Man-Eaters

Hi All,

Today my daughter turns twenty six years old…Happy Birthday Keli...heck just where has the time gone, and that is a problem for me…I still reckon that I am the youngest teenager in town and it only feels like yesterday that I left school but so much water has gone under the bridge since I left my innocence behind and found myself serving in the SADF for the next two years..Not to mention the forced call ups to one and three month army camps every year for the next ten years.

Anyway like I said, water under the bridge…but time does seem to move a lot quicker the older you get, or maybe in my case, I get so involved in my writing that I don’t even notice time as it moves past…in some cases I have woken up thinking that it is Thursday, only to be informed by the powers that be in this household that it is in fact Friday…damn I lost a whole day, then I check my manuscript for my latest WIP and see another four thousand words have been added…at least I know I was busy on Thursday.

My journey as a writer has been nothing short of fantastic. If you stop to have a look at how my year has gone so far, that is from June 2015 up till now… it is just amazing.

Since I signed with my publishers four of my novels have been published in all the e-book formats, in print as well as in English and Afrikaans. Another one has been published in e-book and print and now one of my short stories is going out in Italian.

That is a total of six book since my journey started with number seven just around the corner, so you can forgive me for loosing time…so far it has been one hell of a ride, but I am enjoying each and every second of it.

Something that amuses me no end since I have put myself out into the world of Face Book and Twitter as an Author is the number of ladies that make contact, and one of the first questions that gets asked is…”Are you single?”…”I want to meet you.”…”I’m looking for a guy like you.”…It is not as if I hide the fact that I am very happily married away, and far from single, but my question is…Where the heck were you all when I was a young buck, then we could have talked, but like I have said before, and I will say it again…I am very happily married and consider myself incredibly lucky to have found Lucie…she is the rock in my life, my support system and my soul mate…but no don’t go and tell everyone…it will spoil my fun, after all it does wonders for my ego to get propositioned.

But what is it? Is there a stigma attached to the title, Author. When I was just plain Paul the only person to proposition me was my loving wife…time moves on and nothing has changed…I am still happily married and as much as my ego gets boosted…I will always love my wife and have no intention of ever changing my life style.

To the young ladies out there…Thanks for the attention girls, but my advice to you is to go find someone else to play with, but take care and stay safe…you never know what is watching from the shadows. If you really would like to take me to bed with you…you have a choice…grab one and enjoy.

You will find them all waiting for you in anticipation at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00Q8L4NZ8

Cheers everyone, Thanks for joining me.

 

Advertisement

Reach for the Stars

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I have not put out a blog for awhile but Piet van Zyl has dragged me kicking and screaming back into the darkness of his world and this time all I can say is that he has thrown me into the deep end, and it is a case of sink or swim…either way you just have to hope that the crocodiles don’t get you and I manage to complete this quest that he has dug up from only he knows where.

I was out walking Pooch and his small companion aptly named Fudge and while we were out there under the sun my mind was working…yip it works on occasion. What was I going to blog about, and then it struck me…It is has been something that I read a while ago regarding a very well known Author who says that he never started out to earn a living from writing.

Well all I can say to him is…congratulations…Come on, get real…every author out there including myself has high hopes of one day hitting that best sellers list…why else spend hours, days, weeks pouring your heart and soul out onto print, not to mention research, research  and then going through the whole process of proof reading, editing, re-writing, submitting to publisher…waiting…and then smiling because the manuscript has been accepted.

For me, the wait once I have sent it off to my AWESOME Publisher is the worst. I like to compare it to a school kid submitting an assignment for year end and I end up like a cat on a hot tin roof. The relief once it has been accepted is a wonderful feeling.

Now, unlike the well known Author who claims that he never wrote for gain, but it came his way anyway…I have dreams of my writing capturing an audience of readers…I love to write, my characters talk to me, they take me to places that others dream about and pardon me, but I am reaching for the stars while my feet are on the ground…I would love to have a best seller and be recognized as an International Author.

So there you have it in black and white…writing to me is a career, but it is a career that I love and get a huge amount of joy and satisfaction from. I never in my wildest dreams ever thought of myself as a writer, but it is a blessing that I had without knowing it and the gate needed to be opened for me to realize it.

Well the gate has been opened…and the stories are just lining up to be told. There is no pressure when I write. I take one day at a time and allow the story and characters to lead me along the pathway until the journey is over, one word at a time, although I will admit that my typing sometimes can’t keep up with the voices in my head.

For example when my lovely wife Lucie challenged me to sit down and write Blood Moon over Africa, it was like a roller coaster ride for me, from start to finish…the story consumed me until it was over and I thought that was that, but not to be. One day later I started Blood Spoor in the Dark, and it has been a roller coaster ride for me ever since, and believe me, it has been one hell of a ride, and I have enjoyed and still do, every single minute of it.

Try one of my books, they have been born out of a passion that I did not know I had and just maybe one day I will reach the stars, but my feet will always remain firmly on the ground.  

Take Care out there, and stay safe, you never know what is watching from the shadows.

Look Behind My Mask

Hello Everyone,

Well we all made it through the first three months of 2016 and now we start off month number four with what is known as April fool’s Day. This day is special to me, as it is the day that I said “I Do” to my wonderful wife of fifteen years. Now why get married on April fool’s Day…two reasons, firstly I will never forget our anniversary, and secondly it was the second time around for both of us so we reckoned that only fools tie the knot twice, and it has been a heck of a rough ride…not the marriage, but what life has thrown at us and in the end it has only made us stronger, and brought us even closer together.

Allow me to share a few of the curved balls that have been thrown our way.

• I was in Air Traffic Control for just under twenty years when I found myself being retrenched…why you may ask…simple…I live in South Africa…we were told we are top heavy with white males and some of us got kicked to the curb to make way for people of other color. Mind you none of them were qualified but they got the job. Am I bitter about it…not a chance…read on and you will see why.
• We had just had our first home built when I was retrenched, and suddenly no job…what the heck were we going to do. Well we took the bull by the horns…sold the house at a loss, took my payout pension and bought a beautiful 150 hectare farm in the stunning Katberg. After a lot of blood, sweat and tears we turned the farm into a guest farm, with our long term plan of living out the rest of our lives on the farm. We started doing very well, with self catering log cabins, six bedrooms in the main house, and things started to look as if the future was going to be rosy. We were not worried about the epidemic called “Farm Attacks” as we supplied employment to the vast majority of Africans that lived in a small settlement called Balfour, and they were a wonderful people.
• We grew our own vegetables, got our drinking water directly from the river high up in the mountains, and ran on diesel, gas and paraffin. Heated up our bath water with fire. Life was great until the fires came.
• One morning in 2001 fire arrived accompanied with gale force winds…after the smoke had settled we looked around to realize that we had just lost everything…pension, investment, future gone up in smoke. What next you may ask. We were not insured as yet.
• The government declared it a disaster area and we were informed by more than one government official that we were entitled to disaster aid once they had done an assessment of the damage. The damage and loss totaled over One Million Rand. Forms were signed, stamped and signed again, with us being told that we could expect to get back about 60% of the loss…that my friend was fifteen years ago. Due to corruption being rift in our government it made no difference who we approached…the money was just sucked up by the system.
• What the heck…so now what do you do…no source of income…people shouting for payments…we sold the farm to cover all our outstanding costs and with a bounce in our steps started off again at ground zero.
• Try being a white male in this country…no matter your qualifications, jobs are just not open to you. My lovely wife was lucky enough to get employment, and she moved from a half day into a permanent position at the university and finally we were back on track…with me being the house husband…no problem, you should taste my cooking.
• To cut a long story short that is all water under the bridge. We have given up ever seeing anything from the disaster fund…it will never happen…someone in government found something they would rather spend it on…well, good luck to them I say. Now the whole object of this little story of mine is to say how lucky I am with my wonderful wife. Not once has she ever complained about what has happened in our lives…she is the strong woman behind the man, and because of her I started to write, and the moral of this story is that each and every one of us are blessed with something. I am blessed with two things…Lucie and the gifts of being able too write. If we had not lost everything, if I had carried on my day to day work, I would never have sat down to write Blood Moon over Africa.

So there you have it. Life always throws curved balls at you. Some people catch them and run with them, others just blame everyone else around them…we caught the balls and ran with them. I am now a published author of five novels in print, four that have been translated into Afrikaans; I have a wife, a publisher and readers who believe in me, and there are a heck of a lot more books in me yet, so stay tuned for the next release…the tap is opened and the words just flow.

If you have not yet had a taste of one of my novels, be careful because when you finally decide to try one, you will be sucked in…you have been warned.

Thanks for the visit, Thanks for reading this…God Bless you.

Life gives you lemons …we make lemonade.