxis are how people get around. It’s safe.

Mostly. Unless you’re on a night tube and someone vomits. That’s never safe. It’s reasonably priced, too, especially when you consider what it costs to own a car: petrol, road tax, MOT, licensing, services and parking. And it’s extremely convenient. Unless someone decides to off themselves on the tracks and there’s a moerse mess and an even bigger delay. Then it’s pretty inconvenient. But all in all, the public transport infrastructure in the UK is fantastic.

7) Inflation of 0.5%. And I’m only using this in terms of groceries because what do I know about anything else, really. So grocery prices very seldom increase dramatically. The consumer price index is low. They take the cost of food very seriously here. You pay for bread and milk pretty much what you paid a decade ago.

Even petrol doesn’t really change dramatically in the way that we’re used to seeing down South.

9) Online retail. I shop for my groceries online and a cheerful chap wheels them into my kitchen in very handy demarcated freezer, fridge and cupboard compartments. Every week. At a time that I choose. He’s polite, yet professional. He never accepts the tea and chat that I proffer. But he’ll always check that my plums are firm, my baps haven’t been squashed and my eggs aren’t cracked. From clothes to camping pegs, beds to braai accessories - we even order plants for the garden online. There is nothing that can’t be delivered to your door. And if it’s broken/wrong/late or you’ve simply changed your mind, you can return it. No one gives you grief or charges you for stuffing up a size or making ridiculous fashion choices after you’ve had too much vino and decide a midnight retail

8) Public transport. In South Africa if you don’t have a car, you’re pretty stuffed. Unless you live and work from home, buy your groceries from the supermarket that’s next door, all your mates live on the same street, the beach is around the corner and the doctor/ dentist/pharmacist are your

binge is a good idea. And no one steals your stuff. Even a big shiny parcel that the postie leaves on your doorstep with direct street access. Discovering a parcel propped up against my door ready and waiting is a thrill that never gets old. Like having my melons assessed for bruising or my rump delicately handled by the everfaithful supermarket deliveryman.

Never gets old.

10) The humour. It’s not for everyone. But to me the British humour is hilarious. From sarcasm and sexual innuendo to intellectual wit and banter with deadpan delivery – I love it all. Ok so I’ve got a pretty low bar. I laughed until I cried watching Bridesmaids and I think I may have wet myself a little when I watched American Pie and The Hangover. But the British do it best for me. You know how

I feel about Ricky Gervais. British comedy is funny when it’s clever, and funny when it’s not. I laugh a lot here, and that’s a good thing.

As Charlie Chaplin famously said: “Through humour, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant.” So I’ll just go with that. *Originally published on So Many Miles From Normal

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 25

The Easte The Eastern part of the world holds an exceptional amount of fascinating tales, many of which Western audiences may never know about.

When mentioning Asian literature to people, an image of black-and-white drawings and over-the-top stories of high-school kids often pops into their heads. Stories from this part of the world aren’t all manga, anime, or even dragons with wise monks, as many may think. In fact, there’s a rich, deep culture of storytelling just waiting to be read.

Fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, should be looking to tales from the East for their reading piles.

These stories are not only break out of conventional Western tropes, but give the reader an entirely new way of storytelling and breathtaking wordography.

Liu Cixin Liu Cixin is considered to be one of the best modern hard science fiction writers and he’s the first Asian recipient of the Hugo Awards for Best Novel. He focuses on scientific accuracy and technical details above all else, though they do contain a mix of the extra-terrestrial as well.

His most famous work, The Three-Body Problem, was originally published in 2007 and translated in 2014 by Tor Books. Being the first part of a trilogy, the book pulls together the tale of dying civilization that intends to invade Earth, the first contact with Earth, as well as a video game in the present day.

Cixin has been publishing short stories since 1998 and novels since 2002.

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storyte

ASIAN AUTHORS YOU SHO Hideyuki Kikuchi

Looking at the lighter side of science fiction, Hideyuki Kikuchi presents worlds filled with vampires, werewolves, and all manner of monsters. His tales may not be scientifically accurate, but they do meld both fantasy and sci-fi in the most glorious of ways.

Kikuchi is mostly known for his Vampire Hunter D series of novels, which have also been adapted into video games, anime, and manga. The series takes place in the year 12000 AD and beyond. Earth was ravaged by war, but the vampires rose up to save humanity, well enslave them, really. After many years of rule, the undead fiends (calling themselves Nobility) have begun to die out and their numbers are dwindling.

Protagonist D, a half-human half-vampire, is on a quest to hunt down and slay the creatures that once referred to themselves as nobles.

The Vampire Hunter D series consists of 26 core novels with almost none of them connected. Instead, they all tell their own tales about the mysterious D and his quest to save humanity, whether he’s saving the daughter of a businessman or journeying to a floating town. However, each book does contain a glimpse about the character’s past, his lineage, and the famed Count Dracula.

Besides the Vampire Hunter D series, Kikuchi has also written several lesser-known works.

The first of these is the Demon City series,

ern

ellers!

OULD CHECK OUT

by Graham van der Made which includes Demon City Shinjiku and Wicked City -- both of which have been turned into famous anime movies.

The final series is Treasure Hunter, which is a supernatural take on treasure hunting. Think of Indiana Jones, but instead of Harrison Ford playing the titular character, it’s a Japanese school girl. Ford in a girl’s school uniform is quite the image.

Kaoru Kurimoto

Taking a turn from science fiction to fantasy is Kaoru Kurimoto. Before her death in 2009, she had managed to pen over 400 novels. It kind of makes you wonder if she had time for anything else in her life.

Her most well-known series, The Guin Saga, comprised of 130 of those 400 written books, with three of them published post-mortem. The Guin Saga follows the amnesiac warrior, Guin, who somehow has a leopard mask magically affixed to his head. The mysterious warrior has no idea about his past or the world he is in, but must try to figure it out.

The series has been adapted into audio dramas, manga, anime, and is often compared to The Lord of the Rings.

Under publisher Vertical Inc, it was translated into English, but only the first five volumes with no word on the rest.

Other works in Kurimoto’s stable includes the likes of Makai Sui Koten, a Cthulhu-style series which has Lovecraft’s gods battling those of Japan, and Makyou Yuugeki Tai, a series that bridges the former and Guin Saga books.

Koji Suzuki Remember The Ring, that movie about a VHS tape (actually, remember VHS tapes?) that, when watched, the viewer would be killed in seven days? Well, that horror movie is actually based on a series of novels written by Koji Suzuki.

The Ring series of books are Suzuki’s most well-known works with the first novel centered around Kazuyuki Asakawa, his wife, and their child. Yes, the VHS tape is still integral to the plot, but the circumstances surrounding it as well as some of the darker subject matter (such as rape and crushing someone with stones) make this a different experience. It’s not for the squeamish reader.

Another of his well-known works, the short story collection Dark Water, was adapted into both Japanese and American films. The stories are all connected by the theme of human atrocities, rather than the paranormal.

Suzuki has gone on to win a number of awards and nominations for his works, such as his 1998 nomination for Loop and this 1990 Japan Fantasy Novel Award for Paradise.

Ken Liu The only author on our list that isn’t living in his country of birth, Ken Liu is an American-based science fiction and fantasy writer, but draws from his heritage. In fact, Liu actually translated Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem into English.

As of late, his first novel, The Grace of Kings has garnered much attention. At a whopping 640 pages, the book tells the tale of two unlikely heroes as they rise up against an oppressive emperor and deal with the fallout. The book even references the historical Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Liu has won an incredible number of awards, especially for his range of short stories, and is the recipient of Nebula, Hugo, and Theodore Sturgeon awards.

As Liu (and most other authors in this article) has shown, Asian authors have started gaining notoriety with readers outside of the territory, with some winning the more popular Western mainstream awards. Even with recognition, many of these books are passed over by general Western audiences, which is a shame.

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 27

AUTHOR FOCUS

EMBOSSO

by Melissa Delport EM Bosso has always loved writing, so the story goes, but until recently his life went on a myriad of odd and strange directions. This may well account for his unique perceptions and ability to build characters that relate on an emotional level.

His first true writing endeavor, although loved and locally a success, caused much pain for his parents as they sat in the high school dean’s office trying to explain that underground newspapers are covered under the first amendment and that censorship should be frowned upon. Sadly, civil rights such as freedom of speech end at the High School doorway when you are only 17.

Undaunted, but really more focused on a budding baseball career, EM continued to practice his writing skills on any lovely lady that would accept his literary attention. For what greater purpose is the written language than to woo women? The path from love letters to a full blown novel was wrought with false trails and roadblocks. His path took him from a shoulder injury that ended his baseball dreams to a varied number of unique but questionable jobs and of course marriage and children.

Excerpt from...

Where do his idea and beliefs come from? During his varied careers he has been a shoe salesman, nuts and bolts stacker, telephone company representative, computer system designer, youth minister, lobbyist for disabled Americans, business banker, VP for a large US bank, stock broker and an independent financial advisor, all of which built a knowledge base of human behavior and experience that becomes grist for believable and relatable characters.

“Let me tell you this story, and then I promise, I’ll be as clear as I possibly can be.”

FBoM

If you ever sit down and have the opportunity to ask EM Bosso why he writes (and we strongly recommend you bring him a strong cup of coffee if you want him to like you) you’ll find the answer has little to do with money or sales. He’ll proudly tell you one of his greatest accomplishments came from his first novel SMAFU (Situation Married All F’d Up) when he received his first reader email - when a fan took the time to thank him for writing a book that quite possibly saved her marriage, EM knew the book was a success even if it never sold another copy.

“Fine... talk. I’m listening.”

His Current Novel FBoM (Foundation for the Betterment of Man) from the Eyes of Justice series is making waves and starting conversations. He deals with a topic as sensitive as rape in a very graphic and honest way. It’s brutal and in your face; it makes you feel the emotions and fears, the anger and shame, and hopefully make you talk and take action.

When you finish a novel by EM Bosso, he hopes you were entertained, but more importantly… he hopes he has made a positive change in your life.

In the neighborhoods, the roaming gangs of thugs would burst into homes, pull out women and girls and rape them in front of their husbands, brothers and neighbors. Granted, it was a brutal time, and it wasn’t the first time Sicily had been conquered. They should have been used to it, known what to expect. For some unknown reason, the people of one particular neighborhood finally had enough. In secret, they formed a group to offer protection and vengeance at a moment’s notice. It became known to the Normans

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“There is a legend, from back in the early days of Sicily during the Norman invasion in 1061. The French stormed their towns, looted their treasures, subjugated their people, raped their women and acted like the animals they were.

that this particular neighborhood was not a good place to hunt. There were plenty of other, less dangerous hunting ground. Plenty of other women that weren’t protected.

Other neighborhoods followed, learned, defended. There were never protracted battles, never face to face meetings.

But they tracked the Normans down that had hurt their women. Hunted them. Singled them out, isolated them and extracted their revenge one by one. Although the Normans continued their war, maintained their control, eventually they quit brutalizing the women of Sicily. The price was too high.

They had managed to civilize the barbarians to some extent. ** Inside a moving car there is no distance, there is no place to run or hide. Paul was used to meeting things head-on. No excuses, no evasions, just the facts. He’d learned early on that he couldn’t afford much in the way of emotions if he wanted to get the job done. His first interview with a terrorist while working in military intelligence had taught him that. If you allowed yourself to express your true feelings, the game was up. It’s why he left the military, he felt too deeply, the struggle was too much.

Now, after a day full of heart-wrenching stories; a day that flew in the face of years spent in law-enforcement, his walls of had not only been torn down, they’d been pummeled into the dust. As he began to speak, his eyes grew distant as he relived the night that would define his future.

“I was working the desk the night the call came in. The mother was panicked; her daughter had been taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t have even known until morning if the sound of a car leaving her driveway hadn’t woken her up. It took her another hour to register something was wrong and curiosity made her check on the kid. We issued an Amber Alert almost immediately, but knew it would be tough. The child hadn’t even been seen for several hours, we had no idea what kind of car, we literally had nothing to go on.

I took lead. I sat with the woman as she screamed at us to do something. Blamed us for not doing enough. I could have argued, but she was right. We were doing what we could, but it wasn’t enough.

Two days later, we still had nothing. No leads, no suspects, not even a person of interest. We were dead in the water.

I met with the girl’s parents again, went over every detail, every picture, stories of the kid’s life looking for any clue as to who might have been stalking the her. By the time that first week was up, I knew the child better than I knew my own.

She was about the same age as my oldest, about the same size, same interests.

middle of the night and sit outside my daughter’s bedroom, listening to her breathe through the door just to make sure she was safe. I had other cases to work on but I became obsessed with finding this child.

Finally, I caught a break. It had been almost a month, but a guy’s neighbor had called in to report some odd behavior. She heard a child crying while out watering her garden. The guy had lived there for years, and she knew he didn’t have any kids.

I went to the DA and asked for a search warrant, but he said the probable cause was weak at best. I sat outside that house every available minute for the next week.

Rank warned me I was risking harassment, but I ignored them. I never saw the girl. I never even came close, but I knew. I knew this was the one, I could feel it in my gut.

I had decided not to wait any longer. I watched and waited for him to come home one night. He was too careful, too cautious. He wasn’t going to slip up. I knocked on his door, asked politely to come in for a chat. He told me “not without a search warrant.” I figured once I actually got in close enough, I could come up with some kinda reason for probable cause. A sound at the door, the smell of weed, something I could see from the doorway, but there was nothing.

I pushed my way inside anyway; knocking him down in the process. I cuffed him while I searched the premises. I found her in the basement... what was left of her anyway.

When I pulled her out of one of those plastic dog crates, she was about sixty pounds of nothing. Wide-eyed, dirty, scared, couldn’t even speak. He had bruised her face so badly she barely looked like the girl we were searching for, but I knew. I wasn’t even sure she was going to live long enough for me to carry her upstairs.

My training took over, I called for an ambulance and a paramedic. I just sat on the floor and held her close until they arrived. I remember them taking her from me, I remember going upstairs. I was going to put a bullet in his head then and there, but another group of officers had already arrived. The perp started talking the minute I got upstairs. Started screaming about Civil Rights, wanting a lawyer. I shut him up with my baton. I didn’t hit him hard, just enough to close his mouth. He was resisting arrest, he’s lucky I didn’t bust his skull then and there. A few of my fellow officers pulled me back and took my stick.

If they’d been in the basement, seen what I saw, they wouldn’t have taken my Talon. They woulda let me finish the job….”

I started to have dreams and nightmares. I’d wake in the AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 29

The Cessna bounced once, then grumbled down a gravel runway in the heart of the Kalahari Desert, coming to a halt beside a Land Cruiser. I had come to Deception Valley Lodge, adjacent to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, with the aim of visiting the isolated locations of Cry or the Kalahari (1984).

I’d been fascinated by the book, in which two young American zoologists, Mark and Delia Owens, relocated to the Kalahari in the 1970s. They found an utterly remote spot where they set up camp to conduct ground-breaking research on the indigenous fauna. The autobiographical book that resulted from their time in the desert became an international bestseller and was translated into seven languages.

They lived and worked for seven years in an unexplored area called Deception Valley Pan. With no roads and the nearest civilization eight hours’ drive

30 | AUTHORS MAGAZINE

away, they had for company only each other and the creatures they studied, most of which had never seen humans before.

Their research focused mainly on lions, brown hyenas, jackals and other African carni-vores. Cry of the Kalahari is a personal story of their struggle to live and conduct research in a harsh and inhospitable environment.

The Owens’ ‘cry’, I learned, was one of despair at the ring of fences recently erected to sus-tain the region’s environmentally hostile beef industry. These barriers were destroying migration routes and choking the life of the desert.

When Mark and Delia found that they couldn’t convince Botswana’s officials to remove the fences that were causing the deaths of thousands of migrating animals, they exposed this envi-ronmental disaster

through publications in interna-tional journals. In the end, the Botswana govern-ment accepted most of their recommendations and resolved to maintain the Central Kalahari as a wildlife protectorate.

One morning, before the sky had begun to blush, our little party set out from Deception Valley Lodge (situated just outside the park), bound for the valley made famous by the book. The nostril sting of a diesel engine starting, the crunch of tyres on dry ground, the smell of dusty grass, and a dom-ing sky devoid of cloud. Giraffes poked their heads above the top of a thorn tree, a porcupine rustled its quills through long grass and everywhere were raptors: tawny and martial eagles, goshawks and eagle owls.

Vastness. Kalahari. It’s not easy to put your finger on the allure. And it’s not an

Kal

d

obvious attrac-tion. But once the harsh beauty gets under your skin, it breeds a passion not unlike patriotism, or love.

As had happened to the Owens’, I was falling under its spell.

The Land Cruiser drilled into indigo dark-ness. The last stars paled. A winter Kalahari dawn is icy, but add to it a piercing wind and a fast drive in an open vehicle, and the temperature becomes almost the unbearable.

We coursed east, then south, along the infa-mous foot-and-mouth fences, scene of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of animals in the great droughts of the early 1980s. Until the late 20th century, the vast herds of the Central Kalahari would trek north in times of drought. Their desti-nation: the waters of the Boteti River, Okavango Delta and Lake Ngami.

Prevented from heading north, the desperate animals turned east, dying

by the thousand of thirst and starvation along the wire. The fence decimated the second largest wildebeest migration in the world (after the Serengeti).

We drew up at the park gate and discovered, to our surprise, that we still possessed noses and ears, although they were as blue as the sky and quite numb. After a few more hours of hard driv-ing, we reached the dry Deception Valley, an an-cient fossilised river channel meandering through wooded sand dunes. Mirages wobbled in the heat, deceptively promising water and oases – hence the name. The temperature had risen by 30 degrees in four hours.

Springbok clustered in desultory groups, dust devils playing between them as they grazed on what was left of the nutritious grasses of the ‘riverbed’. Gemsbok walked in single file, heads low-ered. The Kalahari’s cold, dry season was almost upon the valley and

grazers such as hartebeest and gemsbok were starting to leave.

A family of bat-eared foxes trotted beside the vehicle for a while, then scampered across the pan; a cheetah scanned our trajectory from a rise. We travelled across dry, cracked earth from one acacia island to another.

By mid-morning we’d reached the site of the Owens’ camp, now deserted, and swung the Land Cruiser under a grove of buffalo-thorn trees. Out came table and chairs, table cloth, cold meats, home-baked bread.

Here the Owens’s had lived a hard but idyl-lic life, often waking on summer mornings to find themselves surrounded by 3000 antelope. They had to come to terms with big cats making a home in camp and to living a tenuous existence. But I en-vied them their Eden. It was a bitter, harsh, elemental place, but I saw too how easily it was fall in love with it.

lahari

dreaming

Justin Fox travels to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to find the place where the best-selling book, Cry of the Kalahari, was born.

AUTHORS MAGAZINE | 31

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JOHNMARRS © Photography: Jocelyn Voo