Read the first chapter of Tea at the Grand Tazi

If you would like to sample the first chapter of Tea at the Grand Tazi, please visit the folowing link to my publisher Legend Press: 

http://forward.legendpress.co.uk/files/tazi-sample.pdf

 ‘...In the bed, she wept, why she wept she didn’t know. She sensed the light change in the room, telling her that outside it was  moving seamlessly from morning to dusk. As she settled back down into the shadows, the day slipped on and the sun sank ever lower over the city.

In between her bouts of unconsciousness and wakeful lucidity, her dreams were still rotten. In the courtyard below the maggots fell from the orange trees and dropped into the shallow pool as outside the people teemed into the city streets and came awake for the night…’

Excerpts from Tea at the Grand Tazi

'At the next table along, a large woman was laughing, her head thrown far back. She must have been in her early fifties at least, and her voice made a low, rasping sound. Her head was uncovered, her skin pitted and her hands rough, and she was talking to her much younger male companion with all the innocent

flirtatiousness of a school girl. But when she laughed, she laughed loudly, with the voice of a savage. Maia was enthralled by the woman’s plumpness, her vast femininity.'

'Maia opened the door into the dark hallway. She anticipated confrontation with the monsters of her dreams. A succubus sat on her chest, a shroud wiped her face, a snake brushed her with its soft scales. Along the hallway ran her memories, and they sucked her backwards. She expected a hand to grab out to reach her, but when she opened the door, there was nothing there, and the sky had already begun to grow light...'

This was a gateway to Africa, a window on Europe, that drew sustenance from myth. Hers was the fate one meets in places marked by transience.