The voice is mellifluous, even courtly and definitely robust. Wilbur Smith is speaking from the Macmillan publishing offices in London. He is old-world, like his books, and if a voice could have a twinkle in it, his does.
"I was there in 2009," he says, when he learns I am calling from Dubai. "You know, I really enjoyed it. We had a good time. It was the first time we had been there and I was stunned by the incredible development of the whole area. Met so many interesting people."
His voice is also of the kind that suggests a wicked smile is playing on his face as he talks to you. The kind I would think would turn flirtatious if I were to be of the opposite gender. I tell him that and he guffaws.
Wilbur Smith, best-selling writer extraordinaire, is at 78 enjoying the success of his latest book, Those in Peril. It is his 33rd book, so what type of hunger drives him to keep on writing even when he is rich beyond common perception?
"Ha ha ha!" his laughter rolls down the phone. "I think you should talk to my wife! Every time I finish a book she says I can retire now. I have written 32, and this one, Those in Peril, is my 33rd book. People ask me why do you write and I say because that's what I do. I am a writer and a writer writes, but that is too glib an answer.
"I write because of a deep desire and compulsion to tell stories which I think are important, and to link those subjects which are very close to my heart. Because they're close to my heart I can write them with all my heart. People say that is my formula. I don't like to use the word formula, but that is the way of my working."
He describes his style as less a technique, more a way of thinking. "It's your state of mind, the way you perceive the world. Mine comes from my upbringing in Africa, and my fascination with certain aspects of African life.
"I just translate from my own experience, my own thoughts. I don't like to think too deeply about what my style is. It's my style and it's natural to me like the way I eat and the way I sleep."
That's the way he's always written right from his first published novel, When the Lion Feeds. However, not many know he had written one earlier when he was working as an accountant.
"I was trying to write the great African novel, complete with a political slant, and far too many characters." It never got published.
"Then I wrote When the Lion Feeds, which was a story about people, and it's been my observation that people like stories about people."
You are allowed to smile at that. Wilbur Smith novels are populated by old-world alpha males, none of whom can be termed ordinary, at least not in the way ordinariness is usually about being forgettable. Smith had a role model for these protagonists right at home. His father.
His heroes, he agrees, are larger than life. "They are driven," he admits. Those in Peril has two heroes, the heroine as well as the hero. Smith won't give the plot away.
"It's a thriller set in the UAE, Somalia, the US and the UK, and it's about the kidnapping of the heroine's daughter on a ship in the Indian Ocean. It's about her rescue and bringing the kidnapper to justice."
Put like that, it sounds like a regular potboiler. But his fans can rest assured that it will be packed with the Wilbur Smith brand of larger-than-life characters, with ambitions that are unbridled.
On a roll
Smith is driven by a similar ambition to keep churning out books - almost at the rate of one a year. His book before Those in Peril, Assegai, was published in 2009 and reached No1 on the UK Sunday Times best-seller list and South African paperback best-seller lists a week after publication, topped the Argentinian, Australian, Canadian and Italian best-seller lists, and was on the New York Times best-seller list.
"When I started I worked day and night, I spent every hour I could on the typewriter," he says. "However, these days I write a book and take a year off and then I write another book. So I am pacing myself towards the end of the race and it works very well for me because my wife and I have an opportunity to travel, spend time together, go skiing, or fishing. I am tapering it off now."
By the way
"Africa has a special appeal for me as a writer. What fascinates me is the diversity of scenery, from snow-capped mountains to deserts to rainforests, down to white beaches and a circle of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
"It's also the diversity of people. There are so many different types of people in Africa, from the giant Watusis, all of seven-feet tall, to the tiny little forest-dwellers of the rainforests who are four-feet something, and everything in between. It's just a huge assembly of people and animals. The diversity of animals is fascinating too - from elephants down to the tiniest marmosets and field rats. It has everything that the heart can desire."
When he works on a novel, Smith keeps a strict routine.
"It's very much a businessman's routine," he says with a laugh. "I sit down at the desk at about half past nine in the morning and work through lunch. I take an hour off at lunch and then I work to three in the afternoon and then we go to the gym, or do something that is not associated with the book."
He keeps at this for about a year, as long as it takes to complete his book. "One year on and one year off," he chuckles. "Of course, it's not really one year off because I do a lot of publicity. I travel to various parts of the world. Dubai, Italy, the USA, South America, wherever the book needs to be launched."
Like his style of writing, Smith has not changed his style of working either down the years. The author still writes his book chapter by chapter, start to finish.
"I write the book from the first page to the last in one run and then I leave it for a month or two just so it cools down in my mind," he reveals.
"Then I start again at the beginning. I read what I have written and edit it through from the beginning to the end because I believe that's the only way I can give full flow to the story, the continuity and see that the characters fit together, action leading to action."
Obviously it is hard work. What keeps him going is an interest in telling a story his way. "First of all, it has to be something that really catches my interest," he says. Then comes the job of assigning characters. He has created a huge repertoire of characters from which he keeps plucking a few, such as the Ballantyne series that includes A Falcon Flies, Men of Men, The Angels Weep, The Leopard Hunts in Darkness and The Triumph of the Sun, and the Courtney saga that started with his first novel, When the Lion Feeds to his previous best-seller, Assegai, 13 in all.
"I have assembled over the years a cast of characters and some of them I have written into many books. In my new book Those in Peril the two main characters, the man and the woman, presented themselves to me out of the blue and I was able to get to know them very quickly in the first chapter or so and then developed them over the remainder of the book.
"The characters serve as metaphors [for a way of life] and for me it's almost a magical process which I stand in awe of, the way that happens, how the characters become living and breathing entities in my story and in my mind. I look on them with affection. I often develop deep feelings for the female lead in the book and I have admiration for the men I am writing about."
Whether the characters drive the story or the other way round has been a point of debate. Smith feels it works both ways.
"I think the nature of my characters is such that I cannot allow them to act out of character because they have to take the story forward. The story is important, and so, too are the characters; they complement each other."
Smith has been writing for the past 46 years and has been consistently successful. Changing styles and fashions don't appear to affect him.
"I am like that," he says. "I have written 33 books and they range from ancient Egyptian books set in 4000 BC, right up to 2010. It's a great range of books, and the main thing is I have had the will to write, the desire to write. I still have the same enthusiasm for every book as I had for the first one. That allows me to put my heart and soul into the book. That, if you ask me, is my style."
Facts not fiction for Mr Smith
A voracious reader, Smith, for his own reading pleasure, prefers non-fiction. "I have a very wide taste, I like history and autobiographies the most," he says. "Where fiction is concerned, I like people who write similar type of books [to what I write]."
That stands to reason for an author who first writes to please himself. Surprisingly, he does like, "many of the modern writers". But he doesn't care much for science fiction or horror stories. "I like stories about people in interesting circumstances doing interesting things," he laughs.
Naturally, for a person who writes the kind of books he would like to read, there aren't any books that Smith wishes he'd written. "Of course, there are a lot of books that I admire and which amaze me and which I hold up as examples of great fiction writing or non-fiction writing. However, I write my own books and I don't wish to write other people's books."
He has been writing for so long that now he can't imagine doing anything else. "I would have probably shot myself at an early age out of boredom," he says of that prospect had it been a reality. "I believe that I have led a next-to-impossible life. I cannot explain to you how much satisfaction and reward I get from publishing books and then having people coming to me and say that they have read the book and they liked it. It gives me a place in the world, and also it's given me the freedom and the time to travel and do everything I really love to do. It's given me so much that it is the single focus of my life."
What about every author's bogey - the writer's block?
"That is a dirty word!" he shoots back. "I don't know what that is! You know, nothing keeps me awake at night. I sleep like a baby and I wake up refreshed every morning!"
On that note, we decide to end the interview but before we hang up, I ask him to describe his perfect day. "My perfect day would start with me waking up next to my wife. Then I have a very nice breakfast of fruit and cereal, get the morning papers and find out I have five reviews of my books in print in some of the most prestigious papers. Each is praising my work... That would be a good start.
"Then I would like to see a nice fat cheque from my publishers waiting for me at my work desk. [Having put away the cheque] I would take my fishing rod and head off to my favourite river. Later in the day a drive in my nice car and then dinner with my wife, some conversation with her and finally off to bed. That would be a perfect day."
That doesn't sound very different from his regular days, I tell him. He guffaws again.
