When I was a young journalist on Adelaide's "The Advertiser", colour had just been introduced to the broadsheet shortly after I returned from my first visit to Botswana with my father, who wanted to show me the country where he'd been born and brought up.It's also interesting for me to reflect on, because I published this as a plain old travel article, having no idea I was about to return to the Okavango to work as a safari hostess for 2 months, meet the love of my life in the swamps, then give up my job at The Advertiser to live in a thatched cottage in a mopane forest 12 km north of Maun after 8 months of letter writing between South Australia and Botswana, and having been in Eivind Eikli's company for only a couple of weeks before he proposed.
Anyway, last year, the romance writer in me decided that, after 39 historical romances and mysteries set in Georgian, Regency and Victorian times, it was time to write a romantic murder mystery set in the Okavango and Kalahari Desert, based on my experience as a safari hostess on overland safaris and lodges in Botswana in the early 1990s.
My world has been so aviation-focused for 30+ years - from bush flying, to survey flying, to airlines (both domestic and international) - so I have heaps of first-hand material to work with. Like the psychology of pilots - ie, in a crisis in the cockpit; or losing their jobs (the 1989 Pilot's Dispute, which is the inciting factor that sends my pilot to Botswana), or a worldwide collapse of aviation, or Covid, or the stress of pilots having to pass their 6-monthly recurrency checks to keep flying.
All of the above has been woven into my life in aviation, working and living in 12+ countries (Eivind has flown in all 7 continents including, of course, Antarctica) and I wanted to incorporate it in what I love best - fiction with romance with an explosive thriller ending.
So, last year, I wrote "Whispers in the Kalahari".
It's the first book in my 'Wings over Africa' series, which features a pilot hero (based on my pilot hero husband!). Anyway, for a few days, the eBook is on sale for only 99c (to celebrate the release of my latest book "The Lesotho Diamond").
None of the characters in "Whispers..." are based on people I knew in Botswana, but some charismatic stand-outs are an amalgamation of the pilots and safari guides who really made an impact in my life.
In 1992, when Chris Kruger, who was at the time, GM of Okavango Wilderness Safaris, offered me a job in Botswana just after this newspaper article in The Advertiser was published, it changed my life, and I wish he was still with us, so I could thank him when we return to Botswana, hopefully at the end of next year or in 2027.
Six generations of my family have lived in Botswana or Lesotho. They've worked in the British Colonial service, owned gold mines in Botswana (Bechuanaland), or were French Huguenot missionaries living in a cave in 1840s Lesotho (formerly Basutoland).
Our daughter Sophie Elsa Eikli is keeping up the fine tradition.
Although she is now living in Norway, she's doing her Masters in Female Writers in Colonial Rhodesia, and is very keen to visit the continent where her mother and generations of her forebears were born, and where her parents met during that fateful evening instigated by Chris, the day before I was flying home to get married to someone else.
Therefore, a return trip is imminent. And the sequel to "Whispers in the Kalahari" is currently part written for its March 2026 release.
Meanwhile, if you want to dive into a novel about aviation - and bush pilots in Botswana, plus a fractured marriage and a mysterious hunting death from 15 years earlier, combined with a poaching theme, "Whispers in the Kalahari" is on sale for a few more days.
You can also get it in paperback, Large Print, and in Audiobook -
a great Christmas present for aviation or Africa-lovers 
And it's available at Amazon, all other retailers, and Ingram Spark, here =>> https://books2read.com/WhispersInKalahari
Or direct from my Shopify Store - Beverley's Books - here: https://beverleysbooks.com/.../wings-over-africa-collection
... where you can also see the new trailer for my two Africa-set romantic mysteries.
