Slave Shipwreck Saga by Michael Smorenburg Book Tour and Giveaway :)
The
Praying Nun
Slave
Shipwreck Saga Book 1
by
Michael Smorenburg
Genre:
Historical Thriller
An
uncharted shipwreck, the mysteries she hides, and the brutalized
souls who suffered her holds.
In
1985 two divers discovered an ancient uncharted shipwreck off South
Africa's Cape of Storms. Salvaging the wreck only inflames the enigma
with the trail of secrets compounding and the wreck refusing to yield
her identity. Countless vessels, some crammed with bullion, have
joined this ship graveyard over the centuries, but what sort of
galleon was this, leaving only cannon, cannon balls and scant few
clues behind? Three decades pass before the Smithsonian of Washington
solves the riddle.
It's
1794 on the fevered coast of Mozambique. Chikunda and his wife Mkiwa,
stripped naked and shackled, are heaved aboard the São José de
Africa. Only a miracle may save them from the horrors below deck
where more than 400 fellow slaves are crammed. But nobody can guess
what fate has in store.
If
you're a Wilbur Smith or Clive Cussler fan, you will be riveted by
this fact-inspired fictionalized tale by Michael Smorenburg, based as
it is by personal experience, extensive research and the legacy of
artifacts salvaged from the São José de Africa. Pick it up now to
go on the adventure of a lifetime.
Alas
for Chikunda, his regal bearing had also caught the eye of Alfonso
Oliveira.
Alfonso
was the boatswain—or ‘Bosun’—and the Bosun on this ship was
charged with managing the cargo and keeping order aboard. He was an
ugly man, built like a fortress with a bald head and a nose with a
bulb at its end. In
Chikunda, the Bosun instantly recognized an opportunity to earn his
pay on the long voyage that lay ahead. He smiled pitilessly and
directed a forbidding look of cruelty toward the man as he was led to
the brand. The
scourge, hanging limply in the Bosun’s hand, impulsively fluttered,
making the rustling sound of a horse’s tail eager to lash flies
into submission. Chikunda tried not to look, but the horror of it
dragged his gaze down the twisted thongs of its length.
The
Reckoning
Slave
Shipwreck Saga Book 2
A
slave evades re-capture after his slave ship is wrecked at the
treacherous Cape of Good Hope, only to face handing himself over when
his wife goes missing with the man who rescued them. A tale of hope,
fear and most of all, the yearning for freedom.
It's
1794 and the slave trade is at its ugly peak. When the Portuguese
slave ship Sao
Jose Paquete de Africa shipwrecks
at the Cape of Good Hope, only two hundred of the four hundred slaves
aboard survive.
Chikunda
and his pregnant wife evade re-capture only to face the impassable
cliffs of Table Mountain. With the wild South Atlantic at their
backs, Cape Town's gallows and whipping post to the north, the
British garrison blocking escape to the south, and dangers of an
untamed African coast to the east of a vast mountain range, escape
seems impossible.
When
Chikunda's wife goes missing, he has a monumental choice to make.
Pick up The Reckoning now and lose yourself in a world you never
could have imagined, a world where freedom slips ever more out of a
man's grasp.
Cape
of Good Hope, tip of Africa
Winter, 1794
Mussel
shells baked brittle as the finest china by countless African noons
clinked and shattered under the heel of a boot. The
sound of it jarred Chikunda, yanking him to his feet as if a rope
were already about his neck. A
rough club in his hand, he crouched like a knife-fighter, ready to
protect his pregnant wife as she lay, still frozen to the earth where
they’d been embracing just an instant before. “There’ll
be no need for that!” The
man with an unruly mop of coal black hair and glinting blue eyes
rumbled his warning in a coarse Portuguese dialect. The
yawning mouth of his battered old blunderbuss was aimed at Chikunda’s
chest. A
fawn-coloured mongrel with the likeness of a dingo stood
silently at the man’s heel, its one ear urgently at attention, the
other battling gamely to rise beyond half-mast. The
weapon in the stranger’s hands was swaying. The man dangerously
shaky, his ragged breathing betraying fear… or, perhaps worse,
excitement. “Put
it down,” he ordered Chikunda. He
was a small man, slight of build with hands as gnarled as the granite
boulders strewn all around Chikunda’s makeshift encampment on the
shell-littered beach. “You
are the shipwreck survivors,” he accused. “From the slaver?”
Michael Smorenburg (b. 1964) grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. An entrepreneur with a passion for marketing, in 1995 Michael moved to California where he founded a business consultancy and online media and marketing engine in the burgeoning internet. In 2003 he returned to South Africa where he launched a security company. In 2015 he divested of the business to write full time. Michael's greatest love is the ocean, keeping up with the latest breakthroughs in science, understanding the cosmos and sharing all he learns.
What
are you reading now?
About 5 books. Stephen Hawkins’ posthumous book. One of the Trump debacles books (half heartedly). “The Sunburned Queen” — A documentary story about a 5 year old English sole survivor girl wrecked on the East Coast of Southern Africa in 1732… how she became absorbed into a Bantu tribe and married a chief, and how hundreds and maybe thousands of European shipwreck victims had the same fate, peppering the local tribes of Africa with European genes. Fascinating.
About 5 books. Stephen Hawkins’ posthumous book. One of the Trump debacles books (half heartedly). “The Sunburned Queen” — A documentary story about a 5 year old English sole survivor girl wrecked on the East Coast of Southern Africa in 1732… how she became absorbed into a Bantu tribe and married a chief, and how hundreds and maybe thousands of European shipwreck victims had the same fate, peppering the local tribes of Africa with European genes. Fascinating.
What’s
next for you as a writer?
Hearing from you, hopefully persuading me that I’m on the right track.
Seriously.
Readers have no idea how powerful they are in influencing a writer’s trajectory.
I may publish a compendium of my essays on various science and anthropology topics written over the years. Folks seem to like them.
I’m a simple guy of limited intelligence and vast curiosity. My special talent is being a bit slow to learn but then understanding what keys unlocked the stores of knowledge so that I can make these details more accessible to others in an engaging way and without the effort I had to put in. The idea of that thrills me.
Hearing from you, hopefully persuading me that I’m on the right track.
Seriously.
Readers have no idea how powerful they are in influencing a writer’s trajectory.
I may publish a compendium of my essays on various science and anthropology topics written over the years. Folks seem to like them.
I’m a simple guy of limited intelligence and vast curiosity. My special talent is being a bit slow to learn but then understanding what keys unlocked the stores of knowledge so that I can make these details more accessible to others in an engaging way and without the effort I had to put in. The idea of that thrills me.
If
you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take
3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Lordy… I’m a nerd, okay. Certain (non fiction) writers prompt me to leap to my feet and start furiously writing the moment I’ve read a few lines of theirs.
Carl Sagan and Cosmos must top that list.
Any of Bill Bryson’s books will keep me in stitches, and his “Short History of Everything” will keep me amused forever.
Many will know that Prof. Richard Dawkins is more than just involved in a religious debate – his groundbreaking contributions to biology are epic. His ability to explain the machinery of life would certainly keep me reading and re-reading.
Then one of the physicists or anthropologists or neurologist books that can help me understand my place in it all… 4 books is too few, unless, of course, they are 4 kindles stuffed to the brim!
Lordy… I’m a nerd, okay. Certain (non fiction) writers prompt me to leap to my feet and start furiously writing the moment I’ve read a few lines of theirs.
Carl Sagan and Cosmos must top that list.
Any of Bill Bryson’s books will keep me in stitches, and his “Short History of Everything” will keep me amused forever.
Many will know that Prof. Richard Dawkins is more than just involved in a religious debate – his groundbreaking contributions to biology are epic. His ability to explain the machinery of life would certainly keep me reading and re-reading.
Then one of the physicists or anthropologists or neurologist books that can help me understand my place in it all… 4 books is too few, unless, of course, they are 4 kindles stuffed to the brim!
Follow
the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!
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