A sneak book peek into Clan Destine Press' award-nominated Present Tense by Natalie Conyer.
"The mountain didn’t care. It was there before they came and would be there after they left, long after the lights of the city it held in its arms had flickered and died. All they could do in the meantime was to live beneath it as best they knew how."
Natalie Conyer: I like this quote because it tells me something special about Cape Town, where my book is set. One of the main features of the town is Table Mountain, and that mountain, it just embraces Cape Town.
In Present Tense I tried to explore the way people are living in South Africa now, after thousands of years of history, and for me this quote brings the town's past and present together.
I grew up there, but left a long time ago, ignoring the place because I wanted nothing to do with apartheid. But when I went back, I discovered Cape Town is in my bones and I needed to think about that, I needed to explore it, and I think crime fiction was a good way to do that.
P.S. I could have quoted something a tiny bit more exciting but then that would spoil the story's mystery!