Deep Sahara by Leslie Croxford - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Hello lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Leslie Croxford and his new book, “Deep Sahara”!  For other stops on his Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!  Also, come back daily to interact with Leslie and to increase your chances of winning!

Thanks for stopping by!  Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!

Deep Sahara

by Leslie Croxford

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GENRE: Thriller

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BLURB:

Klaus Werner travels to the Algerian Sahara to research a book on desert insects. He is billeted in a local monastery, but upon arrival he finds it empty of its inhabitants. He soon discovers that it is a recent crime scene.

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EXCERPT TWO:

I left Rome in the summer of 1980. The day before that, I went to see Father Carlo. He had asked me back for a final visit, although he’d already given me the travel information.

Late for my appointment, I hastened toward the German Catholic Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima, on Vicolo della Pace, not far from Piazza Navona. My mother used to take me there every Sunday during my boyhood. The rector had been German; now, its priests were not necessarily so. Yet even the Italian ones spoke the language, knew the country and were likely to have carried on their ministry in Germany at some point.

That was the case with Father Carlo. He was sitting in his office in the adjoining building. It gave onto the courtyard at the back of the church. The blinds were drawn against the summer afternoon glare when I finally entered.

Recalling the priest now, it’s hard to bring him into focus with all that’s happened since. Even then, I was still feeling the effect of the sedatives I’d been taking.

My wife Anja had died. But what I suffered was not only her loss, but the loss of myself, in a total breakdown.

 I’d been in our apartment the week after she died. Staring vacantly at some mirror in the empty bedroom, I winced. Something had just moved in the glass. It was a stranger: me.

Father Carlo was waiting for me at his desk. He sat beneath a framed photograph of what I’d later come to know was the young Pius XII as Apostolic Nuncio to Germany in the 1920s. It was at one of the parties Pacelli – as he then was – threw for the political and diplomatic elite in the Tiergarten quarter of Berlin where he’d lived.

Father Carlo adjusted his monk’s habit over an ample midriff as he shifted in his chair to look up from the desk. But he continued 10 straightening its contents, then the rimless spectacles he was taking me in through.

I was sweating and out of breath. I apologised for being late, but explained that, having sold my car, I had walked all the way there from my apartment.

Mentioning it made me recall its shadowy silence, shuttered, too, against the city’s brilliance and traffic. My possessions were half-packed there – the few I would be taking with me tomorrow. Standing there alone, I had simply looked at the rest and left them to move only later if the owner absolutely demanded it. Anja and I had accumulated so much together.

“You’re not very late,” my spiritual advisor said. (For this was what the monk, now indicating the chair at the other side of the desk, had more or less become for me over the last few weeks, regardless of my lack of religious belief. With Anja’s death I had soon found myself using Carlo as a secular Father Confessor, judging it better to rely on him than on the doctor, who’d been of little help.)

“Anyway, you’re here now,” Father Carlo said, “ready to move on. That’s all that matters.”

The priest told me how pleased he was that I had finally decided to undertake the publishing project I’d been offered; how personally helpful I was sure to find it; how conducive to work the monastery would prove. These were all things Father Carlo had said several times before, but which he nevertheless chose to repeat now, with this show of paternal concern.

“Look, I’ve written a letter of introduction to the Abbot for you.” Father Carlo passed me one of two envelopes lying on the desk. They were sealed and made of fine paper.

“He’ll make sure you’re well looked after. And then it occurred to me that while you’re here for me to wish you Godspeed, I might as well also send a note with you for another monk, Father Erich. He’s one of the Order’s hermits, in permanent retreat even further south. I hope you’ll meet him too. There’s every reason why you should.”

“How can I, if he’s a hermit?”

“They come in when the monastery holds a chapter. And the Abbot will take care of giving him the letter. Or any of the monks should know how to get it to him.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “It’s most important that he should receive it,” Father Carlo said, glasses glinting as he handed over the letter.

Taking it, I could not see beyond the opaque lenses.

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GUEST POST:

Evolution of My Writing Habits and How I’ve Grown into a Better/More Experienced Writer

Years ago I was lucky enough to meet E. M. Forster. I asked him whether he followed a plan when writing. Yes he said, in the case of non-fiction or short fiction, but no in that of novels. He just allowed the story to develop. Now there may be writers who are guided by a clear plot from the outset. They are the Ancient Mariner with a tale to tell no matter what. But like Forster my novels have always sauntered out, not quite knowing where they are going. They start from an image, with an atmosphere, possibly a person. Characters, situations and even themes emerge in unsuspected ways. So if the writing is going well it seems organic and rich, but when it becomes dense and unclear the approach feels a liability. Since, however, I can’t help but write in this way, I find I have developed some compensating habits - if, again, without planning.

Like Humpty Dumpty I never quite know what I mean till I hear what I say. So I have to give myself plenty of space and time to say it. I write rough versions, sometimes only fragments, in a notebook, adding thoughts to it as they occur to me. And they do come into my mind without warning, sometimes first thing in the morning as dreams are still slipping away.

The notebook remains beside me when I type on my computer. It prevents me feeling I must immediately produce a perfect draft. I try out sentences, or whole passages and ideas for scenes. In this way even my most tangled and prolix thoughts are free to voice themselves without concern.

My notebook and, indeed, computer allow me to make draft after draft. For rewriting is as essential I find as is an artist’s modelling in clay for what can only later become a finished sculpture. In fact writing, or rewriting, is, I’ve discovered, a quest. The notebook, the repeated paragraphs on my screen, are not merely places for me to prevent infelicities of expression or unnecessary repetition, but to advance the search for what I want to say.

In my notebook, as if in a diary, I continuously analyse what I’m writing. It’s an internal debate and it helps me know what I really mean. In this way I can identify my mistakes. Example: that I’m writing in the third person whereas I should use the first or vice versa. Example: that I’ve entered a section, or the entire novel, at the wrong point in the plot, from the wrong point of view, or even in the wrong tense. For these wrong turns, sensed only uncomfortably at first, then painfully admitted to myself, once properly understood can prove highly productive. They make me clarify my intentions, what I really want to say, setting me on a better course that I would not have taken in a premature rush for completion.

But a word of caution: working with a mistake is to write in a haze, as if butting one’s head against an invisible brick wall. It causes anxiety and a deflation of spirits one doesn’t necessarily understand at the time. Yet, if one is prepared to give this process the necessary time and pay the price, it can lead to a significant deepening of one’s perspective on one’s novel.

I have frequently found my viewpoint adjusted in this way both in terms of the themes of a work in progress and what it is about me that they express. Yet this of course then faces me with a tricky question: how explicit should I make them?

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AUTHOR BIO:

Leslie Croxford is a British author and Senior Vice-President of the British University in Egypt. Born in Alexandria, he obtained a doctorate in History from Cambridge University. He has written one novel, Soloman's Folly (Chatto & Windus), and is completing his third. He and his wife live in Cairo.

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CONNECT WITH LESLIE:

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1591508.Leslie_Croxford

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36985835-deep-sahara

Amazon Author Page:

http://amzn.to/2ClmWS9

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BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon US Paperback:

http://amzn.to/2ClhL4F

Amazon UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Sahara-Leslie-Croxford/dp/1911475126

The Book Depository:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Deep-Sahara-Leslie-Croxford/9781911475125

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Leslie will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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