Who are we?
Kilihune Books is a Maui based publisher. It was started as an outlet for books written about life in Zambia and expanded to include other books about Central and Southern Africa, Maui and the mainland United States. Kilihune Books, to date, has used print on demand publishing to service its authors and its customers. Print on demand is made possible by modern high speed printers and allows authors who might not otherwise be published to put their work into the hands of the reading public. Books are available through this site or from Amazon, either in print form or as e-books, via their Kindle store.
What does Kilihune mean?
Kilihune is Hawaiian for light misty rain. Living on the leeward slopes of Haleakala on Maui, it is common to get rain in the form of a light mist. The wind accelerates around the mountain and rain is carried over from the windward side, but by the time it reaches us it has often diminished to Kilihune. Kilihune rains make the perfect conditions for rainbows and even moonbows when we have a full moon together with the light misty rain. In Zambia the rain was never Kilihune, when it rained it rained! We had typical tropical downpours, sometimes so hard it was impossible to see when driving. Storms would loom up and be visible for miles around blackening the sky, then the rain would come hard enough to bounce back up into the air again when it hit the ground!
What kind of books do we publish?
From Maui to Southern Africa, Kilihune Books offers books written about life on the Valley Isle of Maui and in Africa, from Zambia, to Bostwana and South Africa. Although not quite antipodean locations they are truly different sides of the world. The books include a murder mystery set on Maui and novels set in Zambia, that follow the adventures of a young mining engineer working in the copper mines of Zambia, an historical novel set in Botswana that follows the adventures and misadventures of a young man intent on making his fortune hunting for ivory. Another book is set in Utah and the rocket industry and tracks the investigation following a fatal accident. Further books will also be set in the mainland United States, with venues ranging from Wisconsin to California, and we are working on a new novel set during the Anglo-Boer war in 1901/2 that follows the long ride of Jan Smuts and his commando raid into the Cape Colony.
Other interests
Coffee
We grow and process coffee. Not enough to sell commercially, but enough to provide for ourselves and to give away to friends and family.
We also have olives planted and growing and look forward to first harvest in the autumn of 2013.
iPhone apps
iPhone apps. We have two companion animal track apps for iPhones, Tracks of Southern African animals and Tracks of Central & East African animals. The apps run on late model iPhones running IOS 5.0 and later. This is because of programming limitations that constrain use on phones running earlier software versions. The apps run on iPads, either in the x1 or x2 modes. Noticeable on the iPad 1 and iPad 2 models is the slight pixellation of the system text in the x2 mode. This does not occur on the New iPad. All the images appear in good quality in either the x1 or x2 modes on all iPads.
Our third app is Hula 101, which is an introduction to basic Hula steps through the use of videos showing the steps performed to the beat of an Ipuheke, the classic Hawaiian musical instrument often used in performances. The app plays the videos as a loop until the user stops the action and returns to the step view menu, so that memory is conserved by not having huge video files on one's iPhone. We are currently working on Japanese and German language versions of this app.