Adieu rock and roll dream; Dave Chislett writes a book

David — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:14:00 GMT

Renowned journalist Fred De Vries interviewed David Chislett for The Weekender a while back... here is the unabridged version.

"Music journalist Dave Chislett has written a book. Or: the doyen of Joburg alternative culture has assembled over a dozen of short stories he has written over the last fifteen years and with the help of Ge’ko publishers has turned them into a collection.

Chislett himself would prefer the second depiction, because one of the reasons for him to publish this anthology, he stresses repeatedly, is that he’s eager to move away from the limiting label ‘music writer’.

“I do a lot more than that and always have’, he says in a coffee shop in Linden, not far from his flat. “I far rather have people know me as a writer who does music and other things as well. I’m interested in so many other crazy things that I don’t wanna get stuck as a music writer.”

To read the full article, click here

Hagen Engler Returns With More Fiction!

David — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:14:42 GMT

As a writer with designs on ultimately taking over the world, I am always keen to give props to other writers who seem similarly inclined. Hence onto the subject of some new work that is available from Hagen Engler.

Hagen and I go all the way back to 1988 when we were in the same English class at Grey High in our matric year. I wouldn't say we were mates back then, but we knew each other. He surfed. I ran ( athletics that is!). He was cool I was a bit of a reject at Grey. We had a cracking English Teacher called Greg Cunningham (known universally as Sly Pig) who ran an ambitious experimental English class... he really shaped my love of literature that man, what an inspiration!

Later Hagen and I re-connected through Barney Simon to discover that we were both doing the same stuff promoting SA music, working as journalists, writing our own stuff as well.

Anyway, the man has self-published about 3 collections of his journalistic columns and two novels, and now his latest project is up and running. And here is the man to tell you about it in his own words:

New cyber book of fiction!
I’ve got a new collection of short stories out! It’s called Planetary Vehicles and it’s a web-only prose journey set on Johannesburg. Where Greener Grass was set in Port Elizabeth and Buttons For Gaia in Cape Town and Berlin, this is a series of interwoven vignettes set in Jozi, where I’ve lived for the past six years. Cunning readers will recognise them from a set of columns in Weekend Post. Here they’ve been imbued with hip new headlines, given a spit, a polish and a few extra swearwords and sent back out into the world in collected form.
To read Planetary Vehicles, click here (http://planetaryvehicles.blogspot.com)

You can read them in any order, but if you insist on starting at the beginning, that would be “Rock songs of love, guilt and healing” at the top of the January archive list. Visit me on Facebook here

( http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=617657677&ref=name )

and tell me what you think.

Hagen Engler

The Chiz : books

Adieu rock and roll dream; Dave Chislett writes a book

Hagen Engler Returns With More Fiction!