Facts and logic don’t work with some people.
What they respond to is an entertaining story that they can emotionally bond with and which allows them to come to their own conclusions. Conclusions that are in harmony with modern wildlife management principles, the type of principles we as hunters embrace.
Ever since Bambi we have been getting the crap beaten out of us.
My novel uses the same techniques as Bambi in that the main characters are all talking elephants. There are no warthogs peacefully living alongside lions singing happy songs. I have created a brutal and realistic world that will hopefully ruin some childhoods.
People are fascinated with African wildlife, especially elephants. You only have to think of the uproar over Cecil the Lion to realize this. My novel seeks to reduce the demand for blood ivory by using an authentic family of elephants within a sympathetic and exciting story of adventure. This story showcases the battle over land that is taking place between man and wildlife and describes the forces facing each. The elephant characters will be battling to survive against the expanding human population and their natural enemies. There will be farmers, both white and black, that are in a continuous battle to protect their livelihoods from crop raiding elephants and other predators. It will describe the corrupting influence of the illegal ivory trade and the desperation of the rural poor who must carve out a living in a brutal and unforgiving environment. I do not shy away from the violence of the animal kingdom and the realities of the African bush. They are embedded in this story and will be shocking to some readers.
AFRICA NEVER FORGIVES is the gritty elephant version of Bambi. It is also akin to White Fang and Call of the Wild in that the main character is an animal that follows the hero’s journey through the brutal wilderness. The best parallel to the main human character would be Things Fall Apart. You can also draw parallels to The Jungle Book, Animal Farm, Charlotte’s Web, and Black Beauty.
Some of you out there will be able to identify some of my characters. They are very loosely based on people I have met in Africa, some professional hunters and some in related positions. One of the main characters is Shradek which is slight variation of Shadrek, the famous lowveld elephant poacher. There is Alan and Rosy which is a take-off on Alan and Rosy Shearing. I have hunted with Alan twice and both times elephants tried to kill us. He says I am unlucky, but I think it is him.
If you didn’t know I was a hunter then you might think it was anti-hunting book. I have designed it to highlight the real risks to wildlife and especially consideration of the rural poor that have to live with dangerous game. It is a risky strategy and I am not sure how it will work out.
There are no four-letter words and it teaches a wholesome morality.

It is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble along with Authorhouse.

If you want a signed copy then send me $ 25 for the softcover and $ 35 for a hardcover.

I would appreciate as many 5-star reviews as I can get and I look forward to your comments here and elsewhere.
I am including a sample chapter from the middle of the book below. Lovey is based on the late Russell Caldecott’s (Ultimate Lodge in Vic Falls owner) grandfather who really did drink hot sauce straight as his cough medicine. There are also two teenaged elephant bull characters named Trouble and Mayhem that engage in a conversation.

I apologize for the formatting. It is much clearer in the book.

Thanks,

Mike “Guns” Core
199 E. Thousand Oaks Bld.
Suite 205
Thousand Oaks, Ca. 91360




Lovey, Marmalade, Devil and Nightmare

Old Russ McCallum liked his Tabasco straight and his women black. He referred to the hot sauce he drank as his cough medicine and the big fat Shaagan woman he lived with as Marmalade. She was thirty years his junior. He also had an old black and white mutt terrier named Devil. Marmalade called Russ, Lovey.
Lovey’s farm in Southern Rhodesia’s lowveld was about five miles from the Save River where Madiba and Menea were killed and about five miles in the opposite direction from where Mai, Disa and Benyu were walking.
Lovey had just turned eighty-two. His face was like faded red shoe leather with dull and watery gray blue eyes. His thin gray brown hair only partially covered the liver spots that spread down his forehead and along his temples. He had smoked his own hand rolled cigarettes since he was fourteen and had taken steady shots of whiskey with his tea since his early twenties. He was a skinny wiry man of less than average height who had the ears of a ten-year-old. Lovey looked like a constipated zombie. To say he was handsome would be cruel. He was also a man of action with the injuries and scars to prove it. Lovey had been mauled by a leopard, run over by a hippo, slapped silly by an elephant, bitten twice by puff adders, spat on by a cobra, had killed over five hundred lions, hyena and wild dogs, several hundred buffalo, forty-seven elephants and well over a thousand baboons. He had been peeing black for years. He had tattoos of Geronimo on his left forearm, Cochise on his right, a Crucifix on his right upper arm and John 3.16 on his left. Lovey coughed a lot and although he was still able to walk, his health had declined to the point that he preferred Marmalade push him around in a wheelchair with Devil in his lap. Lovey considered himself to be blessed.
Lovey, Marmalade and Devil were sitting in a specially constructed hunting blind, built three feet high on a rock wall on the edge of a small field of sucker corn, specifically planted to lure in a particular elephant that Lovey had sworn to kill before he died. This clever old bull had been raiding his crops for nearly six years, eating his corn and sorghum while destroying fences, water tanks, irrigation equipment, sheds and even once trashing a tractor. Lovey called this elephant bull Nightmare.
“Lovey, how long are we going to stay tonight?” asked Marmalade.
“Why, you got a hot date back in your village?” asked Lovey.
“Oh, how I wish it were so. I would like a man who wasn’t as grumpy or drank as much Tabasco as you,” said Marmalade.
“Well, you will have your chance before too long. I will be talking to God soon and I have some real explaining to do,” said Lovey, while placing his hand over his mouth to muffle a cough. Devil raised his head and shifted his paws in Lovey’s lap.
“Stop talking like that Lovey, you are a strong man and will live a long time. I would be so lonely without you,” said Marmalade.
Lovey smiled and reached over to hold Marmalade’s hand. She had come to work for Russ slightly over thirty years ago after his first wife Olivia had died. He had two daughters with Olivia, but they were already grown and had their own families, one in South Africa and the other in Australia. Marmalade and Lovey became lovers within a short period and had been living clandestinely as man and wife for almost thirty years. It was the worst kept secret in Southern Rhodesia. They had no children.
“I can see a gray spot moving in from the tree line. Can you see it?” asked Lovey.
“I can see two gray spots coming towards the field. It looks like two young bulls,” whispered Marmalade.
“Maybe Nightmare has recruited a couple of young assistants to check the field out first,” said Lovey.
“I only see the two young bulls. They are on the edge of our cornfield now and are coming in. I think you should get ready to shoot them,” said Marmalade.
“We are here for Nightmare. If I shoot these two then there is no chance he will come in,” said Lovey.
“An elephant is an elephant. Meat is meat. Grab your gun and get ready,” said Marmalade.
Lovey shook his head realizing it was pointless to argue with his wife. He reached for his Navy 470 double rifle and placed it across the arms of his wheelchair. Devil didn’t like the feel of gun metal on his back so he jumped down, growled, walked to the corner of the blind and rolled up into a ball.
Lovey had only seen Nightmare once and then only briefly, but he recognized all the damage he had done by his footprints. He was an older, smaller sized bull with one rather puny twenty-pound tusk. The other tusk had been broken off at the lip. This helped explain why he had managed to survive for so long. No hunter wanted to waste a bullet on a bull elephant with such lousy ivory. Nightmare was a runt of an elephant at only ten thousand pounds or so, but that meant he had to be smarter to survive. He was careful with his crop raiding, only at night and only when there was no scent of man in the area.
Lovey was kind of a runt himself, and he had also learned to survive by his wits and by his ability to soak up punishment. He was no longer healthy enough to hunt elephants on foot so he had to rely on cunning and patience. He had designed this blind and planted this well irrigated corn field during the dry season just for Nightmare. The fresh aroma of the moist dirt and ripening corn would carry well on the dry air. The field was about ninety yards square, big enough for his blind to blend it, but not so big that he couldn’t get a shot from a fixed position. Lovey had planted it only fifty yards from the tree line where the no-man’s land of the bush started. Not so close that an elephant could easily escape and not so far that it kept elephants from coming in. Lovey and Marmalade’s home was a full half mile away. The prevailing winds were in his face; he was high up with a good view, well camouflaged and comfortably seated in his open topped blind with sides made of green corn stalks. It was a grudge match and old Lovey was not going to let himself be distracted by his wife or by two young bulls. He wanted Nightmare and he was prepared to wait.


“Hey Bud, this stuff is pretty good,” said Trouble as he crunched through a green stalk tasting fresh corn for the first time.
“Whoa Dude, this yellow fruit is way better than tree bark or those dry mopani leaves we’ve been munching on,” said Mayhem.
“Why didn’t Bhasa ever bring us to one of these fields before?” asked Trouble.
“She was always too frightened of those tiny men we would run into occasionally,” said Mayhem.
“I will never understand cows. They are just too fussy and picky to hang out with. We have been passing up this stuff for years because of them,” said Trouble.
“I am glad we are rid of them,” said Mayhem.
Trouble and Mayhem began to tear into each individual stalk of corn while slinging their bodies about, unconcerned about knocking down rows of cornstalks while gorging themselves at this delicious man-made buffet. They were making steady progress in destroying the whole field while getting closer and closer to Lovey, Marmalade and Devil. The sun was slipping over the horizon and it would be getting dark soon.
“What are you waiting for?” whispered Marmalade. “They are right in front of us. You can shoot one with the left barrel and the other with the right. It will be dark soon and this torch you gave me isn’t that strong. Shoot them.”
Lovey didn’t budge, other than folding his arms across his chest. Marmalade sighed heavily, rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. Devil continued to nap.
After about ten minutes Lovey began to stroke his rifle and tap his toes. The light was fading with Nightmare nowhere in sight, and these two young bulls were destroying his well laid out plans.
“Marmalade, pick up a rock, stand up and throw it at the bull on the right,” whispered Lovey.
“Why don’t you just shoot them?” responded Marmalade.
“I want them to move off, but I don’t want to shoot and scare away Nightmare who I know is out there just waiting for darkness to fall,” said Lovey.
“I will never understand men, especially white men,” said Marmalade as she picked up a loose stone and heaved it towards Trouble striking him on his hip.
Trouble lifted his ears and rumbled, but then went back to eating. Marmalade picked up another stone and this time threw it at Mayhem hitting him on the top of his head. Mayhem lifted his head high and blew a squeal out of his trunk. Marmalade was a little angry at Lovey for not shooting so she picked up two more bigger rocks and threw them hard, hitting both Trouble and Mayhem in the ribs.
Trouble and Mayhem turned towards each other, rumbling, squealing and shaking their heads. Mayhem then kicked some dirt towards Trouble which didn’t seem to please Trouble as he started to pound his two front feet and whip his trunk back and forth. The two bulls then charged straight at each other, bumping heads, interlocking their tusks and pushing each other back and forth knocking down what corn stalks were left while their wrestling match rotated about the field.
“Look how stupid they are,” said Marmalade. “They must be fighting thinking that they threw the rocks at each other. Surely, you must want to shoot them now?”
“Well, they are a couple of the dumbest elephants I have ever seen,” said Lovey. “Let me check the area with my binoculars and if there is no sign of Nightmare before the sun goes down then I might as well get rid of these two.”
Lovey picked up his binoculars and started to scan the area, but he didn’t have to for long. On the outside of the field, less than one hundred yards away strode a bull elephant coming towards them. It was Nightmare. Lovey turned towards Marmalade and put his forefinger over his mouth, but then whispered to her that Nightmare was coming in. Lovey’s pulse quickened, Marmalade sat up straight and Devil continued to snooze.
Nightmare heard the two young bulls fighting and decided to come in early to investigate. As he approached the corn field, which he had been eyeing for a while, he began to swagger and shake his head side to side. He then blew a loud deep trumpet punctuated by an abrupt high-pitched squeal. Trouble and Mayhem stopped their wrestling match and turned towards the older full-grown bull that was approaching them. Lovey stuck the barrel of his rifle out of the blind opening and rested it on a crossbeam. He would need to wait for Nightmare to get close enough to offer a clear shot, either to the brain or the heart lung area. Lovey preferred the brain, but would take what he could get.
Nightmare was not amused at the damage Trouble and Mayhem had caused to his cornfield. He walked straight up to Mayhem and charged him, striking his much larger skull straight into Mayhem’s forehead and knocking him back on his rear just as Bhasa had done to him a few days earlier. Nightmare then ran up to Trouble and slapped his much larger and heavier trunk across Trouble’s face knocking him sideways nearly off his feet just the same as Bhasa had done to him a few days earlier. Nightmare continued to rumble and squeal at the two teenagers until they were both on their way out of the field with him right behind them. They weren’t fast enough though as Nightmare continued to ram both of them from behind forcing them to run out of the patch of sucker corn and into the bush.
Lovey was getting worried that Nightmare might push them all the way to Mozambique and not return to the field to feed, but Nightmare did eventually stop on the edge of the tree line. Trouble and Mayhem disappeared fleeing the obnoxious older bull who didn’t feel like sharing. Nightmare then turned back to the cornfield.


“Dude, I don’t like how our lives have been working out lately,” said Mayhem. “This is the second time this week I have been knocked back on my bum by some obnoxious adult, first Bhasa and now this rhino.”
“Yeah Bud and it is the second time I’ve been slapped silly this week also. At least this time it wasn’t in front of my mother and our whole family,” said Trouble.
“You mean our ex-family,” said Mayhem as he started to kick dirt up with his feet as they walked along. “The more I think about Bhasa, the madder I get.”
“Me too Bud, and who does she think she is to order us to try and herd a bunch of hyenas anyway? Who has ever herded hyenas? Have you ever heard of anyone herding hyenas”?
“No Dude, I haven’t and that’s probably because it can’t be done, but that didn’t stop Bhasa from making us try. She set us up just to humiliate us.”
“It was all a pretense just to kick us out of the herd and embarrass us in front of our mothers and that isn’t right,” said Trouble.
“And what about picking up the carcass of that smelly old lion? What kind of elephant would make you do something like that anyway?” asked Mayhem as he walked straight over several smaller blue bushes crushing them to the ground.
“That thing was disgusting; I got his blood and guts all over my trunk hauling his remains away. It smelled horrible,” said Trouble as he started waving his trunk in the air.
“What was that?” asked Trouble as a loud boom swept over them.
“It is just some thunder, Dude. We are due for some rain soon,” said Mayhem.
“Bud, our luck is so bad we even got rocks falling from the sky hitting us in the head,” said Trouble.
“That was weird,” said Mayhem. “I’m sorry I accused you of throwing those things at me.”
“Forget about it, I thought you were throwing them at me also,” said Trouble. “It must have been that cranky selfish old bull. Who does he think he is claiming a whole field just for himself?”
“He must have been Bhasa’s evil twin brother,” said Mayhem as another boom of thunder ripped through the area. “We should be getting rain soon.”
“You know what I want to do Bud?” asked Trouble.
“What’s that Dude?” responded Mayhem.
“I want us to make our way back to the family, confront Bhasa over all the nonsense she has put us through and demand an apology in front of the whole family,” said Trouble. “We are bulls now and deserve better treatment.”
“I am with you Dude, and while we are there we can have a proper good-bye to our mothers,” said Mayhem.
“Good, now all we have to do is find them,” said Trouble.
“Dude, don’t you remember? Bhasa always heads out to those marshes close to the sun this time of year,” said Mayhem.
“You are right my friend, but do you remember the way?” asked Trouble.
“More or less,” said Mayhem.

Lovey and Marmalade were now standing next to the carcass of Nightmare. Devil barked and growled at the dead elephant and then clamped his jaws around the edge of Nightmare’s sky-side ear. After exhausting himself trying to pull the elephant carcass, Devil lifted his leg up and peed on Nightmare’s face. It sounded like rain hitting concrete.
“My husband is a strong man. We now have lots of meat for my village,” said Marmalade as she clasped her hands together.
Lovey didn’t say anything, but one small tear did roll down his leathery old face.

I’m in
PM sent

PM sent

.

I'll go USD 35/- for a signed hardback.

Love the front cover picture. Nice painting that I recognise from last year.

PM on its way.

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quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
.

I'll go USD 35/- for a signed hardback.

Love the front cover picture. Nice painting that I recognise from last year.

PM on its way.

.

I got permission from Peter Stewart to use his painting "Valley Panic". The original was auctioned off for the benefit of the Dande Anti-Poaching Unit sponsored by CM Safaris.

Hi Mike

Congrats and I am very much looking forward to reading it!! See you in Vegas- cheers Buzz

quote:

Originally posted by Buzz Charlton:
Hi Mike

Congrats and I am very much looking forward to reading it!! See you in Vegas- cheers Buzz

Thanks Buzz but I want to caution you and everyone else that this novel wasn't written for hunters as the target audience.

It is written for the non-hunting general public to help them understand the harsh realities of wildlife conservation in Africa. The first reaction for a lot of readers is that this is an anti-hunting book, but I have planted the seeds for a more informed and well rounded understanding of these issues.

BTW - I would like to thank Andrew Baldry (aka fairgame) for a little inspiration. I incorporated his story about rescuing a baby elephant from the mouth of a crocodile in my novel. It is in Chapter 17-Hard Skinny Snakes on pages 104-5.

Thanks Andrew

quote:

Originally posted by GunsCore:
BTW - I would like to thank Andrew Baldry (aka fairgame) for a little inspiration. I incorporated his story about rescuing a baby elephant from the mouth of a crocodile in my novel. It is in Chapter 17-Hard Skinny Snakes on pages 104-5.

Thanks Andrew

You write very well and look forward to reading more. Glad you could use that unusual incident.

Cheers

I enjoyed that Mike, very interesting,thank you. Look forward to reading your book. Regards, jc

I just got a phone call from a South African(Louise) living in North Dakota who wanted my book. He heard about it from a friend of a friend.

I am out of hard cover copies but still have softcovers that I can sign and send for $ 25.

It is also available on Amazon and B&N for hard and soft covered copies plus as a digital download.

Hunting Africa is expensive so I am counting on you guys to buy lots of copies so I can go more often.

Thanks for your support.

Guns