Doing the FLF

In high spirits

There are festivals that are fun, and then there are festivals that are - to use the jargon - “super” fun. The Franschhoek Literary Festival this past weekend fell into the super fun category.

It started at the opening cocktail party on Thursday evening when Erika Oosthuizen (legendary publisher at Tafelberg) said, “I’ve got a manuscript I’d like you to look at. We’re very excited about this one.” And today it arrived by email and I can see from the first chapter why she is very excited.

Then, on the Friday, I held a crime fiction workshop and ended up learning a heckuva lot about AI (more than I wanted to know really) from one of the participants. Come the Monday came an email from another of the writers who had been at the workshop to say we had a close connection in that she had been working with Moe Shaik when I was editing his memoir, The ANC Spy Bible. (Well, he was writing it and then sending me the chapters overnight for editing so it was kinda done on the turn.)

Later that day (Friday), I was in a one-on-one chat about my krimi Falls the Shadow and the main character Zara Dewane with Koketso Sachane, who said he didn’t believe me when I told him that I had created a character especially to take my place when faced with an audience at a literary festival. A sort of stand-in. Like those walk-in characters one has in a crime novel. They sidle in, do their thing which is usually bloody, before slipping away never to be heard of again.

And then more evening drinks at the Jonathan Ball get-together at La Motte (que in Kwela’s Stevlyn Vermeulen, and Nelleke de Jager last seen yonks ago, let alone Annie Olivier, who agreed a quiet lunch with romance author Lindsay Norman would be a good thing in the calmer part of the year). After that came the important PanMac cocktail party - they are tremendous publishers which is saying something after forty years. Those in attendance need to be named: always available publisher Andrea Nattrass, and the formidable publicity team: Kelly Norwood-Young, Tshepiso Makhura, Helené Coetzee, and Bianca Lee Noel-Barham. I sympathise with them. Managing writers is a bit like herding cats - difficult. Anyhow. It was at that party that I got to meet Caitlin Venniker - the author of Unleashed. Caity has been a writer on my Writers’ Masterclass and that was where she wrote Unleashed. But apart from emails and phone calls we had never met. Strange thing was, the virtual image matched her presence: she is as she comes across in her book. Caity is a vet and she writes unbelievably well with a great sense of humour and she can, and does, tug at the heart strings of all animal lovers.

The PanMac team

On Saturday, I was faced with trying to keep the lid on the pyrotechnics of Deon Meyer and Tony Park. Thus far, it is by a long chalk, the most fun I’ve ever had on a panel anywhere. It was extremely lively, the anecdotes were hilarious and the audience thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Then that evening we had supper with my long-time friend and journo colleague from our way-back days on The Star, the irrepressible Sue Grant-Marshall and her daughter Amy, and Caity and her husband Andy. That too was a laugh a minute and the Cafe du Vin were no doubt grateful to see us leave, the very last of their patrons that evening. Malbec was consumed, a tribute to Captain Zara Dewane.

On the Sunday while we were waiting for Caity’s session to start, Colleen Higgs (think Modjaji Books) and author and writing mentor to many, Sally Cranswick, sat down in the row behind us. Turned out that Colleen had just published Sally’s novel (Of All Things We Need Hope), and she kindly gave me a copy. I started turning the pages at home that evening and finished it the next day. Which must tell you it is compulsive reading.

One almost last word from Arthur Goldstuck’s book (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI, published by Pan Macmillan): “…AI eliminates the blood, sweat and tears of idea generation, editing and translation, but will cause more tears if you try to use it for emotion, originality and personal expression. Balance the parts that machines do best and the parts that humans do best, and you’ll have the best of both worlds.”

Coming up on Saturday is the Kingsmead Book Fair in Johannesburg. Here’s the programme. See you there.

Final word from a writer currently doing my Writing Reality course: “Staring at a blank screen is like staring down the barrel of a gun loaded with cliches” - Dr Bruce Paxton.