It’s official: I now have a newspaper. Well, it doesn’t technically belong to me, but I am the editor and designer. And I am very proud to say that the first edition is hot of the press and available. This is the front page story of the current edition.

Jesus Rocks my World

Sometime during his high school years, in the hostel at the Art, Ballet and Music School (Pro Arte today), Gerdus Brönn’s brother refused to return from Italy. In the end it would take their mother to fly over and escort him back to South Africa, and to university. Harry, came back from overseas a changed man, having given his heart and his life over to the Lord in the ancient city of Rome.

Once he had settled back into life in South Africa, Harry joined the Hatfield (Baptist) church and tried everything to convince Gerdus to accompany him. His pleas fell on deaf ears, until the night the church held a faith healing service that is.  “This, I’ve got to see,” Gerdus had said with a chuckle. But something unexpected happened that night. “I felt it the moment I walked through the door. A sort of electricity hung in the air and I sensed something bigger, much bigger, than me.” The pastor, from America, prayed for a man in a wheelchair and the brothers watched him stand up from that chair. “I’d never seen anything like it,” Gerdus recalls and when the pastor made an altar call, he went up. At the time, Gerdus had the mouth of a drunken sailor and admits that he could hardly utter a sentence without throwing in a couple of choice words. “Two weeks later, I noticed that I no longer swore. The remarkable thing is that it had happened on a subconscious level since I wasn’t even trying to stop. Sin had left me. That night, at that altar, God changed me.”

He developed a thirst for knowledge and devoured every Christian book he could lay his hands on, specifically those that dealt with healing. When Gerdus came across a book, simply entitled Healing by Father Francis MacNutt, a world of possibilities opened up to him. MacNutt wrote that healing is a reality, here and now, and not some long forgotten practice buried in Bible history. “In his book, the father wrote about the healing done by the latter day Saints and of nuns who would sit with their hands on the sick for hours and hours. The moment they took their hands away, the recovery stopped.” Gerdus grasped and understood, from this, the divine impartation that takes place between the believer and the sick.

Driven by this new found faith, he started a prayer group in the hostel and soon everyone, but two of the boarders, were actively partaking. “Praying for people with headaches became an everyday thing and my room was packed with people, day and night.” His tone melancholy, Gerdus remembers this as one of the most special times of his life. “It was a time of learning. A time of discovering. A tremendous time.”

Once he’d matriculated, Gerdus intended studying for a minister and with this in mind, he joined up with Youth with a Mission who offered him a six month missionary posting in Namibia (then South West). “God revealed to me that I have the gift of healing in my school years already. He confirmed it in Namibia.”After three months of receiving teaching, the group traveled down to Bloemfontein and ministered wherever they stopped or where the need arose. To soon, the six months were over and on his return home, an envelope bearing the coat of arms of the South African National Defense Force awaited him. “I’d been drafted and had to go to the army.”

Stationed in Grahamstown it didn’t take Gerdus long to realise the need for a prayer group and, with the help of a couple of like-minded soldiers, they obtained permission and their own key to the chapel.

In the beginning, the group consisted of about thirty people, but by the time they had finished basic service, there were only six guys left.  As it happened in those years, Gerdus was posted to border service where he started another prayer group. “They nicknamed me Dominee because I carried a little Bible in my pocket and preached to everyone, within earshot, at every smoke break they took.” Years later, Gerdus attended a service at Doxa Deo Hartbeespoort and one of the resident pastors approached him. “Do you remember me?” he asked. Gerdus didn’t recognise him, but it turned out that they had prayed together for a young man whose leg had been blown off by a landmine. “He stared death in the face,” Gerdus recalls. “But with God’s grace, he pulled through.”

The army behind him, Gerdus set out to explore the world and all it had to offer, and with his faith now wavering, took an extended tour through Europe. Not as sure anymore what he wanted to do with his life, Gerdus took up pottery on his return from overseas. Then, God intervened.“My calling is irrevocable,” He said. “You can’t get away from it, no matter how hard you try.” This time, Gerdus heeded the call with his whole heart and became an evangelist. “I had just opened a shop, Silver Hills Mining, in Hennopsriver and traveled to Malawi to buy curios.” Whilst there, he attended a Sunday service at a local church and almost fell of his chair when the minister pointed to him and proclaimed that this man is going to preach to us today. Shaking Gerdus took to the pulpit, but God stood up with him and, together, they delivered a powerful message. “I told them I would be back and started preparing myself spiritually for my return to the church.” When Gerdus arrived in Malawi a second time, the church had advertised his coming service far and wide. He ascended the pulpit to a crowd of close on two thousand people. “I was dumbstruck.”

The minister had also arranged a series of talks and visits to local hospitals to deliver faith healing. Annalie, Gerdus’ wife of many years, accompanied him on the extended Malawi trip and the couple saw many miracles during their time there. “People were healed. Demons were driven out. God’s glory is almost impossible to put into words,” Gerdus recounts, a far-away look in his eyes. Fired up, he brought his ministry closer to home, but encountered fierce opposition from the word go. A planned outreach to Okasi, Brits, was met with outright hostility when, on his arrival, locals lined the streets and cursed him. Not to be thwarted, Gerdus paid a visit to each and every church in the area with the message that Christ is for everyone, but even the white churches condemned his mission. Just when all seemed lost, another miracle happened. “A Pentecostal preacher, in Okasi, opened his doors to me and during my service the entire church turned their lives over to God.” Gerdus visited the church again and started planning a missionary outreach to Mpumalanga.

It was never to be though as disaster struck the family when their shop in Hennops burnt down. The blow took its toll, financially and emotionally. “We lost everything and our only source of income evaporated.” At the time Gerdus’ was studying to become an ordained minister. “I quit my studies.” The family was so traumatised that it took counseling to get them back on track.

God intervened and led the family to Hartbeespoort, where they opened Silver Hills Gems on Scott Street and Gerdus tells of the many people who come into the shop and ask about the metaphysical meaning of the stones. “I say to them, God made these stones, they’re pretty and that’s it.  Some people believe in the power of created things; we believe in the power of the Creator. For us every stone is beautiful, an underground flower perhaps. God didn’t intend for that which He created to be used for rituals and occult practices.”

God never forsakes His people and He is rising Gerdus’ ministry up from its ashes as he is now, once again, involved in a an effective prayer group. “This is a new season, a new time. Get busy with my work, God said to me the other day. And I am heeding that call.”

General fiction submissions are now closed and fear and trepidation descends on 10 000 hopefuls. Don’t know what ABNA is? Here goes.

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Just another writer’s competition? Perhaps not. I scoured the internet for information from other writers to try and gauge the benefit of entering and it looks like it is possibly one of the best competitions around.

Stephen M. Swartz has this to say on ABNA on his blog.  ‘Based on last year’s rough, cutthroat, backstabbing, heartshredding experience (somewhat for me and distinctly more for some of my colleagues), I know some of us do not relish the idea of diving back into those shark-infested waters, to use a dumb cliche. Some of us don’t mind, of course, because we are, by nature, masochists.’

http://stephenswartz.blogspot.com/2012/01/am-i-masochist-entering-abna-2012.html#comment-form

I concur. On every single one of Stephen’s points. But it certainly seems that those who make it through receive excellent feedback on their manuscripts. And that is something every writer relishes. Except  if said feedback makes you want to drink a bottle of scotch on your own, or worse a shot of arsenic. Then, of course, it’s not very helpful at all.

‘In addition to getting general feedback as to where you fit, ABNA also provides feedback to the writers from the reviewers. In my case I got two very good reviews after making it into the top 20%.’

http://whenameoksings.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/hello-world/

But, as with everything, there are concerns as pointed out by Katherine Gilraine.  ‘Penguin’s credibility had been sliding for a while. Some of the worst-edited manuscripts that I have seen recently were Penguin books, and to release a vanity-press subsidiary is a nice sneer of contempt at authors, both at the self-pubs who are trying to get to the market,and the published authors, who had seen a steady decline in how much Penguin manages for them. More and more do I see authors – trad-pubs! – running their own marketing. This is with a Big-Six publishing house. Um, what the hell? I thought that the reason that people would go trad-pub would be to avoid having to do their own deal.’

http://katherinegilraine.com/2012/01/01/abna-2012-and-flexing-my-style-muscle/

It’s a mixed bag really, but it does certainly seem like a worthwhile competition to enter. Good luck to everyone.

Twenty-one today. A milestone reduced to nothing but another alone evening, in a house about to cave in. And any minute now, judging by the sound of the porch door being hammered into its frame by the wind.

Life sure isn’t fair sometimes.

Alexandra Black glanced at the ginger cat on the threadbare rug in front of the fireplace, now hissing at a popping log and crinkled her nose. “I think you’re a bit close to that fire Spider.” Narrowed, amber eyes considered her for a moment. “Just saying. Use it, don’t use it.” When the cat settled down, she opened the book on her lap again and, not for the first time, lost her place after a couple of sentences. She tossed it on the floor and headed into the kitchen.  For a long while, Alex stood at the window, the Alaskan night trying its level best to erase the lingering daylight. It was anyone’s fight.

With a resigned sigh, she turned to the bottle of red wine next to the pink cupcake on the scuffed kitchen counter.  There had been no wishes, no telephone calls, no presents or cards, and no parents with an over-large silver key.

Alexandra didn’t do tears. Hadn’t, at eight years old, when she fell off her bike and her aunt had dragged her into the house by her ear while the neighbourhood gawked from every street corner. Nor had she cried on her sixteenth birthday when the same aunt, and her only remaining family member, lay pale-white and very much dead in her rickety bed. Not even missing the senior prom because no one had asked her, managed to move Alex to tears and turning twenty-one on her own, didn’t make the cut either. She stabbed the cupcake with a candle, lit it, and started singing to herself. When her voice broke on to me, Alex left it to burn in peace, the sugary smell of melting fondant heavy in the tiny kitchen.

A treasure hunt through the cupboards netted a wine glass and she spluttered on a layer of dust she blew from its cracked depths. The bottle squeaked in protest when she unscrewed the top and as she poured, the doorbell rang. Its unfamiliar ding-dong echoed through the house. Alex stared at the door, wine suspended in mid-air. It never rings.

It rang again.

With a long look at her sweat pants and faded sweater, and with a quick hand through her copper hair, she cracked the door and peered around it.

“Sally? What are you doing here? Is something wrong at the store?” Relaxing her grip on the handle, she opened the door wider for a better look at the plump blonde standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“I need you to come down here.”

“Okay. Give me a sec to get my shoes, will you?” Alex ducked back inside, her mind racing to find a reason for The Boss on the doorstep. Maybe she brought me a present. Maybe I’m in trouble. The first thought made her laugh. The second stopped her short.   

Darkness had won by the time the wind carried her down the stairs to where Sally stood, still in the exact same spot.

“What’s up?” Alex said.

“I have something for you in my car.” She waived toward the out-of-the-box red Mustang parked in the drive, but didn’t move.

“Should I fetch it?”

Sally appeared to be considering the question. “No, we’ll go together.”

Alex squinted at the older woman who, she now realised, shone ghostly white in the deep twilight “Are you feeling all right?” she said.

“Let’s go.” After waiting for Alex to slide into the passenger seat, Sally heaved her bulk behind the steering wheel. “Now where is it?” she said, eyes darting around the dim interior. “Alex?”

Slightly nauseated by the overpowering smell of leather, Alex tore her gaze from the galaxy of red buttons on the centre console. “Yes?” she said, and as her eyes found the knife in the older woman’s hand, “what’s going on Sally?” A river of sweat, that had nothing to do with the stuffy interior of the car, slid down her face.

“I don’t want to do this, but I have to.” She appeared to be talking to the windshield, Alex forgotten.

The river turned into a cascading waterfall. “I don’t know what you mean. You’re acting really weird. I think that maybe I should go back inside.” Alex tried the door but it wouldn’t budge. “Let me out.” No response. “Sally? Let me out of the car. Please?” The plea seemed to do the trick and Sally reached over to the passenger door, Alex assumed to unlock it, and pinched her. Or so it felt, at first. The illusion lingered for two seconds before exploding into searing pain. Bewildered, Alex looked down, just in time to see crimson blood budding and then blossoming on her cream sweater.  “Why?” she said as darkness threatened her.

Then it swallowed her whole.

And spat her out again.

“Excuse me?”

The tall stranger turned his dusky, brown eyes on her and with a small frown, changed course. She watched the disappearing figure, grey cloak snapping behind him, before pushing on along the steep path. Here and there, another person crossed her path, but each in turn slunk away from her. Out of breath and with a stitch in her side, Alex headed for the cool, shadow cast by a massive poplar halfway up the now deserted hill and pounced cool deep-green grass.

Where am I?

She remembered pouring her first and only drink. Then, here.

I am alone. And dead, I think. Can dead people be tired?

A dream claimed her in confirmation.

Her mom, red hair, and blue eyes, in the kitchen of a stone cottage, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the wood fired oven and Alexandra, three years old, on her tippy toes for a better look at the cake inside.

“Mommy?”

“Yes my angel?”

“Where did you learn to bake flutterby cakes?’

“Butterfly darling and they taught me in heaven.”

“Mommy?”

“Hmmm?” The hand that held a batter-covered spoon out to her daughter glistened with soapy dishwater, rainbow bubbles caught between the fingers.

“Why did you go to heaven?” the words stop-start, interrupted by sticky licks.

“Because earth is too dangerous for me.”

“Did you die before I was born?”

“That would be impossible, don’t you think?”

Alex started, eyelids fluttering in solid darkness, the earth beneath her hard, and ice cold.

“Help.” The word made no impression on the deafening silence. “Please. I’m scared. Someone, help me.”

The dark void, once again swallowed her.

The opening of a novel is make or break. Everyone knows that. And I suspect it is the one thing that can potentially drive an author or writer insane. So with that in mind, and insanity looming in the not to distant future, here goes. Again

Chapter 1

Twenty-one today. A milestone reduced to nothing but another alone evening, in a house about to cave in. And any minute now, judging by the sound of the porch door being hammered into its frame by the wind.

Life, Alexandra Black thought sure isn’t fair sometimes.

She glanced at the ginger cat on the threadbare rug in front of the fireplace, now hissing at a popping log and crinkled her nose. “I think you’re a bit close to that fire Spider.” Narrowed, amber eyes considered her for a moment. “Just saying. Use it, don’t use it.” When the cat settled down, she opened the book on her lap again and, not for the first time, lost her place after a couple of sentences so instead she tossed it on the floor and headed into the kitchen.  For a long while, Alex stood watching the Alaskan night trying its level best to erase the lingering daylight. It was anyone’s fight at this stage.

With a resigned sigh, she turned to the bottle of red wine next to the pink cupcake on the scuffed kitchen counter.  There had been no wishes, no telephone calls, no presents or cards, and no parents presenting their beaming daughter with an over-large silver key.

Alexandra never cried. Hadn’t, at eight years old, when she fell off her bike and her aunt had dragged her into the house by her ear while the neighbourhood gawked from every street corner. Nor had she cried on her sixteenth birthday when the same aunt, and her only remaining family member, lay pale-white and very much dead in her rickety bed. Not even missing the senior prom because no one had asked her, managed to move Alex to tears and turning twenty-one on her own didn’t make the cut either. She stabbed the cupcake with a candle, lit it, and started singing to herself. When her voice broke on to me, Alex left it to burn in peace.

After some searching, she found a wine glass in the back of a cupboard and almost chocked on the layer of dust she blew from its cracked depths. The bottle squeaked in protest when she unscrewed the top. As she poured, the doorbell rang, its unfamiliar ding-dong echoing through the house. Alex stared at the door, wine bottle suspended in mid-air. It never rings.

It rang again.

With a long look at her sweat pants and faded sweater, and with a quick hand through her copper hair, she cracked the door and peered around it.

“Sally? What are you doing here? Is something wrong at the store?” Relaxing her grip on the handle, she opened the door wider for a better look at the plump blonde standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“I need you to come down here.”

“Okay. Give me a sec to get my shoes, will you?” Alex ducked back inside, her mind racing in an attempt to explain The Boss on the doorstep.  Maybe she brought me a present. Maybe I’m in trouble. The first thought made her laugh. The second stopped her short.   

Darkness had won by the time the wind carried her down the stairs to where Sally stood, still in the exact same spot.

“What’s up?” Alex said.

“I have something for you in my car.” She waived toward the out-of-the-box red Mustang parked in the drive, but didn’t move.

“Should I fetch it?”

Sally appeared to be considering the question. “No, we’ll go together.”

Alex squinted at the older woman whose face, she realised now, shone ghostly white in the deep twilight “Are you feeling all right?” she said.

“Let’s go.” After waiting for Alex to slide into the passenger seat, Sally heaved her bulk behind the steering wheel. “Now where is it?” she said, eyes darting around the dim interior.

Alex tore her eyes away from the galaxy of buttons on the centre console.

“Wh…?” she managed as Sally lunged at her and plunged a knife through her breastbone and into her heart.

Darkness threatened Alexandra.

Then it swallowed her whole.

And spat her out again.

“Excuse me?”

The tall stranger turned his dusky, brown eyes on her and with a small frown, changed course. She watched the disappearing figure, grey cloak snapping behind him, before pushing on along the steep path. Here and there, she came across another person, but each in turn slunk away from her. Out of breath and with a stitch in her side, Alex headed for the cool, shadow cast by a massive poplar halfway up the now deserted hill and pounced on the velvety cool grass.

Where am I?

She remembered a pouring her first and only drink. Then, here.

I am alone.

And dead, I think. Can dead people be tired?

A dream claimed her in confirmation.

Her mom, red hair, and blue eyes, in the kitchen of a stone cottage, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the wood fired oven and Alexandra, three years old, on her tippy toes for a better look at the cake inside.

“Mommy?”

“Yes my angel?”

“Where did you learn to bake flutterby cakes?’

“Butterfly darling and they taught me in heaven.”

“Mommy?”

“Hmmm?” The hand that held a batter-covered spoon out to her daughter glistened with soapy dishwater.

“Why did you go to heaven?” the words stop-start, interrupted by licks.

“Because earth is too dangerous for me.”

“Did you die before I was born?”

“That would be impossible, don’t you think?”

Alex started, eyelids fluttering in solid darkness, the earth beneath her hard, and ice cold.

“Help.” The word made no impression on the deafening silence. “Please. I’m scared. Someone, help me.”

The dark void, once again swallowed her.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/01/03/25-things-writers-should-stop-doing/

Go forth and read this. It WILL make your day.

I thought that I may entertain all my avid readers with the opening chapter of the first book in the Black Trilogy. Enjoy.

Chapter 1

The log let out a hissing noise, burning blue for a moment, before settling back into its rhythmic snapping and popping. Alexandra Black glanced at the cat on the threadbare rug in front of the fireplace, now mimicking the hiss, and crinkled her nose.

“I think you’re a bit close to that fire Spider,” she said. The snake-like sound stopped as the ginger cat turned his amber eyes on her. “Just saying. Use it, don’t use it.” He carried on staring at her, the corners of his mouth turned down but when the porch door banged, let Alex off the hook. The gunshot sound would have given anyone other than her a heart attack but the everyday sounds of the disintegrating cottage were her sole companions. Alaska, she knew, would eat through anything you dare leave exposed to it.

Alex tried reading for a while longer but the wind now seemed to be refereeing a fight between the stubborn daylight and darkness, the result nothing short of a racket. She closed the book and headed into the kitchen. For a long moment, Alex considered the bottle of red wine next to the pink cupcake with the frosted silver twenty-one on.

Just another day, she thought. There had been no wishes, no telephone calls, no presents or cards, and no parents presenting their beaming daughter with an over-large silver key.

Alexandra never cried. Hadn’t, at eight years old, when she fell off her bike and her aunt had dragged her into the house by her ear while the neighbourhood gawked from every street corner. Nor had she cried on her sixteenth birthday when the same aunt, and her only remaining family member, lay pale-white and very much dead in her rickety bed. Not even missing the senior prom because no one had asked her, managed to move Alex to tears and turning twenty-one alone didn’t make the cut either. She stabbed the cupcake with a candle, lit it, and started singing to herself. When her voice broke on to me, Alex blew the candle out.

After some searching, she found a wine glass in the back of a cupboard, almost chocking as she blew a layer of dust from its cracked depths. The bottle in protest squeaked when she unscrewed the top. Then the doorbell rang. Alex stared at the door, wine bottle suspended in mid-air. It never rings.

It rang again.

With a long look at her sweat pants and faded sweater, and with a quick hand through her copper hair, Alex cracked the door and peered around it.

“Sally? What are you doing here? Is there a problem at the store?” Relaxing her grip on the handle, she opened the door wider for a better look at the plump blonde standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“I need you to come down here.”

“Okay. Give me a sec to get my shoes, will you?” Alex ducked back inside, her mind racing in an attempt to explain The Boss on the doorstep.  Maybe she brought me a present. Maybe I’m in trouble. The first thought made her laugh. The second stopped her short.   

Darkness had set in by the time she took the stairs down to where Sally stood, still in the exact same spot.

“What’s up?” Alex said.

“I have something for you in my car.” She waived toward the out-of-the-box Mustang parked in the drive but didn’t move.

“Should I fetch it?”

Sally appeared to be considering the question. “No, we’ll go together.”

Alex squinted at the older woman who, she now realised, appeared a little off colour. “Are you feeling all right?” she said.

“Let’s go.” After waiting for Alex to slide into the passenger seat, Sally heaved her bulk behind the steering wheel. “Now where is it?” she said, eyes darting around the dim interior.

Alex tore her eyes away from the galaxy of buttons on the centre console.

“Wh…?” she managed as Sally lunged at her and plunged a knife through her breastbone and into her heart.

Darkness threatened Alexandra.

Then it swallowed her whole.

And spat her out again.

“Excuse me?”

The tall stranger turned his dusky, brown eyes on her and with a small frown, changed course. She watched the disappearing figure, grey cloak snapping behind him, before pushing on along the steep path. Here and there, she came across another person, but each in turn slunk away from her. Out of breath and with a stitch in her side, Alex headed for the cool, shadow cast by a massive poplar halfway up the now deserted hill and pounced on the velvety cool grass.

Where am I?

She remembered getting into Sally’s car. Then, here.

I am alone.

And dead, I think. Can dead people be tired?

A dream claimed her in confirmation.

Her mom, red hair, and blue eyes, in the kitchen of a stone cottage, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the wood fired oven and Alexandra, three years old, on her tippy toes for a better look at the cake inside.

“Mommy?”

“Yes my angel?”

“Where did you learn to bake flutterby cakes?’

“Butterfly darling and they taught me in heaven.”

“Mommy?”

“Hmmm?” The hand that held a batter-covered spoon out to her daughter glistened with soapy dishwater.

“Why did you go to heaven?” the words stop-start, interrupted by licks.

“Because earth is too dangerous for me.”

“Did you die before I was born?”

“That would be impossible, don’t you think.”

Alex started, eyelids fluttering in solid darkness, the earth beneath her hard, and ice cold.

“Help.” The word made no impression on the deafening silence. “Please. I’m scared. Someone, help me.”

The dark void, once again swallowed her.

Let me start by saying: I am quite annoyed at myself this present moment. Annoyed, because I was anti the whole Twilight Saga-saga from the get go but got sucked (excuse the pun) into it regardless. And for a while there I drooled over Edward, marvelled at Jacob’s abs and felt Bella’s pain and anguish just like the next person. Until last night that is, when my little pleasure bubble burst with a resounding bang.

One of my many, many comments after the movie was this: I sense Stephanie Meyer’s hand in the colossal failure that is the first instalment of Breaking Dawn. Imagine then my horror when I realised that she, in fact, produced it! Stick to writing Stef, one hundred adverbs per page and all. I now understand the series of unconnected, random events popping up all over the movie and can picture her saying: ‘oh Bill (Condon), we just have to put that in because it is in the book,’ even though in that instance it comprises an entire chapter. ‘It doesn’t matter Bill. Just pop it in there anyway.’
Also, it is easy to see why there are musical interludes all over the place with Bill Condon at the helm. For those of you who don’t know, he directed the likes of Chicago and Dreamgirls and a couple of horror movies which then goes on to explain many other scenes, like for instance the wolves talking to each other. Huh? What just happened? Did we step into another dimension there for a moment, because it sounded a lot like we were listening to possessed Marlena in Days of our lives.
Right, with that out of the way: The Cullens. What on earth happened to the beautiful, designer clad, pale people who we came to know. For starters, the eyes?!? The make-up?!? In one scene there is a visible, pock mark perhaps, on the side of RPat’s nose, which remains the entire scene and then just disappears. Kellen Lutz looks like a over stuffed sausage and there are visible dye lines in Carlisle’s hair. Come on!?!

I am disappointed to the point of becoming angry. Why, you may be wondering? Because I get the feeling that they, Meyer and Condon, knew the movie wasn’t up to scratch and rode on the success of the other movies with a ‘they’ll watch it anyway, suckers that these fans are’ attitude! And that, to me at least, is unforgivable and boils down to one thing only: GREED.

Enough said!

I have been absent of late and some of you may have noticed but quite possibly, no one has, because let’s face it: everyone is out there fighting their own battles, some successfully, others not so much. So, while I was spending time on everything but my computer, I was out there in the real world doing what J.M Tohline always advocates we do: living! And I learnt a couple of amazing things, and discovered some others that I probably wouldn’t have, had I been busy blogging. Here are some of the more interesting facts I have unearthed during my, for want of a better word, sabbatical.

1. Christians, it would seem, are out there in the big wide world, preaching to other Christians. Mind you, not all of them, but a large percentage of them. I am not sure that this is the way we should be doing things and I need time to think about it.
2. The place where I live is getting hotter and hotter by the minute. Sadly, because of security reasons, we can’t leave any doors open and every night barricade ourselves in the house where we slowly melt away. I am not very impressed with this little situation at the moment.
3. Just about all modern food is bad for us. Chicken contains dangerous levels of hormones, fish is laced with mercury, fruit and veg is sprayed with chemicals. I tried eating around all of this for a while there and almost died of hunger. That’s all I have to say about that.
4. Substituting crochet for writing, results in severe cramping of the hands and wrists. And that is also all I have to say about that.
5. Something disturbing has happened to the movie industry and I am not sure at all exactly what the cause is of this, but I will not be watching the Smurfs, the animated version of Jock of the Bushveld in which he goes to a DISCO? or Tin-Tin. I flat out refuse.
6. Taking regular breaks and discovering new places is good for the soul. I did it twice in the last two months and plan on doing it every month from now on.
7. No good deed goes unpunished. Nothing more said.
8. High definition television is the way to go, provided one can find a decent movie to watch on your seriously overpriced television.
9. When you haven’t seen someone, who is now in their 70′s, for over twelve years you are bound to get the fright of your life!
10. Some friendships last forever and others rot. I suspect that they pass their sell-by-date.

I have many passions. Books are one of them. And music the other. Tonight I asked myself: if I had the choice between being Adele or J. K Rowling, which would I choose. I have no idea.

Over the past month I have been throwing all my energy into a local talent contest. And it has been great. Awesome in fact.

But, in the process, I have also put my own life, my Black Rain, on hold.  And now I am at the crossroads… do I quit or do I push on? I have no idea.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing yesterday. He asks and answers this question: does one need a writing qualification to make it as an author?

I grew up in a non-English speaking household. No, that’s not quite correct. I grew up in a house where my father was the only person who had mastered the English language. My mother to this day battles with the most basic expressions, and when my husband addresses her in English, she usually replies in Afrikaans, our native tongue. Afrikaans, in case you don’t know, is a West Germanic language that originated from the 17th century Dutch dialect and although there are many similarities between the two, the Dutch generally find it easier understanding us than we do them.

My parents were keen hikers, in their glory years, and as the youngest child, I had no choice but to accompany them on this or that torturous 7-day route through the mountains. It was on one such hike (I forget which one exactly, but seem to think that it may have been the Tsitsikamma, a national park situated on South Africa’s Southern Coastline and a place of indescribable beauty) that I first encountered ‘English’ people. Or more to the point: English boys.

I was painfully shy, back then, prone to blushing of the severest kind and to this day struggle to control it, although it takes a lot more than it did back then to leave me red in the face. The boys were more or less my age, thirteen, and from a prestigious private school in Cape Town. And extremely well spoken. It took all of three days to muster enough courage to speak to them. They were cousins, hiking with their mothers, and since the women had struck up a friendship with my parents, we were now walking together. I cut my leg on a rock and while my mom was inspecting the damage, John Sinclair looked over at me and asked whether I was all right. ‘No,’ I said in my best English. ‘The blood is walking down my leg.’  The silence that followed was polite and uncomfortable.

In my own defence, Afrikaans is a strange language and one would literally say die bloed loop (the blood walks) as one would also say my neus loop (my nose walks). John, it would seem, forgave my embarrassing English and asked for my address before we parted ways. We become firm pen pals for many years thereafter and I am almost certain that I have him to thank for motivating me into taking command of the English language.

I vowed that day, that I would never suffer embarrassment at my own tongue again and I have not, since then, read a single solitary Afrikaans book. I vetoed my mother tongue at school, answered teachers in English and landed myself in serious trouble because of it on any given day. I made a conscious decision to become English and took to reading the dictionary, the English bible and every other foreign book I could lay my hands on. Today, regrettably perhaps, I struggle to write as much as an email to my brother in Afrikaans and often switch to English when I speak to my father, or some half-baked version of my native tongue when in conversation with my mother.

Bottom line: I am as English as I can be. Is it enough, I wonder…