Holiday Seasoning

 I'm without work for the next week or so and I'm just taking the time to rest, reset and rejuvenate. Weirdly enough, I've gotten some shit done that I haven't been able to do due to just mental exhaustion. I'm having a time.

My son cooked us Christmas dinner that was outstanding.

Just outstanding.  

 So much food, for just the two of us followed by a camera copy of Gladiator II in Spanish. The subtitles were so wonky we couldn't really understand in any words but we still understood the story. 

Still going to watch it in English though.

 So then I did some painting, submitted ten chapters of a new story to a publisher, and I will be recording a new podcast episode tomorrow. I don't feel sick all the time...it's great.

the painting I made

Anyway, so I'm sitting here, writing my own shit again, watching the most random romance movie on Netflix and it's just a lot deeper than I was expecting. For one thing, the guy's mother is dying and she had a memorial for herself while still alive. Very triggering for me, but also inspiring. If I die of a terminal illness, I'd also love to have a living memorial before I die. But I know I'd get a lot of superstitious push-back about it.

If you're going to say nice things about me, I'd like to be alive to hear them.

Been thinking a lot about dying lately. 

It was always something to be feared. That phone call that changes your life forever. Something to be avoided at all costs...but the way the world is moving these days, what's to stay alive for? (and I say this in a very non-suicidal way).  

With climate change, disease, the rise of fascism, Ruto, no future for our children...there just doesn't seem to be much to look forward to.

But.

I am enjoying watching these two people fall in love in a very wholesome, real way. No cheese. I'm looking forward to reading several books I bought over this holiday time. I do hope they're really good. I am loving the new romance novel I'm writing. She's a Bajan, he's Palestinian and there's a good chance Harlequin will reject it for political reasons but it's a really good book. 

interim book cover for my second chance romance

 The movie is called Love At First Sight by the way. It's on Netflix. Watch it.

I've been kicked off twitter, which I think is the second thing that's enabled me to do all these other things. I spent too much time doom scrolling. Twitter did me a favor. Though they kicked me out for some bullshit reason. I was apparently an inauthentic account, spreading untrue things. 

I can only imagine that the eye of Sauron spotted one of my tweets on Post Election Violence and had them kick me out. That's the only thing I can think of because otherwise they kicked me out for telling people I took the last fudge at Carrefour. 

Whatever. 

It's for the best I guess. 

 

Whatever has caused this change, whether it's waking up at 3pm every day, or maybe its the hibiscus blend I've been drinking, maybe, its the fact that my son won a lucrative contract and I have work for at least the next two months. Maybe it's because I'm doing things new, things different, things I've been meaning to do for a while but just didn't have the energy for.

After this, I might update one of my fanfics! I know some people who will be very happy about that. 

Keep an ear out for that podcast. It'll be beneficial to you if you've ever thought about how the hell to pay a hospital bill.

It's that Time of the Year

 Yes darlings, once again, we are in December which means the year is ending which somehow means you get to spend lots of dosh on things you don't really need.

While you're doing that yeah, I thought I'd make it easy for you to spend some money on me. So I generated some coupons and guess what?

The child of Destiny series is 50% off until 15th December on smashwords!

This is your moment. This is your time. If you've ever wanted to own the (not) complete series, you can get it. At half the price!

What?

Honestly can you think of a better Christmas present? Because I can't.

Let us count the ways this series checks the boxes.

NC17? check.

Mystery? check

Infidelity? check

Out of the box? check

Plot twists? Galore

Diversity and Inclusion? check, check and check.

Lurve? Always.

So go ahead, click on the link and harvest this seriously good haul at an unbeatable price. 

Give the bibliophile in your life something to do until February. We'll talk again on Valentine's day.

What's better than two books? Four!

Breaking into Author Subscription Sites

 I'm trying to diversify my portfolio in various ways and one of my nanowrimo pals put me on this website named Ream where you publish stories and people purchase memberships to read them (hence the subscription aspect). 

So anyway, I'll try anything once so I recorded an audio book of Erase and Rewind and uploaded it. You get a new chapter every week until the end of December. To build my followers - which is something I'm shit at doing - I'm offering the book free to anyone who follows me.

 Next month I plan to start a story involving bounty hunters who fall in love while in competition to catch a dangerous criminal (of course there'll be a plot twist). 

Anyway so if you're interested in this kind of storytelling do click on the link and follow me.

We'll see how it goes.

Here's a video promo to tempt you further.

Annemarie lives in Nairobi Kenya. Find out more on her work here. And visit her author page here.

Of Writing, Sex Tapes and Elections

 Twitter was atwitter with this news: 400 s*xtapes of an Equatorial Guinea business man released

 Every man on there was quite admiring of Baltasar and his ability to sleep with everyone from his brother's wife to the president's sister. (Do you notice how the women are referenced by whatever man they're adjacent to?)

Anyways it got me thinking about sex tapes and sex in general. 

I write romance for a living and so, I know how boring it can be...to write about. You have the same things happening. Lots of canting hips, moaning, groaning, the occasional kissing, flesh slapping together...by the third book you've seen it all.

As a writer, I know that what jazzes up the sex scene is the emotion behind it. Is it angry sex? They're scratching and biting, he's telling her how he wants to split her in two, she's digging her nails into his shoulders while thinking about him going so deep inside of her that she can taste him in her mouth...Is it tender sex? Do they cry as the hold each other, softly, warmly, gently. Their kisses painful in intensity, their hearts, beating in sync...

You get my drift right?

But watching a sex tape  has none of that. It's just sitting there watching a man stick his dick continuously into a woman. They might not even be that attractive to you. If you're the man or woman in question, you were there, why do you need to watch the playback?

So, my question is, what is the point of a sex tape? 

Is it like when an athlete records themselves at work so they can go home, re-watch and see what they did wrong? Or is it like a memory you get to relive? Your idea of home videos or such.

Also, if this guy and his various sex mates were not ready for the tapes to be made public - so much so that one of the women killed herself - why consent to be taped in the first place? This man was a government official, slept with the wives, sisters, daughters and girlfriends of basically his whole family and fellow government officials. 

And put it on tape. 

Why?

What was the reason?

I sometimes wonder if people subconsciously wish to embarrass themselves because that's the only thing that makes sense.

Anyway, y'all be crazy. 

It's difficult to write fiction these days because competing with reality is just hard.

In other news, Presidential election this week in the US. These last four years have been eye opening on who people really are and these last two years have been especially illuminating about who is valued and who is not by imperialism.

It started with Ukraine. No actually it started with the politicizing of COVID and the proliferation of misinformation. People who I assumed knew how to reason like adults turned out to be...disappointing. Then the war in Ukraine happened and Africans fleeing that same war were STILL discriminated against. We were forced to fund raise to get them out and even then, a simple thing like getting on a train or across a border was harder for Africans than the Caucasians. 

It boggled my mind that even in extreme duress, white people always have time and space for racism. But not as much as it boggles my mind today that there are African supporters of Imperialism. We truly are colonized. 

Anyway, Ukraine happened and they were afforded all and any kind of help available from Westerners. Then October 7th 2023 happened and Palestine was back in the news - as the villains of course. Even when Israeli lies were debunked, Palestinians remained the villains. Even when Palestinian babies died, the babies were blamed for providing 'human shields' for khhhamas. 

Even the darkest cloud has a silver lining. The eyes of the world were opened to what constitutes a "terrorist". 

American propaganda came crashing down.

So, as people go into voting for the next US president, for me, as the grass underneath which elephants are fighting, I don't care which elephant wins, we'll still continue to be crushed. 

Whoever wins, I only know one thing: Ruto Must Go.

Annemarie lives in Nairobi Kenya. Find out more on her work here. And visit her author page here.

It's All Connected by Imperialism

 I've been intending to start a series on the current maandamano taking place in Kenya and the events of today's #nanenane demonstrations was the kick in the butt I needed. This post will be freeform but subsequent posts will contain receipts. 

Let's start from the beginning. 

But where is that?

Let's talk about imperialism. It's a monster, with tentacles spread out worldwide. The head of the monster, however, is nestled in the United States. It's headquarters, one might say.

What is imperialism you might ask. 

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.

It's important to realize that governments are not the imperialists. They are just the instruments by which the imperialists seek to exploit others. The government works for them. They always have. The Dutch East India Company was a private outfit, but the Queen of England had shares as did other noblemen. They are the ones who ate and left no crumbs. The government is left with no one else to consume and now see, they're eating themselves.

The riots we're seeing in Britain right now are a direct result of imperialism and white supremacy.

We might have been colonized by England but it's still the queen's friends who own vast tracts of our land.

Prince Harry is the president of African Parks and don't get me wrong, I love the fella but when they say 'governments have given them the parks to run' I have to wonder. 

Why?

What is the bottleneck that stops Africans from running their own game reserves? Looks to me like we're the only continent still with significant wildlife populations. Everyone else has depleted theirs so why are we not 'able' to run our own parks.

Question for another day.

Let's get back to the events of #nanenane and how they brought me here, to you. The police completely shut the CBD down. It was impossible to hold a lawful demonstration because the police kept scattering people.

This led to a lot of frustrated Kenyans and there was a back to the drawing board mood. Bangladesh ousted their prime minister this week. Their parliament was dissolved.

We must find a way to do the same. 

But the foiling of the demos led to a lot of demoralization for some, hardened the determination of others and got me off my ass so I can show you all how far we've come.

Stay Tuned.

Getting My Writing Mojo BACK!

 It's no secret that I've been struggling. The dearth of blog posts was probably a clue. I had barely been able to update my fanfics.

I won't even talk about the novels I'm writing. (Yes, it's never just one). Marcus Devereux, stagnating, the Harlequin, non-starter. 

Sigh.

Whatever I did, I couldn't get myself to...write. Everything was too depressing I think - COVID, economic crisis, personal crises, parenting crises...and then the icing on the cake; Gaza.

Just hopeless, hapless and helpless.

No wonder the creativity wasn't being defined.

It wasn't just my personal situation. It just seemed like the entire world had given up on even trying. Literally shouting and screaming about Gaza for six months and hearing people perform outrage while selling Israel more weapons. Everyone I know living from hand to mouth, and every day the Kenyan president announces a new arbitrary tax. Let's not even talk about the personal struggles of having an adult unemployed son, trying to find his way amid mental health struggles. Always a fun time.

All of these things are still the same, aside from the last one. No longer unemployed, and with a direction of movement, this is the only thing that has really changed in my life. But I found myself making three fanfic updates this weekend. I finally managed to write daily so my Harlequin story (fingers crossed) is now over 5k words. I still haven't updated Marcus Devereux but I have a plan on how to proceed.

I think that tiny sliver of hope is responsible. That things can change, albeit slowly. hey, for years, nobody would even acknowledge that the Occupation was in the wrong but now here we are - the whole world knows that Genocide is going on.

I can almost believe that that saying about the trajectory of justice is true.

Resolve was the start. Writing it down that I intended to do these things and really understanding that life is too short and all we have is now. And then every day, despite whatever mood I'm in, purposing to WRITE 100 words of my Harlequin story, rain or shine. Somehow, that triggered the storytelling part of my brain and now there's always story there, raring to go. Just waiting to be written down.

Long may it continue.

The Pivot: When Do You Know It' s Time?

 The universe has been kicking me in the ass of late, with signs and portents of changing winds. I know this territory. It's familiar because it's not the first time it's happened to me. The thing I've been asking myself is; do I want to pivot because it's the path for me, or because I'm giving up?

I've indeed been increasingly bored with the assignments I get. There are only so many Regency romance storylines you can write before they begin to blur together. But is that enough reason to quit?

Then I think back over the years, how long I've been thinking about this, but there just has never been time to make it happen. So much work to do, and so many bills to pay. The upheaval that has happened in the last few years, both internally and externally has really brought this thought to the fore; Annemarie, is it time to do things differently?

I'm gonna be fifty this year. My body is breaking down. I don't want to write smut for publishing mills for another ten years. I'd like to continue writing stories but with a bit more control and the ability to earn life-changing income from it. Gotta think about my retirement plan.

(It seems delusional to have a retirement plan with the way the world is going but theoretically).

So yesterday, I got another push in the 'you need to pivot' direction. A client I had written a 'clean wholesome romance' for last year sent me a message. 

(Honestly, any white woman wanting a 'clean wholesome romance' should have been a red flag but again as I said...bills to pay).

I think I completed the assignment in October, I'm not sure and then she sent a message in December about the book being in editing and after that was done, she might send it back to me for corrections. Later on in December or early January, she sent me a message that there would be no corrections to do.

Great. Nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes it turns out like that. So I gave the generic, thanks, hope to work with you again, bye.

So yesterday, she replied to the message, saying "Oh sorry I forgot to end the contract, and here's my 'honest feedback' on your work. She then proceeds to tell me she suspects I used AI because I used 'big words'  that no one uses in conversation.

In the next sentence, she accuses me of having grammar and spelling mistakes, 'which shows I don't check my work'. Now, if I'm supposed to be using AI, doesn't it proofread? She also said my work was late - which is the only true thing she said.

Now, aside from being extremely discombobulated by her message, I just couldn't bring myself to take it seriously.

(Oops, there I go using big words that people don't use in sentences. This must be an AI post)

It seemed so disingenuous and ill-intentioned, especially coming out of the blue MONTHS after the assignment was complete.

She then closed the post by saying the readers hated it because my writing was subpar. Now as an author, I take leave to doubt that she had her book published already if the editor completed their work in December and there 'were so many spelling errors' and so much didn't make sense. Unless she decided to publish the book with these errors and mistakes and AI that didn't make sense etc. So even if she published in January, there's no way you have feedback by February. Unless you're J.K Rowling or Diana Gabaldon and people are spending nights on the sidewalk to get your book first thing, you're just not going to have feedback that soon.

So, white woman is lying. Nothing new there. It seems to be their default. I really don't know how y'all live with them 24/7. The mental health challenges alone...

(Disclaimer: yes, yes, I know. Not ALL white women)

But it was like the last straw.

I am now convinced that -

It's time to take up the reigns and make a change. Finish this romance for Harlequin romance. Begin the story for choice games, finish Marcus Devereux, and look for better-paying, and more challenging gigs that don't take up all my time. 

No big.

I've been listening to former recruiters on TikTok, giving advice on how to get the job of your dreams. I'm trying to implement it. It's not easy but it's not impossible. Just gotta be patient, do the work, and believe in myself. 

Like always. 

Sigh.

(Wish me luck.)