Elton Brown: 0:08

Welcome to SpeakUP! International. with Rita Burke and Elton Brown!

Rita Burke: 0:15

Now, we have interviewed people from far and wide. We've gone on as far as Nigeria. And then we spoke with Terry from England last week. Today we will be speaking to an author from South Africa. Now, as usual, I need to tell you a little bit about him. His name is Kalenga Augustine Malenga. He says that he's been writing for many years. And his passion is writing. We understand that writing is in his blood because his father was a journalist and the first black editor of the Zambia Daily Mail. And would you believe it, to date he has published 31 children's books. Our guest has recently published his memoir as well, and has made a middle grade novel that will be released later this year. To our audience, our guest from South Africa, Mr. Kalenga Malenga!

Augustine K. Mulenga: 1:29

Hi everyone, thank you so much for having me!

Elton Brown: 1:32

It is our pleasure to have you with us today to have a conversation about you and You being prolific when it comes to writing. You must have one of those copier machines just cranking those babies out it is absolutely amazing. By the way, everyone who's listening, this is a Zoom call and we can see one another. I'm looking at something that is extremely colorful! that's behind Kalinga. Kalinga, can you tell us what is behind you?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 2:12

My Zoom background is made up of some of my books. Not all of them would fit on the screen. So it's made up of covers of eight of my books and yeah, I've got someone who does my, my my posters for me. I'm a South African and yeah, I've got about four or five of them and each of them have covers of my books on them.

Rita Burke: 2:39

It's a fantastic looking, very colorful, very energetic background. Thank you for doing that for us.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 2:48

Thank you.

Rita Burke: 2:49

Now, I would like to ask for you to tell us and tell our audience. Two words that best describe who you are.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 3:02

Okay, I think two words that come to mind are passionate and driven. As you said in the, when you were giving your introduction, my passion is writing and once I am passionate about something, that is what gives me the drive. So I'm goal driven and I, yeah, I always want to get my, my, my goals achieved. And yeah, so I would say I am passionate and driven.

Elton Brown: 3:27

Driven indeed! Now that we know that you have many books published, what inspired you to start writing children's books and how has your writing evolved since you started writing children's books?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 3:42

Yeah I used to write books. I started writing books when I was very young. I should have been about 10 years old. Obviously I didn't get any of them published, but I would take part in certain competitions at school. And two of my books did win win some prizes. I was back at school in Zambia. After some time I ended up stopping to write and I just used to read a lot. But my my, my writing journey came back in 2020 when my family and I were coming home from church and my son, my youngest, had a writing competition at school and I mentioned to everybody in the car that I used to write when I was about his age and none of the, my wife and my two daughters and my son didn't believe me because I'm an accountant, I'm a qualified accountant. And they said, there's no way you used to write books. And to cut a long story short, I went home that day, wrote one book. And in, within a week I had written about four or five manuscripts. And that's what I realized that my passion was still there and I decided to go out there and yeah, to get my books published.

Rita Burke: 4:58

So what I'm hearing is that they dared you and they challenged you, and you rose to the challenge that came from your family. Sounds exciting!

Augustine K. Mulenga: 5:09

Exactly, yeah.

Rita Burke: 5:10

Now, in your bio, I read that you like to put positive messages in your books. Tell our audience what positive sounds, feels, and looks like. What do you mean by positive message?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 5:31

Okay, I think the positive message would be like life lessons, and sometimes, especially being a parent, you need all the help you can get. My kids are grown now. Obviously, my youngest is 13 and my oldest is 23, but when they were much younger. There's a lot of challenges that you face, teaching kids right from wrong. I believe my books can help teachers educate I'm sorry, teachers and parents, as well as just caregivers to, to teach. important life lessons. For example, Harry the Honest Horse is all about honesty. Susie the Strickland Sizzling Striker is all about being a team player in sports. Elaine the Elephant is all about, if you first, if at first you don't succeed try again, and so on and so forth. So yeah, that's basically what I wanted to do when I first started writing my first book and then the rest all followed suit.

Elton Brown: 6:40

I love the fact that your books have a positive message for the youth of today. I think it really needs to happen frequently. Let's face it, the world is not in a good place and if you listen to the news all the time, you wind up being depressed and that's something that we don't want our kids to become. We want them to remain positive and see the world as, their own. Can you share with us a memorable experience or moment from your writing journey? that has a significant impact on your career or creative process?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 7:25

Something that comes to mind is obviously, like I said, I wanted to all my books to have a positive life lesson attached to it. But when I was looking for main characters, I wasn't sure whether to go for people or for animals. So the first thing that came to mind that okay, children can relate to animals. So I went to each and every member of my family and ask them what their favorite animal was. And that, hence, every one of my books has got one of my kids and my wives. Favorite animals, but over and above that, obviously I do try to include people as my main characters as well. But the memorable one was my older sister, who is much, much older than me, but she sent me a message, a text message because she's got a farm and she's got pigs on a farm. So she said;"You have to write a book about pigs", but now I really couldn't think about what could I write about pigs, but eventually my latest one, it's actually my latest children's book is called Piggly, the Angry Piglet. And this is all about controlling one's anger. Yeah, so that was my older sister Priscilla's wish and yeah, so it came true!

Rita Burke: 8:44

Sounds very exciting. I'm glad the book is about pigs because guess what my favorite animal is, pigs! I need to get one of those books in my hand very soon! You are teaching children, and dare I say, not only children but families, about values to help them navigate their way through the world. It sounds to me, like that's what you're doing. You talk about life lessons. Yes, you're teaching values about fairness, about kindness, about managing anger, those kinds of things, which is wonderful. As Elton said earlier, it's absolutely needed in today's world. Now, you wrote something called striving to be number one. Tell our audience what's significant about that, please.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 9:41

Okay. So striving to be number one, obviously it's a short story. It's and it's fiction, but it's about the dangers of pushing oneself too hard. So even though it is an adult it is for adults, but it's something that also I wanted to deliver a positive message that the main character had his parents were like high achievers and. He was an athlete. And he felt that He would only be accepted if he finished first and not second, not third. And because of that, he ended up taking performance enhancing drugs. I don't want to spoil the story, but yeah, it's basically just about pushing himself too hard and striving to be number one, no matter what.

Rita Burke: 10:31

Sounds like his parents. were that kind of parent who, if he came home with 99, they would say, where is the other one? And you are quite correct. Sometimes parents tend to drive their children to extremes. So that book must be a fantastic book to read.

Elton Brown: 10:54

Now you've piqued my curiosity and when you started talking about how you receive your content from your family in the form of favorite animals. So what is your favorite animal?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 11:08

Okay, my favorite animal is a lion. Yeah, I just, it's just such an amazing animal. And both, the thing about the male and the female, the lion and the lioness are so different that you can definitely tell one apart from the other and that's what just amazes me so much.

Elton Brown: 11:26

How do you keep a balance between the message and providing a way where the kids are totally entertained by what you produce.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 11:39

Okay. Yeah, because, so obviously for my parenting journey the kids always looked at dad as the, as the lighthearted funny guy. So basically I got that, kids. If you're too serious, you don't get the message across. So I, in my books, I try to have some lighthearted humor as well as just like we said, some entertainment to show them and to teach them that the specific life lesson attached to the. To the book. Yeah. So basically, I didn't want it to be too serious because then sometimes kids, most of the times from what I see is that kids don't really they don't really understand or they don't want to take something when it is too serious. Even though obviously sometimes in life we have to, get the message across when they've done wrong, but obviously in the books. It's not about them doing wrong. It's about them learning from them, but in a positive and lighthearted way.

Rita Burke: 12:42

Yes. Very interesting point. Very interesting point that you made. And I'm convinced that very often the message in children's books are not fully. understood until they grow older. I think that the children's books could appeal to adults as well because the messages are so profound. So I got what you're saying. Now you told us what your favorite animal is, what is your favorite book among the books that you have written? Which is your most favorite?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 13:22

That's a hard one. Okay. My favorite is Donk and the Stubborn Donkeys because that was the book that I wrote when I was 10 years old. It had a different name. I renamed it. It was called the Obstinate Donkey when I first wrote it. And then I renamed it to Donk and the Stubborn Donkeys. That's my favorite, but I do want to just give special mention to two of the others which I really like. It's Chuck the Cheetah and Drew the Dragon. Those Drew the Dragon is very close to my heart because it's got such a good message that I feel it's all about love and it says where there's love, there's always miracles. Miracles do happen. Yeah, but my favorite would be Donk because it was my first. And then obviously Chuck the Cheater and Drew the Dragon.

Rita Burke: 14:12

I heard you. I was blessed and fortunate to hear you reading Chuck the Cheater. That's what inspired me to get in touch with you, to be a guest on SpeakUP! International. SpeakUP! International speaks to inform, to educate, and to inspire. And I thank you because you're helping us to reach our goal today. So much.

Elton Brown: 14:36

Your books, you have many of them. Can your books be downloaded from some place like Amazon or are they only accessible in print?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 14:48

Okay, yeah, so I've got both ebook and paperback and they are All available on Amazon. The only ones that don't have that I don't have in paperback are the memoir and the short stories. Those are just ebooks for now. But all the children's books are available in ebook and paperback, and they're all available on Amazon. They're available on Draft2Digital, which is, which you can get to, get Apple books and Google books, all of those, yeah, they are all accessible there. And obviously locally in South Africa they can be purchased by my website.

Elton Brown: 15:31

Wonderful. I noticed on your website. You talk a little about your self publishing children's book. It's like a step by step guide. Can you give us an overall summary of what that is all about?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 15:50

Okay, so basically that's it's an online course. The first module is free. And then you just pay a nominal fee for the other six modules, which is basically a step by step guide for publishing children's books, because I just felt, I didn't have anyone to help me through this process I learned along the way. If I had the course that I do have now, the online course, I would have found it much easier. But it wasn't, like I said, it was a journey and I made some mistakes along the way, but I think right now at the moment I can say that I am quite an experienced self published author. And I'm still learning. That's one thing. I'm always learning and I'm always reading, finding different ways and different means to make things easier. The marketing journey and things like that. But yeah, I think the course can really help aspiring authors. And actual self published authors who just need like a refresher.

Rita Burke: 17:00

So why did you decide to self publish? And is it working for, and is it working for you?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 17:09

Okay, so I decided to self publish because South Africa has got a huge population. But unfortunately the reading culture is not that good. And there's not a lot of publishing houses out there, traditional publishing houses. So the very few that I did send my manuscript to they were not selected, but I really wanted to get my books published. So that's when I decided to start, doing my investigations and my research and found that you can self publish and I am really enjoying it. In the beginning I had. An editor there and an illustrator there and a different, all of the guys were all over the place all over the world, actually, because I got them from fiber. com. But at the moment, I do have a lady who has an in house. Like self publishing. She does self publishing for, excuse me for several authors here. And she's got her, an in house editor. She's got an in house illustrator. She's got, she does the cover design, the, the formatting. And yeah, I'm really happy with her. And it's working fine for me. Just to mention that my middle grade book, My middle grade novel is through a small traditional publisher who I signed a publishing contract with. And yeah, but that's the only one. The rest I own self published.

Rita Burke: 18:33

You sound like a proud author, proud self publisher who can teach those wannabe authors the process. And we thank you for that. We thank you for that. But there are huge advantages. self publishing because you own your work. I think that is fantastic because frequently we take to publish houses and they modify it and take it away from your original message. So congratulations for having taken that route of self publishing.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 19:12

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Elton Brown: 19:15

Congratulations is definitely in order. You won the creative writing contest. I think you mentioned that before, and that must have been a proud moment for you. So how does it feel to receive such recognition for your work, and how has that motivated you to continue writing?

Augustine K. Mulenga: 19:37

Oh, yes, they are. That was really a great moment because like I said, I wrote, I, I did win two writing competitions when I was much younger, back at school, and to win a game at the ripe age of, I think it was 41 I was. Was it? No, I was 40, 44 actually. Yeah. So to win again at the age of 44 was really something! And that's what pushed me pushed me to write more and to achieve more. And just to mention that also Chuck the Cheater did win also an award recently. I was first runner up in the Copa Book Awards In Zambia. And yeah, I just want to keep going. And that recognition it is what drives us because I think my wife always laughs at me that My love language is words of affirmation. And once I hear those words of affirmation, it'll, it'll make me continue and it'll push me to do more. Yeah,

Rita Burke: 20:40

yes, I hear you loud and clear. Affirmations are wonderful. And if us adults could teach affirmations to the children in our circle, then they would grow up to become successful adults. So thank you so very much for joining us on SpeakUP! International. I certainly appreciated what you shared with our audience and you know what? Perhaps. You could join us again to tell us more about your story, more about writing, more about your family, more about growing up and living in Africa. Thank you so very much. Thank you. On behalf of SpeakUP! International.

Elton Brown: 21:24

Thank you. Thank you.

Augustine K. Mulenga: 21:25

Thank you so much. Thanks Rita. I really appreciate it. Thanks Elton. Thank you.

Elton Brown: 21:42

Thank you for listening to the SpeakUP! International. If you would like to know more about Agustine Mulenga's incredible books. Kindly provide your name and email address to info@speakuppodcast.ca. Please state in your email, you wish to contact him. Would you like to be interviewed by SpeakUP! International? Please drop us a line containing your name company name the service you provide to your community and email address to info@speakuppodcast.ca. You can reach us using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. To connect to our podcasts, use Spotify or your favorite podcast platform and search for SpeakUP! International. You can also find our podcasts using our web address, www.speakuppodcast.ca Our logo has the woman with our finger pointing up, out open. speaking UP! At SpeakUP! International, we aim to inspire, to inform and to educate.