18 April: Zimbabwe Independence Day

On 18 April 1980 Zimbabwe became an independent state. 10 things you didn't know about Zimbabwe:

1. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages. English, Shona and Ndebele are the most common. The Constitution states that more official languages could be added by acts of parliament.
2. The country is named after Great Zimbabwe, an ancient ruined city built in medieval times. It was once the country's capital and is now a protected site. The name is thought to mean "Great Houses of Stone." The capital and largest city now is Harare.
3. Before independence, the country was known as Rhodesia, after South African businessman Cecil John Rhodes who obtained mining rights from Lobengula, king of the Ndebele in 1888. Rhodes' company, the British South Africa Company, got a royal charter from Britain to administer the territory from the Limpopo to Lake Tanganyika. Rhodes used brute force to suppress revolts against settlers. The UK annexed Southern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Company in 1923. Independence was achieved on 18 April 1980 whereupon the name of the country changed to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe remained a member of the British Commonwealth until 2003.
4. The Highest point is Inyangani at 2,592 m, and the lowest point is the junction of the Runde and Save rivers at 162 m.
5. The Longest river is the Zambezi at 2,650 km and the largest lake is Lake Kariba at 7,770 km2. Zimbabwe is also home to Victoria Falls, the world's largest waterfall. The local name for the Victoria Falls is 'Mosi-oa-Tunya' (the smoke that thunders).
6. According to legend, the River God Nyaminyami lives in this lake. He takes the form of a serpent three metres wide, and nobody dares guess at his length. When he swims by the water turns red. However, the god is said to have been in hiding since the white settlers arrived.
7. Zimbabwe is where the scouting movement started. During the Second Matabele War, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, and Frederick Russell Burnham, the American born Chief of Scouts for the British Army, first met. It was here that Burnham began teaching Baden-Powell woodcraft, and the two men came up with the idea of a training programme for young men that would include woodcraft, exploration, tracking, fieldcraft, and self-reliance. It was also during this time that Baden-Powell first started to wear his signature campaign hat like the one worn by Burnham.
8. One of the national symbols is the stone-carved Zimbabwe Bird - it appears on both the flag and the coat of arms, and also on coins and banknotes. Eight soapstone carvings of the bird were found by excavators in Great Zimbabwe. It probably represents the Bateleur eagle or the African fish eagle.
9. The Zimbabwe flag consists of seven horizontal bands in the five national colours;  Black, Yellow, Red, Green and White. A white triangle on the left hand side contains the country’s national emblem, a Zimbabwe Bird, in yellow, on a red five-point star.
10. A famous feature of the landscape is balancing stones. They appear as huge blocks of granite piled on top of each other. They were created by weathering, where softer stone was eroded away, leaving the granite blocks behind. Matapos and Epworth are the two best known locations for viewing these stones.

My books:

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

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Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

I have plenty more stories to tell, but I don't know yet which will win the race to the end of the pipeline. If you'd like to know:

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