The Orchid House sells really well on Kindle. It seems popular with readers but I’ve never been happy with the cover so here’s a new one – similar yes, but softer. I couldn’t really avoid the orchid although I thought about the other themes in the book – travelling in Sri Lanka, living in a house in the jungle, a great Cornish garden, a steamy love affair… there were lots of possibilities.
Here’s an extract from The Orchid House to give you a flavour of some of the more exotic locations:
On Kovalum beach the women said “Hi Baba, you want mango, massage? You want tablecloth or lace?” The smiling gold-capped, gap-toothed, beauties sat beside us and unravelled their cloth bundles revealing and spreading their precious booty. They stroked the blonde hairs on your arm and looked on admiringly until we said, ‘No Baba, not today’, then they collected everything back up and re-tied their cloths and shamed us with their smiles.
We slept in white rooms with latticed balconies and arches over hung with palms, sharp leaved fronds bending against a blue sky like great feathers on a headdress. Trees shooting from a dry rough husk, filling our open windows, resting on the sills where drongos came looking for crumbs.
On the beach the sea was big and dangerous, it roared through the night and everywhere there were warnings in English and Hindi and everyone told tales of bathers caught in the undertow and dragged out to sea or washed up on the rocks by the red and white lighthouse. But on the beach in southern India where the women smiled you stayed safe. The women kept you safe. Now I can’t think past that other place, that beach and your drowning…
