The Journey Thus Far: A reflection on my books

If you had told a younger version of me — a bookish, curious kid growing up in the south of Jozi — that I would one day write stories for children and teens across languages, genres and magical worlds, I’m not sure I would’ve believed you. And yet, here we are.

It all began with a love letter to Jozi’s unique character: The Legend of Mamlambo. This spooky adventure, rooted in folklore, friendship and mystery, allowed me to explore my own childhood curiosities, especially those parts of the city that felt magical, strange and just a little haunted. Seeing young readers connect with it (and having it shortlisted for the Otto Foundation Children's Book Award) was an experience that surpassed anything I had imagined.

Then came Verlore in Duitsland, a personal story nestled within a short anthology, but one that felt incredibly close to my heart. Writing in Afrikaans, my second language, was a return to something familiar and tender. It was lovely to revisit the language and exploring storytelling with a different voice and rhythm was lovely.

Now, I find myself with The Princess and the Sangoma and The Blacksmith and the Dragonfly, co-written with Dean White, and I’ve stepped fully into the captivating world of the Kwasuka Sukela series. These tales are rich with African mythology and the theme of transformation, filled with characters who are learning to forge their own paths — something I feel I’m doing in my own way, too.

Looking back, I see a journey that extends beyond simply writing stories. It’s been a journey through culture, voice and identity. I am so grateful to everyone who has picked up one of these books and decided to embark on this adventure with me.

Here’s to many more stories and many more journeys yet to come.

— Charles

My New Booking Coming Soon: The Legend of Mamlambo

Reader beware . . . Coming to a bookstore near you in July, being published by Penguin Random House South Africa. Amiah hates moving. What was her mother thinking, moving them away from Cape Town to this strange little town in Joburg South? Meeting Teedo, a strange kid with even stranger conspiracy theories, doesn’t make her feel any better. However, after getting to know him and the rest of the group, she quickly realises there might be some truth to his crazy claims. Something strange really is going on in Spookfontein, as the other kids call the town, and it has something to do with the water tower. Could the legend of Mamlambo, the snake-like water goddess, actually be more than just a story?

Prepare to face the chill of legend in The Legend of Mamlambo! Dive into a world where ancient myths collide with modern-day mysteries in the heart of Johannesburg's south. Join Amiah and her friends on a thrilling adventure brimming with supernatural secrets, heart-pounding chases, and the unbreakable bonds of friendship. Traditional South African folklore weaves its magic on every page, keeping you on the edge of your seat as you uncover the truth behind Mamlambo. Are you brave enough? Hold on tight – the adventure of a lifetime awaits!

Jozi: The City Under the City

© Pierre Blignaut

“So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” — Worlds' End

Eish, Jozi . . . Ja, neh . . . Jozi, that great city where dreams and their dreamers are swallowed up whole more often than not. To survive in Jozi you don’t necessarily need the right tools, you need the creativity to make the wrong tools work for you. Like many major cities around the world, Jozi is made up of layers. The top layer is the rough and tough face of its everyday business, that mainly being people going about their business at a furious pace. The first lesson my mother taught me about this city is to keep moving and not to speak to anyone. On its surface, this warning always seemed like it was about avoiding being a victim of crime but it also served as a warning about something stranger. The warning sometimes included the word amasilamusi. A word that both intrigues and frightens me to this day. A word that made quite the impact on Twitter last week.

The great city of Jozi has a mystical layer that appears on the surface every now and then but that usually exists under everything else or on the fringes. In Neil Gaiman’s novel, Neverwhere another London exists below the hustle and bustle of the familiar one on the surface, a mysterious and magical London Below. Inspector Tyador Borlú finds himself trying to solve a crime that spills over into a city that occupies the same space as his city in China Miéville’s novel, The City and the City. A city most can see from the corner of their eye but avoid focusing on. In Jozi, too, below its bustle and grime, there exists another Jozi. One most of us have heard about but tend to look at only from the corner of our eye, if ever at all. The citizens of Jozi learn to navigate the city around its strange elements.

© Austin Malema

One of these strange elements made an appearance on Twitter last week with Noluthando Zuma’s Tweet asking if people know about the taxi from Fourways to Bree that’s driven by a cat. Her Tweet blew up as others came forward with their own stories of this taxi driven by a cat looking to make ends meet. More people came forward with other equally strange experiences or stories from sources like cleaning ladies at work. In my own experience, cleaning ladies at work are an excellent source of all things weird and to do with witchcraft. The story with the cat makes for great memes but what stands out is how many people seem to have encountered this cat driving his route between Fourways and Bree. We might not be sure if this cat plays Maskande or Amapiano on his drive but we all do believe the story on some level. The concept of isalamuzi or amasilamusi came up, with people reporting having had their heartbeats stolen by a driver that made sounds like a baby or purred like a cat.

My mother’s warning about Jozi was also a warning about amasilamusi, whose powers seem to change according to whoever tells the story but there are overlapping elements in all the stories. One of my mother’s experiences with these people, creatures or whatever they are, happened in the late ‘90s. She was coming out from the now infamous Smal Street Mall when she was stopped by an old lady asking for directions. My mother made the rookie mistake of stopping the hear the lady out and fell under some spell. She says she lost control of her wits and found herself going to an ATM with this lady and withdrawing her daily limit. The whole thing was like being in a dream. Next thing she was in an alley with this woman and some men carrying a suitcase filled with money. The old woman told my mom to hand over the money to the men and take the suitcase from them. The idea was that the two of them split the money in the suitcase. My mother obliged and made the exchange. And just like a dream, the next thing she remembers is being in a taxi from Faraday to Turffontein. The suitcase was now a Checkers plastic bag in her lap filled with cut-up newspaper. She told the people in the taxi what had happened to her and, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, they told her it was the work of amasilamusi.

© Thandile Zwelibanzi

Apparently, some amasilamusi are so powerful that they can steal all the money on your person by merely touching you and when you get home all you have is worthless paper where the money was. This only happens if you talk to them, though. That seems to be their one binding rule, that their powers can’t affect you unless you speak to them. Most of us have a blueprint to navigate this other Jozi because our parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents told us these stories but it becomes buried in our subconscious at some point, operating in the background. Noluthando Zuma’s Tweet about that industrious cat has taken the world of amasilamusi and introduced it to Twitter. The result has been largely hilarious and a bit frightening but my thinking here, eyam’ iworry is whether amasilamusi are ready for Twitter? Can their world still exist in the shadows with Black Twitter’s finest on the lookout?

Book Review: Affluenza

Wow, this is such a great read for anyone interested in satirical stories about all the crazy and weird things that make up South Africa. Niq Mhlongo tackles issues like racism, xenophobia, homophobia, crime, land redistribution and economic equality with a flair that is just magical. They stories really speak to me and I relate on so many levels with the South African (but especially Jozi) culture of continuous hussle to attain wealth and status to impress people you don't know. The stories are a lot like Herman Charles Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens stories in their tone and satire.

"This is Johussleburg and everyone here is suffering from affluenza. Almost every black person pretends to be rich while staying in a rented room."

Toya Delazy - My City ft. Cassper Nyovest

I love Cape Town but some days I just miss Jozi, my city.

Farewell to My City

 “Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: it's three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Let me point out from the outset that I have no idea what I'm doing. Let me also point out that I'm the best person in the world at doing what I don't know - I spend at least two hours a day wondering what the hell is going on around me and still pretty much being kickass. I am going on a journey and leaving behind everything I hold dear in order to become a better Charlie and thus best serve everything I hold dear. I am not prepared for this but at least I have a green towel to see me through. I'll be fine.

“For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel
like home.” ― Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After

Ladies. Gentlesirs. I am moving to Cape Town. This is not something that I planned like I do so many things. This one's just a happening and I am the willing victim. I've been struggling to get into the publishing industry for the last year or so and every door I've been knocking on seemed to yield no response. My long-time companion, Varsha and I went through hope all the way to despair and then back to hope again. Of all the people I know I don't think anyone knows more how I feel than she does. Follow your dreams they said but no one ever told us how quick those fuckers run! But we've caught up now and the buggers are in for a beating. Varsha landed a gig at Jonathan Ball Publishers as a Sales Assistant and seems as happy as punch (I honestly think I don't know what that means) there. She also gets free books, which is always nice.

Just before I got too depressed and almost started on my plans to become a super villain hellbent on revenge against literary establishments Varsha sent me an email from NB Publishers looking for an Editorial Assistant. I met all of their requirements and they set up an interview, which I thought was in Jo'burg but turned out to be in Cape Town. It was an amusing situation of me thinking they're here and them thinking I'm there. After some back and forth communication they suggested I move to Cape Town. I thought about it and realised I have nothing keeping me here except everything I love so I said yes, let's do that.

"The city is a sorceress, you know, Daniel? It gets under your skin and steals your soul without you knowing it..." ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Here I am two weeks later scrounging money together, making travel arrangements, finalising places to stay and saying farewells. I'm pretty much doing everything on the run and I'm still in shock. I'm excited most of all. I remember the strangest thought that popped into my head when it all became a reality was: "Shit! Now I have find a new place to gym and new routes to run." That made me laugh. I'm going to miss so much of Jo'burg though. This place is home and all I know about life comes from these grimy streets: family, friendship, love, sex, alcohol, crime, hate, fresh fog fuckery, pain, joy. It all happened to me here.

Jozi. My fair city. I love you and all the life I've lived in you.

Cupboard Person of the er... Year

“The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in 
life.” - Sir Hugh Walpole

I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

It’s too early to make this person my Cupboard Person of the Year, I know, since the year has just kicked off but she will be a highlight no matter what else happens to me this year. So here we go: the beautiful and charming Nthabiseng Monyane.

Life is wonderfully wobbly and all sorts of wibbly and I love it for that very reason. You can never be too sure of what to expect from it. It gives you Joy and sunshine at times and grief and thunderstorms at others. That’s just the way it goes.

Once in a while, though, someone amazing happens and her beautiful soul enters into your life and throws your whole rhythm out of balance by exploding her galaxy into your soulstuff. It’s a beautiful moment that I wish I could capture and bottle. That’s not the way God’s multiverse works though and all I can do is hold my breath and enjoy the beauty of the moment. I can also write about it a little.

Life in its wonderfully wobbly proportions is sneaky like a ninja kitten and introduced me to Nthabi-chan as Asia – someone who left a comment on a post on this here blog a few years back. Of course I didn’t think anything of it back then, since I didn’t expect that we would be meeting at any point. I lack all sorts of foresight I guess. She was, to my mind, just another wonderful mind trawling the interwebscape. I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

And then she moved to Jozi and got in touch and we started chatting on BBM, plotting clandestine meetings in dark corners where groping might occur. We just hit it off like two red headed stepchildren (to quote my friend, Grant). Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day and they almost unravelled because of fresh fog fuckery on my side of things but we circumvented all of that and met for a drink last Friday. Needless to say that the meeting went well... Okay, I lie, the meeting was freakin’ amazing! This woman just made it into my headspace without any effort and it was one of the highlights of my life.

Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day...

I am grateful to the hooded and cloaked powers that be that I met Nthabi-chan and I look forward to at least a lifetime of shared experiences.

Welcome to the Beanbag my Lady Love, I hope you enjoy it here :)