Die Laughing is the fourth in the annual series of Short.Sharp.Stories Awards anthologies, supported by the South African National Arts Festival. The 2016 judging panel was made up of Ken Barris, Karina Szczurek and Karabo Kgoleng.
I live in a seaside suburb of Cape Town called Muizenberg and swim most early mornings in the sea. It’s wonderfully refreshing and helps me to get ready for the day ahead. And of course I love reading – mostly crime and thriller fiction. I’ve read all sorts of crime fiction, from Agatha Christie when I was young, to the more contemporary hard-boiled authors like Elmore Leonard and Bill James. (And of course I scoff chocolates when I’m reading, which could be considered a hobby!)
When it comes to novels for young people, I’m a fan of Mallory Blackman and Stephenie Meyer – both spin a fantastic yarn!
I had always wanted to write, and was lucky enough to get onto a creative writing Masters programme at the University of Cape Town about eight years ago. I don’t believe one needs a degree to write, but committing to the course really threw me into the deep end, as I had no choice but to deliver a novel by the end of my two years part time study. That novel is now in my bottom drawer – I suspect a good number of first novels are lurking in various writer’s drawers! – but I’d love to get it out and rewrite it. I’m not sure why I wanted to write. I just had this overwhelming desire to write a book, and finally tried my hand at it, only to discover writing is a bit of an addiction – I want to do more!
Some pretty good writing but even having lived in South Africa on and off for the better part of ten (10) years, I did not find all the stories accessible.
To be honest, I did not find most of the renderings here funny, much less fatally so. Rather than hahahahheeeeee...kga...kga...ffffffft, I mostly went mmmmmm...interesting.