I wrote my first travel guide, Southern Africa on a Budget, way back in the previous century. I chucked my huge, clunky, 1.5-kg, film-using SLR into a backpack, added a cute little laptop with a – wait for it – 20MB hard drive (yes, the whole hard drive), and hitched and bussed all over southern Africa. Then I did the Engen Guide to Adventure Travel, which I updated as the Getaway Adventure Guide after Engen decided basketball was the next big thing.

I also did a few chapters of Fodor’s for a few editions and contributed a chapter or two to lots of other books, most of which are – like the first three – out of print.

More recently, I did seven chapters in Road tripping South Africa, co-authored Coffee Culture, and researched and wrote a really fun book on farm stalls. And then I watched every episode of the SABC2 travel programme Mooiloop, and turned it into a book. A tad challenging but quite fun.

While I do think travel is great, I also think we need to be aware of what’s in our own back yards, so I did a staycation guide. Now this may sound odd, because I am a Cape Town chauvinist, but it was Joburg-based, so it didn’t really qualify as a staycation for me. But then, you don’t have to persuade people to travel to or stay in Cape Town. And, anyway, it was a convenient stop en route to Kruger, where I happily spent a month working on a visitor’s guide.

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But, while I do love writing non-fiction, fiction is just so much more satisfying. So – ta-daaa! My first novel A Big Hand for the Spirits has just been published.