An Elephant in my Kitchen – why me?
Do you want to write the sequel to The Elephant Whisperer? A friend of my brother’s knew Françoise Malby-Anthony, widow of the book’s author, was looking for a writer but I didn’t take the news seriously. Yes, I was writing full time. Yes, I dreamed of The Big Break. Just not this big. For those who don’t know, The Elephant Whisperer is the true story of a rogue herd of elephants saved from being shot by Lawrence Anthony and his French wife, Françoise. The book describes the magnificent, spiritual relationship between Lawrence and the herd. What had happened to the herd after Lawrence died? Like readers everywhere I wondered what…
Oh no, not scrabble!
I write, therefore I love Scrabble. Wrong. I hate Scrabble. I love words for their content, not their structure. A scrabbler sees gambol as: 4 consonants, 2 vowels, total value 15. But gambol is so much more! There’s bounce in the word, there’s air, exclamation marks, kitten-play, spring, wheat fields!
It could have been me
I had just moved to Cape Town and loving life – just as Anita Rakidžija was. Now imagine bombs whistling overhead, grenades raining down. That’s what happened to Anita Rakidžija, a successful Croatian businesswoman in her 30’s. Anita Rakidžija's memoir They Won’t Hurt Me, Mom is heartbreaking. It's a deeply personal story about a young woman desperate to survive a horrendous war with two small children.