Me (a King) and the African Queen.

 Annamaria on Monday

I am revealing a private joke today.

Long, long before I ever dreamed of writing novels about Africa, I was in love with The African Queen, both C. S. Forester's brilliant 1935 novel and John Houston's 1951 film. So great was my infatuation with that story that for one of my birthdays, my dear departed David gave me a gift of an original Hirshfield cartoon with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in their African Queen roles.

This is the best photo I could take of it.

I have watched the movie umpteen times, read the book a few times, and have taken to listening to and re-listening to the audiobook, beautifully narrated by Michael Kitchen.

In researching for the second in my Africa series, Idol of Mombasa, I did my usual deep dive in the real story, including reading heavy but also extraordinarily helpful tomes such as J. Spencer Trimingham's Islam in East Africa. How, then, could I resist, while in the research phase, also indulging in a frequent diet of those wonderful versions of the story I love so much--in all of its tellings.

Forester's story takes place just a few years after Vera&Toliver#2.  In C.S. Forester's tale, an English missionary and his sister are in German Central Africa, and WWI is in full swing. My tale is set just over the border from German EAST  Africa in late January 1912.

As usual, my research set my imagination boiling with ideas.  I knew that the main theme of V&T#2 was going to focus on the second Commandment, which forbids worshiping any but the one true God.  And that the sin that ought to have a Commandment was going to be slavery.  The missionaries in Africa in those days were as much anti-slavery activists as they were workers in the vineyard to bring converts to Christ.

It was just then that I sat down to a Bouchercon dinner with my MIE cohorts.  I brought with me to that gathering my friend and later our fellow MIE blogger, Susan Spann.  Susan was sitting to my right and on my left was my blog brother Jeff, both lawyers.  Susan, in fact, is an intellectual property lawyer.

As the shop talk progressed, at one point, I talked over a possibility for my next book that had legal implications.  I told Jeff and Susan that I was thinking about inventing two characters inspired by C.S. Forester's African Queen: the missionary Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose.  Jeff, rightly, warned me that I could not just adopt them.  I did not want to plagiarize them, just make my own version of that duo, a very similar brother and sister. Certainly it was not unheard of that a missionary would have a sister (ahem) asSISting him.

Susan confirmed that although I could not use the names that C.S. Forester gave his folks, it was permissible to create similar characters.   And so, as a private joke, I gave my invented people, who were inspired by The African Queen, the names of the actors who played Samual and Rose in John Huston's film.  My missionary's name is Robert Morley and his sister's name is Katharine and this is what they look like:

To my knowledge, only one reader has seen through my little ruse.

Of course the characters in the photo above are in German Central Africa, Forester's   fictional colony.  My characters live in the real British East Africa.

My Robert and Katharine disappear into German East Africa at end of Idol of Mombasa, more than two years before the outbreak of WWI. And out of sight, my characters and Forester's will be leading somewhat parallel lives through the war.  I am hoping that Katharine will return to BEA in 1919, for book nine of the series. She will be without her brother, I fear.  But with her husband, Humphrey.

  

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

African Series Cover Art, Deconstructed

Annamaria on Monday

I have been very fortunate with the cover designs of my books.  They have all been attractive and, especially as of late, inviting to perspective readers.  With one exception, they have been true to the story I was trying to tell--some more than others, but by and large, they all evoked the time and place.

One emblem appears on all of the African series' covers, and it is actually the correct standard for British East Africa:

 

The hardcover jacket design shows a scene of a Maasai cattle herder.  Though there is no such person in the story, the image is apt for two reasons.  It shows the intense beauty of the African wilderness, which (I hope) reads like a character in the story.  Even better, the tribesman is carrying an accurately pictured Maasai spear, the shape of which is a critical clue in the story.  Bravo designer David Baldeosingh Rotstein!

The paperback of the same story gives a different impression.  The wilderness is there, but the central female character is brought to the fore.  Lucky me, my current publisher--Felony and Mayhem--is run by Maggie Topkis, who spent a couple of decades as a mystery bookstore owner.  She knows what kinds of covers attract a browser's attention.  

The ensuing books in the series are treated with similar images.

 

The Idol of Mombasa opens with Vera and Tolliver aboard a ship, approaching Mombasa harbor.  Only one person saw the mistakes on this cover's arresting image.  The coastline in the background is not historic Mombasa, but historic Zanzibar.  And the sticker on Vera's suitcase is Queen Elizabeth II--who was not Queen until 1952.  But the story takes place forty years before that.  The person who saw these errors was Shel Arensen--the editor and publisher of Old Africa Magazine.  He--who knows the history of Kenya better than perhaps anyone--said, "As I was reading the story, I kept waiting for the characters to go to Zanzibar."   They didn't!  He gave the book lovely review despite that.

 

If you ask me, with the next cover, the designer--Anthony Wing Kosner--more than made up for those small departures from perfection.

That's a kudu on the luminous cover of The Blasphemers, and yes, Vera does go hunting and kudus show up a couple of times in the story. 

Annamaria's Events

Bouchercon

11-15 October

Toronto Ontario

Sheraton CentreToronto, Ontario
My Panel: Read the World
Thursday the 12th

AND Tah-dah...

Dagger Awards Gala Dinner
Thursday 26th October
Grange City Hotel
London

Where our own Leye Adenle and our fellow HOT Writer Ovidia Yu are short listed for the short story Dagger Award.  Hooray for Sunshine Noir!

A Mysterious Affair in PrincetonSat, November 4, 2017
1:00 PM – 5:00
Solley TheaterArts Council of Princeton
102 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08540

BSP: The idol of Mombasa

Annamaria on Monday

HUZZAH!  The second in my Africa series--The Idol of Mombasa--launched this past Saturday.  We MIE bloggers avoid Blatant Self-Promotion except when we have a new book out.  Today it's my turn to take a victory lap.

Here is a the story in brief.

The Idol of Mombasa takes place in the Protectorate of British East Africa in 1912.  The English King’s administrators are tangled in an uneasy peace with the Sultan of Zanzibar, especially when it comes to the slave trade. The British have outlawed slavery, but Sharia law allows it. Both laws obtain.  That slippery morality infuriates Vera Tolliver, a Scottish missionary’s daughter, and her husband Justin, an English police officer, whose job is to enforce the law.  Complications increase when a runaway slave is murdered.  A lifelong friend of Vera’s family becomes the likeliest suspect, and British official fingers are knotted into the tangle’s every strand.

Here is what the critics are saying about it and its sister in the series Strange Gods:

“Set in 1912, Alfieri’s captivating, complex second mystery set in East Africa highlights cultural and social issues.” Publishers Weekly

"In Alfieri's intriguing series, some humans are less trustworthy than the wild animals in British East Africa in the early 20th century. The author expertly captures the beauty and danger of the land and the duplicity of man."—RT Bookreviews (4 stars)

"With the flair of Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, the cunning of Agatha Christie and Elspeth Huxley and the moral sensibility of our times, Alfieri permeates this tragic novel with a condemnation of imperialism, a palpable love of Africa, a shocking conclusion and a reminder that good does not always triumph." –Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch

"Alfieri illuminates the complexities and cruelties of colonial rule while giving readers an engrossing romance and mystery."
—Booklist

“Alfieri aims for the audience who loved Out of Africa, with heartbreaking romance married to a complex mystery.” – Kirkus

Michael gave the launch a boost with an interview in The Big Thrill - the monthly magazine of  International Thriller Writers.  You can find that here.

AND my publisher is offering the paperback at a low introductory price.  Follow this link to take advantage of it.   

 Wish good luck to the new kid on the block!

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!