I am so excited about the prospect of the new movie Little Red Riding Hood coming out this March. I know that as a South African, I should be writing about and embracing all things local and lekker, but my heart and soul are in the fantasy world and the sort of euro-centric fantasy that I grew up with - saturated in and which captured my imagination right from the start. It was the real escape from all things immediate. Having worked with young adults, teens and little children for the past 20 years, I can honestly say that children are still drawn into fantasy and crave the huge array of Fantasy Genres that are fed to us from around the world. So while our local publishing houses endeavour to support and promote local and obviously African themes, and I accept that there is almost no place for Children's Fantasy of the Euro-Centric kind in our South African publishing houses, I know that this is the VERY book that our local children are reading... and can't get enough of.
So our school kids will continue to buy and voraciously read American and European fiction while our local publishers continue to seek out local themes and exist - the way I see it - to support and promote local writers of local content. Am I wrong? I just wish we had a happy balance and writers of a variety of genres could happily co-exist in SA. If only economies didn't play a part in the enormous world of publishing and writing...
My offering to the world is very much 'of me' - which means that it boldly and unashamedly embraces the fantasy genre, but it also can't but help express the South African I am at heart... in the end, the local in me found it's way into my writing...
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