The Light Behind Blue Circles follows Peter, a young South African boy, who goes on safari in Kenya with his father. They befriend a Maasai warrior and get caught up in a tragedy that haunts Peter for years to come in the form of nightmares. Ten years later he travels north, from South Africa to Kenya, and the closer he gets the more real his dreams become. On the way he meets travelers who help him on his three thousand mile journey.
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Author’s Note: This novel allowed me to combine several real life experiences. Above is a photo of a Maasai seer that I visited in 1998. I’ve also hitch hiked from East Africa to southern Africa a few times and always wanted to write about it. The reader will quickly pick up on how crazy it is to spend a few days on an overland truck when the driver is trying to make good time.
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The above photo show our campsite in the Serengeti after our truck broke down. I also had the opportunity to go to the bottom of South Africa’s deepest gold mine, and that incident found its place in this story as well.
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While staying in Nairobi I made friends with several dancers that belonged to a group I was interviewing for The Nation. I visited them at their home, and we sat around at night telling stories. It surprised me that although their culture was very different from mine, the ghost stories they told at night weren’t. I decided then to put together a mystery that involved the Maasai because they also believed in prophesies, and that good luck and bad luck flowed in ten year cycles.
Maasai jumping around a fire at night.
