Today, I launch my first book as a small press publisher, and I should be blowing trumpets and marching with flags waving down the street, but well, it is just this little post. In it, I’ll outline the books I intend to publish in the next few months. For updates, follow us by email, or via RSS, or on Mastodon. We also have a WhatsApp and a Signal group for those who prefer that kind of communication.
The Blossoming of the Big Tree is now out. I expected the print and audiobook versions to be ready by now, but the learning process has been steep. The paperback version will be ready in a month’s time. We will print it in Uganda. I recently discovered it is way cheaper to do it locally, and so it might be possible to sell the paperback at under $10. The only problem will be shipping. For those outside of Uganda, it might cost more than the book. And since there are postal restrictions on packages to the US, we won’t be able to send anything there, unless the reader is willing to pay over $100 on courier fees. (Please don’t! Use that money to buy books for your local library!)
The audiobook isn’t ready, either, and won’t be until around 1st January since making a quality product is harder than I realized. I have to invest in a room made for audio productions, and also in better hardware (the mic I bought is a little too bright) and software, before jumping in, so a little patience.
For now, enjoy the e-book, and leave a review somewhere so others can find it.
The Blossoming of the Big Tree
Dilman Dila
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
“…delightful — wonderful worldbuilding with a thoughtfully-constructed solarpunk vision as well as a compelling story that hooks you in!”
“…delightful — wonderful worldbuilding with a thoughtfully-constructed solarpunk vision as well as a compelling story that hooks you in!”
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
The next of my books that I’ll release is A Killing in the Sun, which was first published in 2014 by Black Letter Media in South Africa. The publisher went under a few years ago and so the book has been out of print, and this was one of the factors that pushed me into publishing. I worried about approaching another publisher, and yet I’m not much of a submitter, so putting it out on my own was the best possible way.
It is now out for pre-orders. I have to rewrite some of the stories, or maybe just revise them, and that will be one of the priorities for the next few months.
A Killing in the Sun
Dilman Dila
PRE-ORDER
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
“…well worth reading” Strange Horizons.
“So loving these sci-fi short stories, each one is memorable.” Zukiswa Wanner.
“…well worth reading” Strange Horizons.
“So loving these sci-fi short stories, each one is memorable.” Zukiswa Wanner.
“…perfectly poised between the robustness of genre and the more literary concern” Mark Bould, LA Review of Books
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
After that, it will be A Fledgling Abiba, which does not have a release date yet, but I’ll set it up once I finish with a cover. This novella was first published in 2020 by Guardbridge Books, in Scotland, and our agreement expired this year, I thought I should do a revised edition, and perhaps an audiobook as well. It is a fantasy that some people think fits in the YA shelf, but it’s a fun book for any adult to enjoy. They put it down as YA because the main character is a young woman coming of age, and discovering that she has some weird powers, which includes the ability to fart fire – okay, it’s not a comedy. This is based on an actual character in our mythology, we call them abiba and they fly at night with fire blazing out of their buttholes. I thought it would be nice to explore them in a work of literature.
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I intend to release books that I’ve not written, but which I’ve edited. I’m fond of folk tales, and anything to do with mythology, so I’m always scouring old books for them. When I decided to set up this publishing house, I thought that it would be nice to use it to share these books with you. The only problem is that they were written a hundred years ago, and so are full of racist and bigoted phrases, and some contain outright lies and pseudo-sciences about African people. The solution? Edit them. They have valuable information, most of which has been lost to time, with Christianity and Islam working alongside Colonialism and globalization to erase our cultures, and so these books become important. So I’m weeding out the bad stuff, and giving you the good stuff.
The first is Myths and Legends of the Bantu and Other African Peoples, which was written by Alice Werner, and it is a comprehensive look into African cultures. It’s rich in lore that is mostly lost to time, and well, I have it almost ready. I hope to bring it out on 1st August 2026.
The next in this series is Chaka, a novel by Thomas Mofolo, and still without a release date, but I think it will be out in September or October. It is an important work, one of the first speculative fiction stories to come out of Africa, and what Mofolo did was collect stories about the person we today know as Shaka Zulu, and put them down as a novel. I think of it as a folk account of historical events. Remember, at that time, stories were still being passed around orally. Mofolo was an educated Christian, and he collected these tales about Shaka Zulu. It’s an interesting read, though it was clouded by his education and contained some racist words (Mofolo was from Lesotho, but the Missionaries taught him well… or perhaps it is the translator who did not do justice to his writing?) and so I’ve edited it for you.
On addition to these, I’m thinking about anthologies of folk tales, organized along themes, but I’ll do a lot of re-writing to adapt them for modern readers rather than put them out just as they were written down. Folk tales were meant for oral platforms, which means they would change depending on the narrator and the culture. But once they got written down, they stopped changing, and became set in stone, which I find puzzling. You can read some of those that I’ve re-written here.
I have many unpublished short stories and novellas, and so I’ll work to bring them out as well. Some of these can fit nicely into themes. Like “The Mouth of the Stars” will be a collection that revolves around space travel, but based on the mythologies of the cultures I grew up with (those around present-day Uganda, and East Africa). They lean towards science fiction.
Then there is “The Shape of the Spirit” which is a collection of stories centered on the idea of a human’s spirit, they mostly lean towards horror.
The third new collection I’m thinking of is “The Person in the Metal”, which is about sentient robots. If you ever read my short story, Red_Bati, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Happy reading, and do remember to subscribe to our newsletter for more! Or, you could follow us via RSS or on Mastodon. We also have a WhatsApp and a Signal group. Sign up!
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