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Interview with Michael Stanley By Pat Frovarp & Gary Shulze, Once Upon a Crime
OUAC: It is our pleasure to be talking with debut novelist Michael Stanley. Actually, Michael Stanley is the pen name of the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Michael lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Stan now splits his time between Minneapolis, where he's lived for 25 years, and Knysna, a small town in South Africa on the Indian Ocean. Friends for nearly thirty years, they have traveled many times together into the wilds of southern Africa bird and game watching. They have had many adventures including tracking lions at night, fighting bush fires on the Savuti plains in northern Botswana, being charged by an elephant, and having Stan's plane's door pop open over the Kalahari, scattering his navigation maps over the desert. A Carrion Death is set in Botswana and starts when an unidentified body is found in the desert being eaten by a hyena. Detective David "Kubu" Bengu investigates and immediately runs into the double obstacles of a traditional witchdoctor and big business. Kubu, which means hippopotamus in Setswana, is very much like his namesake - large, a little slow-moving, but dangerous when crossed. More murders take place, seemingly unrelated, but Kubu eventually finds the pattern to them. OUAC: First off, we'd like to thank you for
choosing Once Upon a Crime as the first stop on your tour. We
are honored. A Carrion Death has received a lot of deserved
attention. Where else will the both of you be touring? OUAC: That's a lot of travel! MS: Yes. We'll be addicted to airline food by the time we get home. OUAC: Tell us how you got together on this project, and a little on the writing process. A Carrion Death reads seamlessly. We would never have guessed that it was a collaboration. MS: The idea for this book came on one of our trips to the bush. If one wanted to get rid of a body, we thought, feed it to the hyenas, which eat everything including the bones. The idea sat dormant for many years, but when Stan retired in 2003 he persuaded Michael to work on a book for fun. We hadn't a clue how to go about it and took three years of muddling our way through plot dead-ends and uncooperative characters before we finished a satisfactory draft. We spend a lot of time talking about the plot, usually when we are 10,000 miles apart. We use Skype on the internet, which has been fantastic. Once we've decided what we want the next piece to be, one of us writes the first draft. We then bounce the piece back and forth several times, until we are both satisfied with it. There are large parts of the book where now we've no idea who wrote the first draft. When we do disagree, which isn't often, we let the editor decide. OUAC: What has surprised you the most about writing A Carrion Death? MS: Getting a publisher! We thought we would have to self-publish. But the other thing that we never expected was how often the characters took over the plot. We thought, as authors, we controlled the story, but were amazed how often we started writing a piece, expecting to get to a particular point, only to find the characters wouldn't let us go there! It was very disturbing at times. OUAC: Kubu is one of the most engaging police detectives we've encountered. Is he based on anyone you know? Are there plans to make him a continuing series character? MS: Thank you. We like Kubu too. We had a wonderful experience early on in our writing. We went to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and harassed the head of the Criminal Investigation Department enough that he spent most of a Saturday showing us around and telling us about their police procedures and about famous cases. He was a great character - he arrived in jeans and a cowboy hat, and throughout the day his subordinates kept phoning him because they had caught some armed robbers in a neighboring town and needed his input. He kept telling them that he had much more important business with us! Kubu is not based on him at all, but the whole experience shaped how we thought about the CID and its detectives. We've just finished the second book featuring Kubu, titled The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu. It's with our editor in New York right now. We've just started thinking about our seventh book. OUAC: Seventh book? MS: Yes. We've been told that writers only start making money after their sixth book. So we've decided to write the seventh now and go back to the earlier ones later. OUAC: In the book, aboriginals seem to have been given the "short end" of the stick by the government and the diamond interests in Botswana, what with land seizure and relocations. How is this handled in today's South Africa? Are reparations in place, etc.? MS: This is a really tough one to answer and a tough issue for the Botswana government. The issue of the Bushmen and their land rights in the Kalahari has become an international debate, and the government and the diamond companies are being cast as the bad guys. The reality is much more complex. The Botswana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Bushmen's claims to parts of the Kalahari, but the issue is far from finally resolved. It is part of the complexity of Botswana, and in the book certain characters take the issue and use it for their own ends. I suppose that says more about people than about Botswana! It certainly wasn't our intention to be judgmental about it. The situation in South Africa is quite different because the history of the country is so different. South Africa is addressing a wide variety of land claims from different groups of people and, where possible, is resolving these on a willing buyer/ willing seller basis. But it is a slow process and some people are getting impatient. OUAC: There's another author who has made a franchise out of Botswana. Did publishers balk at bringing out another series set in Botswana? MS: You're referring to Alexander McCall Smith, of course! He is a wonderful writer and has an almost uncanny ability to bring the Batswana culture to life in his books. He's quite a hero there actually, because he has put the country on the literary map. We were once told that he "owns Botswana" implying we shouldn't play in his sandbox! But Botswana is a big country with big challenges, real conflicts and serious crimes. There's room for plenty of writers. In A Carrion Death we have tried to show the modern Botswana and use its traditional culture as the context of multiple murders rooted in Botswana's diamond resources. Our detective works in the criminal investigation department of the police and has to face murder and violence - very different from the issues Precious Ramotswe addresses. I think our editors appreciated that difference, and that there is a lot more to say about this fascinating and diverse country. OUAC: What is Steelworks, the drink Kubu is so fond of? How did it get its name? Is it any good? MS: A steelworks is a delicious non-alcoholic drink made from ingredients not readily found in the States. A tot of cola tonic, a couple of splashes of Angostura bitters, topped up with ginger beer (preferably from a bottle) and perhaps some soda water. Stan prefers it without soda water. We've done some research but have no idea where the name came from. Perhaps it was a favorite drink at an English steel mill. OUAC: Thank you for your time. We look forward to meeting Michael on April 1 (no fooling). Is there an April Fool's Day tradition in the other cultures you are part of? MS: Oh, yes. We celebrate April Fool's Day in South Africa. The newspapers always run a fake story which causes short-term outrage. However, in the modern world it is sometimes hard to tell the true reports from the fake ones! But we'll be remembering this April First with a lot of excitement for a long time to come! 
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