White Horse Audio trailer

BLOODLINE MURMURS OF EARTH 2 x Audio trialers

Chad Le Clos in Black and White

The Craven Silence book trailer #JonBenetRamsey

#JonBenetRamsey Beth Karas discusses Misdirection with The Craven Silence authors

Irma Stern published in the November issue of Country Life magazine

20 years later nobody knows who killed JonBenét Ramsey

HOT WATER Everyone is beatable... [book trailer]

#diveintohotwater HOT WATER Some of the behind the scenes stuff that went into researching and writing this narrative

Bloodline - Audio Teaser to a Brand New Dystopian Epic

WHITE HORSE III Excerpt

In Court

“The way they act in court - they act like they own the court!” — Mikey Schultz speaking about the Pistorius family

I looked at Uncle Arnold surveying his kingdom, taking in the little people of the gallery.  He wasn’t just glancing from one side of the gallery to the other, he was scanning.  It reminded me faintly of a Terminator. 

He had his back to the front of the courtroom, and for a long moment, he took in all of us.  Slowly, calmly, he took in each face. It had a calm, calculated quality about it, but the feeling I got wasn’t evil or menace, more satisfaction. All told Oom Arnold felt like things had turned out basically as he’d hoped, was the impression I got.

If this sounds easy to say after the fact, it wasn’t.  It was my observation at the time – to Marc, and via WhatsApp to Lisa. Something else that was bizarre was a white policeman barking at us just before the trial began.  He told us to turn off our cell phones, he warned us not to take any photos.

I was a little shell-shocked.  I asked Marc: “If our phones are off, does that mean we can’t tweet…No man, I think he means turn of the sound of your phones.”

Then, shortly before Masipa arrived to take her seat I asked Marc a few quick questions about Justin Divaris.  Botha had mentioned him and I wondered whether Marc could fill in any of those blanks.

“Are Justin Divaris and Samantha Greyvenstein still together?”

Marc told me they had gotten married, had had twins, but that one of the twins had died.

“Are Justin and Oscar still friends?”

Marc replied that at first they [Oscar and Justin] had remained friends, but subsequently Justin had felt Oscar had misled him, and thus, were no longer friends.

“Who did Justin call after Oscar called Justin?”

Justin called Major-General Shadrack Sibiya, a policeman the former head of the Hawks in Gauteng. 

I guess Justin just happened to have the head of the Hawks number on his phone, don’t most of us?

Sibiya, who has been found not guilty of fraud, and I think not guilty as well of gross dereliction of duty, and not guilty of gross misconduct, was Justin’s first port of call.

Sibiya then made a call to...

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Oscar Pistorius - was there an argument? 4 True Crime writers discuss the 2nd pair of jeans, the broken bedroom door, the cricket bat and the amount of blood at the crime scene

WHITE HORSE: Oscar Pistorius

Authors Discuss World Exclusive Photos of Reeva #Soundcloud

More: An Oscar for the Great Pretender [WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES]

ALERT: Exclusive insights into the Oscar Pistorius trial

At 22:00 local time Lisa Wilson and I will be releasing new images and a major new insight into the Oscar Pistorius saga at www.shakedowntitle.com.

Our mandate at ‪#‎shakedown‬ is to "thoroughly test in order to make sure there are no problems or defects". We've found a significant defect in Oscar's narrative that - thus far - no one else has.

WHITE PRIVILEGE preview

NEVEREST III Preview

JUICE III preview...

BOOKS: Bats vs Supes: Decoding the Mythos - what's it about?

Crack photojournalist Nick van der Leek has brought out a second book [available Friday 8 April] in his Kindling For Film Fare series.  In Bats vs Supes: Decoding the Mythos the author tries to understand the problems bedevilling the DC comic universe.  What are DC getting wrong that Marvel consistently get right?

A movie featuring Batman alone should be a juggernaut in this brave new comic era. But a flick featuring Bats, Supes and Wonder Woman ought to be a contender for biggest blockbuster ever. And yet Batman v Superman is not going to make the magical $1 billion milestone. Why?

After a strong record breaking opening, the worst fears of the comic’s core fan base were realised. Snyder had messed with the comic mythos. “There’s darker and there’s fucking with source code,” as the author puts it.

For a film that’s about finding your authentic self, whether it’s Bats, Supes, Wonder Woman, a schizophrenic Lex or being born a monster, this film shouldn’t be fighting its own source code. Right out of the starting blocks and at every turn it is. Has Snyder killed the DC cinematic universe? Are [spoiler alert] Jimmy Olsen’s early assassination and the coffin at the movies conclusion portentous signs of a systemic failure at DC? Is the issue too little creativity or too much?

In True Crime writer Nick van der Leek’s inimitable style he interrogates the archetypal mythos to discover the epic origins buried in the comic canon. The author analyses in detail where Snyder nails it, and where he goes off track.

 Using extensive research the author investigates whether DC and Snyder deserve credit or criticism, and how DC stand apart from more successful celluloid rivals, Marvel. At the same time the narrative is a treatise about the world we live in – both real and imagined.

 One of van der Leek’s more frightening revelations is this: has an entire cinematic universe been simply undermined, or has it been destroyed to cater to society’s dark heart? And where is our dark collective heart taking us…is it a place even superheroes fear to tread? Decoding the Mythos provides sanity and reference to a world – factual and fictitious - spinning out of control.

 Available NOW!!!

My latest 6 page article on superb landscape artist Hugo Naude [Published in April 2016 COUNTRY LIFE]

Extract from "JUICE" #ThePeoplevsOJSimpson

Hertz
“Go, O.J., Go!”— Hertz’s well-known slogan

Prior to Cochran redecorating O.J.’s Rockingham home for the jury walkthrough, the walls were covered in photographs of O.J. and his white golf buddies.  In one of O.J.’s alibis, Cochran claimed O.J. was playing golf at the time of the murders, and in his book “If I Did It” O.J claims between 22:00 and 23:00 on June 24^th he was “chipping balls into his neighbor’s yard.”

Golf was a big deal for O.J., in fact it was integral to his lifestyle. On the night of the murders, at 23:45 the Juice flew to Chicago for yet another golf outing with Hertz execs. O.J. had enjoyed a long relationship with Hertz; and there had been more than a little water under the bridge over the years between the brand and their beloved black ambassador.  Did Hertz know about previous incidents of abuse between O.J. and Nicole?  You bet they did!  Did they care?  Well, they cared about preserving a lucrative relationship with O.J., and so did O.J.

From thewashingtonpost.com:

Soon after O.J. Simpson was charged in January 1989 with assaulting his wife, Nicole, he placed a telephone call to a man in New York who had helped make him a household name. Simpson told Hertz Corp. Chairman Frank Olson that the wife-beating charges were overblown, a Hertz source recalls. The former football hero said he and his wife had too much to drink at a New Year's Eve party and had gotten into a fight, and that the police had been called.

Nicole Brown Simpson then telephoned the Hertz chairman herself and repeated much the same story. “She told him the same thing O.J. had said, she belittled it and said it was not a big deal and there was nothing to it,” recalled Brian Kennedy, Hertz’s executive vice president of marketing and sales.

Olson was relieved. Simpson, at that point, had been Hertz's corporate spokesman for more than a decade. In the public’s mind, O.J. was Hertz. Moreover, Simpson was just then in the middle of contract negotiations to...

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Birding [PHOTOGRAPHY]

Wedding Photography by Nick van der Leek

B&W Photography [Wild Coast]