My new novel:
Category Archives: Books Written
Beyond the Dreams of Men
Perhaps check out my latest flash fiction anthology?
Flash Fiction Library
I’ve been building another project: FlashFictionLibrary.com.
The premise started off as very simple here: build a literary presence.
Interestingly, I am really enjoying the flash fiction genre and I think that it may have its own full place. Hence, I’ve begun publishing novella’s of ten to twenty of the Library’s stories on Amazon (see Volume I here) and, well, I guess we’ll see where all of this goes.
Anyway, please go check out FlashFictionLibrary.com and let me know what you think!
My Favourite Customer Review
Of the few that I have received, this is by far my favourite customer review:
“For a moment, imagine that the Gods are borne out of human and animal imagination, a need to reconcile the unforgiving natural world through storytelling, manifested quite solidly in the perceivable realm as beings of vast powers, desires, and hungers. Gods of knowledge and portent. Gods of sex and lust. Gods of blood and gold. This novella takes the reader into the minds, histories, and hearts of gods who have been ‘forgotten’ in name, though remembered and ‘fed’ in deed, and play out their continuing drama of agendas and violence against the backdrop of modern Johannesburg, South Africa. I urge anyone who enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s book AMERICAN GODS to take this journey, because while the former is a seminal work of mythic genius, it is ‘safe’, and the Forgotten Gods of Jozi is equally genius and most certainly not safe.”
– Amanda Close
It is regarding my book, “The Forgotten Gods of Jozi” :
Amanda is perhaps partly correct in her comparison of my book to Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods“. I read that book of Gaiman’s many years ago and it stuck with me as a favourite, but it was more the timing of that reading than the reading itself that influenced me. The timing of reading “American Gods” was just after I had discovered the intriguing writings and thoughts of Austin Osman Spare that resulted in the alternative occult school of thought, “Chaos Magic“.
A thought that always stuck with me was Spare’s inversion of cause and effect that formed the basis of traditional religion. What if, instead of us believing in gods that exist, the gods exist because we believe in them. What if belief itself had the power, not the gods.
After Spare’s writings stirred a philosophical tickle in me, Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” struck a narrative chord with me that I have often contemplated.
I suppose “The Forgotten Gods of Jozi” was a naturally extension (many years later) of these underlying thoughts and, even if I did not set out to replicate, duplicate or fabricate similarities, they do perhaps exist.
That said, beyond the logic of the oldest gods existing in the oldest known settlement of man (the Cradle of Humankind), the “Forgotten Gods of Jozi” is also partly a self-biography of me moving to Johannesburg (about seven or so years ago). It’s chosen settings are (and often chronologically) the places I stayed in over the early years, the places and things that left impressions on me and my local haunts in those days.
And, in this sense, the tale has nothing to do with Gaiman or Spare. Rather it is actually quite a personal tale with creative license on the city I’ve come to love.
All said and done, the above must be my favourite customer review of all time. It is quite an honour to be compared with Neil Gaiman, in any shape or form! Thanks Amanda.
I am two thirds of the way through my next book’s rough draft, “The Space Between Ages”, and here is a mock-up cover for it:
The Forgotten Gods of Jozi
Here is a link to my new book: The Forgotten Gods of Jozi.
And here is the blurb:
He lifts the cold, jagged rock. It is heavier than he expected. And then, with all his might, he smashes it down on the exposed skull of the man standing with his back to him. A loud, sick thump rings out. It mingles with his shout and the other man’s surprised, brief scream.
And then there is nothing but silence, broken only by his panting and the sound of blood rushing through his ears.
The world is silent.
The sky does not open up and the sun ignores him. The soft wind drifts by as the world carries on callously.
Everything is the same, but everything is different.
And a thousand, thousands years later the roar of Gorgion Tuesday erupts from a petrol station in upmarket Houghton – Johannesburg – his lover senselessly murdered in his arms. An old, cold evil stirs deep in the city under the African full moon, pushing back against the new nicotine-neon gods of modern man. Overlooking ancient battlefields now covered by complexes and shopping centres, a dark omen flies in through Old Man Mhlu’s window while Ragman Blue’s hypnotic song washes over a mortal crowd in a dingy bar in Fourways where dark things scuttle in the shadows.
Julia Green winks and takes a slow drag on her cigarette. Her scarlet lips softly blow out the smoke and her green eyes narrow in sudden thought, “Change, Tuesday, change… I can feel it coming. It may rain tonight.”
Everything is the same, but everything is different.
The Cobweb Way
The second of three books in “The Fractayle” series has been published on Amazon: The Cobweb Way.
“The world ended and there was a great and long silence.
The Ancients that survived Red’s virus have crept below ground to sleep the centuries away in chambers of light and darkness wrapped in their beds of dust and metal. They must wait until the numbers of men are great enough to accommodate their existences and so they dream of their Three-faced Queen and her palace across the stars.
In this Great Silence, Unit Two was left by them to guard them while they slept. He was to guard the Entrance and protect the Ancients. He is the Guardian. And then one day one of the humans seeks his help…
The second installation of the mind-blowing high technology science fiction series, “The Fractayle”, this tale builds a unique perspective of the world of men and their monsters, where religion comes from and why, and how everything fits together.
“The Cobweb Way” also sets the scene for the climatic third and final book in the series “The Lights in the Sky”. Who is Bobby Chase? Who is Jason Ash Winters? Did Red survive the Great Silence? What is the Fractayle? What is the End Point? And why is a dark and deep cave in dusty mountain in a strangely familiar desert so important?”
Also see the first book in the series, “The Long Life of the Candle Man“
The Cobweb Way (sneak peak)
I just finished my first draft of the sequel to “The Long Life of the Candle Man“, which I’ve decided to call “The Cobweb Way”. The first draft has just been sent to my Editor and, hopefully, will go smoothly onto Amazon’s eBookstore within the month.
That said, I have already decided on a cover (i.e. I just finished designing it) and thought I’d drop it here as a sneak peak at the second in a series of three novels (“The Fractayle”).
Also, as a matter of interest, I like opening each of my novels with a poem of some significance. Below is “The Cobweb Way” opening poem:
“By ancient hands of brimstone,
Lying within spider webs so
Complex, if they were shown,
Their strands reaching from below,
Would cast a net so wide and far,
Angels’ feathers would certain stray,
Into tales lacking a guiding star,
And beyond the light of any day.
Tell me those secrets you’ve never told,
Even unto yourself at night,
And walk with me to where the lands hold,
All things between wrong and right.
Ancient hands stir the dark pools,
In old motions oddly familiar,
That they still deceive the fools,
Into becoming something similar;
But no one dreams of the dreams,
That are never dreamt by those,
Which walk in the paths unseen,
Wearing the red soft silk clothes.
Tell me those secrets you’ve never told,
Even unto yourself at night,
And walk with me to where the lands hold,
All things between wrong and right.
Winds of change carry us so,
From dark beginnings begun,
Through yesterday’s old shadow,
Into tomorrow’s raging Sun;
And when blood was blood afire,
Old devil deeds done so long ago,
Split the lands asunder with ire,
And still echo in the chambers below.
Take me to all the places you’ve seen,
And I will take you to all those that you haven’t.”
* Just as a matter of interest, if you are interested in reading this book, I strongly recommend that you read the first in the series first (i.e. The Candle Man). Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle software for free on your computer over here.
The Long Life of the Candle Man
The second (of two) novels I wrote during 2010 was “The Long Life of the Candle Man” and, while the former was a whimsical zen tale, the latter was a hardcore science fiction.
The setting of The Candle Man is one where the very Web has been uploaded into our collective consciousness. Think about it, what is the difference between telepathy and emailing your thoughts to another?
As man has spread amongst the furthest reaches of the galaxies, a greater and more subtle evil is growing in his very thoughts. A great bureaucracy, the Lunar Government, turns its brutal machines across the world of men as the evil grows inside the very system upon which mankind believes it is reliant.
And, amidst this vast and decaying society, a young man stumbles across his fate.
The Candle Man lives again.
You will not understand, until you understand.
P.S. This is a complete book with a complete tale in it, but I do intend writing and publishing another two in the series (‘The Fractayle’) with their titles being “The Cobweb Way” and “The Lights in the Sky”…
The Trichotomy of Non-existence, Non-meaning & Nowhere
I have always been fascinated with the written word, be it poetry or its longer cousin, books. In 2010 I had a goal: write a full length novel and publish it.
So I wrote two.
And then, thanks to Amazon’s Kindle ebook format, published them.
The long and awkwardly titled “Trichotomy of Non-existence, Non-meaning & Nowhere” was my first attempt at a novel and draws on my interests in zen, taoism and factoids from our diverse world. It is a tale of three parts with three distinct characters that end up intertwined in each others fate for no apparent reason.
I have tried to summarize this tale, but with so many twists and seemingly random turns, eventually the summaries become the tale itself. So, rather than any short form, I would rather you read The Trichotomy for yourself.