AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

The Bone Traders - when Apple is a much desired fruit, not a...?

Was Google another word for a gaggle of geese?

She had a doll and it was called Katherine. It was the only child she had known. 

...after the solar storm, when the clue to your future was left like stale marrow in the bones of the dead, it took one, gifted man, to ensure that tomorrow was for living and not dying.

Listen to Mark Roper's audio sample of THE BONE TRADERS -- available on +Amazon.com as an audio book, paperback or as a Kindle download. 

AUDIO BOOK - A BOY. HIS IMAGINATION. HIS REALITY.

A BOY. HIS IMAGINATION. HIS REALITY.

Can a boy, lost and floundering, use his imagination to win over the harsh reality of being abandoned by his father? And if so, what are the consequences? Does reality have the ability to rear its poisonous head like a taunted Cobra? Or will it negotiate?

This is what the readers are saying about Roper's imaginative novella, TWO FEET:

The way he describes his mother makes me bite my lip, leave the couch to take a long walk on the heath.
Between his memories, his imagination and the dust, he walks and talks with his mentor, his companion. Was he real? Actually, I don't even want to know. He's just very good to have around. So is the novella.
I am waiting for Part 2.

...the proof is in the pudding. Listen to the sample, or, read the novella.

 

Read more of Roper Books

Sticks and Stones -- TWO FEET - on the road.

STICKS AND STONES

LISTEN AS YOU READ -- IT ADDS TO THE ATMOSPHERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Music by JALUKA and Johnny Clegg.

My sticks are ready.

I am ready to fight.

Mabuza is not happy. He is angry. I know this because he has been tugging at the grey pebbles of hair on the left side of his head like a dog scratches at a tenacious flea. He avoids my eyes when I look at him, especially when I am busy polishing my “donga”, my dlala ‘nduku, my playing sticks.

There are two sticks. One is longer than the other. The longest I will grip in my left hand to parry the blows and the shorter will be in my right for attacking. Both sticks I have chopped from the Wild Olive tree. I have soaked them in cooking fat that I have stolen from the kitchen. This, and many hours of sunbathing have helped harden the wood.

I am fighting Galpin. He is one of the many sons of the Induna (Chief) that lives across the Matsapa River. There was no throwing down of the gauntlet, no challenge. It is just an accepted ritual. We are both of age. It is our time.

He pointed at me. I pointed at him. We shook hands, and that was it. We will fight behind the General Dealer Store.

I think Galpin will probably go for my knees first. I have seen him fight before. Or he will feint a move to the left as the right stick goes for the side of my head.

I am prepared for this. I have stolen a dishcloth from the kitchen. This I will wrap around my head like a bandanna for protection. It is the norm. Galpin, will, of course, wear a traditional bandanna of local cloth. It will be embroidered with either a lion or a fleet-footed antelope.

My bandanna is embroidered with the word “Sunlight” which is a well known brand of soap.

I have been practising down at the dam, away from the eyes of the brood. My target has been imaginary, or I have taken to beating at the clumps of reeds that grow down there. I parry and thrust, sink low on my haunches, stab and defend. My enemy, in return, showers me with soft seeds that glisten like flakes of gold in the sunlight.

I have consequently made an enemy of the Cape weaver birds that are in the process of nesting amongst the reeds. I try to think of their angry tirade as applause.

“This is the game of children.”

“No. This is the game of warriors!”

“Pah!” Scoffs Mabuza, followed by a lump of phlegm to the ground. “There are better ways to be a warrior.”

“Like what?”

Mabuza taps the side of his head twice.

And with that, Mabuza went back to stabbing the garden fork into a weed infested flower bed and I am suddenly, briefly, wondering what you, Dying Father, would be telling me at this juncture of my life. The moment is fleeting. More of a spasm, then it has gone and shelved itself away amongst the other odds and sods that have briefly, over time, asked for reasons and advice, and then crept away scorned.

I think of decorating my sticks. Perhaps with a few coils of copper wire, like the great warriors of King Chaka’s people.

“Are you now a maiden?”

I am rebuked.

I trundle away to the dam in search of applause from the cape Weaver birds.

There are no noises of the night on the night before the fight. There are none only because I do not sleep. My calf muscles are taut as I lie on my bed, cramping with a nervousness that first began as something heavy in my stomach. A squirming something, not unlike that wriggly bastard worm, that is sometimes warm, sometimes cold. I think it is what they call fear.

Hurry dawn’s light.

My sticks are ready.

Watch me, Meneer Gerber.

I am to be a man, Dying Father.

I am The Sunlight Boy. 

I pedal away from the house as it sleeps. I have managed to put my two sticks down the back of my shirt. I am a Samurai on a bicycle, off to defend what? This I do not know. It is a tradition. So that must be it. This is my rite.

I take the tar road to the General Dealer store. The road is void of traffic. There is cow shit on the rise, and I dodge it. The tarmac shimmers like a snake’s skin in the dawn’s light. A slight mist envelops the pineapple fields to the left and right. The plants stand aloof and sharp. It is a hostile plant for reasons only Nature must know.

I ride the road and avoid the potholes.

Mabuza stands at the turn-off to the General Dealer. I see him from a distance, and I ease off on the pedals. He stands where the red dust meets the tarmac, where the old meets the new. His chest is bare. He wears a loincloth, his tin cup attached to a riempie (thong) of leather about his waist. He holds, loosely, a knobkerrie (wooden club) in his hand. As I approach him, he nods once and breaks into his customary trot to cross the road.

We say nothing.

I pedal after him, his warrior gait light, and he barely rustles the red sand beneath his naked feet from its slumber.

The tailor with the milky eye is setting up his sewing machine on the porch of the store. There is not much activity yet. The Store is still closed. A hen with a clutch of chicks works the soil close to the wall where I park the bicycle. The hen fluffs her feathers and the chicks respond like sharks to offal. I remove my sticks from under my shirt and from my trouser pocket I pull out my Sunlight bandana.

I think of the reeds and the angry Weaver birds as I wrap the dish cloth around my head. I fold in the corners. I bounce a stick off my scalp. Numb and dumb.

Mabuza is watching, but he is not.

Behind the General Dealer Store where the grass is well trodden, Galpin stands with a small group of people. I recognise some of them from the kraal. His father, the Induna will referee. That was already decided.

There is only Mabuza behind me, and he is yet to speak to anyone.

Galpin and I square-off. There is no ritual or celebration. It is straightforward.  He attacks and I parry; the Wild Olive wood in my hand shuddering on contact and sending electric shivers down my arm.

He feints left and the next second I am on my knees. The pain comes later. It is a quick blow to the area behind my right knee. I stand up.

....and will the Sunlight Boy win? On his road to adulthood...read Mark Roper's inspiring novella to discover the consequences on +Amazon.com 

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Feet-Haggis-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00UVUQRH4/

AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

TWO FEET HEARD IN THE CLOUDS

Free Audio sample of TWO FEET

Free Audio sample

There's a salad on my head

THERE'S A SALAD ON MY HEAD.

READ THE AUTHOR'S NOVELLA, TWO FEET - GROWING UP IN SOUTH AFRICA IN THE 1960'S. ON AMAZON.

(As an update, have you tried buying a tube of toothpaste recently? Before I comment, let me know your thoughts -- I don't know about tooth decay, but selecting a tube of toothpaste is rapidly becoming brain decay.)

Had a quiet chuckle a few days ago. Stumbled into the local supermarket come pharmacy to purchase a bottle of shampoo. Liquid soap in a bottle it used to be known as. Pure and simple.
 Not any more -- I surveyed line upon line of misshaped bottles -- green, yellow, amber, gold, dark...upright and not upright. Bulbous and lean, some bending toward being phallic shaped; another so sculptured that it resembled an inert human hand. 
So I began reading the ingredients and that's when I scoffed out loud which probably confused the platinum blonde beside me, because he hurried away with a toss of a basil scented curl. I can only presume he reacted so because I had interrupted his blissful moment of wondering what next to anoint his scalp of dead, keratinized cells with. 
I perused the fine ingredients of some of the bottles with incremental mirth.

Avocado and passion fruit, honey and almond, wild herbs and strawberry, lemon zing with a dash of grapefruit (natural no less!), raspberry with mint and selected herbs from India, (I grow mint in the struggling veggie garden and I use it to anoint a good slab of lamb, not my scalp) rose petal and, wait for it, tea. Yes, tea - I simply don't get it. 
 Give me/us a break here -- we are talking about washing our hair, not dumping the veggie garden on our head, are we?? Mango juice with wild African honey? Not tame honey, nay, but WILD African honey -- I can see the plains of Serengeti, the intrepid shampoo maker dodging a pride of African lion, escaping the wrath of a feeding Hippopotamus as he scours the veld for the wild bee...
 I do not jest. Let me ask: Who went out there and did these experiments? Who woke up one morning and squashed a mango, sieved a few strawberries, tossed in a twig of mint and an almond as support  and  then added bee vomit and then proudly announced that he had created a shampoo? Who? 
And the coup de grace here is, we buy this shit! We believe this stuff. 

Maybe none of this surprises you. It does me -- as a farm kid I grew up with all those ingredients so imagine if I'd wandered off into the orchard, into the fields, mashed up a few strawberries, squashed an avocado or two, and dumped and massaged them into my scalp? Then rinsed with a cup of cold tea.

It would have been straight jacket time, I tell you. Or I'd be quickly associated to smoking the same green stuff the tractor driver was hourly participating in -- Back in those days, a bar of Lux or +Colgate soap did just fine even though it may have just been used to clean one of the mutts. I'm still showing a full crop of hair just in case you are wondering.

P.S. I bought the green one -- I think it is lime intoxicated with the fumes of an African swallow's fart or something or other. Not quite sure, but it seems to goad well with the bees out in the garden -- I'm a fair attraction.

Bring back them good, simple old days.

So here's an extract from TWO FEET about shopping -- hope you enjoy. Comments appreciated. 

EXTRACT FROM THE NOVELLA, TWO FEET:

This was a good road. It had a few hills and a few potholes, but pedalling was easy especially on the way to the Store. I’d park the bike outside the Store where the hulking overhead diesel drum was positioned, and then walk across the dry patch of red earth where the chickens fed, and climb the few concrete steps onto the porch of the building. Here, a Cobbler and a tailor worked. The tailor had a milky eye and his left leg would furiously pump the plate on the floor to make the sewing machine rattle. He looked as though he was riding a bicycle to nowhere. The Cobbler, who wore a white shirt and a tie, had a tiny anvil and a mouthful of little black tacks that protruded from his lips like snakes’ tongues. Beside him were heaps of shoes that I thought would never cover a person’s feet or tread on a road again. But they did.

There is always a group of people gathered on the porch. A mother feeding her baby on her bosom, her head bent low over the infant to keep away the flies, an old man leaning on his cane peering from beneath the brim of his recently purchased hat, and another woman tying up her cash in a piece of cloth that she would thrust down her blouse for safe keeping.

The business of shopping was a muted, respected affair by customers in the Store. An aisle was approached with caution, almost in awe, bare feet scuffing on the concrete floor. Canned goods were held carefully in both hands, and the picture on the label was studied with the intensity of an art scholar. A bar of wrapped, Lux soap was sniffed and smiled at, and the bulky bag of Hullett’s refined, white sugar, stroked and prodded.

At the rear of the store, alongside gardening implements and paraffin lamps, shoes for men and women, made in Taiwan, beckoned. The shoes were never tried on for size but measured against the foot, the brightness of the shoe’s plastic alluring. The appearance of high heeled shoes would cause much stifled giggling.

The weighing of maize meal, sugar or flour by the Store’s owner was a solemn affair, the customer having ordered it, not by weight, but by what he or she could afford. As the grocer’s scale shifted on its fulcrum, so would the head of the customer, as if mentally trying to balance the brass contraption by telepathy. When the scale righted itself, the customer would do likewise with his or her head. Then the maize or flour would be poured into a paper bag and fastened with cello-tape. Whatever money the customer had was offered to the store owner as payment. It was accepted that the store owner would count out what was needed, and the balance be returned. A sticky sweet or two always concluded the transaction.

TWO FEET - FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD

The novella, TWO FEET, is available as a FREE +Kindle download on SUNDAY 11 JANUARY 2015.

FOR FREE DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE

Under the vast African sky, a young boy is forced to come to terms with a whole new reality. Abandoned by his father, his new playground is the open plains, and his new family, a deeply-rooted local community with some seemingly unorthodox ways—among them, Swazi warrior Mabuza, and stern, religious Afrikaner Meneer Gerber.

But Mark soon finds that this unconventional upbringing might be exactly what he needs to fill the emptiness created by his life-altering loss. While he imagines his father fighting for his life in a distant hospital, the boy learns to find solace and hope through the wisdom and traditions of his new community—including important lessons about life, overcoming obstacles, and how to walk with bare feet.

 With equal parts insight, emotion, and humour, Two Feet takes a candid look at the realities of family life, while evoking the adventure and curiosity of childhood.

Is God A Mechanic?

Read and listen to extracts on this web link:

An extract from Mark Roper's inspiring novella, TWO FEET -- now also available as an audio book on +Amazon.com and +Audible as well as +iTunes.

IS GOD A MECHANIC?

Meneer Gerber, our teacher, once said we were all marching forward on God’s road. (I have seen Meneer Gerber smile once when he was talking with the headmaster’s wife. His teeth were very white).

He said that God was our engine that was driving us on.

God was our petrol fuelling us around the bends and up the hills and down the hills.

God was a powerful motor vehicle and we were his passengers.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God wore a crash helmet, as the racing car drivers do that I had seen pictures of. But I did not.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s car, as it zoomed along, also left behind clouds of red dust that asphyxiated bird and insect as it travelled. But I did not.

I wanted to put up my hand and ask if God’s car had any gears, especially a reverse gear. I was thinking that a reverse gear would be a good idea for God’s car because if there were any mistakes to be fixed, God could just reverse over the mistakes and then drive forward again. This way He could repair the mistakes and make certain they never occurred again. But I did not ask.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s engine ever broke down. But I did not.

But I should.

Was a submersible borehole-pump not a part of God’s engine?

I won’t ask.

But if God was in control of an engine, any engine, then He would know how to repair it?

But I should ask.

A borehole was an engine. It had an engine, a pump. It was buried deep down in the shaft after the drilling machine – Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! -- had driven away leaving mounds of red clay and diesel and black oil stains on the grass. Yes, a pump engine that sucked the water from down there where it was quiet and still and dark. Immersed in the bowels of the earth, where the sun didn't shine and where the water was sweet.

I won’t ask.

I will.

Will not.

Will.

I raised my hand.

“Meneer?”

Meneer Gerber had his feet up on the desk. He twisted his feet and separated them so he could get a view of me. He remained lounging back in the wooden chair that often creaked with the sound of a timid fart. He looked at me between his polished shoes.

“I did not ask a question, boy.”

“No, Meneer.”

“Then what the bloody Hell do you want?”

“You are in deep kak (shit), Rooinek!”That was Pisskop’s whispering voice. He sat at the rear of the class, but his words were like rifle shots in my burning ears.

Stand up, Feet. Make me stand. Please!

I stood on shaking knees trying to focus on Meneer Gerber’s shoes that partly hid his face. I was deeply flushed. I felt as if I was rolling in a field of stinging nettles. The soles of Meneer Gerber’s shoes were worn thin, and there was a patch on the left shoe. I spoke to the patch.

“Dust, Meneer. There is only dust now because the borehole engine has broken. In the vegetable garden where my mother is growing radishes, beetroot, cabbage and carrots so we can sell them at the road shop. (Breathe, chest in and out) Mister Kelly, he says the pump is old and worn, and he showed us the remains of some rusty pieces (cheeks hot, so hot)...so... so now there is no water, Meneer because of the pump so we...we are carrying water now from the dam in Mister Kelly’s jerry cans. (Bare-feet now sweating on the wooden floorboards and toes curling) We use a pole, Meneer, so we can carry the water on our shoulders, you see? But the grass on the hill is dry Meneer, and we are often falling and (hearing a dry chuckle from Pisskop)...and Mabuza is helping with some rope to pull the jerry cans up the hill, and my mother, she is really trying to show the water the way to find the vegetables. (No breath any more. Sucking in air) Meneer, but it is not enough water without the borehole engine so...so...I...the plants are dying in the dust so I...so I...was thinking that maybe God because he knows engines, Meneer, can fix the submersible pump?”

Meneer Gerber abruptly swings his feet off the desk. He sits slowly upright in the wooden chair that makes a farting sound. He does not lose focus of me.

I remained standing. Sweaty, naked feet glued to wooden floorboards. A strong smell of chalk suddenly, a waft of Pisskop’s sour body odour. I sense movement from Max, the baker’s son, seated behind his desk. It is more of a nervous squirm, like someone waiting for a film to be projected.

“You are in deep, deep kak (shit), Rooinek,” whispers Pisskop from out there amongst the blurred faces.

Think:  mother on hands and knees in dust whispering to rivulet of tepid water. Solution: God repairs pump. Result: mother not necessary to be on hands and knees in dust whispering to tepid water.

“Are you...”His voice is shrill with pain, like the sound a rugby player makes when he is kicked between the legs. He coughs then again speaks.

“Are you are asking me if God is a bloody mechanic, boy?”

I am I suppose, so I nod, and my head feels heavy, and I know the gesture makes me look like a dumb child with his bare feet glued to a wooden floor.

I am soon bent over with my head in the corner. Above my head, just a few inches away, is a small book shelf. It carries two heavy books – the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places of the World. There is a layer of chalk dust on the books. They are not a part of the curriculum so are never read and are left to gather chalk dust.

When a child is bent over in a corner of a room, and he is given a caning, his first reaction is to recoil, is to lift up his head. That is what the bookshelf is for. When you recoil, you slam your head into the bookshelf. This way Meneer Gerber gets you twice with one blow. This way the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places in the World also have some use.

I look down at my two, bare feet as Meneer Gerber lands the first of six strokes. He will land the second stroke half an inch above the first, and then the third will strike where the first landed. He is a master of his craft.

I wonder if God will try the reverse gear for me.

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this on?”

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this off?”

...for the conclusion of this chapter and to read the full Novella, please visit http://www.amazon.com/Two-Feet-Haggis-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00UVUQRH4/

TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

Shopping in the wind (better than at Morrisons!)

...a FREE chapter from the novella, TWO FEET, by MARK ROPER. In it he explains, briefly, what is was to go shopping in Swaziland in the late 1960's. Some of Mark's earlier Blogs reflect his attitude toward modern day shopping!!! (There's a salad on my head, Brain Decay etc etc). TWO FEET will soon be available as a FULL audio book read by the well known stage and screen actor, Miles Anderson.  Please free free to comment and, needless to say, TWO FEET is available to purchase on +Amazon.com 

SHOPPING IN THE WIND

But they did come and repossess the car. It was a red Mini-Imp, and the men that came were from a large, prosperous city across the border, and they didn't even stay for coffee. They just drove it off down the thin, corrugated and eroded dirt road that led down the hill onto the main road.

We stood and watched it go. “Shit,” is what my mother said.

We were left with a black bicycle, and on this bicycle I would pedal on the tarmac road to the local General Dealer every day. It was a long road bordered by pineapple fields, and the labourers working in those fields wore old, plastic fertilizer bags tied to their legs to avoid the sharpness of the pineapple leaves. They were like human scarecrows.

This was a good road. It had a few hills and a few potholes, but pedalling was easy especially on the way to the Store. I’d park the bike outside the Store where the hulking overhead diesel drum was positioned, and then walk across the dry patch of red earth where the chickens fed, and climb the few concrete steps onto the porch of the building. Here, a Cobbler and a tailor worked. The tailor had a milky eye and his left leg would furiously pump the plate on the floor to make the sewing machine rattle. He looked as though he was riding a bicycle to nowhere.  The Cobbler, who wore a white shirt and a tie, had a tiny anvil and a mouthful of little black tacks that protruded from his lips like snakes’ tongues. Beside him were heaps of shoes that I thought would never cover a person’s feet or tread on a road again. But they did.

There is always a group of people gathered on the porch. A mother feeding her baby on her bosom, her head bent low over the infant to keep away the flies, an old man leaning on his cane peering from beneath the brim of his recently purchased hat, and another woman tying up her cash in a piece of cloth that she would thrust down her blouse for safe keeping.

The business of shopping was a muted, respected affair by customers in the Store. An aisle was approached with caution, almost in awe, bare feet scuffing on the concrete floor. Canned goods were held carefully in both hands, and the picture on the label was studied with the intensity of an art scholar. A bar of wrapped, Lux soap was sniffed and smiled at, and the bulky bag of Hullett’s refined, white sugar, stroked and prodded.

At the rear of the store, alongside gardening implements and paraffin lamps, shoes for men and women, made in Taiwan, beckoned. The shoes were never tried on for size but measured against the foot, the brightness of the shoe’s plastic alluring. The appearance of high heeled shoes would cause much stifled giggling.

The weighing of maize meal, sugar or flour by the Store’s owner was a solemn affair, the customer having ordered it, not by weight, but by what he or she could afford. As the grocer’s scale shifted on its fulcrum, so would the head of the customer, as if mentally trying to balance the brass contraption by telepathy. When the scale righted itself, the customer would do likewise with his or her head. Then the maize or flour would be poured into a paper bag and fastened with cello-tape. Whatever money the customer had was offered to the store-owner as payment. It was accepted that the store-owner would count out what was needed, and the balance be returned. A sticky sweet or two always concluded the transaction.

If a can of paraffin was listed on my mother’s shopping list, the road and the ride home was a challenge. Paraffin was an essential fuel. It kept the deep freeze and the fridge cold and the hurricane lamps alight when there was a power failure. The bag of meagre groceries I could hang on the handlebars, but a five-gallon metal container filled with paraffin was heavy and cumbersome, and the only place for it was between my legs on the hard saddle so I’d peddle off with knees and elbows wide like a frog in mid-flight and my backside almost touching the rear tyre.

The road I travelled was often shared with one or two eighteen-wheeler railway trucks.  Red, monstrous and loud, they travelled across the country transporting cattle, timber and sugar cane. Long before they came into sight the tarmac beneath the bicycle’s front wheel would vibrate, and as fate would have it, we’d meet on the downhill, so there was no time or place for stopping. Feet would start pumping wildly on the pedals and my backside would take to the air and the paraffin would begin sloshing left and right as the grocery bag began to scream and tear against the spokes of the front tyre.

To this day I don’t have a clue why I thought going faster would save me from the metallic beast that was coming up behind me. It is what boys do.

The driver of the monster would purposefully sound his foghorn as he neared. The sound of the tyres and the metal was ferocious as the vehicle passed, like a freight train coming out of a tunnel and crossing a steel bridge. It felt endless. It was a red blur out of the corner of your eye. The handlebars of the bicycle shuddered like a jack hammer in your hands. The tarmac was a dark blur, and the yellow grass on the verge becomes a spray of colour without shape.

Then the wind, the gale, the blizzard, the hurricane hit.

It came off the passing vehicle and slammed into you as you quickly tensed your flailing knees, and sphincter muscle, around the five-gallon paraffin can. You try to turn the bicycle’s juddering wheel into the wind with no success. You bend your head so low you are just short of chewing the metal of the handlebars.

Then you are in the ditch, and you are being watched by a group of labourers that work in a pineapple field dressed like human scarecrows. The bag of sugar you bought has exploded on the hot tarmac, and the bar of Lifebuoy soap has disintegrated against the fence-pole, and the bicycle has curled up some twenty feet away shaped like a modern sculpture.

But you are still holding the five-gallons of paraffin to your chest as if it were liquid gold.

Which it was.

 *****

Mabuza once told me that when travelling on any road and there is a fear of being struck from behind by an ill wind, get off the road.

*****

FREE AUDIO SAMPLE - THE BONE TRADERS

My name is Dog.

I am a simple creature: I eat from a simple carcass. I ask for no more or less. I am good.

I fly your sky. From a height I witnessed the beginning of the end.

In my simplicity I do not profess to know your sciences, your mathematics, your nucleus, atoms and fusion.

 From aloft, riding a thermal, I experience the detonation.

My wings are buffeted by the shock waves that precede the wrath.

My body is pummelled.

I close my eyes to the whiteness of the light before I begin to spiral away.

Toward what and where, I do not know.

Only time will tell. 

AUDIO SAMPLE ON AMAZON.COM

FREE AUDIO SAMPLE

Visit READROPERBOOKS for extracts from his novella, Two Feet and other selected writings.

When Time Stood Still

...On your wide-screen television set, there is an image of an over brilliant sun. Then your television shuts down.

On your iPod there is an image of a mountainous section of an iceberg collapsing. Then your iPod goes blank.

On your mobile phone, whatever the make, there is an image of a wind generator. It crumbles like an autumn leaf underfoot. Then your mobile phone goes blank.

On your computer screen there is an image of dead cattle on a ravaged land. Then your computer shuts down.

Through your window you see the dust as it advances like a Tsunami. Then you can see no further. 

...and???

Read THE BONE TRADERS by Mark Roper -- when time stands still, your history stored in the mechanisms of an ancient clock-piece, what does the future offer?

AN AUDIO SAMPLE OF THE BONE TRADERS