The long game: how a body in a boat became two books – Guest Post by Andre Louw

 

The city of George with the Outeniqua Mountains

Andre Louw is a man of many talents. He’s a guitarist, but he missed out on rock star fame so he turned to law. He qualified as an attorney in 2000, received a PhD in Law in 2010, and now teaches at Stellenbosch University. His fascination with corruption and his love of reading mysteries led him to try his hand at fiction, and that led to not one debut novel, but two! The first, titled Phantom Pass, was published in February by Catalyst Press.

I was very intrigued to discover this story set on the Garden Route on the Cape coast, the area where I live. Phantom Pass itself is about half an hour’s drive from my house. And, indeed, the book has a strong sense of place and an authentic feel. I was keen to learn how Andre came to write the book. And his story has important messages for anyone setting out to write fiction.

So it’s a great pleasure to welcome him to Murder Is Everywhere for today’s guest post.

Michael

 

Andre Louw

From a young age I’ve had a great love of books – my mom engraved that on my psyche and injected it into my DNA from early on - and I always wanted to write a book, my own book. Just one.

For my day job I have, over the years, written two published books and a number of academic articles. I knew that I could write. But I didn’t know if I could write this:

Fiction.

I would, on one or two occasions over the years, set out to try. Just a very few pages, one scene at a time. But that never worked. It never stuck. I guess I wasn’t yet ready for so big a task as creating a world filled with fictional persons with imperfections and problems, triumphs and emotions. For the mammoth task of spinning a yarn that someone would like to read to the end.

I did, though, get the impression that I might be able to do it, once I set my mind to actually just knuckling down and trying. Keeping at it for more than 30 minutes at a time, and then not immediately chucking the text because it lacked stuff (whatever stuff that was).

Then it eventually happened in 2019. I remember the actual day:

19 November 2019, a Friday evening.

I was 47 years old.

Wow, later in life than I thought it would ever happen, but better late than never, right?

I decided to write one scene for a crime thriller, the first one: The discovery of a body.  

Ooh, sexy! Right?

Right!

I did it. And I loved it. And I kept writing.

But not for long, just till I came to around page 30, when I realized that, as much as I loved the experience so far, I had no bloody idea where to go from there, nothing.

Nothing.

I had not plotted anything out, and, frankly, I had never planned for this to turn into an actual book. But I was there now, at last. And I decided: I was not gonna let that keep me down this time.

I am really proud of myself for that very small thing: To, just at that moment, decide that I would keep going; I would MAKE it work.

So, I set out to do it.

 

I spent 2-3 weeks just plotting; thinking about the story and where I wanted it to go, and what I wanted to say. And then I started writing.

My writing hours, for most days over the six months I spent on it, were from 22h00 to 02h00, most if not all nights. Quiet time, dark and no interruptions. And hey, I’d usually have a whiskey or two in the process. My muse. I loved it.

It feels very strange to say this, like some form of blasphemy, but for my book the coming of COVID-19 was a bit of a blessing. Just over 3 months after I started, South Africa was under a hard lockdown. Working remotely from home helped me manage my time to write.

It worked (I think).

I finished the first book in six months. And then, realizing that I had to split the work into two books and move some stuff around for that purpose – I was told that nobody would buy a debut novel by an unknown writer that ran to 250 000 words - the last 10 chapters of book two took me another couple of months. All in all, the book(s) were done in around 9 months.

I felt great. I felt proud.

And then I tried to get it published …

And everything came crashing down, hard.

 

I had from early on in the process wanted to self-publish. I spent nearly a year researching the publishing industry and self-publishing. During this time I lost my nerve to do things myself, as I realized I did not have the financial resources or the time to manage the whole process of getting the book into readers’ hands.

So then I started submitting the book to publishers, both in South Africa and elsewhere. There was no interest. Just the rate of (negative but mostly well-wishing) replies was probably less than 1%.

This was so demoralizing that I eventually put the book away.

Having done some soul-searching I realized that I had built up the expectation in my mind to a dangerous level. I now started to become depressed. The third book and the fourth, both of which I had started writing while I was seeking a publisher for the first, were shelved. I simply couldn’t write anymore.

What was the point?

Somewhere in 2022 an independent American publisher, Catalyst Press, read the book. They declined to sign it up, citing reasons relating to another title they had upcoming. One of their editors, SarahBelle Selig – by far my favourite person in the publishing industry – managed to break my heart in the nicest way. She raved about the book and the writing.

So, around late 2023 I thought, what the heck, let’s try again, and I once again asked them to consider it. On 6 May 2024, the day after my birthday, I signed the publishing contract with Catalyst for Phantom Pass and Chasing Ghosts (out mid-2026).

Yes, I googled it:

Phantom Pass

That was 1 630 days from that evening when I had put the first words to paper, describing the discovery of the mutilated body of Mark Whitcombe in a little rust-red-coloured boat floating on a cold estuary under grey, darkening skies. That image was the seed of everything.

From it, grew the two-book murder investigation set in Knysna on the Garden Route of South Africa. Capt. Josh Holland, a trainee detective with a background in law, is thrown into the chase under the wing of the experienced Colonel Gavin Whitall from the South African Police Service’s Serious Crimes Unit in George, after the mutilated body of a prominent retired advocate is found in a small boat on the Knysna estuary.

The investigating team encounters a number of suspects, including a former apartheid security police operative and a notorious local drug dealer. As the investigation expands the detectives realize that the fate of their victim appears to be linked to a murder committed in Mozambique in 1986, in the shadowy world of the African National Congress’s armed struggle. The team wades through a highly politicized police bureaucracy and grapples with high stakes political corruption, as they stalk a killer across the southern Cape and beyond South Africa’s borders. All the while the body count stacks up, as prey becomes hunter and death comes uncomfortably close.

1 630 days from a body in a boat to a signed contract.

Thinking back on it now, it is hard to fathom just how long this story has been a part of my life. Impossible to try and calculate the importance and role of its presence in the back of my mind; how it may have changed me, my relationships, my professional life, and my overall conception of myself as a person.

But, then again, I have also realized that it always will be a major part of my life. Regardless of whether it will sell and be a commercial or popular success. Maybe that stuff is just fluff?

It will always be there because it is something – like a child - that did not exist in the universe before I came along. Something I created, and of which I am personally, immensely proud. I know many people dream of doing this, and few manage to do it.

It is not Hemingway, Steinbeck, Irving or King. It is definitely not Larsson.

It is (just) me.