Talk Radio 702

My husband Vince has been on a publicity tour of sorts promoting the newly established collaboration between IBM's Watson and the financial and health service industries in MEA (the Middle East and Africa.) Specifically with Metropolitan Health and Standard Bank. Watson is IBM's cognitive computing system that you may recall famously beat two human contestants on Jeopardy a few years ago. It is more than just a supercomputer because it can actually learn and think in the human sense.




Recently, Vince has been talking about the Watson collaboration as a guest on CNBC Africa's Power Lunch with Alec Hogg, has been quoted in Finweek as well as other industry publications and last night, he was interviewed about Watson for a half an hour by Bruce Whitfield on Talk Radio 702's The Money Show. (It was also simultaneously broadcast on Cape Town's CapeTalk.)

And I went along for the ride!

I think this was my first time in an actual radio studio and it was pretty cool. (Sure I am very proud of Vince and all, but let's face it ... this blog is all about me! So as I was saying ...) Talk Radio 702 is the premier talk radio broadcast station in Johannesburg and, according to its website, it has a media reach of more than 804,000 listeners.

red means "we're on"

Bruce and Vince in the studio

The studio is right in the heart of Sandton.

Vince was pretty relaxed; I wouldn't be!

Bruce invited Vince back for another chat and next time, he wants him to bring Watson.

Stay tuned!

Bloody Winners

We won!

I know it's not about winning. It's about participating in the creative process and trying on the shoes of the murder mystery writer, blah blah blah. But we had crafted a really good story with intrigue, subplots, sabotage and double-crosses. We tied it up with a biblical bow and Amanda, our group's author, presented it flawlessly.

And our story won!

Team Amanda at work.

About 60 of us - plus seven authors - gathered in the Rosebank Gautrain Station last night for a Murder on the Gautrain. The mastermind behind Bloody Book Week and the mistress of ceremonies for the evening was Jenny Crwys-Williams, the radio talk show host whose weekly Book Show (Wednesdays on Talk Radio 702) is a forum for author interviews and reviews of the latest releases in the book world.

We were separated into groups of about eight and teamed up with one of the celebrity authors with whom we would travel on the train. Our team was assigned Amanda Coetzee. Amanda was the perfect leader for our little group's part reality show / part master class. When she isn’t writing crime thrillers, she works as a deputy headmistress. She grew up in Bedford, England, and now lives in Rustenburg with her husband and son. Her novels include Flaming June, Bad Blood, Redemption Song and her latest, One Shot.

Furnished with two typed copies of a description of a murder scene full of clues - and red herrings - we were instructed to pick up where the story ended so far and solve the murder. Present day Joburg. The apparent murder of an already terminally ill Russian nurse and former hit woman. A gang of five. A hand-picked investigator named Hitch. A cat.

Amanda in the zone

We huddled in the train car as it hurtled towards Pretoria and ironed out the basics of our plot. The why, the how, and the who, all whilst trying to be extra careful not to let another group overhear our ideas. We had the skeleton of an outline concocted even before the train entered the final station.

Once we arrived at the exclusive Blue Lounge, Amanda was handed a laptop and she quickly got into the writers' zone. She wrote the first attention-grabbing line which she read to us for approval and then she was off.

But she needed details. Who was on the other end of that phone call? What did Hitch see that turned his blood cold? What kind of alcohol would Hitch drink? What was the code name of the 5th man? The code name for the gang of 5? Where was the secret place where the gang would reconvene? How would justice be served? What did the riddle mean?

What is a nickname for Svetlana?

We got out our smart phones and our iPads in order to look up facts. What are the symptoms of digoxin poisoning? How do you say, "the truth is revealed" in Russian?

Jenny introduces Penny Lorimer

After about an hour, some wine and some really delicious snacks, we all reconvened back in the Blue Lounge and one by one, each group's author was called to the high hot seat to read their team's chapter. Next to them on the couch sat the judge and author, Alex Eliseev, who would ultimately decide whose ending he would use to finish his story and be published on the Bloody Book Week website

Peter James

Some stories were really funny. A little bloody 50 Shades of Grey anyone? Some ideas came straight from the front page headlines. The scandals of Pistorius and Malema and Zuma. They were all really good and surprisingly very, very different.

Amanda and Alex

But as Amanda read, you could see that she had the audience on the edge of their seats. You could hear a pin drop in the room as she made her way through the twists and turns of the action. Alex was listening intently too.

Team Amanda with Jenny

After the readings, Jenny and Alex deliberated behind closed doors. The guests were served more wine and hors d'oeuvres. Back in came the judges and the verdict was announced.

Amanda Coetzee's team were the winners. Bloody brilliant!

Murder on the Gautrain

Tonight we are going to reenact a scene from one of my favorite movies, Murder on the Orient Express. Vince and I have ridden on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice as well as its sister train, the Eastern & Oriental Express from Singapore to Bangkok. But alas, no murders either time.










But tonight as part of Bloody Book Week in Joburg, the brainchild of Talk Radio 702's Jenny Crwys-Williams, a murder is guaranteed. And we will play the part of Agatha Christie's renowned Inspector Poirot as we come up with the ending for a murder mystery by investigative reporter turned crime novelist Alex Eliseev along with best-selling authors and writers Peter James, Amanda Coetzee, CM Elliott, Dr. David Klatzow, Penny Lorimer, Jacques Steenkamp, and Mandy Wiener.

The murder unfolds on the ride between the Johannesburg's Rosebank Gautrain station and Pretoria. There we will convene in the Blue Train Lounge and brainstorm whodunnit and how it was done!

Someday we hope to take the famous Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town. In the meantime, the game's afoot ... or in this case, a-train.

Cocktails and Crime

It's "Bloody Book Week" in Joburg with a week long calendar of events, sponsored by Talk Radio 702, for mystery loving enthusiasts. The week includes book launches, interviews, talks, dinner parties, cocktail hours and a whiskey tasting. You can even go on an Agatha Christie-style "Murder on the Gautrain" excursion to Pretoria and be a part of a real mystery writer's chapter in a soon to be concluded novel! Along with a lineup of fiction writers, screenwriters and critics discussing the genre, there was one book talk that caught my attention.

Unfortunately it was about a non-fiction bloody book called Killing for Profit by Julian Rademeyer. An expose on the illegal rhino horn trade, Julian is an investigative journalist who chronicled the intricate and far-reaching drama and history behind this scourge. He was being interviewed by David O’Sullivan, the morning talk show personality on Talk Radio 702 and the venue was the local independent Novel Books bookstore in Bryanston. (Wow, they still have those in South Africa?)

I of course found the conversation incredibly interesting. Anti-rhino poaching has become my passion since I have come to South Africa. When I first got here and realized the state of the crisis, I was shocked. How did it get this bad and how has it remained increasingly so? I am hoping this book will give me some insight into the problem and maybe even some hope for an answer.

I have just recently been accepted into a volunteer program in a conservation area in the Eastern Cape. For two weeks in August I will assist with rhino monitoring and other conservation efforts. I am very excited and will be journaling throughout the entire experience. Not blogging since we will be internet-free! But afterwards, I will blog a synopsis or two. In the meantime I have some homework to do by reading Killing for Profit.