Into Africa
Why would I write about Africa?
For many generations my family served the Crown in far flung outposts throughout Africa.
My grandfather mapped the tsetse fly belt in Botswana’s Okavango Delta and chased German soldiers during WWI who slipped into the country from what was then South-West Africa, now Namibia. He was later appointed to the Committee that recommended the banishment of Botswana’s Chief Seretse Khama – the grandson of my great-grandfather’s friend, Chief Khama III. It was a painful episode, in both the history of the country, and for his own family, which resulted in his early death.
My Uncle was a District Officer in Tanganyika when he was trampled to death by an elephant at the age of twenty-seven.
And my father organised Lesotho’s Independence Celebrations before becoming secretary to the first democratically elected Prime Minister of that country, Leabua Jonathan.
Twelve years of working closely with my father on the family’s memoirs has provided a wealth of material for my stories of Africa.
Add to that the bush pilot husband I acquired in Botswana while managing a luxury safari lodge there, and I have the ingredients for a series of romantic suspense novels set in Botswana and Lesotho between the 1950s and the early 1990s, featuring – of course - an aviation hero.
Diamond Mountain set in Lesotho in 1962 against a backdrop of medicine murder and illegal diamond buying, is about to go on pre-order.
Following that is a my novel, "1989" (working title), the events precipitated by the Pilot's Dispute, which see my hero and heroine moving to the Okavango Delta where they are embroiled in a twenty-year-old hunting murder mystery.
For so long I've put off writing these stories, which I've incubated for too long.
I hope you enjoy them.
Okavango Angel
My Okavango-set novella, Christmas Angel was inspired by my time at Mombo, however in this instance I’ve called the Camp Momba in the stories. It’s about an Aussie girl who falls in love with a game ranger and I’ve based it on how I remember life helping to manage a luxury safari lodge in the early 1990s.
More details HERE
It’s available in ebook only here: https://books2read.com/u/barwpa
Diamond Mountain
Lesotho, an African mountain kingdom in the final years of Colonial Administration, 1962. Philippa Tremain, the beautiful but rebellious District Commissioner's daughter, has set her sights on a glittering marriage to the son of one of Cape Town’s prominent legal families.
More Details HERE
[Coming May 2021]
The Memoirs of Spencer "Ted" Nettelton
Dad grew up in an Africa where game stretched across the horizon. Like his father grandfather, and most of the other males in his family, he served in the British Colononial Service which often meant isolation and loneliness, for long stretches of time.
As a result, many of them kept regular diary entries of the laborious hours on trek, either on a mule (in tsetse fly country in the case of my grandfather), or on the back of a sturdy Basuto pony, in the case of my father.
These memoirs are a collection of those recollections of my forebears, as put together by my father during the last fifteen years of his life.
GROWING UP IN BOTSWANA IN THE 1930S AND 40S
Spencer 'Ted' Nettelton grew up in Botswana during the 1930s and 40s when herds of wildebeest stretched across the horizon ... Read More
WORKING IN THE COLONIAL SERVICE IN LESOTHO
ADVENTURES IN BOTSWANA
Between 1916 and 1922, my grandfather kept a regular diary during his months-long treks throughout Botswana, mapping the tsetse fly belt, chasing suspected German dissidents who'd slipped across the border from the then South West Africa, collecting hut tax, and shooting for the pot ... Read More
