Creatively Green is the blog of freelance writer, avid crafter, and La Mamma Verde (the green mom), Wenona Napolitano.
This blog features everything about her creatively green life from green crafting to eco-gardening, green parenting and green living in general.
You will also find articles on writing, being a mom writer, and see guest posts from authors.
Full of green musings, eco-product reviews, book notes, eco-friendly crafts and so much more.
Guest Blog with BC Harris Author of Conspiracy of Cats
My name is Beverley, but my friends call me Bev. My maiden name is Cox and I married a Harris. With this in mind I choose to write under the name B C Harris.
Writing is something I’ve always wanted to do but never got around to. As a working mum and wife I never had time to think about myself. Throughout my twenties and thirties I thought I’d never get to travel anywhere exotic, never see the world beyond the UK and Western Europe, because there was never any money for those kinds of holidays.
This situation began to change back in 2010 when I left my then husband and moved back to Edinburgh. I rented a flat and, though I initially had a flatmate, I was living on my own for the very first time with all the financial responsibilities, but also all the personal freedoms. I was forty-six, and I was scared rigid.
Two years later my life was very different.
I was living in the southwest of England by then. I’d met Ian Harris and, together, we ran a small business. I’d also learned to drive, and this was something I hadn’t ever considered doing. Our business was doing well and affording holidays wasn’t a problem. Luckily Ian had the same idea about those holidays; lazing around on beaches was fine, but we also wanted to collect a few experiences.
There then followed a series of little adventures. We went paragliding, swam with wild dolphins and went kayaking as well as sailing. Ian could do the last two already, but it was all new to me. Visiting a plantation in Jamaica to trek on horses for a few hours before swimming in the sea with them was all my idea. Ian wasn’t keen but, in the end, we both loved it so much we did it twice. Horse riding was like driving; I’d never considered it as something I wanted to do, until my two-morning rides with Ziggy and our cool-down swims in the sea. Back home again and we signed up for proper riding lessons.
Our next holiday took us to an estancia in the north of Argentina. We rode in the Sierras de Cordoba with the gouchos. We rounded up cattle and swam in pools under waterfalls. I even met a foal still steaming in the chill of the dawn, because she had just been born moments before. It was my very first morning on the estancia. I woke very early and went outside with my camera hoping to catch the rising sun, and there she was, standing on wobbly legs as her mother welcomed her into the world. The whole trip was an incredible experience, but I’ll never forget that I was the first human being that little horse encountered.
In South Africa we spent time a rehab centre for animals; an experience I drew upon to write some of the scenes for Jude and Peter in Conspiracy of Cats. We walked with lions. Nandi, Mufasa and Duma were only nine months old at the time, but they were big and sassy and quite the handful. Africa was every bit as life changing as Argentina. This was undoubtedly in part about the people we met in both countries, but it was mostly about the animals and the incredible landscapes we were privileged to be a part of for even a short time.
By 2017 we were living in France, renovating an old and neglected house that we originally bought as a retirement plan. Boy was that a steep learning curve. I couldn’t speak any French and Ian’s wasn’t great, so we took lessons. We had no woodworking experience between us, but we built our own pergola. We installed a kitchen from the floor up and turned an overgrown acre into a beautiful garden. We kept bees. We even got married there. It was a wonderful experience. Then covid happened,and everything changed again.
The French confinement was possibly the strictest in the world. We had to remain within one kilometer of our home, and even our dogs were stir crazy. We couldn’t see friends and no one could visit. The media made it all so much more frightening than perhaps it needed to be. I was depressed, scared, I couldn’t sleep. We’d finished the renovations by then, and there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. One day, when I was feeling particularly low, Ian suggested that I write down a story I’d told him years before during one of my periodic moans about wanting to write but never having the time.
Right then I had nothing but time.
In May of 2020 I set up a little desk in the back porch with a view out across the garden. I could see the dogs, the cat, the birds and the red squirrels that came every day to chase one another around the trunk of the huge mulberry tree that shaded my windows. I couldn’t type. I just hammered away on my keyboard… the same one I’m writing this on. I put in a lot of hours, escaping into a journey through time, between Scotland and Tanzania, a supernatural murder mystery that had been turning over and over inside my mind for years. My experiences in a different part of Africa helped to bring certain elements of the tale to life. I was happy. I had a purpose. I started to sleep soundly again. It was an amazing experience to bring my characters out into the real world and, by August, it was done.
In 2021 we relocated to Scotland. We hadn’t really considered returning to the UK, but covid had caused so much chaos as well as isolation, that our priorities had shifted. Ian is currently reinventing our business all over again, and I am still hammering away on my keyboard writing my stories and bringing characters out of my head and into the real world where they will, hopefully, find a home in books that people can enjoy.
Writing has been an incredibly cathartic experience for me. Just when I thought it was too late for life to be anything but nearly over, my world was turned upon its head. I am older and I am bolder. At fifty-seven, I now relish my future.
Tagline: A Beautiful House, A Horrible Death, A Brilliant Revenge
Book Description:
CONSPIRACY OF CATS… a supernatural murder mystery.
An apprehensive Jos Ferguson travels from Edinburgh to Northern Tanzania to visit the house her Uncle Peter built before he died. But Peter isn’t as dead as he should be… he was murdered, and he wants his niece to help him exact revenge upon his killer. With a little Maasai magic and a conspiracy of cats, Jos sets out to do exactly that.
A beautiful house. A horrible death. A brilliant revenge.
Looking back, it was as if Peter had known that he was going
to die.
It was as if all of them had known, because the Maasai came
prepared for their ritual even though their little brother died only a few
hours before they arrived. It was the largest group of Maasai Beola had ever
encountered at the white house. At least fifty men, most of them warriors, all
carrying their weapons and their shields. Their chests and faces and arms
painted as if they were going into battle. She watched them from the master
bedroom window, just as she’d watched the police arrive, having gone back up to
finish changing the bed so it would be clean and ready when Jude returned. They
arrived on foot just before sunset, and it would have taken all day to walk
from their village on the western side of Mount Kilimanjaro all the way to the
white house.
Some of the warriors carried armfuls of wood, and immediately
began building a large fire in the middle of the lawn. The elders, including
their bearded laibon, sat down on the porch steps to rest and, when Beola went
out to meet them, they asked only for water. When she offered food they
politely refused. When Beola moved to go back inside to fetch the water, a
young warrior stopped her. ‘We must leave the white house in peace, little
sister,’ he told her, and then he and several of his fellow warriors guided her
towards the lodge where they fetched enough water for all. When that was done,
the young warrior told her, ‘Word has been sent into the park so your husband
and your son will come home soon. When they do, you must be ready to leave.’
‘But why?’
‘The laibon wishes to cleanse the white house of sorrow.’
Beola knew better than to argue with the wishes of a laibon,
and so she nodded, resigned.
‘How long must we stay away?’
‘Moon die and come back again, man die and stay away. Come
back with the new moon, sister.’
Back inside the lodge Beola began to pack, without any clear
idea of where her family would go or who they would stay with. By then it was
full dark, and the fire was burning so brightly she could see its orange glow
above the garage blocking her direct view. Kissi and Ben arrived while she was
still packing, in shock at both the death of their friend and the large
gathering on the white house lawn. The evening breeze was becoming a wind by
then, and the stars were obscured by gathering clouds. The warriors had begun
to sing a sorrowful sounding song, their beautiful voices competing with the
mounting voice of the wind.
By the time the Nyerere’s were readying to leave, a storm was
in full flow.
The perimeter of trees bent and swayed in the wind that had
initially made their leaves whisper. That wind was howling and shrilling by
then, a tempest that thrashed and whipped the leaves and branches. Storm clouds
had gathered so close, they were piled on top of one another, grumbling,
rumbling, crashing with thunder directly overhead. Lightening split the night
over and over. Up on the roof garden, a solitary figure braved the onslaught.
The old laibon was yelling into the night, his spells snatched away by the wind
that seemed, in turns, to want to blow him away and push him down. Rain pelted
down upon him, it blinded his eyes, dripped from his beard, soaked his shuka
and chilled his bones. He fought against it, at the same time as he embraced
it, arms stretched wide and high. Calling out, over and over, to the spirit of
his friend.
As the Nyerere’s were loading up their jeep, another vehicle
arrived, lights sweeping across the scene as it circled the lawn. Beola thought
that it must be Jude, but it was Henk de Vries, pulling up in his flatbed
truck. She assumed he’d heard the news and had come to pay his respects. She
ran towards him, but half a dozen warriors barred Beola’s way. They told her to
go, to never speak of this night to anyone. Beola struggled against them, and
called out to Henk in some distress, but either the wind stole her voice, or
the Dutchman chose to ignore her. Kissi was next to her by then and had to
impel his wife bodily into the back of his Land Rover as Ben sat quietly
weeping in the front. He then got in himself and set off for his father’s home
in Arusha, having called ahead to stay there were sanitation issues at their
home, so they needed a place to say for a while. As they were moving around the
lawn towards the drive, Beola watched Henk lower the tail gate of his truck and
saw two warriors lift and carry something towards the fire. Meat for the
funeral feast, he told her much later.
When Kissi’s Land Rover reached the foot of the hill,
he turned north towards the main road that would take them to Arusha. They left
the storm behind almost immediately. When they reached the top of the
escarpment, he stopped and got out. Ben and Beola joined him. Together they
stood atop the ridge, watching a small storm rage over the white house.
About the Author:
B C Harris is a Scot who, at the time of writing, had just finished renovating a farmhouse in France. A labour of love that began from first sight back in 2016. No sooner had the final length of flooring been laid and the last paintbrush dried, than disaster struck in the form of pandemic. France went into a strict lockdown and, with time to do more than simply daydream about writing books, a new project began to take shape.
Writing began as an escape from the fear and isolation that was soon affecting us all, and quickly flourished to become ‘Conspiracy of Cats'. The global pandemic seems to be receding now, but the passion for writing has taken root. Find out more about B C Harris online.
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