Guest blog: Researching Bushman Culture

 This weekend's guest blogger is the talented duo of Michael Sears and Stan Trollip, known jointly as Michael Stanley. I first met them in a bar at Bouchercon years ago, and have loved their Detective Kubu series ever since.

Michael Sears

Stanley Trollip

They set their books in Botswana and always include fascinating glimpses into the people, culture, and issues facing the country. Here they shed light on their research for their latest book A DEADLY COVENANT. Welcome, Michael, and take it away!

 

We’ve always been fascinated by the Bushman cultures. We have a great admiration for how they survive in the harshest environments and for the unselfish aspects of their group behavior. Botswana, Namibia, and the Northern Cape of South Africa are the remaining areas where their descendants can be found and their languages can still be heard from native speakers. So when we decided that our mystery series would be set in Botswana, we wanted the Bushmen to play a role. 

It’s a challenge to feature a culture so different from one’s own in a novel, and when we started researching the Bushmen, we read everything we could get our hands on. However, we encountered many obstacles. Not only are there few representatives of their nomadic culture still alive, but the Bushmen don’t have a written history - they pass on their culture through stories and songs told around the camp fire. Although there has been much written about them, starting with the work of anthropologists in the nineteenth century, it was frustrating to find contradictory interpretations. Unfortunately, most of the historical writers couldn’t speak a Bushman language and sometimes came to conclusions that may have been based on miscommunication. 

Still, there was a huge amount that could be learned. Many of their tales have been recorded, and although much of this is myth, their values come through strongly. Also, there is a powerful record of Bushman life and beliefs in the wonderful rock art that survives throughout southern Africa. The most remarkable site is at Tsodilo Hills in northern Botswana near Shakawe, where the new Detective Kubu mystery, A Deadly Covenant, takes place. The Bushmen regard this as the birthplace of humankind. Today, it is a World Heritage site boasting over three thousand rock paintings, some of which go back thousands of years.

Eland

Giraffe

Much of the area where the Bushmen lived is arid, including the vast Kalahari Desert. For tens of thousands of years, their ability to survive in this harsh environment depended on a number of factors. They were skilled at discovering subsurface water and food sources. Their groups were small, seldom more than a dozen, so they didn’t need a lot of food for the group to survive. Importantly, they believed that resources belonged to everyone and had to be shared, so if they came across some water, for example, they would take a drink but always leave some for the next group. In fact, they didn’t believe in ownership at all.

However, European and the local black cultures did, and as they and their animals moved into the territories the Bushmen used, clashes were inevitable. A Bushman would come across a cow, for example. It was much easier to kill it, because it didn't run away, than to run for several days after an antelope they’d shot with a poisoned arrow. The farmer thought differently and would either kill or enslave the Bushman if he caught him.

Bushman with hunting kit

Over time, the nomadic Bushmen in Botswana retreated into the Central Kalahari, but even there they faced conflict. The government of Botswana wanted them to settle so that it could supply them with water, schools and other resources guaranteed by the constitution, and convert the central Kalahari into a huge nature reserve. The Bushmen wanted to decide their own lifestyle. Eventually, in 2006, the High Court in Botswana confirmed their right to continue to live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but exempted the government of its usual responsibilities for them. The seduction of town life with the supply of at least some resources encouraged many of them to move to the recently built town of New Xade, a sad place where people have little to do but raise scrawny goats.

Starting a fire

Bushmen made their first appearance in our debut novel, A Carrion Death. It’s Kubu's Bushman school friend who teaches him to be observant and sets him on the path to becoming a detective. We liked their presence so much that we made them the focus of our third book, Death of the Mantis, whose backstory is the demise of the Bushmen and the struggle of the remaining ones to maintain their history and traditions. The book seemed to strike a chord with readers, and was short-listed for an Edgar Award and won a Barry Award. Bushmen featured again in Dying to Live, and play an important role in our new book, A Deadly Covenant. 

One of the attractions of Botswana as a setting for novels is the clash of cultures. Although it is a well-managed country, genuinely trying to uplift its peoples, there remains a struggle between old and new. It accepts new ideas and technology, but old beliefs and prejudices run deep. The Bushmen sometimes find themselves trapped in that interface.

Synopsis and bio

While digging a trench for a new water project, a contractor unearths the skeleton of a long-dead Bushman. Kubu and Scottish pathologist, Ian MacGregor, are sent to investigate and MacGregor discovers eight more skeletons. Then an elder of the village is murdered, and things become still more complicated when a mysterious Bushman appears at the massacre site, collapses, then disappears again, but seems connected to the murders in some way.

Accusations of corruption are levelled at the water project, and international outrage over the massacre of the Bushman families builds. But how do the recent murders link to the dead Bushmen? As Kubi's team investigate, they uncover a deadly covenant made many years before, and they begin to fear that their own lives may be in danger.

Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip write under the name Michael Stanley. Michael has lived in South Africa, Kenya, Australia and the US. He now lives on the Cape south coast of South Africa. Stanley splits his time between Minneapolis, Cape Town, and Denmark. They have written eight books in the Detective Kubu series and a thriller concerning rhino poaching and rhino-horn smuggling in Africa. Discover more about Michael Stanley and their books at: 

www.michaelstanleybooks.com

www.facebook.com/michaelstanleybooks

Thomas Kies, Guest Author

Type M is very pleased to welcome guest author Thomas Kies, author of the Geneva Chase Mystery Series. The first novel in his new series, RANDOM ROAD, introduced Geneva Chase, “a reporter with a compelling voice, a damaged woman who recounts her own bittersweet story as she hunts down clues” to murders straight out of a nightmare—six bodies found naked and cut to ribbons in a posh Connecticut home. Thomas lives and writes on a barrier island on the coast of North Carolina with his wife, Cindy, and Lilly, their Shih-Tzu. He has a long career working for newspapers and magazines, primarily in New England and New York, and is currently working on his next novel, GRAVEYARD BAY.

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How Crazy is Your Research?

From nine until five, Monday through Friday, I’m the President of the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce. We’re right on coast of North Carolina and we’re blessed with beautiful beaches, world class cuisine, and some of the best fishing you’ll ever see. I’m the head cheerleader for one of the nicest places on earth.

Being the head of the Chamber of Commerce comes with a reputation that’s wholesome, upright, and good for the community. Heck, when the sun’s shining, it’s called Chamber of Commerce weather. Who else has their own damned weather?

But on weekends and after work, I think about and write things that are dark and, according to my wife, deeply disturbed. I write mysteries.

That requires certain tidbits of knowledge that others may not have, and certainly nothing that a president of a chamber of commerce should be harboring. For example, in my first mystery, RANDOM ROAD, a swingers’ club figures prominently in the plotline. I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve read the book and asked me how I know what the inside of one of those clubs looks like. Because I worked in newspapers and magazines for over thirty years, I have the inside dope on a lot of stuff. It doesn’t mean I was a member.

In my second book, DARKNESS LANE, there’s a creepy scene that takes place in an exclusive diamond merchant’s shop. It’s expensive, well-secured, hard to find, and by-appointment only. Yes, that’s based on a real jeweler’s establishment. Full disclosure, in real life, the owner was murdered there.

The theater and haunted mansion scenes in DARKNESS LANE? Based on real locations in Fairfield County, Connecticut where the book takes place. I have pictures on my phone. I can share if you like.

 In the book I’m writing now, GRAVEYARD BAY, there’s a scene from a professional dominatrix’s BDSM dungeon. Have I actually seen one? Oh, yes. Was I a client? Hell, no.

But then there’s the stuff I don’t know or haven’t seen.

Let me digress for a moment. When I attended my first Mystery Writers Conference, there were multiple workshops given by authors, publishers, agents, cops, ex-FBI agents, forensic specialists, and physicians. We discussed everything from how to kill someone, to hiding the body, to what the body would look like after being in the water for a week. Questions were asked and answered. Will someone die after eating ground glass? What is a fatal dosage of Fentanyl? When someone is killed and thrown into the water, how do you keep them from floating to the surface?

If you were someone off the street just wandering into one of those workshops, you’d think you’d stumbled onto a coven of psychopaths. Weird? Certainly. Scary? Maybe. Fun? It is if you’re a mystery aficionado.

So, doing research at home is very similar. If someone were to look at my browsing history on my computer (my home laptop, not my work computer…oh, no—that would be wrong), they’d be tempted to call Homeland Security or the FBI. Let’s take a look at some of the topics I’ve Googled or YouTubed: The Russian Mafia, Los Zetas, M-13, explosives, pill mills, AK rifles, handcuffs, sex trafficking, ice pick murders, samurai sword, killer clowns, theater make-up techniques, Aryan Brotherhood, and hypothermia.

Some of the headlines of articles I’ve downloaded: Garage owner charged with selling drugs. Prominent developer killed by train. Real estate agent charged with home burglary. Florida nanny found dead in woods reportedly tortured before her murder. Body found in floating barrel identified, but name is withheld. Students mine data to find where unfaithful husbands live.

Those are actual headlines!

So, speaking of data mining, you can only imagine what Facebook has on me. And the ads that pop up unbidden on my computer screen? There’s an algorithm working overtime that’s dropping the weirdest advertising possible in my emails and on my newsfeed.

But then there’s the old fashion way of doing your research. This is where you get a feel for a scene or the flavor of the action. Talk to the experts. I have friends in law enforcement that help keep me on track (what happens when someone goes missing?). Some of them are avid readers so I want to get it right. There are doctors (so what does that broken arm look like?) and attorneys (walk me through a plea deal) in my Rotary Club who are fans as well. They don’t mind that I ask them questions, even if their answers never make it into a novel.

I’ve also spent time in police headquarters, hospitals, prison (not much time), and courtrooms. It gives you a chance to see, listen, feel, and smell the scene. I love researching my books.

And while knowing your subject matter is a good thing, Stephen King writes, “You may be entranced with what you’re learning about the flesh-eating bacteria, the sewer system of New York, or the I.Q. of potential collie puts, but your readers are probably going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.”

I try to tell the best story I can, but I also try to make it as realistic as possible. I research some pretty strange stuff…just don’t tell my Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

COMING JUNE 2018! The second book in the Geneva Chase series, DARKNESS LANE, is coming in June 2018! Pre-order now to be the first to read Geneva Chase's latest account.

Visit Tom's website at www.thomaskiesauthor.com

Never Waste a Good Story

Aline’s entry from Monday concerning the ethics of using a third party’s actual life experience as a plot line, plus last weekend’s guest entry by Leslie Dana Kirby about how her debut novel was inspired by the O.J. Simpson case, brought to mind an entry I (Donis) did on a similar theme several years ago on this very site. I use real events, both historical and personal, all the time in my books. When I use personal events, I either disguise them or ask permission of the individual to whom it happened. I do have the writer’s mind, though, and when I hear an intriguing story, I do not forget it, and like Aline, I ponder long and hard on how I can use it in a book. Sometimes I ponder long and hard for decades, as I noted in this entry from 2011:

My third novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder,  was thirty years in the making. There are at least two pivotal scenes in the book that owe their existence to newspaper articles that stayed with me all that time. I read the first story when I lived in Lubbock, Texas, back in the ’70′s. Two women, an elderly mother and her grown daughter, were out shopping together, walking down the street and minding their own business, when a crazy person ran up and attacked the daughter out of the blue. The old mother saved her daughter when she jumped on the crazy man’s back and pummeled him and bit on him and basically beat the heck out of him.

Somewhere around the same time, I read an interview with an old British soldier who had fought the Massoud in Palestine after WWII. He described a fighter who came at him tooth and claw and absolutely refused to be killed, even after he shot him and stabbed him and beat him with the butt of his rifle. The fighter finally sunk his teeth in the soldier’s foot and the soldier had to decapitate him to make him let go. The soldier said it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to him in his life. I took both these images and put them together to create one of the climatic scenes of the book.

The opening scene of Drop Edge isn’t quite as old an image in my head as the other two, but it is also a tale that took me a long time to tell. Seven or eight years before I began writing that particular book, I did a family genealogy for my sibs for Christmas, which as you regular Dear Readers may know, is one of the things that inspired me to write my Alafair Tucker series in the first place . One of the things I learned while doing research on my family was the story of one of my a great-great grandfathers and three of his companions who were returning from the Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge when they stopped a few miles from home to rob a bee hive in a tree. While they were smoking the hive, they were ambushed by bushwhackers and killed. They were found by their families a few hours later but lay dead in the field over night, guarded from wild animals by their wives until morning, when they were buried where they fell.

(p.s. the following was also included in the same 2011 blog entry—I repost it now because it is five years later and the high school reunion is about to recur, and now it is not just depressing, it’s unbelievably depressing) On another topic, I recently received an invitation to a depressingly high-numbered high school reunion coming up in October. I graduated from Nathan Hale High in Tulsa in a class of nearly 700 people. (Nathan Hale is the guy who, while about to be hanged by the British as a spy during the American Revolution, said, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” which I always thought was one of history’s great instances of bravado in the face of death. If it had been me, I might have done my patriotic duty like Nathan did, but when it came time to die, my last words would have been along the lines of , “For the love of God, please don’t hang me.” Of course, nobody would have named a high school after me, either.)