In a spirit of transparency

What I'll be doing here in 2025

Photo by Alexandre Croussette on Unsplash

New Year greetings to all my readers and a warm welcome to new subscribers.

As some of you may know, I started this newsletter to support my philanthropic self-publishing venture. To date, 100% of net income received from newsletter subs and sales of my novel, Salt & Honey goes to support a feeding scheme for Ju|’hoan school children in the Kalahari desert. (If you fancy an African, adventure-packed romance featuring a young, indigenous hero, read or listen to a sample here. Beware the bull elephant.)

So, that’s Koba book 1, the prequel.

The sequel- Koba book 2

Over the course of 2024, I began publishing a chapter a week of the follow-up, Koba book 2, on Substack, for paid subscribers. The novel is called Kalahari Passage and I’m three-quarter-way through it. This week I’ll publish a free excerpt of a dramatic scene, hoping it might pique your interest. For just £4/$5 a month you can catch up on chapters 1- 22, and have a VIP seat as I conclude this exciting story. Hopefully by March 2025.

Koba book 3 - final part of the trilogy

Starting in the latter half of the year, I plan to publish a chapter per week of this untitled novel, for paid subscribers on Substack. I’m hoping for feedback from readers so please considering joining. Aside from your chance to influence the outcome of the trilogy, your subscription will put food into the bowls of children whose hunter-gatherer parents want them to become “paper people”, with mother-tongue reading/writing literacy. We hope that one day one of them will write a story.

Giveaway- free annual subscription to first 10 applicants.

If you can’t afford the subscription fee but are genuinely interested in the story of this unique character and her people, just drop me a line and I’ll be oh, so glad to make a special arrangement for you.

candimiller@substack.com

Here’s that free excerpt from Chapter 23, Kalahari Passage

If you want a summary of the plot to date:

18-year-old Koba is repatriated to her homeland by the South African Apartheid government . She was jailed for having sex with a white man, her childhood friend and recent lover, Mannie. She falls into the clutches of her mortal enemy, André Marais, but thanks to unexpected help, escapes certain death at his hands. After an arduous journey she finds a band of Ju|’hoansi and slowly settles into the traditional hunter-gatherer way of life. She gives away her westernised possessions, including a distinctive yellow dress. The gift proves fatal for her adopted mother who is crushed to death by André, mistaking her for Koba. Mannie is in a state of shock after secretly witnessing the hit and run murder.

Chapter 23

Mannie couldn’t stop shaking. Murder, and he’d witnessed it. The sound of the bakkie soft-thumping over the body would echo in his ears for a long time to come. Though he’d assured the minister he hadn’t seen the vehicle number plate nor the driver— true— he had a sickening feeling he knew who it had been. André.

Koba believed André blamed her for the death of his father, Etienne, after a hunting trip in South West Africa six years ago when the hunters had encountered Koba and her family on Marais land. The truth was that he, Mannie, could have prevented his uncle’s death. He’d confessed this to no one but Koba.

On that day, nine-year-old Mannie had been alone on the driver’s seat of the wagon being used in the hunt. He was petrified by the events unfolding around him: his father was drunk, his cousin had shot a Bushman who now lay bleeding in the sand not far from the wagon, and his uncle had a Bushwoman in the back of the wagon where he was displaying her genitalia to a giggling André. Facing front, young Mannie had seen the wounded brown man crawl towards the wagon. He’d kept silent when Koba’s father took aim and shot Etienne with a poisoned arrow. His uncle’s death throes still haunted him.

It seemed to Mannie that Koba’s return to Nyae Nyae had cast her back into the lion’s den. He had to warn her, but where was she?

*

Earlier, Mannie and the minister had carried N!ai’s body into a storeroom at the side of the church.

‘I’ll send a message to the police,’ Venter had said, ‘but if they come, it won’t be for days, so we can’t leave her lying out there, not in this heat.’

Mrs Venter had arranged the yellow dress so that the skirt covered the woman’s mangled leg. She’d bound her splintered skull in a faded orange tea towel fastened under the jaw. Mannie was glad they’d placed one of the kneelers from the church under the woman’s swathed head. Somehow it felt as though they’d made her comfortable.

They retreated to the church-house kitchen where the reverend in his long nightshirt wandered around with a candle like a distracted Wee Willie Winkie. He was trying to locate the oil lamp they kept for emergencies.

Mrs Venter, in a dressing gown with all the chenille washed out of it, was spooning sugar into a glass of water for Mannie. ‘It’s good for shock,’ she said, pushing it across the table towards him. Then she sat down, folded her arms across her massive bosom and turned the flickering light reflected in her spectacles on him.

‘Now, son, what I don’t understand is: why were you in the churchyard at that time of the night?’

Mannie rotated the glass between his thumb and forefinger, watching the liquid swirl round. Even if an oke’s not religious, he shouldn’t lie in a church, he thought, not even in a kitchen next door to one. But how much could he safely say? He took a gulp of water and plunged in.

‘I was hoping to meet someone.’

The couple blinked like a pair of frazzle-haired fledglings. ‘Who?’ they chirruped.

‘A girl.’ He blushed.

‘What girl lives out here?’ Mrs Venter squawked her surprise.

Mannie wanted to bang their grey heads together, but he’d been brought up to respect his elders, even those whose politics defied logic. There are girls in the town, he thought irritably, but they are brown-skinned, so I suppose they don’t count.

He reminded himself that the Venters were good people; he’d seen that. Nevertheless, they were keepers of the Afrikaner faith and therefore of apartheid principles. His tone was mutinous when he said ‘An old friend. I wrote her a letter asking her . . .’

‘Koba Yellow Dress!’ the old woman exclaimed.

Mannie felt his whole body tighten with urgency. ‘You got the letter? You gave it to her?’

‘Here it is, son.’ Slowly Venter laid the crumpled letter on the table between them. It was bloodstained in one corner. ‘That poor woman in there – he gestured with his pipe towards the storeroom ‘was going to deliver it to your Koba.’

The glass of water swam in Mannie’s vision. He hung his head, ashamed to realize he felt most sorry for himself. All this way, all this trouble and Koba knew nothing about him being here. She wasn’t coming.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and managed to mumble, ‘She’s in terrible danger.’