Heyyy!
It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you...
Sorry, sorry. I have my own mirror bitch. She sneaks into my writing sometimes.
Undoubtedly this sounds like gibberish to you if you don't watch Insecure. So let me explain; mirror bitch is your reflection with whom you share all sorts of affirmations including rapping if that's your thing. Usually, mine consists of lectures and dancing.
Well, anyway...
I haven't just been ignoring you out of laziness or meanness or neglect. I have actually been super-focused on several kinds of writing; which made finding the mental energy to write you the kind of blog posts you deserve, hard. I'm gonna tell you all about them and maybe they will help you on your own writing journeys if you have one, or your life journeys as well. Those are important too.
First of all, it was my birthday last week. I'm now officially forty-four.
Yes.
You read right.
I'm 44.
I'm writing it many times so I can begin to believe it.
I don't know what I thought 44 would feel like but I know this ain't it. For one thing, aside from the maybe increase in aches, pains, and that I can actually see grey hairs on my head; I feel just the same as I did when I was 24. And by just the same, I mean I don't feel like an adult yet...
Yeah, it's true. I'm middle-aged and still struggling to adult. I was going to write that my outlook is the same, and I don't feel wiser but that's not true. I can look back and see my journey and it's progression.
When I was younger, I was in a lot of pain, all the time.
Emotional pain, not the annoying, inexplicable physical pains I experience now.
I was angry at how 'the world had treated me'. All I wanted to do was be left alone and just get on with it and raise my child. I didn't understand why bad things kept happening to me. A lot of that is chronicled in Single Motherhood Unplugged and if you read that you know it's a river of pain and horror.
I read it the other day/year/whatever when I was transferring my titles to a new home and I was so glad that I didn't even recognize that girl that used to be me. I'm grateful to her though. Without her, I would not be.
So yeah, there has been growth.
There has been development.
Yet I still feel that I am just on the cusp of understanding who I am. Of getting to know who is the real me.
Do you watch Red Table Talk? Jada Pinkett Smith has become my guru on how to listen to yourself and navigate this thing called life. And as I listen to her realize things, I, in turn, come to realize that I am in a better place than even she is in some ways. Not all mind you, she's taught me a lot that I still hadn't grasped. Especially when it comes to sons and their mothers and their stepmothers.
It's a bit mind-boggling to tell you the truth. I read through the comments after each episode and come to realize how much a lot of people are still in that place that I have put behind me. It makes me so thankful...and also a bit smug.
Gratitude, honesty and not suffering fools gladly is the mantra that I live by.
Moving on swiftly...
I've been looking more and more into other markets for writing. It's great, putting out your work on ebook retail sites and waiting for readers to find them.
Really great.
Especially with Amazon's ever-changing algorithms and other shady practices that keep being exposed. In spite of how great it is, I thought that I would expand my out-of-the-box thinking to include things inside-the-box such as answering calls for submission. From flash fiction to niche stories, I've been compiling and submitting to magazines et al, because getting an entity to pay for your story is good for your street cred. It's also another source of income which I never sneeze at. Having good street cred is good for ALL your stories and so that's what I'm cultivating now.
I actually finished Cinderella By Any Other Name.
Yeah! Imagine.
It's so good. It made me cry. I was triggeredT. I submitted it to a magazine so we'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed for me?
A blog named Worthing is going to publish Sixes of One next month. I will be sure to link you on the day.
I also participated in this year's Wincest Big Bang for the Supernatural fandom for the first time. It was a weird experience in that I was probably the only black person there and very definitely the only African. I could see how different they treated me like maybe I was a lost chimpanzee that needed to be protected but obviously had no clue what was for its own good. I don't even think they realized their little patronizings.
The mod was very nice to me. Nice like you treat the 'special' kid in class. I thought that I just might be seeing what I expected to see - given twitter - but I was also doing a Malec Big Bang and a Malec Xmas anthology at the same time. The Shadowhunters fandom is a little more multifaceted, with people really from everywhere on earth.
There was such a hugely tangible difference in the dynamic.
I was just another person in the group. One or two were interested in coming to Kenya and asked me some questions but otherwise, just...general camaraderie. Anyway, I rolled my eyes and kept it moving.
Both of my Big Bangs are now up. You can read the Wincest here and Malec here.
I also entered my book In Search of Paradise for a novel contest on inkitt. You can read the story here and then leave a review. Honeypies, darlings, sweethearts, I'm asking, in honor of me birfday and turning FORTY-FOUR, please go leave me a review?
Thank you, here's a chocolate.
Muah.
Lastly, I want to end this post with gratitude. Thank you for reading all the way to the end, you're truly the best and I appreciate you. Have a good day.
It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you...
Sorry, sorry. I have my own mirror bitch. She sneaks into my writing sometimes.
Undoubtedly this sounds like gibberish to you if you don't watch Insecure. So let me explain; mirror bitch is your reflection with whom you share all sorts of affirmations including rapping if that's your thing. Usually, mine consists of lectures and dancing.
I haven't just been ignoring you out of laziness or meanness or neglect. I have actually been super-focused on several kinds of writing; which made finding the mental energy to write you the kind of blog posts you deserve, hard. I'm gonna tell you all about them and maybe they will help you on your own writing journeys if you have one, or your life journeys as well. Those are important too.
First of all, it was my birthday last week. I'm now officially forty-four.
Yes.
You read right.
I'm 44.
I'm writing it many times so I can begin to believe it.
I don't know what I thought 44 would feel like but I know this ain't it. For one thing, aside from the maybe increase in aches, pains, and that I can actually see grey hairs on my head; I feel just the same as I did when I was 24. And by just the same, I mean I don't feel like an adult yet...
Yeah, it's true. I'm middle-aged and still struggling to adult. I was going to write that my outlook is the same, and I don't feel wiser but that's not true. I can look back and see my journey and it's progression.
When I was younger, I was in a lot of pain, all the time.
Emotional pain, not the annoying, inexplicable physical pains I experience now.
I was angry at how 'the world had treated me'. All I wanted to do was be left alone and just get on with it and raise my child. I didn't understand why bad things kept happening to me. A lot of that is chronicled in Single Motherhood Unplugged and if you read that you know it's a river of pain and horror.
I read it the other day/year/whatever when I was transferring my titles to a new home and I was so glad that I didn't even recognize that girl that used to be me. I'm grateful to her though. Without her, I would not be.
So yeah, there has been growth.
There has been development.
Yet I still feel that I am just on the cusp of understanding who I am. Of getting to know who is the real me.
Do you watch Red Table Talk? Jada Pinkett Smith has become my guru on how to listen to yourself and navigate this thing called life. And as I listen to her realize things, I, in turn, come to realize that I am in a better place than even she is in some ways. Not all mind you, she's taught me a lot that I still hadn't grasped. Especially when it comes to sons and their mothers and their stepmothers.
It's a bit mind-boggling to tell you the truth. I read through the comments after each episode and come to realize how much a lot of people are still in that place that I have put behind me. It makes me so thankful...and also a bit smug.
Moving on swiftly...
I've been looking more and more into other markets for writing. It's great, putting out your work on ebook retail sites and waiting for readers to find them.
Really great.
Especially with Amazon's ever-changing algorithms and other shady practices that keep being exposed. In spite of how great it is, I thought that I would expand my out-of-the-box thinking to include things inside-the-box such as answering calls for submission. From flash fiction to niche stories, I've been compiling and submitting to magazines et al, because getting an entity to pay for your story is good for your street cred. It's also another source of income which I never sneeze at. Having good street cred is good for ALL your stories and so that's what I'm cultivating now.
I actually finished Cinderella By Any Other Name.
Yeah! Imagine.
It's so good. It made me cry. I was triggeredT. I submitted it to a magazine so we'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed for me?
A blog named Worthing is going to publish Sixes of One next month. I will be sure to link you on the day.
I also participated in this year's Wincest Big Bang for the Supernatural fandom for the first time. It was a weird experience in that I was probably the only black person there and very definitely the only African. I could see how different they treated me like maybe I was a lost chimpanzee that needed to be protected but obviously had no clue what was for its own good. I don't even think they realized their little patronizings.
The mod was very nice to me. Nice like you treat the 'special' kid in class. I thought that I just might be seeing what I expected to see - given twitter - but I was also doing a Malec Big Bang and a Malec Xmas anthology at the same time. The Shadowhunters fandom is a little more multifaceted, with people really from everywhere on earth.
There was such a hugely tangible difference in the dynamic.
I was just another person in the group. One or two were interested in coming to Kenya and asked me some questions but otherwise, just...general camaraderie. Anyway, I rolled my eyes and kept it moving.
Both of my Big Bangs are now up. You can read the Wincest here and Malec here.
Thank you, here's a chocolate.
Muah.
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