Book Launch: The Signare of Gorée

Yay! My new novel, The Signare of Gorée, was finally published on 9 September. For having been born in Senegal, it is a rare delight to be able to say that I have written a mystery set in my birth country.

I am celebrating my book's launch over four weeks with a fantastic blog tour hosted by the excellent Coffee Pot Book Club. They promote high quality historical fiction and I am honored that Cathie Dunn would accept to host The Signare of Gorée.

This post will update weekly with links to the various blog tour stops as they happen. You can find the same links on the official blog tour page. 

Over the tour, I will be sharing: what inspired me to write this historical mystery; the historical background of the powerful women called, signares - who they were and the unique culture they created; the tragic story of Senegal's last warrior queen; the dark and beautiful highlights of my historical research; and the occult practices I witnessed in my childhood and that have seeped into the novel. 

There will be many excerpts and I will try not to bore you with my answers to interview questions!

 

I hope you will visit to learn more about this unique story and the fascinating country where it is set! 

September 12th

When Angels Fly

Let Your Words Shine

Let Us Talk of Many Things

The Historical Fiction Company

The Coffee Pot Book Club 

September 19th

Left on the Shelf

Archaeolibrarian

Historical Fiction Blog 

MJ Porter's Official Blog

Linnea Tanner's Official Blog

September 26th

CelticLady's Reviews

Yarde Reviews & Book Promotion

Myths, Legends, Books & Coffee Pots

The Whispering Bookworm

Mary's Bookcase

October 3rd

A Darn Good Read (Review)

Oh look, another Book!

Elizabeth St.John's Official Blog

Wendy J. Dunn's Official Blog

Ruins & Reading (Review)

The Signare of Gorée will soon be available on expanded distribution booksellers worldwide.

The Signare of Gorée - Cover Reveal

Before she could blink, she was 48 years old and pined for glimpses of her hometown. And it was just as well she was deep into 1840s Senegal, a world where few have traveled before, while those that have truly seen it are long gone. But we can make them return with a little imagination, can't we? We can create magical characters and spin a mystery. 

You must know that life is short and time is running out for me. This is why these days, my blog is sparse in content. All my efforts, you see, are poured into writing, researching, keeping myself fed, staying mildly connected to the increasingly narcissistic 21st century, and time-traveling to places that will hopefully inspire my future novels.

Not much to say, still working on honing my upcoming historical novel set in Senegal, but in the meantime, here is the full cover by graphic designer extraordinaire, Ross Robinson. 

I love it and hope you do too.

The Signare of Gorée will be released in September 2024 

You can already add it to your to-read shelf on Goodreads, and if you read books on Kindle, it is available for pre-order on Amazon, worldwide.

Folgar...on Gorée island.

  

The Signare of Gorée - a historical mystery set in 1840s Senegal

I have a new book coming out in 2024 and here is the cover. I hope you like it.  

1840s Senegal seems worlds apart from my current home in Brittany. While writing this book, I could not be further estranged from Victorian England where I set the first Maurice Leroux detective novel, Calista. 

This story takes place two years earlier than Calista. It is 1846 and Inspector Maurice Leroux finds himself on Gorée Island alongside my ancestor, Lieutenant Leopold Candeau who will be his Watson during the investigation.   

Nothing pleases me more than assembling puzzles and breathing life into historical figures: Gorée's métis mayor, Armand Laporte; his daughter, the signare Constance Laporte; her husband, the Bordeaux entrepreneur Hilaire Maurel; the famous signare Anna Colas Pépin (who inherited THE house you might have heard of whenever you read about Gorée); and glimpses of one of Senegal's first catholic priests, Abbé Boilat from whom we have acquired many illustrations from this period.

Yet I am most enthralled by my lead signare, Angélique Aussenac. The lady on the cover. She is already one of my favorite characters EVER! 

For months now, I have been researching my birth country's history, its people, their beliefs and that fascinating period existing between the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1817 (soon after the Congress of Vienna) and France's abolition of slavery in 1848. It is a period of shifting mentalities, of moral and economic reckoning, a period that would forever change the pulse and purpose of Gorée Island. 

I have spoken so little about this novel and its premise because it is still my secret place. I will try to add to this post over time. 

There is a trailer on Youtube for now. 

The rest I guard it close to my chest. 

The Signare of Gorée - my new historical mystery

Suddenly it is almost 2023 and you awake with a new historical mystery in the works.

Why not, you think. Why did I not think of it before? I'll return to the place of my birth, in a different time. 

Senegal, you fill my thoughts. I am loving the research and the return to the familiar.

I have called this novel The Signare of Gorée. 

The setting is the 1840s on the French colonial island of Gorée and detective Maurice Leroux is a touch younger than he was in my gothic novel, Calista.

Summoned by the French navy to investigate a series of horrific murders, Maurice is soon haunted by the strange deaths on the island. 

One...by one...

The undeserving must die.

The Silence of the Pirogue

No self-respecting author born in Senegal and with a blog called, Teranga and Sun, should omit to pen a novel set in their birth place. I am pleased to have begun a historical crime novel partly set in 1970s and 80s Dakar.

Western Africa is a such a world apart from the last thirty-four years of my life in Australia. Yet now that I am currently living in France, so close to the place of my birth, the memories of Senegal have flooded back.

A wonder it is, don't you think, that just as I commence a new life in Brittany in the home of my French ancestors, I find myself drawing from an older life in order to create.

No surprises, given you have read this post's title. My new novel is called The Silence of the Pirogue. A pirogue, in case you are not familiar, is a slender traditional Senegalese fishing boat. It is beautiful and very common along the Atlantic shores. And that's all I'll say!

I have two other novels in progress, though one is purely at embryonic pen-free stage and its title has not been announced... Hint: it is partly set in a beautiful island and it takes place in 17th century France. D'Artagnan might just make an appearance.

In the meantime, I am eagerly applying the last beta-feedback edits to The Secret of Chantilly. I have made a decision to query agents and publishers and hope to find a home for it. Wish me luck. I do tend to keep my affairs secret but it is no secret that I aim to get rejected many times this year.

2020 is off to a good start. After ten years of erring, and wondering-where-to-grow-roots, it is wonderful to not be renting a home anymore. I feel as though the last six years have been incredibly intense. I lived a double life. By this I don't only mean that I was split between my corporate job and my writing job, but I also led the other double life; the one where I had a current Australian home and a potential French home, and everything I did and planned was aimed at leaving one and reaching the other. Who else plans, ever secretly, and for that long? Talleyrand perhaps. :)

Writers need their own quiet place, unburdened by the yoke of the landlord who so often corrupts any good intention one has to write from the heart. And I think artists need their space even more, so they may fill it with pretty things and remain inspired. This year, 2020, is the year I am no longer in transit; I have a place to call my own. I can fill it with books, art and paint the walls any color I wish. What a joy.