WRITING DID NOT come easily, or early, to the writer. As mentioned previously he was born somewhat dyslexic and calculexic and as a result endured his school years being told he would not amount to much (some people contend this was a self-fulfilling prophecy).

 

Back in those days the kids in the brightest class were groomed for medicine or law. Next came those destined to be engineers and scientists. Below them were the future teachers, nurses, marketers and misfits.

 

Clearly our subject was a misfit and so he drifted around a while, travelling, shifting files around, mixing cement and banging nails, stamping building application forms. Having missed the boat to architecture, he thought he might have to settle for town planning. Back in the early 1970s there was no box labelled "writer".

 

But then he was given a sign. On 16 June, 1976 he watched a phalanx of black schoolchildren marching into Joburg town. "What's going on here?" he wondered. "If only I was a journalist…"

It was like the idea fell from the sky, "as if by magic," he muses. 
 

The day 16 June, 1976 was a turning point in South African history, as well as in the life of “the writer”.

He resigned and in short order went from Rhodes University to The Star newspaper (the largest daily in South Africa back then), to sub-editor on The Sowetan (the largest circulating paper catering to a black readership), to editor and then group editor of the Systems Publishers computer magazine division.

 

Meanwhile he and climbing buddy Clive Ward were travelling around in their spare time, climbing and collecting material for a book idea they had. Call it serendipity, but the day they walked into the offices of Struik Publishers in Cape Town, the publishing director noted: "How co-incidental, the board has just decided to publish a book on the mountains of Southern Africa."

Mountains of Southern Africa ­–The book that started, and changed, everything.

Mountains of Southern Africa hit the streets and the bookshelves for Christmas 1984 and was an instant best seller: just the thing dreams are made of. With his first royalty cheque David relocated to Cape Town to study further. He also managed to squeeze out another three books before graduating with a Masters Degree in Environmental Sciences.

 

More books followed, as well as starting a garagista publishing Pachyderm Press which published mainly food and gardening books, but also one "magnum opus": Historic Schools of South Africa.

More than a dozen books followed when, out of the blue, he was headhunted (in 1993) to edit Getaway travel magazine. All the travelling had its benefits, but it took a toll on his personal life. So, after 13 years of that, the old writing life and a modicum of domestic stability beckoned. To date he has had published more than 30 books across numerous genres.

The harvest of some 40 years of deep ploughing: it was definitely the road less travelled, although much fun was had along the way.

In 2006 David went back to writing and producing books, prominent among which were the limited edition, hand-bound large-format collector's editions African Icons  (his 21 must-see places in Africa) and Africa's Finest – an environmental investigation leading to a book showcasing the 50 greenest safari lodges in Africa and the Indian Ocean.

The chance meeting with a safari horse that became the alpha stallion of a wild zebra herd in the wilds of Botswana convinced him it was time, in 2016, to finally become the paperback writer that was always the dream. That resulted in the non-fiction narrative Running Wild, with four more volumes of "Stories from the Veld" following. 

In 2017 DB the paperback writer was born. Five volumes in the series “Stories from the Veld” followed.

For the past several years David has been amassing, you might say hoarding, about as many works in progress. Some date back decades, others are fragments he has collected and stored in his own "skunk works" box. At last look in there was a collection of short stories, a biography of curious words, a novel about a travelling book bus, an embryonic anthology of "eco poems" and a "best of" collection of his Veld Stories. Had we but world enough, or time, this dilly-dallying were no crime.

Deadline, what deadline? The word “deadline” comes from the American Civil War when Prisoner-of-War camps had a wire fence perimeters and guard towers at each corner: step over the dead line and POW! 

Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.
    J K Rowling