The Week in Review – April 12, 2025

It's always with a sense of immense relief whenever I finish up a massively intense deadline – like the past three or so weeks have been where I had to write alt text on 17 backlist titles for the big publisher in the UK I work for. Of course, invariably, with a job like this, much like the creative process in general, it ends up with the memeworthy "doing all the work while crying".

Anyhoo, I got through it – the largest title taking me more than five hours of describing highly complex bar graphs for the visually impaired. It's ... definitely a skill. But it wasn't all dull stuff. A highlight for me was writing alt text for three Patti Smith books and oh my gosh, why have I never delved deeper into her work? I do believe I'll be purchasing hard copies of these titles – there's something to be said about a creative person who works across multiple disciplines and is still going strong in her latter years. She's a decade younger than my mum. Respect.

I briefly want to talk about the whole thing with the de-extinction of the dire wolves according to the work that Colossal has been doing. On one hand, my inner SF author is absolutely gobsmacked by the science behind this while another part of me has had time to sit back and listen to other opinions. So I have mixed feelings.

These are not dire wolves in the historical sense – it's been pointed out that the animals that died out over 10,000 years ago were not actually related to grey wolves at all, but were closer to dholes. All Colossal has done is mod the genes so that they have larger, edited grey wolves that share traits with dire wolves. No actual dire wolf genes were spliced and diced, but rather certain genes were nudged in the modified grey wolf DNA (at least that's how I understand it and am trying to explain it in plain English).

But evolution is a weird thing. Case in point is the Aldabra rail – a fascinating story of how the form of the animal was so well suited to the environment that under similar circumstances the same creature evolved after the first iteration went extinct. And let's look at parallel evolution. We have porcupines in the Americas and Africa, but they are not closely related, even if they are both rodents. They both have quills, however. 

If these hypothetical dire "wolves" can occupy the same ecological niche the original ones did, then they will have similar form and function, so in a sense do behave as the dire wolves should. Nu-dire wolves, anyone? Not that there's much in the way of megafauna for them to hunt these days.

I've seen people saying we should rather protect the species that we already have, and that to have these 'de-extincted' beasts running around is unethical since we can barely manage the vulnerable or critically endangered ones we already have. And yes, I totally see their point.

Yet it is also my hope that the work being done can be applied to helping restore species that are under significant pressure. Or nudging along programmes such as The Quagga Project that has already done a much gentler job of de-exctinction for the quagga. The current generation of Rau-quagga, as they're called, are really starting to look the part.

I do, however, have a great fear that we're going to see many more 'designer' exotic animals created for wealthy billionaires who don't have anything better to do with their fancy yacht money. Le sigh.

Anyhoo.

On to books.

Mini review

I just read Knee-Deep in Cinders by Ashley Capes, an author I've reviewed before, and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this book even more than his first, that I read a million years ago, it feels like. In this one, we meet Vilas, who's the endling of his people, who were brutally murdered and used for magic potions by a conquering race, due to magical properties in their bodies – primarily their immortality. Vilas is now kept under lock and key, collared so that he cannot access his magic, and he vows that one day he will break free and wreak vengeance on the city of Onath. Yet when an existential threat looms, Vilas may very well be the only one who can save the city he has vowed to destroy. 

Capes offers well-written, action- and intrigue-packed adventure fantasy set in a well-realised world populated by a broad cast of characters. This is very much the type of story that carries me away so that I forget that I'm reading and get swept up in the action, with some nicely executed descriptions as well. I know that with his previous book I felt that there were moments where characters acted without sufficient motivation and I'm pleased to see that this time, he's gone deeper, with a far stronger-realised setting and characters. A solid read, and one that I recommend.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I read The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon yoinks and yoinks ago, and I recall enjoying it, so I was certain that when I picked up The Priory of the Orange Tree that I'd enjoy it. Her writing is often hyped and in this case I'd say that the hype is warranted. Shannon writes the kind of fantasy I can sink my teeth into, and her solid grip on evoking a sense of history and place in her writing is what keeps me reading. But also, the covers. Oh my, Bloomsbury has outdone themselves with the covers – and not only for The Priory but also for the other book in this setting that is currently sitting next to its chum up on my bookshelf – A Day of Fallen Night. These are pretty books that look simply delightful in my permanent library, avid book dragon that I am.

Speaking of dragons, this book has 'em. 

We meet Tané, a dragonrider; Ead, a mage belonging to a secret order who must safeguard a queen; and of course Queen Sabran who must face great adversity to rule her land. I don't want to go into too many particulars – this is way beyond the scope of this review, but I will touch on themes. We do have an outside, existential threat that reminded me somewhat of The Lord of the Rings in terms of the world-breaking aspect that the different protagonists face. It's a ticking clock, if you will, with it being quite clear that if East cannot treat with West, then everyone's doomed.

Sabran is very much a Queen Elizabeth figure, while our enlightened meddlesome mages with their orange tree are suggestive of our Assassins or yore, and of course our dragonrider's culture is very much a nod to Imperial China – and it's really a lovely combination, with plenty of adventuring and derring-do. And the sapphic angle was wonderful to see so effortlessly front and centre.

But...

Of course, there's a but.

While the story starts off strong, and Shannon has oodles of awesome happening, I feel that she falls afoul of the the law of 'too much awesome'. One of two things should have happened: the novel should have been reeled in and simplified with perhaps fewer subplots and viewpoint characters in order to focus more on shoring up the stronger main arcs or, alternatively, it should have been expanded into two or three books, with more attention given to fully developing all the narrative arcs.

While I still found this an entirely enjoyable read – enough so that I immediately purchased the next book in this setting, I felt that about 3/4 of the way in, Shannon suddenly came to the startling conclusion that she needed to wrap the story. Whether this was due to the publisher's deadline or a self-imposed one, who knows, but the last quarter of the story feels somewhat dashed off. She gets off to a strong start but then either lacks the will or the wherewithal to see it through to the end. And this is a big book – one I'll likely read again in a few years. The world is big enough that it wouldn't have hurt to develop this further to give The Priory a more dynamic ending. It's not a deal-breaker, but definitely a thought I've had.

As you can most likely gather by now, I feel quite strongly about Samantha Shannon's writing, enough that I'll go on a limb. I really love what she's doing, however, and I'm glad that she's getting the opportunity to tell her stories.

The Week in Review – April 5, 2025

There's a lot I can say about the world at present, but I've already deleted the introduction to today's blog once because I think I was dropping too many F-bombs.

Anyhoo, before I go back on my decision to make this post family friendly, it's time to kick off with this week's roundup...

I've not had nearly as much time as I would have liked to read, but I did finish wonderful little field guide by Peter Ryan. Yes, I'm more than a little obsessed with birds, so the Guide to Seabirds of Southern Africa is one that I particularly enjoyed. Granted, my eyes complained about the size of the type, but this is a field guide, so if it weren't the kind of book you'd conveniently slip into your backpack before going for a cruise on a ship, then it would have to be the kind of hefty coffee table book you could clobber annoying people over the head with. (I'd really like that, too.)

What I appreciated with this slim volume was how much they managed to pack into it. Not only do we get an overview about seabirds in general – and they really are amazing, considering some of them hardly ever go to land – but we're also reminded how fragile our oceans are. We are one of the reasons why seabirds are vulnerable thanks to our fishing habits and also all the awful plastics we seem to be choking our oceans with. 

But if you get past that, Ryan gives us an excellent overview of all the important species that are found in and around our coast ... as well as the ones who sometimes wander here by mistake. And I learnt a new word (for me, all right) for a type of albatross. Whoever came up with "mollymawk" deserves a badge. I may want to include it in a colourful, Shakespearean insult one day.

Nevertheless, this fantastic little book has loads of photos, and while I'm not going to tell my shearwaters apart from my storm petrels anytime soon (without a lot of handholding), I really do appreciate all the photos that will assist with IDing. I suppose I really need to get off my posterior and go for a boat cruise soon considering that Simon's Town and Cape Point are right on my doorstep, so ostensibly I don't have to go far for some birdwatching.

Bookish stuff

This past week I attended one of editor and all-round awesome person Helen Moffett's Salon Hecate events at the Noordhoek Artpoint. One cannot ask for a better environment to sit and listen to folks talk about their passions – there are always amazing new artworks up on the walls. This time around it was on April 1, and the talk centred around why certain people do the things they do (publishing, volunteering, doing book fairs) in a country that doesn't exactly have a huge reading culture. 

Speakers included Julia Smuts Louw (Off The Wall poetry), Darryl David (assorted book festivals), and Colleen Higgs (Modjaji Books), all interrogated by Helen. My big takeaway was that one needs to put your trust in the universe and take that leap of faith to do that thing that makes your heart beat faster. You might not always succeed, but when you do, it's magic.

And to a large degree, that's what I've found. If I look at my career thus far, I'm certainly not wealthy, but I've had some incredible successes that involve winning major literary awards, speaking at literary festivals and Comic Con, working with some of my favourite authors and illustrators, and of course, seeing my books out there in the wilds. It's not so much the number of books, but rather the journey that sees you arrive at various destinations. 

If you think it's a mountain that has one peak, you're very much mistaken. I liken this more to a steady climb full of false summits that never end unless you decide you're done.

I'm not done yet.

Going wide

I've steadily been going wide with my books. What that means is that I've given up on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited for my most recent titles. My sales there have been so dismal. I don't know if it's the boycott of Amazon goods or simply that the industry is so volatile what with all the junk AI books and general oversaturation. Or just that I really suck at marketing. Or perhaps all of the above. What I am grateful for is my small cabal of rabid readers who go out to buy my books when they do release. THANK YOU.

So, my books are now going to be going up at Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and all the others, as soon as their terms with KU finish up (it's a 90-day contract). And I'll also be directing folks to purchase the ebooks directly from my Ko-fi store as that's the venue where I get the biggest slice of the pie when it comes to the splits. PayPal doesn't steal nearly as much from me as Amazon or the other vendors do. So if you're looking for something to read, do stop by my Ko-fi store. I've just put up the ebook for my novelette The Princess Job this past week. I'll still be using Amazon for my print fulfilment, however, as the system works, even if it's not that author friendly. I just shudder what the print costs are going to be now with all the tariffs. But, as we say here in South Africa, ons sal maar sien.

The Week in Review – March 29, 2025

This has been one of those weeks where I really don't have much to say – pretty much subsumed by work with a pack of brutal deadlines. I broke all my previous records and proved that when I have a fire lit under my arse I can type 2,500 words an hour. I don't recommend doing it, but I still have it in me. This was for an alt text job that I misjudged the number of images I had to write descriptions for. That was *fun*. Not. But hey, it pays the bills.

 

Anyhoo, I've not done nearly as much reading as I'd have liked to. I've just been so knackered in the evenings, and honestly, when I've spent my entire day reading and editing and writing, the last thing on the face of this planet I can bear doing is more reading. Nope, I watch short prank videos on IG. And chortle like a lunatic.

But today being my birthday, I'm taking things slow. The husband creature and I went to buy some nice things at the shops and we've got a few friends coming around for tea. Which is something we don't often do. My brain is itching for me to write, and my next WiP is nibbling at my grey matter. I've got some ideas I'd like to weave in. Mostly, I want to make some acerbic commentary about current global events. But it's good, also, that I'm not actively writing today. I need a break. I'm feeling a bit crispy at the edges.

And yeah I know, I'm blogging today, but I enjoy this; it's one of my guilty pleasures. In a few years' time I might look back at these words and cringe, but for now it's a valuable outlet. I'm not so vain to think I'll ever have a biographer looking through my dog ends of thoughts and opinions. But I'm not likely to inflict my memoirs on anyone either. Haha.

Which reminds me of a a writers' meeting I once ran. There were a dozen participants, of whom only one was a teen. The rest were all retired. There was the one prerequisite man with faulty hearing aids predictably sitting the furthest away from me (he was writing a political conspiracy theory thriller – of course he was). The rest were all ladies who were either writing poetry or their memoirs. The teen was sitting next to me, looking rather wide-eyed at all the older folks, and she leaned over to whisper, "What is a memoir?" At which point I laughed a little too loudly before I explained it to her.

We all want to be remembered. Have our names memorialised on stone. But when I walk in the local cemetery as I am wont to do, so many of the headstones are so badly eroded you cannot see the names. Particularly tragic are the ones that were initially intended as shared plots, with the one spouse's details on the joint headstone blank. There's a story there, except no one's around to tell it. Or the sad little stones, choked in long grass, of the little children who lived perhaps a day or two, who were so loved and wanted by their parents that they had their names carved into pale marble with a bible verse. The parents are now in the dirt, too. All gone. And homeless people make their beds on the graves.

I guess I'm always slightly maudlin about the ephemeral nature of life, conscious of trying to pack as much living into each moment before it's gone. I'm reminded of that immortal line from Highlander, when the Kurgan tells Connor McLeod: "It's better to burn out than to fade away" – and that's kinda been my ethos over the years.

Though now approaching 50 I have learnt to pace myself. 47 is plenty good to get stuff done, and I would prefer to be able to go at a decent pace for a good few years still. I like to remind myself that Robin Hobb wrote her breakout novel Assassin's Apprentice at age 47, when she'd already written and published countless other novels under the name Megan Lindholm. So perhaps there is hope for me yet.

And lastly... Because this is a bit of a rambling mess of a post. I have been slowly putting my ebooks up at my Ko-fi shop because honestly, I'm tired of Jeff Bezos getting more fancy yacht money out of me. If you've yet to read any of my books, do consider buying one of mine or simply buying me a cup of coffee just for shits and giggles. It being my birthday and all that... 

Almost Human by Lee Berger and John Hawks

I will admit straight-up that I'm terrified of caves, so there were parts of this book that had me kinda claustrophobic in a big way. But oh, what a wonderful read. I've been fascinated by the work done by archaeologists, anthropolgists, and palaeontologists since I was a wee lass, so Lee Berger's story in Almost Human (narrated by Donald Corren) about how he pulled together the team that discovered and described an early hominid and one of our ancestors – Homo naledi – was absolutely riveting.

What many of us often don't realise when we're watching a nature documentary is how much behind-the-scenes effort goes into these expeditions of literal blood, sweat, and tears at times. Lee Berger is a paleoanthropologist who has spent many years here in South Africa studying the ancient remains of our ancestors and near cousins, and he really digs deep into how he pulled his team together and how they faced and overcame the many challenges they encountered in their work.

What I love about his writing is that he not only comes across as a scientist who knows his stuff, but he tells a darned fine story, too – a rare combination. So his writing is very much accessible to those of us who may not be conversant in all the scientific terms. His approach of sharing his findings with the scientific world at large also goes contrary to the methods of many researchers who are not so forthcoming with their research – his attitude geared towards getting as much input as possible from those in the know.

The basic story of the H. naledi discovery is particularly fascinating because not only is the species a crucial, missing link in our understanding of human evolution, but also the the remains themselves were discovered in a practically inaccessible cave, making it an incredible challenge to not only analyse the site but to retrieve the remains for further study using a scientific method.

And for once this was an opportunity for women to shine – with young women researchers being the ones who had the physical characteristics that made them best suited to squeeze through the tight spots guys would struggle with and then still spend hours at a time at their work carefully retrieving the remains.

This was a thrilling account that turned, ahem, dry bones, into something exciting. 

The Week in Review – March 22, 2025

The big news this week has, of course, been the whole shitshow with Meta having been caught out for training its AI on a database of pirated books. The Atlantic made a link available where authors can search to see whether their books have been used... And lo and behold, six of my novels and one short story anthology that contains one of my stories appears there. I'm unsurprised. I'm not even angry anymore. Just sad and resigned that creatives' work has been reduced to mere 'content' to feed the capitalism machine. 

That won't stop me from continuing to write, however. But it does serve as a wakeup call that writing fiction will be relegated to a hobby, going forward, much like you still get some people who weave, crochet, or make crafts despite the availability of inexpensive, imported mass-produced goods. I know what I prefer in my home, and it isn't made in China.

THE BIG NEWS, OF COURSE...

Some of you may already have seen the Very Big Announcement on social media, but in case you haven't, I've just been contracted for a five-book fantasy series called Fate's Scatterlings with Mirari Press. You can read more about it here. But the short of it is that a few years ago, I wrote a book called Call the Fire, which was always intended as book one of an ambitious four- or five-book series. Life got in the way, as it invariably does, and quite by chance I figured out that Marius from Mirari might just love this story, which is a queer, adventure-packed fantasy. Turns out I was right. And now I've got a sufficient carrot to set aside the time to write the rest of the epic saga, which, my dearly beloveds, is going to be wonderful. 

Moving on from Amazon

I'm a little over Amazon, and am starting to see the need to diversify where my books are available. I'll still be using Amazon for my international print fulfilment because a) their quality is excellent and b) they know how to get stuff from A to B. But for ebooks, I'm getting seriously tired of handing over such a large piece of the pie every time I sell a book. Hence, I'm slowly going to be taking my works off KU and going wide. My shop of choice, however, will now be Ko-fi for my ebooks, and I've already put my very early Books of Khepera there. Go check out my shop, and if you're looking for a starting point for my weird and wonderful fiction, Khepera Rising and Khepera Redeemed will be a fun, and rather dark pair of reads. I'll let everyone know as the other titles come available there.

Witchmark (Kingston Cycle 1) by CL Polk

This one's been on my radar for quite some time, and turned out to be every bit as enjoyable as I'd hoped it would be. Witchmark by CL Polk brings us a recognisably modern fantasy setting reminiscent of early 20th century London, where the elites control magic and use it to manipulate the world (and by default others). This is very much a story that engages with the ideas of class consciousness while also unpacking the issues surrounding countries with jingoistic, colonial aspirations who seek to wage foreign wars. I'd say this was very much a parallel with Britain's actions in India, instead it's Aeland vs. Laneer.

Our magically gifted main character Miles Singer would have spent his days in a gilded cage, enslaved to do his family's bidding. Instead, he sought to flee, by going to fight in the war. While there, he had the opportunity to reinvent himself and start fresh with a new identity back home, working as a doctor, where his skills as a healer can go some way to repairing the incalculable damage that has been done to others. 

Yet he gets dragged into conflict nonetheless, torn between his desire for freedom and navigating the Machiavellian power plays of the nobles who are always hungry for more power. Added to this, he crosses paths with a man who's dangerous to know and love. 

With themes centred on the class struggle and freedom from oppression, this little book packs a powerful message. I am definitely going to hunt down the sequel.