"Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?" — Alexander McCall Smith

Baboons take a bit of getting to know but, apparently, once you break the ice, so to speak, they are complex and interesting creatures with elaborate societies.

There is this intimacy still in Botswana. It's a country of just under two million people, and there's this sense of connectedness, in that people tend to be related to one another.

A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.