Category: Books

A Rose for Every Season

March 23rd, 2017

When a woman gets to her breaking point, two things are certain; vengeance or surrender.

If anyone told you that Helen chose neither vengeance nor surrender, you would react the same way I did. You would shake your head, laugh and walk away.

If you embody certain Kenyan mannerisms you’d throw in the phrase Ghai! Wacha jokes!

There is something beautiful about betrayal, a certain unveiling of character and actions that make life worth living. It is like watching two bulls lock horns and even though you are guaranteed the show of a lifetime, you know that at any moment the tables could be turned on you…and lastly there’s blood. Of all the magnificent colors in the world, why did blood have to be red and not silver?

So, there I was laughing when it hit me, that what Helen did is something that took not her courage, but her resolution…she did what I would never do, and that is why her story is worth telling.

PS: It’s just began, a process that I had to endure, the frustrations and pace in writing. I am pleased it’s being edited 🙂
Back to square one; reflecting on writing

March 16th, 2017
Have you ever found yourself going back to the beginning?

I am talking about a situation that makes you stop, go back in time, and then come to the present to figure out where you went wrong or why you did not see it coming?

This week has been my reflection week (hence few posts, if I may admit) and the key issue that has been bugging me is my writing.

Image courtesy of: Stocksnap

There are three things I wish everyone knew about writing and Writers:
1. Writers are not gods. We create worlds but we do not magically make them appear.
2. Writing takes time and energy. There are good days and bad days, but the bottom line is that there are days!
3. The first draft is just that…the first draft, and it takes more work to get it into that book that a reader holds.
So, I woke today at 2A.M.and sat on the floor beside my bed, pulled out my notebook and started updating the story I have been writing and halfway through, I found myself irritated by what I had written and frustrated that it was not flowing like I needed it to.

I closed the notebook and went back to sleep.

When I woke up at 6:30A.M, I opened that notebook and there it was again, three pages of babbling that did not appeal to the story I was writing and as I looked at it, I went back in time and asked myself, “why am I writing this story in the first place? Why have I been writing every day? What’s so unique about this story?”

As am I typing this, the answer still remains, “It’s you who is impatient.” This story wants to be told, and I started out so well, when I was optimistic about it but now because of other projects and work, I have set it aside and only come to it when I am frustrated.

Have you ever found yourself going back to the beginning? If you have, don’t be afraid of what you might find as your weak spot. It will freak you out, make you sad, angry or disappointed in people and yourself, but…if it’s to do with something you are passionate about, it is definitely worth the trip!

I am working on letting go of my frustrations because…this book deserves better, my writing deserves the best.
My week so far

March 11th, 2017
I am officially a year older! Well, March is my birthday month and I was looking forward to having a nice laid back fun day spent at Java, sipping coffee and eating chocolate fudge cake. Well, that’s what I thought I would do, when I posted this.

The truth is, my birthday landed on a working day and I stayed up till 1:00am getting things done.

I woke up on Thursday feeling out of sorts because the first song I came across my playlist was Stay With Me by Sam Smith and I wasn’t in the mood for feeling blue.

So, I walk into the office all blue and moody and grouchy and “I don’t want to talk to anybody” mood written all over my face when my Supervisor says, “Listen, you and I are going to Java today to get coffee and cake! Alright?”

Now, Heaven is in my face and I say “Alright,” and that was the beginning of a fun day…well, at least for a couple of hours because work had to be done, reports and emails had to be read, proofed, edited and sent.

The highlights of my week had to be:
1. Learning that I am aging quite gracefully and my baby cheeks are still on point.
2. Understanding that life goes on because it should never stop, and whenever I want the world to stop for me, it will sprint instead!
3. Love is…
4. Getting an awesome Thermos Flask from my Mom because she knows I could use some coffee while at work, and besides she is worried sick that I am starting to lose weight again.
5. Getting a copy of Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie from my sister 🙂
6. Getting 4 awesome books to read.
7. Celebrating International Women’s Day and appreciating the fact that the world is working towards gender equality because women’s rights are human rights, and this journey will take a lot of effort and time.
Books I’m looking forward to reading!
$2 books on Amazon that I want to read

March 2nd, 2017
There’s nothing like ‘enough books.’

I love both print and eBooks and it’s because of my love for Kindle that sent me straight to the Kindle Store in search of books under two dollars ($2).

Here’s what I have so far:
1. Eve of a Hundred Midnights by Bill Lascher: $1.99
2. The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck: $1.99

3. The Professor by Robert Bailey : $0.99

4. Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale: $1.99

5. The Sapphire Heist by Lauren Blakely : $2.00

I’m keeping my eyes on these five titles for now, I am crossing my fingers that the price of “Everything we Keep” does not go up before my pay day! It’s my #BirthdayMonth and I am looking to indulge in some new books and thrills!

Have you read these books? Which one would you recommend and are there any books I’m missing out on?
Finding my voice and then some

February 28th, 2017

I have been posting on this blog for two years. I was on blogger before this and somewhere in between I published four books on amazon.

You would think, wow! However, some days I sit back and it feels like I have not done a thing worth bragging about, and it takes never ending rain like the one pouring outside my window to remind me of this. I am a sunny kind of girl. The cold weather gets me in a funk, and since I am on medication, I cannot drink as much coffee as I would love to.

You may be a reader or writer or blogger or all, as you read this, but the thing is, have you ever felt like it’s not enough?

I have and it’s not the feeling but rather the situation that “I DO” all the time that gets to me.

It is twenty three minutes past seven and I have been at work, shielded from the rain, longing to go home and these thoughts assailed me. They have refused to walk in the rain and let me be. It does not help that my mentor is demanding a draft of my written work by Friday, but my heart and mind’s not in it.

I wonder whether my feelings would have changed tomorrow having scheduled this post?

I have written “The Crown of The Sea” but it does not flow or scream ‘indulge me’ like I would want it to.

At this point, I am scared to share it with anyone, what if they like it? What if they don’t? Worse off, what if they are unmoved by it, like I am?

Sometimes when I think about writing, I find myself uncertain of my voice and style and what comes to life when someone reads a story I wrote, but if there is one thing I am slowly coming to accept it’s that it will slowly come to be…

I am taking my own advice and setting the manuscript aside, working on projects, traveling a little bit, and then I will get back to it.

So, does it get easier? I don’t know, and I am looking forward to whatever I will experience as I keep writing.

Have a lovely week!

Readers, keep reading and Writers, please keep writing! 🙂
A little bit of you

February 18th, 2017

If there was a time when Mercy could have smiled, it would have been at her engagement party; instead, she was on her balcony watching guests stream into her two-bedroom apartment.

Thank you Gratisography 🙂

Her sisters were not coming.

Grace had simply sent her a text message ‘I am not for this.’

Noella, the baby of the house, smiled when she’d told her the news, “Well, are you sure? I kind of find it a little bit rushed, you caught him cheating, like a minute ago and the now, he goes on one knee? But, if you’re sure sawa sawa, I’ll be going out with my friends though.”

Her fiancee, Henry, was welcoming the guests.

He had a wicked smile, the one that made women commit all kinds of sins in their minds, and sometime when she looked at him, she saw little bits of her dreams splattered all over his face. Sometimes, like right now, she felt like she could fly from her balcony and land on the ground a beautiful mess…sometimes she asked herself, ” what happened to the little bit of you?”

Her thoughts danced around her, and then she heard him call her name, and somewhere in that moment, she looked down…and there he was, the little bit of her, the one who made her simmer…dreadlocks, tatoos, caramel…and a smile. He had her dreams all over him, and he stood there…hands in his pockets, his eyes asking the only question she knew “why?”
The man from the sea

January 12th, 2017

If people knew about him, they would cast him out. He would be the genie they heard about. The face to the man they were told to fear as children. I wonder, did anyone ever lay eyes upon him and live to tell of it? When people speak of Neema, they speak of an unmatched beauty and unrivaled wrath.

They speak of her anger as though it was a strong wave hitting the shore.

Neema was grace.

She was silence.

She was the one who saw truth when our people saw lies and greed. Her mistake was to speak about it and fight it.

She was never one to keep her tongue between her teeth!

The man from the sea visited her every night until the day she took her first steps and that was the last time I saw her as a child. He handed me three pearls: uzima, baraka and amani. I carried these pearls home and wrapped them in my kanga and hid them under my mat.

My husband would have traded them for mnazi had he found them, but he would never give me a child had I asked.
The Crown of the Sea

January 10th, 2017

Chapter One

A tale is told among the old souls, of a Queen; the beautiful one who lived among the great creatures of the Indian Ocean.

She graced the land when the moon was high up in the sky. Those who saw her say that her skin glowed like the moon and the trees bowed when she walked past them. It was a soft swoosh of leaves, a swaying of such strong and tall living things. They believed she was not of this world, for no woman could have such grace and beauty at a glance. But how would they know without having laid their eyes upon her? Others say that she was a siren who charmed the young fishermen into jumping off their boats into the deep ocean floor with her. And I ask, how would they know yet no one graced the shores of the ocean at night? However, of all that is said about her, one thing rings true; her crown.

They all say that she wore a crown of sea shells and pearls with one flower at the apex. If I were to start from somewhere, I would start with her crown. Before we proceed, sit down, have some water and listen. This tale is told not because of her beauty or might, but because no one has ever heard it from the lips of an old soul. As word spread about her across the lands, so did fear and evil, but what is evil and what’s there to fear if not a lack of understanding?

Her mother crowned her Neema at birth. The ones who spoke of her beauty and cruelty knew nothing of the turmoil in her heart. They saw what they wanted to see.

It was Jabali who could have set things right, but even he could not withstand the purity she oozed and in denying her, he set upon us a wrath unlike no curse man has ever seen.
To set or not to set goals

January 2nd, 2017

Jambo! Chances are you have heard the phrase “Happy new year!” more than you’ve heard “how are you?” So,I am not going to add to that list, but it’s great that you are reading this. It is even greater that my assumption is stronger, and that you’ll make it to the end of this post.

So, 2017, uh?

Time flies so fast, wasn’t it just the millennium yesterday? How old is Facebook again? And last year wasn’t it just SnapChat’s year? And of course who can forget the epic showdown on democracy? If you’re American and you’re reading this no disrespect or harm here, but voting in Trump just had me speechless! Let’s agree to totally disagree that it was the highlight of last year. Forget that,it’s a new year and like most people I am struggling with the decision of either setting or not setting goals.

First, I rarely meet the goals I set every year. Secondly, it is boring to set goals because life always springs up new stuff on me along the way. So, to set or not to set goals, that is the question!

I thought about it and realized that there is a lot for me to do and why not settle in the middle. I can set some goals in certain aspects of my life and leave the other aspects as open as I can. For example, I’d love to read at least 100 books this year and review them on Goodreads. I can set that.

I’d also love to publish another African series.I have set a timeline of February for the first draft. I can definitely work on that and also source for a cover creator by March. I can work with these timelines to produce content but if there is one area I am unable to tap into, it has got to be my studies, work, and fitness.

So, to set or not to set goals, I am learning that choices are personal and whatever I choose I have to take responsibility for seeing it through and accepting the consequences. So, until then, here are a few titles I’m reading today because it’s back to work tomorrow.
The place you call home

December 28th, 2016

The bravest man is the one assured of his death. Wakoli, the village cobbler, was such a man. You never met him, but Wakoli could look at your shoe and stitch it in one motion, but the same hands could not hold a woman’s hand without his knees shaking.

It came as a surprise when he suddenly said that he wanted to return to his father’s land. We sat with him as one of his hands went into the shoe and the other the needle, pulling and fastening and fixing. He would say, “A man has no friends in this world,” every time he talked about his ancestral home. He would pick another shoe, look at it and smile.

“You can tell a lot about a man’s shoes. How he takes care of the things that protect his feet as he leaves footprints on the earth. Some shoes speak of love, others, misery, but my Father’s home is awaiting me.” Wakoli was not a day older than your Father, but his back was bent from all the stitching he did. He carried his sack of shoes waiting for his clients to come for them. The sack was old and torn but never did a shoe fall from it.

Wakoli was the wind. He came and went as he pleased. Everyone at home knew him, but even so, he was the only one who saw me beneath the busaa. No, that is not true, he was one of the few who saw me, your mother- Nyanam, was the other. She was the only woman who could carry ten pots of water and not complain of a stiff neck come dusk.

She would laugh until you felt as though Heaven was with you. When she cooked, the food would warm your soul, and she never let me sleep hungry. She would come to the busaa den looking for me, “Shemeji, you have to eat what I made today, you know you are the only one who appreciates my cooking, eh? Now how about a few mouthfuls then you can continue quenching your thirst?”

An excerpt from The Place you Call Home a short story published on Smashwords