Writing – Page 30 – Sarah Potter Writes

Book Review: “Balthasar’s Gift” by Charlotte Otter

The Official Blurb: Maybe it was an error for crime reporter Maggie Cloete to ignore the call from the AIDS worker, before someone put four bullets in his chest. It is post-apartheid South Africa, at the turn of the century. But there is a threat to the country’s new democracy: HIV/AIDS, which is met with fear and superstition. Now that fear has reached Pietermaritzburg and an AIDS activist is dead. Maggie’s instincts are on red alert. Despite threats from politicians and gangsters, she learns too much about Balthasar’s life and his work at the AIDS Mission to be distant and professional. She is deeply, and dangerously, involved. Balthasar’s Gift continues the tradition of pacy, hard-boiled South African crime fiction.

About the author: Charlotte Otter lives in Germany but used to work as a journalist in South Africa. Fed up with reading crime novels that centred on the naked, mutilated bodies of beautiful young women, her debut novel focuses on a murdered blond gay man, Balthasar, who’s the widower to an AIDS victim and saviour to orphans.

Her novel was first published in Germany under the title Balthasars Vermachtnis and latterly in South Africa in an English language edition. Between 2008, when she started writing her novel, up to signing a publishing deal in 2012, her novel underwent fourteen revisions: three with her agent, three with her co-agent in London and one with her publisher. This just goes to prove that writing isn’t for the fainthearted.

At present, she’s working on her second Maggie Cloete novel, which is an eco-conspiracy that’s named after a rare and threatened butterfly called Karkloof Blue. Nowadays she has to squeeze her writing into two hours daily from 4.30-6.30 am, as she’s working full-time high up the corporate ladder in Information Technology. To quote her, “In my other life, I am a corporate hack, mother of three, reader, traveller, feminist and optimist. I am happily married to the love of my life”.

What I thought of Balthasar’s Gift: Firstly, I just loved Maggie Cloete, the novel’s central protagonist, and was heartily relieved when she was still alive by the last page. Yes, she’s abrasive, stubborn, disobedient, independent-thinking, impatient, rule-breaking, and probably every boss’s idea of a nightmare employee; but everything she does has a good reason and is governed by her demand for justice.

She wants the truth behind Balthasar’s death, which the authorities brush off as caused by a robbery gone wrong but which Maggie believes is related to something that runs far deeper and lies at the heart of what’s rotten about South Africa: its political corruption; its profiteering by a few at the expense of the masses, and its unwillingness to tackle the AIDS epidemic and deal with witch doctor style superstitions that lead to the further spread of the virus. In particular there’s a belief that having sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS, which includes sex with small children. So apart from Maggie seeking the truth about Balthasar’s death, she’s also searching for a two-year-old girl who’s disappeared and who the police don’t seem interested in finding.

Balthasar’s Gift is one of those rare novels that achieves a superb balance between being a fast-paced thriller and an informative read. As a reader, I gained deep insight into an area about which I previously knew little. The author’s style of writing is punchy, with her never using an extraneous word, yet managing to paint an extremely vivid picture of South Africa. And for those who enjoy a bit of love/lust interest in a story: Maggie, the motorbike-riding tomboy, is far from immune to the charms of a certain green-eyed street juggler called Spike!

Where you can buy Balthasar’s Gift:

English edition (paperback only)

African Books Collective
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com

German edition

Paperback

Ebook

To learn more about Charlotte and keep updated about her novels, do check out her WordPress blog and her author website.

August’s Guest Storyteller, Blondeusk

Bio: Blondeusk has always loved writing stories and has spent hours day dreaming of one day seeing her books on the shelf in Waterstones. On her 40^th birthday Blondeusk woke up and decided that she had done enough dreaming and it was time to take action on making her dream a reality.

Sarah says: Blondeusk, welcome to my blog and thank you so much for guest storytelling this month. Whilst you’re here, I’m going to take the opportunity to tell people the success story of your blog, Blondewritemore. As a complete novice to blogging, Blondeusk created her blog in April of this year and already has 200 followers (probably more by now!). This must have taken some hard work and determination to achieve in three months, and I know she’s beavering away with equal determination at her first novel.

The extract below is from one of her stories: a thriller about two women; a captor and a prisoner who become friends and use their bond to break free from their respective confines.

Extract from’ The Beautiful Prisoner’

The door to her attic prison cell opened slowly and Kim watched the blue plastic tray come into view. As usual the two bony white hands that gripped the tray tremored slightly which made the china plates of food rattle.

‘Thanks’ Kim said, standing up to accept the tray and smiling graciously at the timid looking face in the dark unlit doorway. The face silently nodded and waited for Kim to step away from the door, so it could be locked and bolted again.

As Kim sat down on the floor, the door was shut and the three bolts screeched angrily as they were forced back across the thick wooden door. Heeled footsteps moved from the door and gradually faded away.

Tray time was Kim’s favourite part of the day. The meal today was chicken casserole, creamed potatoes and peas. It was a sizeable portion and filled a hole within her cavernous stomach. She ate with speed in case one of her captors decided to come back and take it away from her.

After licking the plate clean she sat for a while on the dusty floor boards until she felt sleepy. Soon enough her eye lids started to grow heavy and she crawled onto the small mattress. It didn’t take long for her mind to transport her back to the night of the accident. Her brain had no other dream material and so every time she slept she relived the same scene.

She was back there, lying twisted and broken in the middle of the road, on that hot and sultry evening in July. An eerie silence had descended the road. The birds in the trees had stopped twittering and the sheep in the field opposite were no longer bleating.

Craning her neck she could see the steam vapours from the silver car’s bonnet twirling up into the air. The monstrous car was wedged into a huge bush and there was no sign of life from the driver inside. It had happened so fast. One minute she had been walking along the pavement texting her friend, the next minute there was a roar of an engine, tyres skidding across the road and she was being catapulted into the air.

She lay back and grimaced at the pain emanating from her legs. Suddenly the driver emerged from the car and staggered towards her. He was a tall dark-haired man dressed in a crumpled pin stripe suit. In silence he crouched over her and looked at her sternly with angry dark eyes. After a moment of thought he bent down and scooped her off the road with his crater-like hands. The ground fell away as they lifted her high into the air.

Over his shoulder she watched the giant boot of the silver car rise revealing its dark mouth. As he turned towards the boot, with her in his arms, she started to struggle but it was futile, her body was broken. He reached the boot and placed her inside. As he leant over her she could smell the sweet smell of alcohol on his hot breath.

The boot closed firmly and darkness enveloped her. She started to scream when the engine of the car started.

Kim awoke screaming ‘NO PLEASE STOP!’ Her face was damp with sweat and her heart pounded hard in her rib cage. This has to stop she thought getting up from the old mattress, there has to be a way out of this prison.

You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

“I never knew you were like that…”

Have any of you unpublished authors, or those published under a pen name, ever worried about what your family, friends and social associates might think about certain risqué or controversial elements contained in your fiction? Back in May, I interviewed Geoffrey Gudgion about his novel Saxon’s Bane. Since then, he’s published a most amusing post about some of the conversations he’s had with people about his novel, including one about “Shush, you know what”.

G.N. Gudgion

Cindy Callens, on the Belgian book review site Draumr Kopa, kindly asked me to do a guest blog. I shared some of the more amusing comments people have made since Saxon’s Bane was launched. Click here for Draumr Kopa.

Here’s what I had to say:

People have said some strange things to me since Saxon’s Bane was published.

“I never knew you were like that,” an elderly lady from my local church said one Sunday.

“Like what?” I asked. The question made me stop in my tracks, and the departing congregation flowed around us.

She shuffled, making that eyes-lowered squirm with which Christian ladies of a certain age simultaneously mention and avoid mentioning delicate subjects. “Well, you know…”

“No, I don’t know. What’s the matter?” I sensed that the subject causing her such embarrassment was of a reprehensible and possibly sexual nature, and my mind raced in a frantic ‘Oh-God-what-have-I-got-to-be-guilty-about’

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July’s Guest Storyteller, Richard Sutton

Richard Sutton, writer, guitar picker, sailor, one-time adman, ski mechanic, tree planter and Indian Trader; spent his young life all over the West Coast states, eventually settling in New York and New Mexico. He began writing novels in 2005. Since then, seven books and many short stories have passed beneath his fingers on the keyboard with five currently available in both print and all eBook formats from a variety of booksellers. He’s said that he writes to “get the odd voices out of my head and onto the page”. Working in a variety of genres, from historical fiction and fantasy to scifi and mystery, the range of his writing implies he’s got many voices competing for his attention up there.

Image: Deep cedar & redwood groves of Northern California used with permission of Mathew Mills — Image of deep cedar & redwood groves of Northern California used with kind permission of Matthew Mills

The excerpt below is from his current project-in-process: a Young Adult novel called On Parson’s Creek, set in the Pacific Northwest, beginning the Summer of 1967. It’s the story of what happened when a “new kid” moves out to the woods and finds some things beneath the cedars that nobody really wants to talk about. So, of course, he’s dragged into discovering who or what, exactly, is making its home near his. It’s a departure for Richard to write in first person, but quite a bit of the novel is memoir. The rest of it comes from his usual “what-ifs” sprung from ideas he had then and now. It’s in beta reads and editing and he expects he’ll have it ready next year or possibly this fall if the betas don’t toss out too many more suggestions.

Excerpt from On Parson’s Creek

A new kid at a new school discovers things in the woods that his new neighbors wish he hadn’t…

I was sixteen the first time we crossed the culvert over Parsons Creek. It was just my luck. My tenth grade school year had just ended when Dad told me that we were moving to a cabin out in the cedars. The news didn’t bring a smile. After moving almost every year since I’d been in school, being “the new kid” was getting old. We’d actually lived in one place during all three years of Junior High and my sophomore year in High School, so I’d started to feel comfortable. Me: Jack Taylor — settled. Like I finally belonged somewhere. Somewhere I didn’t have to try and fit in. I should have known it was much too comfortable a feeling to last for long. So, here we were: uprooted again, according to some unexplained schedule. As we slowed to look at the creek, I’d already started trying to figure out a new angle.

We were staying in the same state this time. Not too far from my school friends. We’d also been out that stretch of highway many times on McKenzie River fishing trips chasing the wily Oregon Steelhead Trout. At least the scenery would be familiar. I wondered how it would feel going from a school with seven-hundred in my graduating class to one that graduated only ninety-six the year before. I’d done my research on the new digs, which helped lower my expectations as my first day at a new school approached.

I was used to feeling all nervous whenever we were about to finish a move, anyway. Running down my mental notes of “how-to-be” and “who-to-be” possibilities always occupied my brain until it was exhausted. I wasn’t a typical, well-adjusted kid. Each time I approached a new school in a new town, I tried to get it right. I tried to toss those behaviors that had been troublesome before and find new ways to fit in. It felt like hitting the ground running. Sometimes this led me to all kinds of interesting information and gossip, which I would consider carefully for anything of value before finally falling asleep each night during the school week. I had developed a “new kid checklist” in my head. It was very important to determine who the major assholes were as soon as I could, and what especially annoyed them. That meant planning how each day’s between-class activity would take place. I felt it all hanging over me like a gigantic pile of garbage I had to pick my way through. Since I was supposedly used to it, I also felt a little guilty that it still bothered me after all this time. It’s not easy watching your life unfold from an arm’s length away.

As usual, that morning we were late to our own arrival. We’d overshot the driveway, so Dad backed the car over the culvert and uphill to where the driveway opened at an angle, to the brush along the roadside. He pulled in and our first view of the house was suddenly blocked by three deer, running straight at us. One of them lost its footing, skidded in the gravel and had to jump straight onto the hood of the truck. Dad stomped the brakes with a shout and we all cringed back, thinking it was going to come through the windshield. Instead, it jumped off and joined the others, shooting off into the brush on the other side.

“What in the name of…” Mom nudged him, so he tuned it down, adding, “Sheesh! Never saw that during daylight hours. Ev’rybody Okay?”

I replied, “They must have been spooked by something. Scary. Maybe we should keep our eyes open pulling up. Who knows what’s up there. Maybe a bear?”

No bear. Still, despite the jarring welcome, the fragrant tang of the Red Cedar grove where the A-Frame cabin nestled felt like a good sign as I climbed out of the back seat of Dad’s panel truck. The movers, parked between trees up past the house, were already unloading boxes and lining them up on the long, decked porch. As I climbed out of the back seat, there was a sudden, shuddering crash as the roll-down back door of the moving van hit the deck. I figured that must have been what had spooked the deer.

The house itself, sat in almost full shade as Mom and I carried the dishes and other breakables from the car. Dad stood there, rubbing his chin with one hand while his finger traced the deep crease where the deer’s hoof had struck the hood. Out through the trees, I could see where the hilltop fell away and clear, sunny light filled in between the crowded trunks. Douglas firs and a few dark hemlocks mixed in from the creek side and wrapped completely around the small cedar grove at our doorstep. It looked like an island in the forest.

Sarah says: Thank you so much, Richard, for your guest storytelling contribution for this month. I thought your excerpt was really atmospheric and I could almost smell those Red Cedars. Also, I really felt for the poor boy (you) continually being uprooted and having to start over again at a new school, year after year. I’m sure that many Young Adult readers going through the same thing today will identify with this. Wishing you the best of luck with this novel.

You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

The Writing Process Blog Tour

Barbara Monier has kindly tagged me to take part in the Writing Process Blog Tour. Barbara describes herself as an “author, novelist, cynical hopeless romantic”. She has two novels finished and published and a third on the way.

Thank you, Barbara, for thinking of me for this event.

Last week, I answered some set questions in my post for the Meet My Character Blog Tour, so you may notice a small amount of overlap in the answers below, but hopefully not too much.

1. What am I working on?

I’m taking the Summer off from writing, apart from haiku and tanka poetry, having recently completed my 90,000-word speculative fiction novel. This is my fifth novel and the outcome of a journey experimenting with various types of fiction. His Seed (or alternatively, Counting Magpies) is set in the 22nd century and its themes are male infertility, sexual exploitation, incest, love and romance, as measured against the yardstick of humankind’s threatened extinction. That all sounds very serious, but it’s not science-y or remotely preachy.

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I’ve always had a tendency to cross-genre. When I first started out, literary agents and publishers made comments such as, “This is really original and well-written, but unmarketable for a novice author” or “I really like this, but where would it go on shelves in bookshops?” or “I applaud your imagination, but comedy, fantasy, horror is just too much of a mix”. I heeded their comments and had a go at writing a straight genre medieval-style sword and sorcery fantasy novel, which had so many full reads and near-misses, I finally flung my hands in the air in despair and declared (I’ll quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus here ) “And now for something completely different!”

To me, speculative fiction is the new respectable name for cross-genre science fiction or fantasy; although some purists will scold me for saying this. Having consciously applied the speculative label to my work, I’ve felt compelled to write in a more literary style than before. I acknowledge that there’s some exceedingly literary published science fiction and fantasy out there, but such works can be sadly overlooked by readers who look down their noses at genre novels.

As far as the finished product goes, it is definitely more literary and lyrical than my other novels, although quite minimalist in style compared to other works that are considered literary. It also breaks away from the urban nightmare often portrayed in Dystopian fiction, instead depicting a future in which nature has started to regenerate without so many people around to rape its resources.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Normal is boring and I just don’t feel driven to write about everyday things. Of course, it’s impossible not to include them in a novel, or readers would have no frame of reference to draw upon, but I’ve always loved “what-if” novels set in the future or in a fantasy kingdom. You see, I’m not very adventurous myself in real life; on the other hand, my imagination is huge and extremely adventurous. Up to the age of thirty-six, I daydreamed during every spare moment. Then I decided to write my first novel and pour all those daydreams into something more constructive, rather than releasing them into the ether. The first draft of my first novel — a time travel romance — received a publisher rejection containing the word “promising”, which was sufficient praise to spur me on; although sometimes I still blush at the memory of sending out an unedited first draft to a publisher.

4. How does my writing process work?

Writing straight on to the computer, I start with one or two characters in my head and perhaps write a piece of flash fiction or prologue about them, just to fill the blank screen with something. It’s all about calling my brain to order and dialing up my literary muse. This starter stuff usually ends up being dumped in the second draft. Having got underway, I soon come up with some kind of emotive and perilous situation into which I throw my characters. From thereon in, the world blossoms around them, new characters unfold and, before I know it, my fictional characters have taken over telling the story, throwing up the most wonderful surprises along the way. Usually the end of the novel comes to me, somewhere past the halfway mark.

I used to write in a linear fashion and then go back to weave subplots in with subsequent drafts. With my latest novel, I wrote from six different character viewpoints, weaving in flashbacks as I went, which required an awful lot of concentration. Normally, I don’t plan a plot or make any notes, but hold everything in my head. This time I admit to having had to stop a third of the way through the novel to construct a family tree/timeline.

I carry out research on the trot, as and when it’s required, and rarely suffer from writers’ block. If my brain won’t work, it means I need to take a break and do something completely different. I tend not to write at the weekend or in the evenings.

I’m now pleased to pass the baton on to two of my writing buddies …

Benjamin Jones, otherwise known as Graphite Bunny, whose blog is full of wonderful photography and prose poetry, and who was my guest storyteller on this blog back in March.

Henry Gee, who blogs at cromercrox.blogspot.co.uk about all manner of things that catch his attention: some of them quirky and some halfway normal. He’s appeared twice on my blog: first, in November for an interview about his then self-published novel “By The Sea” and then a week ago in a post about his success in finding a traditional publisher for the same novel.

Blondeusk, who calls her blog Blondewritemore and describes herself as “a novice writer starting her journey”.

Dave Farmer, who blogs at davefarmersblog about life, writing, and zombies(!), and who was my guest storyteller on this blog in June.

And here’s the link to Henry Gee’s “Writing Process Blog Tour” post.

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