Andrew Pender-Smith’s and Craig Carden’s imaginations have been in overdrive for years on several great titles, and they are meeting the world this year. Look out for ‘Buzz Up Your Writing’, ‘WHAT the SUN SAW’, ‘All Gone Now’ and ‘Where People Now Dance’. Here are several single images and two links to a video to give you a taste of what’s in store for you. Enjoy!
Please note that, except for ‘Buzz Up Your Writing’, the books are unillustrated. The pictures you see here, and those in the video, are for marketing purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, all the images have been created with the help of Bing Image Creator.
To the writers and other creators out there, ‘Happy Creating’.
Happy New Year to everyone from Andrew Pender-Smith, Craig Carden, and Sebastian de Vervet of Green Monkey Publications. May 2024 be a good year for all of you.
To all you creatives out there in particular ‘Happy Creating’. May 2024 be a year of great creative success for you. With lots of good wishes. Andrew Pender-Smith
If you are celebrating Christmas, Andrew Pender-Smith, Craig Carden, and Sebastian de Ververt of Green Monkey Publications say ‘Merry Christmas’ to you. If you are not celebrating Christmas, we wish you ‘Happy Holidays’. May you experience peace and happiness.
The images come courtesy of New Bing Image Creator.
Two Green Monkey Publications titles have just been turned into audiobooks by Apple iBooks using AI-generated voices. Their titles are An Absolute Killing and Will You Come Back? They are both creepy horror stories in which nature does what is least expected with deadly results. These chillers are by Andrew Pender-Smith. Two other books currently being worked on for audio are The Warnings, a horror story with strong elements of the supernatural set in Zululand South Africa by Andrew Pender-Smith, and Miss Whoop Whoop! and the Jumping Pumpkin, a mystery romp predominantly set in two highly outrageous nightclubs. This fast-paced story has lots of often comic twists, bizarre turns, and almost unimaginable leaps, and is by Craig Carden. All four titles are also in the process of being made available as audiobooks in several online libraries. Green Monkey Publications will let you know when they are all up and running.
Here are the Apple iBook links for An Absolute Killing and Will You Come Back?
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot onTreasure Island.” Walt Disney
Choosing a list of favourite books is seldom easy, especially if you have read as many as me. I put a list of my favourites together after a friend posted a list of books that resonated with him on his Facebook page, and he briefly explained why he chose them. It got me thinking about some of the books I have read that have moved me in one way or another. The space here is too small to go into reasons of why and how, but I offer my list in case anyone would like to read some of the books on it. I most sincerely hope they do and that they get as much satisfaction from them as I did. The books are not in the order I read them; some of them I read in my teens, and two have been written by friends in more recent years. As the stories and their authors came to me, I wrote them down. Here is my list.
The God of Small Things by Arunduthi Roy Falling Leaves and Mountain Ashes by Brenda George The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Mathilda by Roald Dahl Seal Morning by Rowena Farre The House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar The Kite Runner by Khalid Hussein The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye. Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara Hear Me by Julia North Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Just after I posted my list on my own Facebook page, I suddenly remembered a book that had really moved me, and it is ‘The Village bythe Sea’ by Anita Desai. Set initially in a small rural village in India, it is a story of a struggle for survival in a poor community under threat by development. This causes turmoil in the family and the issue is exacerbated by an alcoholic father and a bedridden mother in a home battling poverty. Looking for a way to better the lives of himself and his family, young Hari, the only boy in the family, sets out for Bombay, leaving his elder sister Lila to care for the family, which includes their sisters Bela and Kamal. His youth and naïveté, make it difficult for him to deal with life on the edge in the country’s capital. Further turmoil follows until, finally, the tide turns for him and his family. It is a moving story deftly told, and though billed as a book for young adults, I recommend it as a satisfying read for older readers too. Another book I also did not put on my initial list was ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’ by Mildred D. Taylor, but it definitely needed to be there. This is the story of an African American family in racially segregated rural Mississippi during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Life is tough, but it becomes even tougher when the family faces increasing hostility from the town’s white community, especially when the family stands up to the town’s bigots. The story is told mainly by Cassie, a teenage girl with heart and spunk, and it is her tenacity and that of her family, especially her mother and her Uncle Hammer, that helps the family finally win through. Mildred D. Taylor tells the story with unsparing honesty, and it is all the better for it.
When writing the word ‘honesty’ in the last sentence, it got me thinking about what really involves me as a reader, moves me, and stays with me. The answer is: a story honestly told. It is one in which the writer has not set out to impress or manipulate the reader but has let the story unfold as it has come to them. Sometimes, if they are lucky, it has entered their minds like a river flowing easily, and they have the story down in one or two drafts. Most writers, however, need to work through numerous drafts, carefully weighing up each word and phrase, perhaps even coming at the story from different angles until everything fits into a readable whole. Whichever way the story has come to them, if it has been written without artifice, if it contains no more and no less than what needs to be there, the story is likely to involve and transport the reader, and it is even better if the story has more of the heart than the mind.
As well as being a writer, I am also an editor and I have edited numerous books. Though I have not mentioned any here, some of the best books I have worked on have been autobiographies and family histories meant only for friends and family. Perhaps it is because these writers have not set out to impress agents and editors of big publishers but that they have simply sat down and told of events as they happened, relying on their own memories and those around them to help the story unfold and, in so doing, have given us a story honestly told.
An invitation. If anyone would like to share the names of their favourite books, I would love to hear from them. They can either post them in the comments section or put up a list on their own site and then send me a link.
On a different note:
Over the last two years, I have mentioned that Andrew Pender-Smith and Craig Carden of GreenMonkey Publications are each working hard on a novel. Their titles are ‘Where People Still Dance’ and ‘WHAT the SUN SAW’. The dates of publication are now much closer. Book covers and publicity material are almost complete. Once all this is ready and a final edit of both manuscripts is done, it will be time to launch ‘Where People StillDance’ and ‘WHAT the SUN SAW’.
Acknowledgement: The pictures of the cute mouse reading in a library were created with the help of Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator.
To the creatives out there – Happy Creating. Keep on journeying and you’ll accomplish more than merely ‘getting by’.
After years of work, of living the story rather than merely writing it, my family saga Where ‘People Still Dance’ is closer to being read by others. Originally, ‘Where People Still Dance’ had the working title of ‘Where People Once Danced’ but the long and sometimes turbulent story of the Craighall’s turned out to have a happier ending than I thought it would, and so ‘Where People Still Dance’ became the title. Whether the saga that involves four generations of the Craighall family, and moves from late Victorian England to present-day Zululand, South Africa is as fully realised as it needs to be is a matter of which I am not entirely sure, but I am confident that the Craighall’s, those living and those no longer with us, will let me know if I have left out anything that still needs to be told. I am sure they will communicate if needs be. My journey with them has been a fascinating and, often, an exhausting one.
At the same time, Craig Carden’s intimate love story ‘What the Sun Saw’ which unravels in Oman, India and England, looks as if it is nearly done. It has its brilliant, happy moments under the sun (and the moon too) but also its deeply sad ones. Has all that needs to be told been told. Craig Carden is not entirely sure and merely says, “We shall see.” In between writing, the garden gets attention. As four of the photos show, winter in KwaZulu-Natal can still be colourful. This large orchid (seen here during the day and at night), the poinsettia, the crassula, and the azalea are all flowering now. The Indian Hawthorne and the amaryllis tend to flower in early summer. In time, may ‘Where People Still Dance’ and ‘What the Sun Saw’ come to bloom just as brightly. I live and work in hope.
To those of you who write and, indeed, all who create – Happy creating.
This is by way of saying ‘Happy New Year’ to everyone, and most especially to all those who visit or follow Green Monkey Publications. May it truly be a creation-filled 2022. From Andrew Pender-Smith, Craig Carden, and Sebastian de Vervet of Green Monkey Publications.
At least two new works, one from Andrew Pender-Smith, and the other from Craig Carden, are due out this year. We will let you know about them later in 2022.
Image credit: Igor Kasalovic on Unsplash Free Images
Several paintings, a book cover, and a swirl of tropical fish.
Dear Reader,
Over the years I have had many people ask me why fish appear so often in my poems, short stories, novellas and novels. These include those written under my own name and the two books written under the pseudonym of Craig Carden. A lot of my paintings and drawings include, or wholly involve, fish. Why? The answer lies in my early childhood and involves something my mother did during a time when I was experiencing severe eye problems. Here is the story:
My fascination with fish, often bordering on the fanatic, began as a young child. Between the ages of three and a half and nine, I had to undergo several operations to my eyes. At the conclusion of each operation, my eyes were heavily bandaged. I could not see for about a week after my first operation and for two weeks after the second. Whenever the time came to remove the bandages, I was always filled with a great deal of expectation. Finally, I would be able to see again. It was strange to be looked after in hospital by people who I learned to recognise by voice only. As I lay in the dark, I spent a lot of time imagining what they looked like.
Following my second operation, as was done after the first, the bandages were removed in an almost-dark room so that my eyes, unused to the light for some time, would not hurt. The hospital room had blinds and they were slowly, slowly opened to allow more and more light to filter in. Even though this was all gently done, my eyes felt as if they were being stabbed. The first thing I saw after the bandages were carefully removed, and the blinds were close to half open, was a bowl of colourful fish. They were being held by my mother who had bought and then carried them into the hospital for me. As I got used to looking into the light again and the pain began to subside, I concentrated on the moving colours right in front of me: red, black, orange, blue, silver gently moving in and around brilliant green water weed.
The bowl with the little fish stayed beside my bed until I was ready to be discharged about two days later. They were two guppies and two red wagtail platies, and they made the journey back with me from seaside Durban to rural Zululand, a place of rolling green hills, citrus trees and sugar cane. The car was a station wagon and I lay in the back all the way home. Every hour we needed to pull over so that ointment could be administered to my eyes. We also used this opportunity to check that the fish, placed in a plastic bag for the journey, were okay.
To this day I have never been without fish. My mother had unknowingly begun a lifelong hobby. Today, many, many years later, I have several tanks in my bedroom and the fish are the last things I see when I go to sleep and the first when I wake up.
To those of you who write and paint: happy creating.
This is the second poem in the current series of a children’s poem placed in a picture. Teachers and students are free to use the poem if they would like to do so.
Green Monkey Publications 
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