The 'Writing A Book' Diaries: Nuance, Let's Talk About It

The 'Writing A Book' Diaries: Nuance, Let's Talk About It: So I was sitting on the loo, releasing the hostages and watching John Mayer's Instagram show, named Current Mood. John Mayer was one of...

The Struggle. Is Real. Newsletter Edition

 I'm sure I don't have to tell you what a charley foxtrot social media is becoming. Just this week the Americans were removed and then returned to tiktok. All the social media influencers are talking about having your own newsletter so that you don't lose followers if you lose your account.

Very good advice I guess...if your aim is just to talk at people.

For me, social media is a way to connect, to argue, to know what's going on out there...I'm not really that good at selling my shit using these apps - as you might have noticed.

However, I'm trying to take my authorpreneurship more seriously lately and so I'm attempting, once again, to have a subscriber list and put out a newsletter. Thee irony is that I did have a subscriber list, and this blog, was my newsletter. But madmimi shut down and Go Daddy has ridiculous hosting prices and so I was left in limbo, alone and abandoned, having to begin again.

So yesterday, I found substack - I mean I knew of it in an abstract sort of way, but yesterday I realized that it might be the way to build up my subscriber base. I know that I had a few regular readers of this blog. I don't know if you ever look for me now that each blog post doesn't land in your inbox but if you do...you can subscribe to my substack and have my posts delivered to your inbox once again.

Yay?

I hope so.

I'm neglecting my paid work to write this and inform you so I hope someone's listening. As an author what is your answer to the perpetual need to be in people's faces and remind them of your existence?

This year I'm not about 'achieving goals' though. I'm about living and enjoying so my blog posts will not be in linkedinese. I might rant and rave a bit, as I am wont to do. 

But.

I can promise that it'll be interesting. Maybe even fun. Come join me.

Erase and Rewind

 

Chapter One: Awkward Menses

 

Her period was getting embarrassing. This was her third week bleeding, and the flow didn’t seem to be abating even a little bit. If anything, it was getting worse. She was seeing double and she couldn’t quite walk in a straight line. She couldn’t tell anyone though; her father would run screaming from the room if she tried to talk menstruation with him and her brother might drive her to the hospital in a panic. This was one of those awkward times, when she wished her mother had asked her to come along, when she walked out on all of them seven years ago. Well, she hadn’t so Rosemary would just have to handle this the best way she could. She excused herself from class to go see the nurse, hoping she’d be able to get there considering her vision was blurry. 

 This was a good time to have a best friend she could call on. Unfortunately, her best friend was also her panicky brother. So, she was back to square one. She walked slowly arm trailing against the wall to the nurse’s office. Nurse Sylvester was always very concerned; her eyes went squinty and she’d lean forward to listen intently when someone was confiding their problems to her. It was as if she was trying to compensate for all the neglectful parents who abandoned their kids to her care. Rosemary didn’t buy it though. She knew for a fact that it was nurse Sylvester who’d spread the rumor that Angie Lemon had gonorrhea. 

To listen to the rest of the story, click here 

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.