The Tricksters: General

INTRODUCTION

The Tricksters is my debut novel. It is a fantasy comedy for both young and older adults.

COVER

The front cover of the book depicts an inkblot-like bunch of wildflowers. The idea was that it would have an angels-and-demons-like effect.

Does the populace of Verndoy perceive Verndoy Animal Care correctly? What do they see?

Staring deeply into the centre of the cover puts across an aspect of hypnosis, which comes into play through the chief baddie, Trabarp.

SYNOPSIS

The gist of the summary is this – an everyday guy who works in a shop is thrust into taking on his deceptive ex-overseers while needing to make decisions about his personal life.

Along for the ride are his best friends Dile, Ack, and Marga.

Strange footprints, torn-up sketches, secretive paupers, ogre cousins, wild yorkies, a dog-sized hamster. Love and friendship. Adventure and sleuthing.

While the Bureau of Knights also get a mention on the back cover, prospective readers must not draw too much into this. It would not be in my best interests to spoil the story for you by letting you know if they make an appearance at some point and to what degree. In essence, you need not worry that I've subconsciously followed the 'rules' of other novels that contain secret orders of knights.

I tried throughout to make the plot unique and the timeline unpredictable.

For instance, the hamster, Demetrius, is not Harles' pet or sidekick. Yet, he remains a symbolic mischief maker throughout the story.

For instance, a hearing in Part 2. Something hardly seen in fantasy novels.

BIOGRAPHY

My rosy cheeks make me look tipsy or like someone told a joke that crossed a line just before the photo was snapped. To be fair to my publishers, I was warned in my contract that the colours of photographs may be imperfect upon publication; beige-cum-tan may become tourist cheeks.

With this being my debut novel, I had no previous novels to mention. So, I gave my publishers general info about myself.

The 'karaoke-style' sentence was chiefly inspired by some housesitting stints my wife and I had when we were younger; a cousin of mine lived just a few suburbs away, and we would look after their pets when she and her family went away.

They owned a very large TV with very clear sound and, owing to the largeness of their house, we'd find ourselves singing along at length to YouTube videos on Friday or Saturday nights, only realising afterwards that our voices must have carried in what was a generally silent street.

I am no Chris Martin, no Freddie Mercury, and must have caused great suffering to both neighbours and pets.

My wife and I used to love playing Sherlock Holmes roleplay games. Holmes and Watson inspecting the clues in the mud of the rainy countryside. Holmes and Watson back in busy 1880s London.

And then our Xbox broke at a time in our lives we were largely focused on other things, and I never got around to buying a new one.

So, last year, suffering from withdrawal symptoms, I watched game walkthroughs on YouTube on our lounge TV; Hercule Poirot: The First Cases, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Back to the Future: The Game.

Much better than spending my spare time watching average or rehashed Hollywood nonsense.

There is a magical creativity and atmosphere that only a video game has.

Incidentally, here in South Africa, you can say lounge or living room. Most of us still say lounge.

At the time my publishers requested personal info from me, I was very interested in ancient Greece.

I had watched a documentary narrated by Liam Neeson. I had read portions of a giant coffee table book about that period. I had read the first few chapters of the re-telling of The Odyssey by Jaroslav Hulak. Read two booklets about the daily lives of the ancient Greeks.

You get the picture.

I eventually went on to complete that novel-like version of The Odyssey, but a book from that period of my life fell through the cracks.

I recently unearthed it during a spring clean. Aristotle and Poetic Justice by Margaret Doody.

I am now roughly halfway through it. Aristotle and Stephanos are in Delphi looking for the missing heiress of a silver merchant.

I have the habit of starting more than one book at a time, so that any book I find boring or not to my taste can be put aside and donated or re-donated to a hospice shop at which I used to volunteer.

Aristotle and Poetic Justice passed the test before it fell through the cracks, and passes it still. I have no doubt I'll go on to complete it.

In Junior Primary School, our hopeless P.E. teachers used to shout us into jumping into the deep end of the pool with old kickboards that didn't float properly. They'd then stand there chatting and gossiping, keeping an eye on us only to remove from the edges the hands of petrified kids who had become tired of swallowing water.

To add insult to injury, I remember the one quasi-human telling me aggressively, "You're sinking because you don't kick properly!"

Exact expletives come to mind.

We should have all run around hitting them with those boards, like a scene from an Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell movie.

A couple of years later, on a very hot Durban night, I ended up in the pool at an uncle's birthday party. An aunt of mine asked me why I was shy to leave the shallow end. Despite being half-sloshed, she taught me with patience and friendliness how to swim, and I've been swimming ever since.

It's been one of the great loves of my life.

And I'm happy to say that my P.E. teachers in both Senior Primary School and High School were a lot happier and logical than the quasi-humans of my Junior Primary days.

I still never miss a world cup, and I'm glad the Soccer World Cup has now started.

I usually go for South Africa first. And if we get kicked out, for one of the other African countries, or one of the countries of my ancestors. All depends on who makes it through to those final rounds.

For instance, Portugal. My mother's father was Madeiran.

But I won't support any team, wherever they're from, that tries to hack and dive their way to the final.

Must be a team with a good record. Preferably, an almost clean sheet.

Nothing anyone can do about whinging though. Inevitably, each team in the world cup is going to have a bunch of whiners who follow the ref around as if their melodrama is going to sway his decision. Not even the soccer gods can do anything about thirty-year-olds who act like someone at the next table removed their meal and started eating it, or like you won't give them back their toy car.

I'm still a fan of audiobooks. Everything from LibriVox to Terry Pratchett to retro Star Trek novels.

LibriVox has a clear rendering of Twelve Years a Slave, which I listened to the same weekend I watched the movie on Netflix. It expounded on things one might have missed in the movie or wanted to know more about afterwards.

Old Terry Pratchett novels are read clearly, but it always sounds like the narrator's angry with life or giving a kid a stern lecture. I much prefer listening to Tony Robinson (Baldrick) read a Terry Pratchett novel. The Carpet People. Small Gods.

The retro Star Trek novels, which one can find easily on YouTube, are read by the original cast. William Shatner reading a William Shatner novel, for instance, with Leonard Nimoy voicing Spock. James Doohan in his natural Canadian accent and as Scotty.

Some of these audiobooks are AI, but most of them are dinkum.

Of late, I've had the terrible habit though of falling asleep to a George Takei reading roundabout the same point each time. I still don't know how that novel ends. I just remember Takei impersonating an alien accent, and the next thing it's four in the morning and I'm telling my cat Scrappy it's too early to feed her.

Also on a light note, my wife and I used to love watching Weird or What?

A few years ago, every evening I'd sit for hours reading summaries on LibriVox, but I'd hardly ever listen to a recording before downloading it. So, once my flash stick was full and my speaker's lights were moving about, I got a nice surprise.

Among the many readers of the many downloads was a white English-speaking South African guy. There was also a Zulu lady. And an Afrikaans lady.

So that was a cool discovery to make as a South African.

On the whole, I think LibriVox has a positive effect on people. Podcasters and politicians always try and sway you against or generalise about someone somewhere in the world, and it's nice to hear everyday people from different parts of the globe; reality over agenda.

The guy who reads Sleepy Hollow sounds like Grandpa Smurf.

Conjures up images of the original hand-drawn Smurfs series, which I loved when I was small.

To end this section on a sad note, Kelsey, our dog, passed away before she could see her name in my author bio.

Kelsey was a stray who followed my parents-in law's neighbour home one day from their local Spar. He got the word out that he was looking after her, and when no one came forward to claim her, he had a predicament: he already owned dogs, and couldn't keep her permanently.

We adopted her, and well into her late teens she remained pleasant and happy-go-lucky, until a heart attack at her water bowl caused water on her lungs and the inability to walk.

I took her to our vet and kissed her goodbye and stayed with her while she was being put down. He left me alone with her afterwards, and needless to say, I bawled my eyes out.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I state in my Author's Note that The Tricksters is only for readers older than thirteen. Overviews on online bookstores include the same guideline. This is for two reasons.

Firstly, portions of certain chapters become intense. While teens and adults won't mind this tension adding to the story, kids would dislike or be bored with it. These portions are unsuitable for children.

Secondly, some of the humour in the novel is suggestive. While it may cause a teenager or adult to chuckle, children shouldn't or wouldn't get the point of it. Again, not suitable.

If you are not one for suggestive humour, rest assured that The Tricksters contains various forms of humour throughout. You won't be stuck with suggestive humour page after page.

And nothing is extremely suggestive, anyhow. Nothing overdone.

The challenge to the author is to create that type of humour without crossing a line; to cause amusement rather than a frown. It is with reason and intermittency.

In the end, whatever your preferences, you might find yourself laughing when you least expect.

As far as spelling goes, South African spelling is like UK spelling. I only really made mention of it due to words like 'realise'. I'd noticed in British novels I'd read over the years that most editors had favoured 'realize'.

For instance, in Roald Dahl short stories, which I read avidly when I was in my late teens, Dahl always went with 'realize' with a z.

So, nothing major. Rather just a natural tendency of mine, Durban born and bred.

The novel does contain one distinctly South African idiom towards the end, though: the whole toot.

This means, depending on context, the whole nine yards or the whole lot.

Again, I wouldn't underestimate the intelligence of my readers to gather things as they went along. I'm sure that further idioms may have been a point of interest rather than one of dislike or confusion.

PART

Part 1: Life In Verndoy, centred on its title page between corners of wildflowers, contains a lowercase 'p'.

This is intentional. The idea is that Harles, the only-human main character, has made natural errors in his cursive headings.

The lowercase 'p' was therefore carried forward into the ebook version of the novel. Its different font, however, may make it look like an error in sample pages on online bookstores.

Rest assured that it is rather a stylistic approach. 'Part' contains a lowercase 'p' in cursive on every part-title page within the paperback, and in every part heading throughout the ebook.

Equally, the 'I' in 'in' is uppercase. Technically, it should have been lowercase.

However, for the same reason, my publishers' graphic designer and I jointly settled on it being uppercase.

Just think of whenever you've used a note or exam pad, shorthand or longhand. Like you and I, Harles follows preference rather than technicalities when writing headings in pen or pencil.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'll write about Part 1: Life In Verndoy in a few months' time. Need to time these posts accurately so as not to have unwitting spoilers.

If you are interested in buying The Tricksters, it is available in ebook at multiple online bookstores. And in paperback through Amazon and Takealot.