lived to rule again alongside his son, and grandson. Yet it wasn’t some “alternative universe” story, it was a continuation of The Lion King that created a plausible Mufasa survival scenario through the timely off-screen intervention of us: humans; humans that had a purpose unrelated to the story told by The Lion King. That purpose, the attempted re-introduction of captive bred African wild dogs into the wild, accounts for a lot, in particular why the dogs in this story having English, specifically North London, accents. Re-introduction of dogs is a difficult task in reality due in no small part to the highly complex nature of  wild dog society and behaviour, much of which, including hunting techniques, is learned in the wild from one generation to the next and so is almost totally lacking in captive bred dogs. This helps to account for why the dogs have somehow risen to the top in this story.

So, why is this version of the pridelands so empty? Where have all the lions gone? This is something I do touch on in the story, and in an earlier version explain in greater detail. Why did I get rid of all that? In part it was because it was a distraction and dilution of the main story. Partly it was because it was potentially very harrowing and difficult to accept for Lion King fans. The cold facts are that in 1994, the very year The Lion King was released, an outbreak of canine distemper virus of exceptional virulence swept through the lions of the Serengeti, killing one third of the population of about 3000 lions. Much like the Black Death in humans centuries before, it wiped out entire prides, while leaving others almost unscathed. In my stories the dogs were immune, having been inoculated while in captivity. The dogs are not the carriers, jackals and hyenas were, just as they probably were in our real world in 1994. The lion the human shoots; puts out of his misery if you will; is in the final phase of this terrible disease. He is also The Lion King’s Mufasa. The vet who shot him is the one who saved him in the gorge, and if it’s any consolation, he went back to his car and threw up in the earlier version. It would not have been easy for fans to deal with that. It’s really tough and hard to accept. Hard even to accept that a disease, one of dogs, could play any part in The Lion King world, but in my version it does, as do other illnesses and animal weaknesses as well as their strengths.

Many Lion King fan-fiction stories start with a weasel worded disclaimer, followed swiftly by a paragraph that describe the appearance of a character. I don’t do either. Indeed I never describe any of my characters in any depth. If you have an idea of what Nengwe looks like then you have formed it for yourself in your imagination, and that’s exactly what I want you to do. I don’t describe Falana either, but I do give little hints about her, in particular about the way she moves, that and that she has “loin achingly beautiful emerald eyes.” I tell you how Nengwe is proud of his mane, and, at least at first, spends a lot of time cleaning and grooming it. In contrast I spend a lot of time getting the story going. Indeed no says anything at all in the opening and first chapter. I confess that’s a mistake I probably wouldn’t make now. I’d get the story going a lot faster.

I have a very well developed sense of point of view, even for conventional fiction, and well beyond anything seen in fan-fiction. I use it to hopefully produce all sorts of emotional effects in my readers. Point of view is a lot more than just simple first person, third person stuff. It’s more like the camera angles and shots of film and TV. For most of this story I adopted a very close over the shoulder third person point of view alongside Nengwe or occasionally Shaha.  The reader sees and hears everything he does, and its close enough to allow the reader to hear his thoughts. I think of this as the “riding with” shot often used in coverage of motorsport. You see the race from that driver’s perspective and even may hear his team radio. I use this mainly to invite the reader to identify with Nengwe and to get them deeply involved in the story. It gives a “you are there” feeling. I hope you are almost able to smell Nengwe at times; something that in reality would be impossible and frankly far from pleasant. When I adopt any other point of view, for example Falana’s, it’s not so close, not being able to hear their thoughts. The point of view rules I set myself initially didn’t allow me to follow the dogs, or even Mtundu. We see them through the eyes of the lions. When I finally came to write the final part I realised that I needed to change that to allow the reader to see more of the dogs, in particular their planning in the run up to the final showdown. This gives at one point the same timeframe from three different viewpoints: Nengwe’s, Shaha’s and the dogs. I also play some specific point of view tricks with Shaha and Yali.

I have worked hard for a long time to make my reported speech distinctive and natural. I want the reader to know who is talking without constantly telling them with “said so-and-so”. This allows my dialogue to flow and hopefully to be easy to read. For the record, “said Nengwalamwe” or “said Nengwe” occurs only twice, and never on its own. Two character conversations are simple enough, but three and more way does get tricky. It’s about each character having distinct speech patterns and vocabulary, as well as accent. It’s all about creating believable characters rather than stamping them out with a cookie cutter.

I write in the traditional English style, which is character led. The story comes out of who the characters are, rather than the characters coming from the plot. That sometimes means that the characters didn’t always do what I wanted them to; they took me on some interesting side journeys at times.  I also use foreshadowing and other literary devices fairly extensively. The story starts “in medias res”, i.e. jumping into the middle of part of the story; using good ol’ flashback to resolve it later. The weather and location often both reflect and drive Nengwe’s moods; this is an example of so-called pathetic fallacy. I also sprinkle a fair amount of imagery and allegory, particularly within the story itself. So the cave on the rock is important to Nengwe, and its opening and the subsequent hunt are about much more than clearing rubble and hunting.

What is in a name? It’s long been a convention to use Swahili, or less commonly, Zulu words as names in The Lion King based fan-fiction. I’ve read it advised, and assumed to be the norm in many places. I have never gone with that, it’s not how I generally create names. I like names to be names. Nyala is a Zulu word… probably. It’s a type of forest dwelling larger antelope. They’re fairly unusual, but they do appear in some zoos. I happen to rather like them. I shortened it to Yali.

Shaha though is a Swahili word that means “storyteller”. She is a shaha. I chose it as I wanted it to be given to her by Rafiki, who uses Swahili in The Lion King. I named her sister and brother, Zenani and Thembekile after Nelson Mandala’s first children as I had recently read his inspiring autobiography: Long Walk to Freedom. I used the familiar versions he used: Zeni and Thembi. But of course Nelson Mandela is not a Zulu, he is Xhosa. The two are closely related linguistically and geographically. In Zulu Thembi appears to be used as a girls’ name, in Xhosa culture it’s for boys. I don’t know why. Neither have anything to do with Swahili, which is in a different language group.

Falana is a name I made up. It sounded right to me, suitably (north) African and sensual, having overtones of Nala. I can’t remember where Mtundu came from, it might well be Dave’s, as his father’s certainly is, Utawala, but neither means anything: they are just names. Mtundu shortens to Mutt, which Dave and I used often between us in discussions, but only once or twice in the story. He uses many various less than flattering terms to refer to Nengwe, including Fuzzbutt, as due to an obvious physical characteristic of baboons, Nengwe calls him Baldarse. Nengwe’s parents’ and brother’s names: Melakwe, Nengwala and Talashi are also meaningless. I made them up on the fly while writing. As is usual in many cultures I use appropriate short, familiar, nickname version of most of the names. This is something I’ve done right from the start of my Lion King fan-fiction writing, though few other fan-fiction writers do.

I enjoyed coming up with Kudlavu. It is reminiscent of the Zulu word for elephant: Ndlovu and yet has its own character. Llasani is a character I particularly enjoyed naming. She needed a feminine name, in leonine terms that is, but where does that double L come from? I confess that was a dig I took at the Swahili naming convention. Llasani is not a Swahili name, and it doesn’t mean anything, yet it means a lot to me. Zulu is a “click” language and it has three distinct click sounds, rendered in our roman letters as lh, lq and if I remember rightly, lz. Xhosa has even more; indeed xh in the word “Xhosa” is a click. Ll is none of these sounds however. So what is it? It’s simple, at the time I was working for a company based in south Wales. Ll is a sound that as far as I am aware is almost unique to Welsh. Llasani comes from the south Wales valleys, the Rhondda probably, and is the kind that, were she human, would get trashed every Friday night in Swansea. Meeting her could be as big a mistake for you as it was for Nengwalamwe, and possibly