Paperbooks

'fast-paced, sexy and blood-spattered' - Black Mongoose

Robert Guest, former Africa editor of The Economist and author of "The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future" has offered an excellent recommendation of Black Mongoose by Jon Haylett:

"Black Mongoose is a terrific novel: fast-paced, sexy and blood-spattered. Jon Haylett writes hard-boiled fiction with tremendous energy and an eye for unsettling truths."

Robert's book The Shackled Continent shares similar themes with Jon Haylett's novel, trying to explain the reasons why Africa is so poor in relation to the Western world and how it could become less so.

Order your copy of Black Mongoose now - £7.99 

Lucy

Gary and Jon launch short short story comp!

Gary Davison has launched a short story competition on his website www.gary-davison.com with Jon Haylett. Gary asked Jon to look at 4 pictures and make up a story title and first line for each one. The titles are:

Flight of the Wombat

The Doctor

Love is Blind

The Dancer

To view the photos and find out how to enter click here!

Lucy

Author feature - Jon Haylett

 Jon Haylett author of the brilliant Black Mongoose has been featured on fellow Paperbooks author Gary Davison's website www.gary-davison.com

As well as writing two brilliant novels, Jon Haylett is an award-winning short story writer, winning the Bridport International short story prize and the 2004 Royal Society of Literature vs. Pritchett Memorial Prize.

Gary asks : How do you approach writing a short story?

Jon  -  "Setting about writing a short story is very like setting out to have a baby. Obviously you’re not going to get anywhere without having all the necessary plumbing, like a basic command of the English language, imagination, a pen and paper or a computer you can work. After that, things become much more complicated. Everyone knows that a woman responds to the right atmosphere – candle-light, a decent wine, a few well-chosen sweet nothings and a look of lap-dog fascination with every word she utters. Similarly, the creative brain needs…. pampering. Frustratingly, you can then bang away for hours trying to think of something but produce nothing of any great consequence. As a lubricant, I strongly recommend a good bottle of St Emilion, and something special in the way of malt whisky.

I never know when I’m absorbed in the creative process whether what I’m doing is going to result in anything. Conception, when it finally happens, can be anywhere – out in the fresh air, in bed, on the patio, or on a pebble beach – but you don’t know that it’s viable: it’s a little, pink, wriggling thing. I have heaps of embryonic stories kicking around in my mind, and a load more gathering electronic dust in a folder called ‘Short Stories – Pending’, most of which are never going to develop into anything.

People who set out to have a baby don’t realise how hard they have to work. So it is with a story. Each word, each phrase, every punctuation mark has to be scrutinised, tweaked, considered and reconsidered. Once the story is ‘finished’, I go over it, and over it, until I’m sick of it. Then I get other people to read it – mostly my poor family – and then I edit it again; and again."

To read the interview in full click here!

Lucy

Author blog: Jon Haylett

I thoroughly enjoyed writing Black Mongoose, not least because the fictional country of USuzwe was reputed to have the most beautiful women in Africa. I had much more of a struggle with the website. I had never built one before so I had to start from scratch, which included buying the program – RapidWeaver – learning how to use it and, as the site began to come together, finding and sorting out the bugs.

The website was designed – if I can use so strong a word - to help those of my readers who know little of Africa see some of the wonders that I was struggling to describe, and of course one of them was Africa’s women. The book boasts some truly beautiful women, the lovely Lindiwe and the diminutive Zanela to name but two. And they dominate my stalwart English hero, they wrap the poor boy round their little fingers, they manipulate him, point him in the right direction, and give him a gentle push.

So, in the website, I gave a page to photographs of African women. All came from that wonderful source of photos, Flickr. had been warned by a friend of my daughter’s who is a lawyer that I must obtain permission to use the photos, which I did. I was deeply moved by the generosity of the people I approached. Some turned out to be professional photographers, yet they still allowed me to use their stunning shots.

This photo of a Masai mother, courtesy of Flickr member ‘Arriving at the Horizon’, me too late for the first upload of the site so I used it in a blog. To me, this girl is the Mona Lisa of Africa except, instead of a smile, she has a tear.

Jon

Order your copy of Black Mongoose now - £7.99 

Jon Haylett and Gary Davison

Gary Davison, author of the brilliant Fat Tuesday is doing a four part feature on fellow Paperbooks author Jon Haylett on his website http://www.gary-davison.com/.

Below is a taster, Jon's answers are in green:

'What would you say to ………… if you could have a face to face with them for thirty seconds. Here are his answers:

Simon Cowell

Hi, Simon - I know you must be someone excruciatingly famous because that’ll be why Gary’s introduced us but… I’m sorry…., I’ve never heard of you. Could you give me a potted life history in 30 seconds… or, even better, less?

Katie Price (AKA Jordan, the glamour model)

[I've heard of her]

Hi Katie - in these deflationary times it must be wonderful to have such substantial, portable assets. Heard you wrote a novel and sold 300,000 copies in the first 6 weeks. I’m badly in need of your advice. Are you free for a couple of hours one-to-one? Or is it two-to-one?

Zimbabwe Head of State, Robert Mugabe

So the white man gave lithe and beautiful Zimbabwe back to you, young, fresh and so, so full of promise - and you promptly raped her. Now you ask us for £11 billion in aid, no strings attached, as a minimum amount to repair the damage while, at the same time, squabbling over who gets the latest consignment of brand new Mercedes Benzes - E280s at $50,000 a throw. Take a hike.'

To read the blog in full click here!

Jon Haylett Blog - Strangers

Two of my favourite films involve people suddenly finding themselves operating in unaccustomed milieus: Harrison Ford in ‘Witness’ as the city detective sent to an Amish community to investigate a murder, and Peter Riegert in ‘Local Hero’ as a Texas oil man despatched on a secret mission to a remote Scottish crofting community. One of the joys of both lies in watching the incomer flounder in a foreign environment and then, slowly, begin to function and to appreciate what he has found – if not enough to stay there.

I loved writing ‘Black Mongoose’ primarily because it’s a fast-moving adventure story, and because, as in the two films, its hero, having set out to enjoy a tourist holiday, sees everything fall apart, spectacularly, in an unfamiliar place and amongst strangers. Johnny Strowger associates with people he would otherwise never have met, he experiences the grim realities of their day-to-day existence, he even does a little to help improve their circumstances.

If there’s a huge contrast between, say, Harrison Ford’s city life and the rural existence of the Amish, there’s a gulf between the England that Johnny comes from and a failing, third-world state like USuzwe. And that’s why I had so much fun writing ‘Black Mongoose’, because I was able, in a James Bond way, to drag in all sorts of truly African horrors to throw at my poor hero.

I say ‘fun’, but there were moments when I found myself shocked. In writing the novel and developing the accompanying website, I did more research than I have for any other book I’ve written. I already appreciated that, for many citizens in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, life is dreadfully hard, but what I found unacceptable is that so many brutalities continue to be perpetrated on women, children and defenceless minority groups. The photograph, courtesy of Sandra Crouse Quinn, University of Pittsburgh, of a billboard in Zambia showing a young, abused girl, not only illustrates the point but suggests how widespread this particular wicked misconception must be.

Jon

Order your copy of Black Mongoose now - £7.99 

Black Mongoose - Kenyan Music

Above is a little bit of Kenyan music to enjoy. This clip is taken from the companion website for Jon Haylett's second novel Black Mongoose that was published last week. The website www.black-mongoose.co.uk gives detailed information about the book, presented chapter by chapter and blogs by Jon about the themes and topics the book covers.

Order your copy of Black Mongoose now - £7.99 

Lucy

Black Mongoose launched!

The brilliant Black Mongoose by Jon Haylett was officially launched on Saturday. We are really excited about the release of this powerful and highly topical novel which is a must-read for anyone who enjoys a fast-paced thriller or is interested in African politics and society.

The author Jon was born in Africa and has worked in the Caribbean and right across Africa so knows a lot about the subject matter, making the book a highly-informative read, as well as entertaining page-turner.

Below is the blurb:

USuzwe is an African country rotten with corruption. Its rulers systematically pillage the economy, rob the charities and drain the aid budgets of gullible Western countries. However, a group of citizens rebel against the poverty, food shortages, bankrupt social services, disease and early deaths and plan to topple the regime within a week, their unsuspecting instrument ex-Royal Marine Commando Johnny.

Johnny arrives in the Kingdom of USuzwe like any other tourist, intent on enjoying its palm-fringed beaches, game parks and beautiful girls. But when his brother mysteriously disappears, he finds himself the object of a huge police manhunt. Guided by Ephraim and the beautiful Lindiwe Dhlimani, Johnny begins the systematic destruction of the snakes of Kisingo’s regime, but at a terrible price.

Order your copy now - £7.99 

Lucy

Jon Haylett Interview

Jon Haylett's fantastic novel Black Mongoose is out this Saturday. Jon has done a fascinating interview with the Writewords website, which was posted up yesterday.

Below is a taster:

How did you start writing?

One evening, some twenty years ago, I’d finished my marking and preparation for school and started, for no logical reason, a short story. Since I’d neither thought of doing this before, nor had any experience or knowledge of writing, the decision at the time seemed quite bizarre. Yet within months I had won a short story competition and my first novel had found an agent.

Who are your favourite writers and why?

I don’t enjoy most novels, particularly modern novels, preferring well-written non-fiction or novels with a firm factual base. So I have difficulty in pointing at an author and saying that he or she influenced my style of writing. On the other hand, I do have some favourites, which include:

1. Books about the history of the opening up of Africa by European missionaries, hunters and explorers, for example Patterson’s Man-eaters of Tsavo, JA Hunter’s Hunter’s Tracks, The Washing of the Spears by Donald R Morris, a history of the rise and near-destruction of the Zulu nation, and the stories of men such as Robert Moffat, the missionary who opened Africa for people like Livingstone.

2. Novels including Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, particularly Justine, which I first read as I hitch-hiked along the North African coast towards Alexandria, Jock of the Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, the story of a dog in the early days of the European penetration of South Africa, Something of Value by Robert Ruark, a novel, but sometimes described as the best history of the outbreak of Mau Mau in Kenya, and A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtmanche, a chilling story of the Rwanda massacre in 1994, because, as so often happens, a novel is first in revealing the true horror of events ignored by press and politicians.

To read the interview in full click here!

Pre-order your copy now - £7.99 

Lucy

Jon Haylett blog

The hero of ‘Black Mongoose’ is an ex-Royal Marine commando. I knew precious little about the marines when I started writing the novel – I hadn’t fully appreciated that they are a section of the Navy, not the Army – but it was essential that my man had certain military skills which he puts to good use in the book, and the marines are one group which specialises in them. So I had to rely on someone else to help me when I wrote about Johnny Strowger’s earlier exploits. In this I was fortunate as an ex-pupil of mine has been in the Royal Marine Reserve ever since he left school.

Last September he went out to Afghanistan. As a Reservist he didn’t have to go, he chose to, and I admire him for doing it. He left his job, his family, his life in London and, after some additional training, was posted to Helmand Province. It’s not the first time he’s volunteered: a couple of years ago he did six months in Basra. Last week we all breathed a sigh of relief: he’s back, safe and well.

Johnny Strowger was involved in Operation Telic as part of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the difficult things I have tried to capture in the book is the mental state of a man who, as part of such operations, has killed, clinically, frequently and up close and nastily.

As an author, I feel more comfortable writing about things I have experienced, but I’ve always believed that it’s the acid test of a writer’s skill when he/she attempts to write outside his/her field. For all the research (and the internet is a wonderful thing), for all the talking to other people, in the end it comes down to imagination, whether the writer can put him/herself into the boots of the person portrayed and ‘see’ what they would think, feel and do.

I found writing about Johnny rather frightening, particularly as I know that many servicemen and women experience considerable difficulty in adjusting to civilian life. I admire those who succeed; I worry for those who, like Johnny, struggle.

Jon