Getting there...

Here's the latest cover design using our own photostock of Vic Falls and a 'retro' antiqued look - VF is chocka with late Victorian lithoprints that I wanted to reflect the colonial past that haunts most of the book.

Safari, so far...

Found quite a nice snappy title in Swahili - Milele Safari, which translates as 'eternal journey'.

Quite like that one, although it's a little zen perhaps? I think it's important that I keep it as 'African' and focussed on the Journey aspect as poss... Here's two cover ideas I'm currently playing around with using that combination and the other contender Smoke & Thunder - The Safari Tales

 

Sian Glirdan may be a pen name I'll use - that's Welsh for Jane(tte) and Glirdan literally translates as 'wordsmith' from Sindarin, but perhaps that's a better one for my fantasy writing?

A Rose by any other Name

Names are important. Very important. Safari Tales was a working title really and it fitted the original concept of travellers' tales, in that the stories I was going write about did 'belong' to different people, some of them real ones.

But books evolve and writing (for me anyway) tends get these funny holistic branch offs and so, what could have been a collection of stand alone stories, suddenly had themes and backstories of their own, with flashbacks and serendipity thrown into the pot almost by osmosis. And here I am, coming to terms with one of my spiffy reviewers pointing out what I'd already been worrying at for some time - Safari Tales as a main title is really pedestrian and, yes, I'm afraid - unoriginal.

Smoke and Thunder might be a better, more dynamic one, but it's not too African sounding and that's important to me, so it's back to the drawing board for now for a snazzier title. What I'm currently trawling through is Google Translate's 'Swahili-English' option along the lines of 'Human Herd' style of things but nothing's really striking me yet.

Safari Tales may replace An African Journey as the strapline perhaps - any views, suggestions or 'thought showering' will be gratefully received...