Vera and Tolliver Sound Off

Annamaria on Monday


Actually my title today probably should say "Sound On."  I have not had a BSP (Blatant Self-Promotion) post for well over a year.  Today, I am taking a raincheck on my Bouchercon hiatus opportunity in order to tell everyone this:

I am very proud to announce the publication of audio versions of Idol of Mombasa and The Blasphemers—Vera and Tolliver #s 2 and 3!

The audio for the first in my Africa series—Strange Gods—has been available for some time.  The voice artist who narrated Vera and Tolliver # 1 did such a marvelous job that I knew I wanted him to record the other books in the series.

You can find out more about Dennis here



Dennis Kleinman is a South African, living in LA, who has the right soul, the right voice, and ALL the right accents to do a superlative job of reading Vera and Tolliver. Audible chose him to narrate Strange Gods, and when I first heard his recording, I was stunned by the result. In Dennis’s voice, my own characters became even more real to me than they were in my imagination.  The Scots, the English, the tribal people all sound exactly right to me when Dennis reads their dialogue. He also puts just the right emotional ring to what they are saying.

Once the audio rights to Idol and Blasphemers reverted to me, Dennis went to work, doing his magic on characters that presented new challenges: Arab and Swahili voices, Midlands English, as well as tony British aristocrats.  The results are superb.

If you listen to books and are new to the series, you can start with the audio book for Strange Gods here:

And then,  I invite you to follow Vera and Tolliver from Nairobi and its environs to the costal Arab trading city of Mombasa and then to the Maasai region of Nakuru in the East African Highlands:

Idol of Mombasa Audible 


The Blasphemers Audible 

What next for Vera and Tolliver?

There is no fourth in the Vera and Tolliver series to brag about this year.  What that is so is a long story and definitely not a thriller.  Here is the expurgated version:

I completed the next in the African series—A Death on the Lord’s Day—some time ago. Complications of changing publishers has kept it under wraps. Readers have asked me for more of V&T, and I promise you more is on the way.

We used to use the word “glacial” to describe things that moved painfully slowly.  Now we are pained by how terribly fast glaciers are moving. I can safely say that moving at “publishing speed” wins my vote as the new metaphor for the most frustrating pace on the planet. Snails gallop by comparison. Tortoises are far less tortuous. Or torturous for that matter.

Photo: Annamaria, Serengeti 2006


I promise I will not give up.

A Death on the Lord's Day will be published soon.

Stay tuned.

https://www.annamariaalfieri.com

By Train to Marseilles, By Steamship Via Suez

Annamaria on Monday

My credentials as possessor of a riotously romantic heart are well-established among frequent readers of this blog.   A passionate aria, an antique map, an image of the clock tower of San Marco in Venice.   The strains of a tango.   The sight of a lone giraffe standing under an acacia tree. They all take my breath away.  A list of images and sounds that provoke longing in me could easily fill up this page.

Today’s post—about how people traveled from Britain to East Africa in the 19-teens—needed a good title.    Something that would stir a sense of adventure in you.  Once I typed out the words above, it took me ten minutes to settle down to work.  I was high on the visions they evoked, floating a hundred feet up, watching my long-ago-and-far-away characters travel from London to Mombasa: their clothes, their conveyances, the scenery as their Victorian-style train click-clacks through France, the ship, the luggage.  They call at Naples.  I know that bay well.  Vesuvius.  Ischia.  Capri.  The deep dark blue of the Mediterranean.  And on to the south past Stromboli, spouting fire in the night.

I took this photo of the Mediterranean on a trip from
Livorno to Catania.  The deep blue sea is really blue there.
Not so the Atlantic Ocean I played in as a child

If I wanted to set a scene in Suez, I would have to research what it looked like.  One day perhaps I will go and see it for myself, but it won’t look as it did a hundred years ago.

My head already holds a composite historic picture of East Africa’s major port.  From photos I know its landscape, its buildings.  From many eyewitness accounts I know the colors, the bustle, the emotional impact it had on arriving passengers.

By the time the second book in my African series came along, I also knew quite a bit about how people traveled from Europe to British East Africa—and to German East Africa and South Africa for that matter.

The facts were easy to come by, from the Handbook of British East Africa, 1912, a copy of which is in the New York Public Library.   Just recently, I found a reprint I could afford (originals run in the thousands of dollars—if you can find one!).     For people of the time, the book had invaluable advice.  Today, it is a complete guide for this historical novelist.  How else would I discover details like: The quickest and most comfortable, therefore the preferred route, from London was by train to Marseilles and then steamer to Mombasa via Suez.  The handbook also has ads telling which companies offered passage, their schedules, and the price of various levels of accommodation.

The Idol of Mombasa, my upcoming book, begins with Vera and Justin Tolliver coming home to Africa after a honeymoon in Yorkshire, Glasgow, and Italy in January 1912.  I chose for them the steamship Galacian of the Union-Castle Line.

Founded in 1853, Union-Castle operated cargo and passenger ships serving this route from 1900 till 1977, when it went out of business.  The Galacian, built in Belfast, was turned into a hospital ship during World War I.  In March of 1917, it was damaged by UC-65, a German submarine.  A year later another German submarine torpedoed and sank it.

This is a poster printed on metal.  It sits on a shelf over my computer.
I found it on a rack outside a fancy stationary store on an elegant
street between Piazza Navona and the Ponte Sant'Angelo in Rome!!!

In my story, arriving at the same time as Vera and Tolliver, is the Grand Mufti of Egypt, a character whose presence plays a pivotal role in the action.  He comes on a different line:  Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linne, which was established in 1890, to compete with the British ships, which dominated the market.

 In the last scene of the book, the Egyptian clergyman leaves Mombasa, this time sailing on a French steamer of the Compagnie des Messageries Maritime (Certainly the most romantic name for a shipping company.   How it sings to me!)  This one even had nicknames—“MesMar” and “MM.”  It was privatized in 1996, and now operates under the totally prosaic name of CMA CGM.  UGH!

The British-India Steam Navigation Company, founded in 1856, sailed mainly between the British Isles and India, but since there was a great deal of interplay between India and British East Africa, this line also served Mombasa.     

I have always said, romantic as I am and with a soul overtaken by historical fiction, I would not want to have lived in a time when there was no deodorant, hot showers, or painless dentistry.  But I would put up with a great deal of discomfort for the experience of steaming through Suez on one of those ships of yore.  As long as I could come back to the present—horrifying as it often is these days.

Oh, for a time machine!