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Wilbur Smith &
Danielle Thomas
Interview by Stuart Beaton
Wilbur Smith, and his wife Danielle Thomas, make quite a team - between them they've got thirty books in print. I caught up with them when they were in Adelaide recently, to promote their new novels.
Both write novels set in Africa – for Wilbur Smith, set in Africa’s past, and Danielle Thomas’ in its present. Filled with tales of dashing heroism, and fearless buccaneering, their books have earned places on bookshelves worldwide. But what is it that led them to write?
Wilbur Smith says that writing "just naturally came - I had to do it. But there was a little break along the way. My Papa said, when I told him I wanted to be a journalist, "Go and get a real job". So I ended up as an accountant, but immediately went back to writing - it was in my blood, I think."
"I think if you want to be a writer, you've got to be a voracious reader", says Danielle Thomas. "I went to university, in Cape Town, and did a lot of writing, but most of it was for myself. Then I met Wilbur, got married, and also got intimidated. I started doing research for him, reading his work at lunchtime - acting as a sounding board for him. And sort of, I suppose, a pre-editor as well."
It was this work as researcher and proof reader that inspired Danielle to pen her first novel, Children Of The Darkness. "I found, after reading his work at lunchtime, I would meander off and do research, garden, do the housework, and check up on the farms - whatever - and in my mind I would start creating what his characters would do next. So I was making up a totally different story in my mind, to the story he was actually writing, with his characters. And, eventually, it just got to the stage where I had to write - so I did!"
"I think if I hadn't married him, I'd probably have started earlier. I was a little bit intimidated at the thought of saying, "You know, well, I'm going to try and write a book as well." And that kept me back a long time."
Growing up in Africa for the pair was like being characters in their own novels – filled with adventure and excitement. Wilbur said that "it was just paradise for a small boy. There was endless fresh air all around you, endless space. Dogs, horses, guns, fishing rods, a constant supply of companions, in the form of small black boys. We'd go off into the bush, bird-nesting, and all the other horrific things like that - which I realise now, as a conservationist, how terrible they were!"
"Those times of joy and happiness were interrupted by long periods of incarceration in a boarding school, which were horrible. I was able to appreciate the freedom, after having been locked up in a boarding school."
Danielle agreed, "I was this poor little skinny, knock-kneed kid, who was sent away at the age of 6 to a boarding school, but rather like Wilbur, when I came home it was marvellous. We used to go ut over the weekends, and camp out in the bush, and I used to roam up and down the rivers, swimming in these crocodile infested waters. Or walking along with a piece of bamboo, with a piece of string and a little hook on it, trying to catch fish."
She said that it was a far cry from Africa today, where violence and bloodshed have become commonplace. "It was lovely - everything was so safe. It was beautiful and safe. If you wandered away from camp, and you were found by tribesmen, then they would walk miles to bring you back to your own camp. There was no case of being murdered, or anything which modern society brings with it. We just didn't have seem to have the evils the we do today."
Birds Of Prey, by Wilbur Smith, and Drumbeat, by Danielle Thomas, are available now from all good book stores.