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| Eugh. Talking about
myself... Not my favorite subject. Where to start? With the hard questions I suppose. So what is it I get called again? Ah yes. "Hey, you." or " #@$%#." or "Monkey". My mother has called me 'David' for the last forty years or so, when she's mad at me. No one else ever does. I am a South African of half Scots, half Yorkshire and half Afrikaans descent, which explains a number of things: My logic, my mathematical skill, my attitude. These days I live in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, Mount West, (which is a white painted rock three miles further in from the middle of nowhere) Finnegan's Wake Farm. It's a remote, high altitude extensive farming and timber area, which is (relatively) near my boys school. It's all dirt roads and very few people. Around here "log on" is adding fuel to the fireplace. And 'Internet' is what happens to fish that do not swim away from the net. The locals -- those that matter anyway, mostly speak Zulu and regard computers with distrust or as very boring TV. They find us very funny, and -- as we now tran s port some 18 junior-school kids to school -- a useful addition to the neighbourhood. The government closed the local school, so these children from surrounding farms and forestry (two of whom are only six years old) were walking 12-18 KM to school every day. And then walking home again. It's not all fun being an African kid. |
 Dave selects his weapon of choice. Coconuts at twenty yards!
Sunset at Finnegan's Wake. |
Finnegan's Wake.
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My family: well, let's
put it this way, without having to fool people, they
wouldn't be run out of this town. If 'normal and sane'
was a requirement it would be another matter. From my
mother I got a tolerance of anything alive, from spiders
to snakes and a near insatiable curiosity. She also
started us all on sf. From the Old Man I got attitude and
different upbringing from most South African kids. He
took us places -- From boats to black townships -- where
white people didn't go. I think Dad automatically gave
deference to the sea. Everyone else had to earn respect.
It's an excellent attitude. From an older brother I
learned the finer arts of diving and rock-climbing and
how not to drive. I had to learn how not to ride a
dirt-bike by myself. From my sister I learned to jump
when she said 'frog'. It has been very useful, especially
in the army. I started life as a little shriveled scrap and went downhill from there. Having had really severe respiratory problems as a babe, my parents had to ship me off to high dry climate when I was six. It sorted me out. However, it also explains why I will not voluntarily sit still, stay indoors and point blank refuse to spend more time in bed than absolutely necessary. This naturally explains why I am a writer -- a profession that requires a great deal of sitting still indoors. Fortunately, most of the writers I know seem to be chronic insomniacs, so I do win on one point. So how come the love of books? I was addicted before I was really able to behave like hyperactive lunatic. How do I manage to read? Well, very, very fast. I make up for this by writing very slowly and with great difficulty. Therefore -- according my logic -- I am now a career writer. I did try almost every other alternative along the way. |
| As a place for a
town-kid to choose to grow up I was very lucky. I grew up
right on the edge of a city, on the margin of a nature
reserve of five hundred acres or so of native coastal
bush. The bush ran all the way from the canefields to the
beach, and so did we. My Old Man crewed on an old
commercial fishing boat, operating out of Durban harbor,
weekends. Commercial fishing boats are the most
egalitarian meritocracy I've ever come across, something
which I guess has colored my thinking. I grew up between
the bush, beach, and the harbor with school as this sort
of unwelcome add-in. Then, at 14 or so, I was sent off to
boarding school where I learned all the other important
things that every boy should: Smoking, strong drink and
pursuit of wild women. To be fair, they weren't
curricular items. None-the-less they were mostly what I
learned, and were of great value to me. I was able to
move on instead of waiting for university to get these
done. However, before this 'moving on' my country decided that they really needed me, because they'd got themselves involved in a little war in Angola. As I was only seventeen at this time, I suppose I should have been flattered. As they seemed to want all my peers too, I personally just thought they had a lack of discernment. Conscription was still brand-new and any kind of resistance to it and support for those who didn't want to go was embryonic. My choices were five years in jail, leave the country, or go in for a year. I'm a strong swimmer, but the Atlantic seemed too large. The Pacific more so. The interior of Africa including the Sahara lay between me and anywhere I could go that wouldn't either kill me or send me home, so, like a wimp, I went. It was only a year... We were offered a choice of unit. I volunteered for all the things which I thought I might enjoy. As a diver, sea-fanatic and rock-climber I tried for: Navy Divers, Parabats. Being young, foolish and unaware of how the military mind works, I wrote 'or anywhere but the medics.' |
 They do call him the monkey, after all. |
I don't have to tell you where I was called up to, do I? Or that the one year got 'upgraded' to two? Ah well. I learned a lot. Saw things I won't forget in a hurry. And there were nurses. And that's enough about that.
 Dave and Barbara Freer.
James and Paddy Freer, with Budapest and Jock. |
I came out, and
eventually loud noises stopped making me take cover. I
met a girl who was intelligent, beautiful and wanted
nothing to do with me. Situation normal. Then I met one
who was even more intelligent, prettier, and
rock-climbed too. Barbara Gordon Bagnall... She also,
alas, had suddenly developed an appalling taste in men:
she liked me. Eventually she even married me. And to her
other qualities add tolerance and stamina, because we're
still together, despite me, despite a life which has
been... varied and bizarre. We have two sons, proof that
there is natural justice, because they are very like I
was. (I'm allowed to say this sort of thing about Paddy
and Jamesy, but God help anyone else who does.) Along the way I went to university became an Ichthyologist. I was the research officer for the Western Cape commercial shark fishery. I wrote some amazingly dull papers on the subject too. Because research is badly paid, and because I had kids to feed... I moonlighted as a commercial diver for a mussel farm. It just happened to be one of my main shark sampling grounds. The water was a delightful ten degrees Celsius. Working at 10-15 meters down in the stirred-up muck, visibility is two or three centimeters. I knew exactly what was in that water. You do all sorts of things for money. I seem to attract those sort of jobs. From commercial fishing to cleaning plants off church steeples. I get to be Father Christmas quite a lot too. On the way from there to here I became a fish farm manager. This taught me more about plumbing, rough-welding and how to fix damn near anything in a hurry, than I wished to know. I can also gill and gut a trout in 3 seconds. It is a skill every aspiring author needs. When the fishmeal (the principal ingredient of farmed fish food) price trebled, the farm I was on was suddenly facing the wall. I was wholeheartedly tired of busting my ass for someone else. I'd written a few pieces, principally back when I was a full-time scientist, relying on fish-catches that relied on weather. (I was based in Cape Town. It's a beautiful place. Unfortunately, a lot of the time if you face into the wind, it'll blow snot out of your ears. Of course sometimes it doesn't do that. Then it rains, but that doesn't stop fishermen. There are naturally, beautiful, still days when the wind and sea are tranquil and sun pours down. I can confirm two things about these days: 1) 6.5 out of 7 of them fall on weekdays, outside of holiday times... 2)You don't catch fish on these days.) |
| As a fish farmer I
hadn't really had the time, or by the end of the day the
energy to write. (Take my advice - if you're going to
write choose a day job that does not involve physically
picking up and running with 6 tons of water and fish
every day. Choose something which makes low physical and
mental demands. I loved fish farming (I never grew up
properly - I still like fish and don't mind being muddy)
but it was the most physically demanding job I've ever
done, even more so than commercial fishing, which is no
holiday camp. But next time around I'd choose being an
undertaker or, if I could stomach it, a politician.)
Hmm. I seem to have waffled off the track. Anyway, Barbs helped me choose one step better. She went back to work, and I wrote and looked after the kids. After all, it couldn't be that difficult to get published. I'm not 'naturally' good at anything, but I work hard. I don't fail (i.e. I'm bloody pigheaded). In year or so of real work (which I was sure these other writer types were totally incapable of) I'd be there. And then -- we could settle down somewhere in the back-country -- I could work mornings, fish afternoons, climb and dive weekends... ha. If ignorance is bliss, I must have been orgasmically happy. I was vain, and stupid to boot. Anyway, six years, several million words and seventy-four rejections later, with a part time job as a relief-chef at a couple of luxury lodges (these jobs just happen to me. Blame genetics or something)... Jim Baen 'phoned up. |
 Dave never mentioned a twin brother! |
I thought he was one of my friends having me on.
I nearly told him that he did the phoniest American accent I'd ever heard, and put the phone down on him.
Nearly.
That was a couple of years back. The Bear (Eric Flint) and I te amed up, and later I got involved with writing with Misty Lackey too. I've written or collaborated in five novels for Baen Books. I've got contracts for another six. I've squeezed in a novella and a novelette too. Now, hunched, red-eyed and gnomelike I st are at this screen... what is water?... what is sunlight?
It's fun though. Addictive too. And every so often I go AWOL.
See yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
What struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
His riband, star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks and laughts at a' that.
[footnote says birkie = fellow; coof = fool]
'A Man's a Man for A' That'. Robert Burns, 1759-1796.
 Duchess, Robin, and Batman. |
The Menagerie Actually, I'm only a part-time writer. My real (and unpaid) profession is menagerie assistant. Some of these are wild-run -- the sunbirds, shrews, bats who just pass through the 'surgery and recovery unit'. Other residents are a Staffie with Cushings, a blind Maltese for whom I am the seeing-eye human, and two Old English Sheepdogs to whom I am the rent-a-brain-cell (and I don't have any to spare) and the 4 cats to whom I am the scratching-post, catbox emptier and general junior factotum. Cats are like that. There are usually 2-7 of the above "assisting" me in my writing. I'll blame the typo's on that, shall I? Or on an Old English having borrowed the brain cell and lost it? |
 Roland. That's a big, fluffy dog. |
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