Book Extract: Kalahari Passage by Candi Miller

I’m pleased to be welcoming Candi Miller back to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Kalahari Passage: Koba book 2

Koba and Mannie have been in jail. Their crime, loving each other across the Apartheid colour bar in southern Africa. Koba escapes her captors and using her bush skills, finds her way across the semi-desert to her former tribal home. But adapting to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle after a decade away, has challenges. And her mortal enemy is on her trail.

Meanwhile Mannie absconds during his parole and sets off on a sub-continental road trip to find his beloved Koba. But will his new comrades persuade him to join them across the border for training in deadly guerrilla warfare? And what will that mean for his future with Koba? 

Under tragic circumstances the lovers meet, but the danger they are in means they face  heart-breaking choices.

Kalahari Passage is an action-packed story of a search for identity and love. Readers will be spellbound by Koba’s world where an ancient culture dances, trances and lives in harmony with the land.

Candi has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy it. 

*****beginning of extract*****

Koba, an indigenous Ju|’hoan girl, has found safety her among her people, making friends with |Kuni and her musician husband, Bo Fingers. Koba decides to decamp with them to avoid her stalker, the man she calls Lion. She has suitors too, unwanted. Koba is secretly in love with Mannie, Frog-boy, a young white man from whom she was separated by the government.

In italics is the interior dialogue Koba has with her conscience, aka Insect. (A bit like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, but bawdy.) 

Something had been decided in the group. Everyone except ∥’Aoka Sour, looked content. Gaps began to appear in the circle as people rose and said goodnight.

Koba grew uneasy, nervous as a wildebeest that finds itself in a thinning herd. She scanned the remaining faces for clues and started when another large log was thrown into the fire. All the cooking is done, people go to their sleeping mat; why the wood-wasting? she wondered, until it occurred to her that a decision had been made to leave the area.

She gazed up at the night sky again, calculating her options. The Big Rain will have washed away my footprints, but Lion won’t give up easily. Better to hide in the herd, although I seem to get many unspoken looks in this noisy place.

Use your intelligence, Bushgirl. There are few marriageable women in the group. That is why you are eaten by eyes.

Hnn, that man named for an orange, Gxao, he is the worst. Brought me a shell full of honey, grinning at me like a baboon from behind a face swollen with bee stings. I hate honey, but Hairs-in-his-ears would not listen, pushing the food under my nose … And every-every time I go to gather wood or set a snare, a man wants to help me. Buzzing round like bees, these men. I don’t need them. I have always found my own roots and berries. And when I longed for meat, I learned to hunt.

Is so. Remember that warthog you and Frog-boy trapped in a burrow?

Koba certainly did. It had nearly run Mannie through with its razored tusk. She’d killed it with a stab through its neck and together they’d roasted the sweetest meat and devoured it, the fat running down to their elbows.

Heh-heh. After, Frog-boy saw you with man’s eyes for the first time and you knew then he wanted to have food with you.

Koba smiled at the memory of their shy, lustful looks. It had taken a long time for them to consummate their passion for each other. She thrilled, remembering their first explosive coupling.

Bushgirl, your heart still longs for him. Stay among these noises. Their buzzings will distract you. You have spent enough time alone.

And enough time talking to an insect, Koba thought. She would go with |Kuni and her family, wherever that was.

But later she lay awake, unable to find comfort in the hollow she’d made in the sand. One of Bo’s melodies picked its melancholy way towards her in the dark. It was leading |Kuni’s voice up, rising like thin smoke, reaching for the stars. And then their discrete sounds danced, entwined, until Koba heard notes that led |Kunigently down to earth again and stilled the song with the softest twang. Koba felt it as tenderly as a lover’s tap on her naked shoulder. She ached for Mannie, for his lips brushing hers, his chest under her cheek as she lay in his arms, the fresh, musky, man-boy smell of him. Would she ever see him again?

No. And no use wishing to touch stars when a person is planted in the sand, she told herself. She thumbed the tears from her cheeks, pulled the old kaross Zuma had given her over her head and closed her eyes.

*****end of extract*****

About Candi Miller –

Candi Miller was born in southern Africa and has spent more than twenty years researching the first peoples of the region, a group who have now adopted the exonym of San or Bushmen. She taught creative writing at UK universities.

She now lives in Cornwall where she is writing the last book of the Koba trilogy. She is republishing her novels to support a school feeding scheme she co-founded for San children in 2017.

Say hello to Candi on Substack, Instagram, TikTok, Linktree, and Facebook. 

Kalahari Passage is book two in the Koba series. Click to buy on Amazon. To buy the series, click here. 

Click to read our review of Salt & Honey, the first book in the Koba series.

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.