Way back in the olden days – Also known as Early March 2020 – when we still had Bookclub – I took out Death & Other Happy Endings by Melanie Cantor. It took me a while to knuckle down and read it because I didn’t feel like a death book, especially in the midst of a pandemic. I eventually decided,…
Category: thinking
Shadow Flicker launched at Xpression on the Beach
“On Saturday mornings, Kate and her dad used to wake up early and surf for hours at Muizenberg.”
Kate, the protagonist of Shadow Flicker by Melissa A. Volker, grows up in Muizenberg and becomes a surfing champion before a tragedy puts a stop to her career. Years later, she returns to the sea to face her trauma and to find love and healing.
Last night, Shadow Flicker‘s author visited Muizenberg, the place where she usually catches waves as a SUP champion, to launch her novel at her local surf shop, Xpression on the Beach.
The launch was hosted by surf legend Gary Van Rooyen. Melissa was in conversation with surfer, writer and historian Glen Thompson. Many friends from the surfing and literary worlds joined us for the special occasion, a kind of homecoming for the author and her novel’s protagonist.
A scene in Shadow Flicker is set in the St…
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Barbara Erasmus reviews Shadow Flicker by Melissa A. Volker in the Sunday Times
Local eco-romance novel will blow you away There are no blurred lines between the good and bad guys who all get their just desserts – cynical readers must bear in mind that Volker’s genre is romance rather than noir By Barbara Erasmus Many South Africans will identify with the heroine of Melissa Volker’s debut novel Shadow Flicker – she experiences…
Love and Launches
Wow. What a week I had last week. It’s taken me a while to pause and reflect on it. First I had the pleasure of making a trip down to the Cape Talk Studio for an interview with John Maytham. To say I was nervous is the understatement of the year. My mouth was dry like the Sahara desert and…
Shadow Flicker by Melissa A. Volker launched at the Book Lounge
It was quite a while ago that Melissa A. Volker and I sat at Jonkerhuis, discussing over cake and coffee a version of the manuscript that would eventually become her novel Shadow Flicker. During that conversation, I mentioned my dream of becoming a publisher. I also told her that I’d loved her novel; that it needed some work, but that I was convinced it would…
An Equal Share
This article first appeared in the print edition of Zigzag 2 years ago. So much has happened in women’s surfing since I wrote this, equal pay from the WSL for example, Emma Smith on the cover of the Zag, the women’s championship tour invited to JBay and a women’s event scheduled at Mavericks. In some places it is still a…
Book Review – Surfing With Sartre
Surfing with Sartre by Aaron James Did you know that one of the first casualties of climate change might be surfing as we know it? Desert Point could be the first to go. Even at current sea levels it only works on a low tide. Many other breaks could follow as rising oceans swamp reefs. What greater cataclysm could befall…
It’s Time – Corona Open J-Bay Women’s
Are you ready? Because it’s time. Nearly twenty years ago, in 2000, the women’s event last ran at J-Bay. (You know. The year Tom Hanks talked to a volley ball in Cast Away and Steve Tyler Didn’t Want to Miss a Thing?) Well, down here in South Africa, we can’t wait. And today, we FINALLY got done with…
The pay disparity thing at Ballito
I hadn’t written anything about this because I actually didn’t know where to begin. I’m busy working on a piece on the greater issue, which is not, in my opinion, just equal pay in WSL contests, but the long history of sexism in surfing that has informed opinion of what is okay and what is not. But in the meantime…
May’s Author 18 Feature – Joanne Serling
The debut novelist I am featuring for the month of May is Joanne Serling. Joanne’s book Good Neighbours is Literary Fiction and was published by Twelve. (Twelve is part of the Hachette Book Group, who also publish, among others, David Baldacci, Jeffrey Deaver, Malcom Gladwell and Michael Connelly.) BLURB “Joanne Serling’s ice-pick of a debut novel, Good Neighbors, centers of…
Melissa A Volker 