It’s been exactly a year since I swam this route… I loved it so much, and I think it deserves a place on the blog. It definitely should be on everyone

Most people when they venture into open water swimming off the Cape coast, start with a Robben Island Crossing. It is a big deal… it is out in the big ocean, it’s a solid 8km and it is properly hard, especially if you don’t catch a sunny day and the you don’t have a glorious view of Table Mountain. The first question folk ask after that is: What’s next? And most think that a swim around Cape Point is the next best thing… It is!!! That’s exactly what I did, no regrets, it is a stunning swim.

Miller’s to Fish Hoek is touted as a 10k swim and it stole my heart. If you know me, then you know that I am always looking for a 10k swim…

Anja Stoeckigt is a very familiar illustrator to South African Picture Book readers…

Paper Tales is a wordless picture book, perfect for South African children in every language!!! It is the story of three feisty gals, who are delightfully bored. Until… A pile of papers come flying by…

1. Tell us a little bit about your writing journey. How did you become a writer? Did you always want to become a writer?

So I am definitely more of an illustrator that fell into the author role, and maybe that is why my first book is a mostly wordless book. I find that illustrations can speak louder than words sometimes and with this book I wanted the child to be the author and use their imagination and come up with their own storylines and ideas. So no, I did not always want to become a writer, images and pictures are my first love.



2. Who or what do you think had the biggest impact on you becoming a writer?

I think people like Oliver Jeffers and Albert Arrayas, who create the most beautiful and funny stories compel me to want to produce things of the same caliber. I also had a need inside of me to create this story and I wanted the world to see its beauty.

3. Tell us about your work style: Are you compelled to write when inspiration strikes or disciplined, or do you just squeeze it in whenever you can?

My inspiration usually starts with an image and an idea and grows from there. It can be anything as small as two dogs sniffing each other’s bums to a leaf tumbling from the sky that inspires me. And usually this strikes in the early hours of the morning, while my husband is still snoring contentedly next to me. So I have to creep out of bed and write down my ideas in the freezing cold, while trying not to wake the household. This is usually how I start my days.



4. Where do you work best? On the couch at a desk? While you are at it, tell us about your dream workday.

Usually either at my desk or snuggled up in my bed with a cup of hot chocolate and my notebook. My dream workday is to create all day, whether it be writing, drawing or my latest passion printing; unencumbered by anyone until my stomach tells me that I have worked long enough and it is time for a break. I love losing myself in my work.

5. I love your characters, they are so full of life, where did you find them? Where do you get your inspiration to create them?

I often base one of them on myself (the bear girl is based on my own character) and the others are often loosely based on friends and their character traits. So I watch and observe the people around me and then take snippets from real life and put that into my characters.



6. What made researching for this book great, did you get to do any interesting interviews or visit any unusual places?

I googled a lot of origami images and fell in love with the imagery and history of it. I also folded A LOT of origami birds. And the wave in the book for example is based on the famous Japanese painting “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”, so I like to hide little easter eggs like that in my art.


7. Do you have something to tell our followers who think that they might have a book inside of them, a word of encouragement or some advice?

If you think you have an idea brewing inside of you, explore it, write it down, read it out loud, ask for help, play around with different versions, be open to positive advice and just go for it. When you are passionate about something it will shine through and your love for it will show!



8. And where can our readers find you?

Instagram – @paper_tales
And on my website: www.papertales.co.za

This book was beautifully packaged and given to us for review purposes by Penguin Random House South Africa. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are entirely our own.

Penny Haw has been writing biographies about Women in Science for the past few years, and I love them. These are great reads on a topic close to my heart. She is rewriting “hidden history” one incredible scientist at a time…

Easy reading, thoroughly enjoyable stories and altogether great…

1. The Invincible Miss Cust: This is the true story of Miss Cust, who gave up everything, including her name, to go and get her veterinarian degree at Edinburgh University (an English University would not have her).
2. The Woman at the Wheel: The Woman at the Wheel, is the wild story of Bertha Benz, who was such a disappointment to her parents, because “she was only a girl” and went on to pioneer the invention of the horseless carriage.
3. Follow me to the Africa: This book is about the archaeologist, Mary Leakey, who under the shadow of her much more famous husband, developed into a world renowned archaeologist in her own right, despite her non-academic education.
4. The Woman and her Stars:

The story of the Caroline Herschell, the astronomer.

These books were published by Penguin Random House, South Africa. I bought my copy of the Woman and the Stars at Liberty Books in Grabouw.

It is Marine Protected Area Day and the perfect day to talk about a new book for children about the area we live in… surrounded by sea and glorious kelp forests and ocean wildlife. The South Peninsula is the perfect location for an adventurous children’s book.

The book is about a young boy called Ben, who lives in the South Peninsula. Ben loves kayaking in the sea, and spends a lot of time on the water, heading out to the lighthouse at Roman Rock.

It is a really wonderful, heartwarming, easy reading chapter book. The story is interesting and engaging. The illustrations, by the author, are delightful… an all round wonderfully giftable local book for kids of all ages to enjoy.

Tell us a little bit about your writing journey. How did you become a writer? Did you always want to become a writer?

I think I was always a writer, even before I knew what to call it. I grew up telling stories to my baby brother before bed, making up worlds and characters as I went. And before I could even write them down myself, my mom would transcribe them for me as I told them to her. So in a way, my writing journey started very young, in the most informal and lovely way possible.

I wrote stories throughout my teens too, but only began taking writing seriously around 2021. That was the year I made a decision that children’s books were what I wanted to pursue with everything I had.

Right after school, I worked in many different roles in the EdTech space, which later helped me pursue my own career path. Looking back, I can see how everything, even when it wasn’t obvious, helped get me to where I am now.

Who or what do you think had the biggest impact on you becoming a writer?

My mom, without a doubt. She fostered such a deep love of reading and storytelling in me from the very beginning. She took me to the library every single week, she transcribed my very first stories, and she always made me feel like the things I wanted to create mattered.

Beyond that, the children’s books I grew up reading shaped me enormously. I have always been obsessed with beautiful picture books and middle grade stories. The best ones made me feel seen and transported at the same time, and that is exactly what I want to do for readers.

Tell us about your work style: Are you compelled to write when inspiration strikes or disciplined, or do you just squeeze it in whenever you can?

Honestly a bit of all three depending on the season! When I am in the thick of a manuscript I try to be quite disciplined about showing up every day, even when I am having to look a bit harder for inspiration. I have learned that you cannot wait for everything to be perfect before getting it done.

There are also seasons where life is full, maybe I am deep in an illustration project, and I am squeezing writing in wherever I can. I think that is just the reality of being both a writer and an illustrator.

That said, I do have a notes folder on my phone that I am constantly adding to. I tend to get inspiration at random times, usually when I am out and about in nature.

Where do you work best? On the couch at a desk? While you are at it, tell us about your dream workday.

For deep focus work I love being at my desk, surrounded by my favourite children’s books and artwork on the walls. My window looks out into our garden and I often find myself watching our chickens scratching at the grass just outside, which is honestly a very effective form of procrastination.

That said, there are absolutely times I work on the couch, especially during illustration work when I like having a documentary or series on in the background. When I was working on The Boy and the Whale Shark I watched a lot of nature documentaries, things like Our Planet, which felt completely fitting for the story I was telling.

My dream workday starts with a walk around our local common with my dogs, which doubles as a way to get into the creative zone before sitting down. Then a morning and afternoon of deep work on something I genuinely cannot wait to create. My favourite feeling in the world is being so excited about a project that it is on my mind before I fall asleep and pulls me out of bed the next morning. That kind of excitement is what I try to chase with everything I make.

I love your characters, they are so full of life, where did you find them? Where do you get your inspiration to create them?

Ben came from me, really. He carries a lot of my own childhood experience of feeling different and wishing I could change something about myself that I had no control over. I was diagnosed with psoriasis at the age of five, and that shaped so much of how I moved through the world growing up. Ben’s feelings are very much my own feelings.

Whale sharks have always been my favourite sea animal, and they worked so perfectly in this story. They also have spots, just like Ben, and there is such a gentleness about them that felt exactly right for the friendship I wanted to build.

I find that basing characters on real people, or in this case on myself and drawing on real character traits, helps create characters that feel believable and genuinely alive. And I had so much fun bringing the other characters to life too, like Sipho and Liv, who each add their own colour to the world of the story.

What made researching for this book great, did you get to do any interesting interviews or visit any unusual places?

This is one of my favourite questions because the research was genuinely so much fun. I spent a lot of time in Simon’s Town and the surrounding area, snorkelling around Windmill Beach and Boulders, just soaking up the atmosphere and the wildlife. I also watched countless nature documentaries, my favourites being the ones narrated by David Attenborough, of course. I watch these for pure enjoyment anyway, so getting to call it research was a very welcome bonus.

The standout experience was going out on a kayak with my brother to Roman Rock Lighthouse and around Ark Rock, both of which feature in the book. Getting to see those landmarks from the water, the way Ben would have seen them, gave the story a completely different depth that I could not have found sitting at my desk.

Do you have something to tell our followers who think that they might have a book inside of them, a word of encouragement or some advice? And where can our readers find you…on instagram? Website?

Write the story that is closest to your heart, because that is usually the one that needs to exist. For me, The Boy and the Whale Shark is the book I wish I could have read when I was nine and going through some of the hardest parts of my skin journey in hospital.

My other piece of advice is simple: read as many children’s books as you possibly can. It never stops teaching you something new.

You can find me on Instagram at @caylalewis where I share some of the journey of being a children’s book author and illustrator, as well as updates on what is coming next! My website is caylalewis.com The Boy and the Whale Shark is also available in Afrikaans, and is in bookstores nationwide and online through LAPA Publishers, part of Penguin Random House South Africa.

Earlier this year Cape Town Swim introduced a new program called RISE to Strength. This is for swimmers, like myself, that want to do more, but don’t know how to take their swimming to the next level. After twelve weeks on the course I am a much stronger swimmer, for so many reasons, and definitely not just because I have been doing extra gym work. I have learned that there is much more to swim training than just “swimming the miles.” I have learned to value my rest and recovery so much, and that in order to achieve my swimming goals, I really need to be a lot be kinder to myself.

The programme consists of a weekly swim schedule, as well as two strength workouts. There are videos for every exercise, to make sure you are getting them right. Each week a new exercise to focus on, as well as weekly motivational talks on one of the pillars of training: nutrition, sleep and so on. And a group chat where you could ask questions at any time.

I was wary of a program that involved the word “Strength” because I had a vision of looking like an idiot in online classes. I was concerned that if I was not doing the workouts correctly, that I would not be making the most of the training offered. But the programme includes two weekly strength workouts and videos of every exercise to check that you are doing things correctly. You cannot go wrong, and there are so many ways to ask for help and feedback.

Honestly, I knew that I needed to add strength training into into my program, but I came up with every single excuse not to include it into my routine. It always boils down to the “I don’t have time” crunch. I thought if I signed up to this programme it would at least help me to achieve my strength training goals. It turns out the RISE to STRENGTH programme is not just a strength training programme, but also about strength of character. RISE to Strength introduces holistic training, incorporating mindset into your programme on a daily basis. In the past 12 weeks I grown so much as a person, not just as a swimmer.

I came into the programme a little tired and run down, not to mention slightly, injured. I knew I had to make some changes to my typical strategy to “Just Push Harder.” I decided that I would give myself these twelve weeks to see that if by focusing on rest and recovery rather than my characteristic drive to get stronger, if I would get as much benefit from the programme as I had intended. It totally worked, by focusing on my days off and ensuring that they were actually days off, and training myself to sleep better, and fuel better even on rest days, I gained so much more in every area.

1. Making the Hard Things Easy: There are things that I find terribly difficult, getting enough sleep (as a mom) is one of them. It is one thing to stop doing, “just one more thing” at the end of the day. I had to make going to bed a lot nicer… made sure a book I was enjoying was next to my bed and my glasses(!). Stopped working at 9:00 pm, – this has always been hard, writers can just keep on writing, but I made sure to stop for a hot drink, and at the same time shut my lap top. Suddenly getting to bed was a lot more inviting, and getting to sleep earlier became easier and easier.
2. Keep Track of What You Are Doing: For the longest time I have intended to keep a journal of my workouts, but I have been inconsistent and somewhat shifty about doing this. In order to schedule my workouts well I needed to write everything out for the week to create a plan, and then I had to figure what I actually got done, and it is not the same thing. One thing led to another and I found my self tracking things, and it has been “not a little” enlightening. I can see the effects of a late night on the next days swim, for example, and it is very motivating to do better.

3. Pause and Plan: By definition, I am a busy mom, I dash to training in between life, but keeping a journal meant that for a few minutes every day I would pause, process and reflect on what I have done, and what I planned to do next. This pause and reflection is completely new to me, and might be the most important few minutes of any training day.
4. Incremental Changes Are Lasting Changes: I am terrible at slow change, I want to do everything completely and properly, right now… the fact that the programme is scheduled is an excellent thing for people like me. I just couldn’t figure out how to fit the workouts into my day… And then I realised that I could incorporate the exercises into my life, throughout the day. It is easy to do a few squats before I wash dishes, it is easy to do a few pushups whenever I step into the garden… these exercises are easy to incorporate into our days if we add them to things we already do it is actually getting them done.

5. Stacking Habits: The workouts for this programme are very easy to do at home, I was battling to set aside the time needed to get to gym and back… but I swim at gym a few times a week and it is easy enough to just stay half an hour longer and get onto the weight machines once I am done swimming. Suddenly I have found time for a weight session at gym twice a week, something I never thought that I would be consistent at.
6. Less is so much More: To gain from the hard work we put in, we need rest days, and I hadn’t been taking them. As soon as I saw an opportunity to swim I would take it. If I had a rest day, I would use it for massive spring cleans or mountain hikes, leaving me much more exhausted than a swim ever would. I had to learn to rest on my rest days, and now I sure do look forward to fresh weeks and new swim days since I have been taking my rest days more seriously.

7. Practice not Perfection: I am at that stage in my life where there are certain exercises that I haven’t done for ever. I might never be able to do a single-leg bridge, but I can do a double and that’s actually fine. I was worried that the exercises would be too hard for me. They weren’t at all… Not to mention, if you start with just two (push ups, for example), it will be a very short time before you improve and can do a whole lot more.

RISE has not been what I expected, it has been so much more. I thought it would be all about workouts and finding more time for training which is just not very sustainable for life. But it is about so much more… changing little things incrementally throughout the day, and working on improving by small amounts in several areas. RISE has been a complete game changer for me.

Before this programme I was training hard and consistently, but swimming was quite separate to my life. I have learned to put it all together, swimming includes so much more than jumping in the water, whatever the weather. That is part of it, but to swim better you need to sleep better, fuel better, rest better… it’s a whole lot more than just swimming!!!

• A gorgeous collection of coming of age stories.
• The perfect gift for classic lovers, who own all the classics.
• Delightful, poignant stories, an excellent read.

I loved this beautiful hardback book. I read it on the train, back from Silent Book Club in the City. It is a short poignant read, a collection of stories written by Harper Lee before she published To Kill a Mocking Bird. This collection of essays follows her writing journey… and gives you a little look into her life, and her coming of age during the Great Depression. It is laugh out loud funny, really thought provoking and in places strikingly sad. This is a gem, for those friends that love a classic, but have read them all… it is beautifully giftable. I thoroughly enjoyed this, it’s the kind of book that you would like the world to slow down a little, so that you can savour your read.

• Loved the Setting: Hot, sticky summer in California.
• Loved the Era: Late 60s.
• Loved the feisty characters: In an era, where women stayed home and did the cooking and cleaning, these gals really changed the mould!!!
• In a Nutshell: Perfect weekend read. This book is definitely a movie in the making.

A gritty true crime novel about serial killers, and their wives. Have you ever asked: When a serial killer is eventually caught and goes to prison for his crimes, what happens to the wives? Well this book answers those questions, regular women from the late sixties, whose husbands committed heinous crimes, become friends… because nobody what’s to know them, it is as if the crime washed over them too… not only are they plagued by all the “what if’s” and could they have saved lives if things had been different, but the guilt… Should they have noticed more? Should they have been aware? But when similar crimes start to happen in their town, again, and it’s not their husbands… then these gals can start to piece together the kind of man that is committing these crimes… they know “him,” they have lived with “him.” This is their journey of healing, as they come face to face with a killer, as they make mistakes learning and discovering and ultimately confronting. Gripping read… if you like true crime, you will love this.

• If you read a biography this year, let it be this one.
• Possibly the most triumphant book about overcoming… ever.
• This is a five star read.

When Gisèle Pelicot was called to her local police station to be a witness to her husband’s character, because he had been caught filming up ladies skirts at the local supermarket, she had no idea of the horrors that would be made known to her. The love of her life, her husband of fifty years, turned out to be a monster of the worst kind. She thought she was getting dementia, and had spent ten years looking for answers and going through several medical procedures, with her husband at her side, to determine the reason for the gaps in her memory and feelings of lethargy and fatigue. Meanwhile, her husband had been sedating her and inviting the locals in, to do with her “lifeless” body as they pleased… a horrific crime that shook the world. This book could have been a harrowing book, but it draws on Gisèle’s strength… as you read through her journey of pain, and her realisation of the depraved crimes against her. Even more so, when she was faced with the idea of a closed court, and being alone, with just her two lawyers, in a room full of perpetrators, who were all in denial of the crimes they had committed. She asked for an open courtroom, let the world see what they had done, “Shame has to Change Sides,” she said. I had seen the news, and I thought this book would lock me into despair, but no she has provided women everywhere with hope, she grew in strength throughout this book and I only say that when a woman so desperately wanted an ordinary life and family filled with love and laughter, she did not get that, but she remained steadfast through it all.

• This really could be my book of the year.
• This is a book that could go on forever, I never wanted it to end.
• The Main Characters: Meg and Beth are just the best, they rise above their difficult circumstances. I loved them and I can’t help wondering what became of them.
• Setting: Mississippi, during the Great Depression.
• The entire book was based on a terribly sad premise, honestly there are some extremely mean and dysfunctional people in the world.
• Don’t be put off by the number of pages, well over 600, and not a word is wasted.
• I immediately listened to the audible afterwards… so totally worth it. In fact, I think I preferred the audible.

I literally lived inside this book. We have two wonderful and feisty protagonists: Meg is 11 and considered un-adoptable, she is in a word, hardworking, gritty and above all, optimistic. She stays at the La Fayette County Orphan Asylum, and is destined to be a factory worker as soon as she turns 12. Meanwhile, Birdie is considered “un-marriageable” and has come into town to borrow some cash from her socialite sister. Birdie ends up doing the orphanage books and meets up with Meg.

In an era where appearances were far more important than reality. Rich and poor suffering as they tried to hold onto the social structures that were collapsing around them. This is historical fiction at a time when women “held the world of men together,” and it cost them dearly.

And Birdie, in desperate times, goes to desperate lengths to save the day. She inadvertently, with a gathering of very dubious, desperate local gals, decide to set up a small “Dance Club” to entertain the local college boys and to earn some hard cash, and fast. Together they define friendship and loyalty and integrity in a far more determined and uncompromising manner, than the local aristocracy, whose behaviour under the guise of upper-class indestructibility displays anything but strong moral principals.

This book is all the emotions… it will make you laugh out loud and cry out-loud, it is happy, it is sad, it is brutal. If you enjoyed The Help by Kathryn Stockett you will wish she had written so many more books, this one is hilarious and devastating all at the same time.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House South Africa, for providing a few of these books for review purposes. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are entirely my own.

I have spent my life hiking to and fro across the Cape Peninsula, and I was excited to see that Tim Lundy has revised his father’s book: Lundy’s Best Walks in the Cape Peninsula. I remember pouring over his dad’s book and deciding where the next family weekend hike would be.

The book is small and pocket friendly. Definitely created for making the best, and well intentioned, hiking plans. The introduction is packed with a great set of tools including: Emergency numbers, mountain safety, and a brief introduction to local birds, plants and snakes. As well as a quick look at the geology, cave conservation and the weather… “the weather is notoriously unpredictable.”

With all the safety precautions and armed with local wildlife knowledge, the reader is taken on thirty hikes across the Cape Peninsula, with varying levels of difficulty, ranging from extremely easy wanderings to adventures of the more tricky kind.

Each hike has:

• A QR code that takes you to the start of the hike on google maps.
• A clear and comprehensive map.
• Time to set aside for the hike.
• Water availability on the hike.
• Degree of difficulty
• If dogs are or aren’t allowed on the route.
• A full description of the route, including historical landmarks and details that only a guide could provide
• Full colour photographs, from along the route, to inspire you to get up and go.

All the hikes are described in detail and the book is rich, with full colour photographs on every page. The nice thing about having a professional guide to describe a hike for you, is that they include so many details that you wouldn’t get by just walking the route… you will be able to discover the history behind lots of curious features on our local mountains, you will discover how to get access to the museum on top of Table Mountain. On almost every “Table Top” hike someone in the party asks about the reservoirs on the mountain top. I love that hikes within Cape Point Nature Reserve, our family’s stomping ground, have been included.

1. Lion’s Head

2. Tranquility Cracks

3. Chapman’s Peak

5. Long Beach

6. Elsie’s Peak

7. Elephant’s Eye

8. Skeleton Gorge and Newlands Ravine

This book is perfect for weekend warriors, who like to plan all the details, as well as armchair hikers who would like to be inspired. It is the kind of book that can be popped into a daypack, and you can dip into on a snack break to read about where you are hiking. It is an extremely giftable book, that would be just as happy on the trails and on a coffee table.