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.)

Gaslighting 101 - And I'm Sick of It

There's a genocide going on in Palestine. 

It's obvious to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Hellen Keller, may she rest in peace. 

N.B. (In case you don't know who those are, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder are accomplished black American musicians who are also blind and Hellen Keller is an American writer who was both blind and deaf) - There, I saved you a Google search.

However, there is a certain imperialist subsection of society insisting on the right to not call this a genocide. They aren't saying it isn't. They're just saying you can't call it that. When they hear you call it that, they become very upset.

You might lose your job, or be evicted from your house, or get deported.

It's like those white women who are more concerned with not being called racist rather than with actually not being a racist. 

I mean...these people are diabolical and clearly living in another plane of mental illness but what I don't understand is why we all indulge them.

Israel doesn't want to be called a terrorist genocidal state? Okay then, everyone tiptoes around it and tries to appease. They try to find other words to call this situation or worse, try to convince these people that they are wrong. As if they don't know.

People are being so careful with their language so as not to offend and the people that they are trying not to offend are busy saying shit like this.

We have discovered that the so-called violent massacre of October 7th was just Israelis instituting the Hannibal directive on their own people. Furthermore, Hamas has shown more interest in giving back hostages than Israel has shown in taking them. 

But somehow, we're supposed to turn a blind eye and just continue to assume that Israel is good, and Palestine is bad.

There's a certain level of dumb that is required in order to live comfortably in this world and I don't have it. And sometimes I just want to scream in people's faces, "STOP. FUCKING. LYING!"

Because it's one thing to expect us to put up with things like this. It's another to have to smile about it and pretend everything is fine.

It's not.

Everything is fucked. 

You know there's a book by that name that I had begun to read. It started with a story about Witold Pilecki who was the first person to alert the world about the holocaust. To the surprise of no one who has lived through the last four years, nobody believed him.

Long story short, he infiltrated Auschwitz with the faith that 'the good guys' would send reinforcements and he'd be able to save everyone. 

Well, that didn't happen.

How long are we going to keep swallowing this baloney and calling it pork chops? Aren't you tired? I'm tired.

My Christmas Holiday

 Yes, I'm writing you an essay as if I'm still in primary school because this holiday was worth writing about. I was hoping to get a week off work but between December Decembering, rheumatoid arthritis, and procrastination, I did not finish my assigned work (and not all of it) until the 24th morning. 

Let's see there was a lot of swimming done.

                                                                 Christmas Caroling

Birthday Lunches

got a new tattoo

got a dog.

As you can see, I was super busy.

So anyway, on the 24th, we set out for Weathercock House in Limuru. Yes, just as the name suggests, it was a colonial throwback to the glory days of the empire. 

We arrived quite late what with rushing to finish work, the mechanic taking his time making the car roadworthy, and shopping for supplies. When we got there, the house was on top of a hill and the car kinda refused to climb it. 

Stress.

However, Timothy, the owner of Weathercock house offered to drive the car up the hill and proceeded to do some four-wheel drive shit on my poor not four-wheel drive car. The sun was just setting over the property and it bathed the garden in beautiful golden light. And what a garden it was. It's the reason I'm writing this essay.

We hadn't eaten a thing all day and were hoping to get a meal at some nearby restaurant but Timothy was like kill that story. Danger! Thieves! Also, there was no Uber, or Bolt, nothing operating in Limuru. Timothy was leaving so he wouldn't be available to drive our car back up the hill if we used that. 

Sadness ensued.

But we had with us, some frozen chips and chicken pieces as well as salad. We had wine, we had ice cream, we had chocolate chip cookies. We made do. Happily, we'd hired a chef for the next day so that was taken care of. 

An actual fire in a fireplace. A 72-inch tv. and creepy ass pictures on the wall. Weathercock House was like a journey into my own past. I grew up in a neighborhood where every other house had a zebra skin on the wall. Seeing it brought back memories of tagging along with my mother to visit her friends.

The kitchen had an honest to god Aga. The fridge was from 1950 but in very good working condition. The same could be said for the bathrooms, absolute 80s decor, except for the instant shower which was the only thing not working up to standard. A real pity since I really wanted to take a bath in the bathtub. Really relive my childhood.

The bed was like sleeping on a cloud. 

However...

Creepiness abounded as I said. There was, what I eventually realized was a 'service corridor' which actually ran parallel to the main corridor. The bedrooms were in an entirely other 'wing' of the house - very helpful for me to picture the manor houses I write about in Regency romances. And there was a hidden staircase that led to an attic - which I immediately decided was occupied by the ghost of this guy.

That wasn't the only creepy picture in the house. There were several.

But there was also a very cute little bar in the second part of the sitting room (it had three parts) and the reading nook was to die for. They let us have one pet so we brought our dog, who we thought was Alejandro at the time, but turns out she's Alejandra.

She was remarkably well-behaved. Didn't poop in the house once.

We woke the next day to a breakfast that was mid at best. I wasn't holding out much hope for the chef. But again, we had ice cream, we had Amarula, we had chocolate and we had the great outdoors. 

The gardens were remarkable. At least 40 years old, the trees were living things. We could feel their spirits. If there was anything that cemented to me the importance of conservation, it was being in the presence of those trees. So old that other plants had rooted in them so that every tree was festooned with at least two other trees, a vine and a flowering plant all tangled together and growing from a single root it seemed. Just standing beneath those trees was a spiritual experience.

Lunch was a million times better and so was dinner. Chris and I pretended to be slaves who had broken into master's house to drink his wine. 

Then we shot some sort of gangster movie that I'm still waiting to see. (Chris says he's editing). All in all, as Christmas goes, I'm counting it as one of my best - peaceful, full of love and food and rest. The journey back to Nairobi was also super smooth. And that's my Christmas holiday. If you want to tell me about yours, feel free. 

How Are We Feeling About AI?

 

So I've been on the anti-AI train for a while, mainly because the way it works now, it basically steals the work of creatives in order to produce just like...struggle versions of their work and suits, who know nothing about creative work, use AI to cut costs regardless of the quality of the work.

So just as someone who values quality, I've not really thought of it as a good thing. But recently, most of the programs that I use for creating designs such as Canva and even Microsoft, have come up with AI options for generating images.

Before, when I was creating a social media post or book cover, I'd search images for pics I could use but then, the other day I thought, what if I generated the image? After all, it's not as if I would have used an artist before, and this is an opportunity to get exactly what I wanted...I thought.

But surprisingly - or perhaps not - I found that it's just as difficult to generate what I want as it is to find it. Haitian Zombies? forget it. Mixed race couples? Da fuck? That's dangerous, no can do. African Gays? What? No.

So in conclusion, AI is just as unimaginative as the white suits who invented it. Creatives have nothing to worry about.

They have nothing on you.

Speaking of extremely creative and original work, In Search of Paradise is on discount. 

Have you copped it yet?

Book Sale In Search of Paradise

Occasionally as my skills get better, I like to improve aspects of my work where possible. I particularly love this new cover so I'm discounting my book by a lot to promote it. Please do buy for yourselves and your friends. It's that affordable.

Share this post and I just might buy YOU a copy. I want you to enjoy it. I know you will. So choose how you want to get it. Buy? Share? the choice is yours.

Christmas is around the corner after all.

Shades of Grey: the saga of Israel and Palestine

 I grew up watching South Africans fight for their freedom. They did some shit; burning people with tires in the middle of the street because they were identified as snitches is just one example. On the other hand, the Boers were busy beating people to death, right on TV because they dared to protest. They massacred students in that very famous massacre the year I was born. They detained people, from Nelson to Winnie to that Jewish guy you can watch in Live to Lead on Netflix. He lost his leg in a bombing in Malawi and when he woke up, he was terrified that the Boers had him. When he was told he was still with Frelimo but he lost his leg, he was relieved.

Can you even imagine the alternative if the loss of a leg fills you with relief?

The West called the South African freedom fighters, terrorists. Nelson Mandela was only removed from a terrorist watchlist in '94 or thereabouts when he was already the president of South Africa. It was only after the South African embassy in London was literally under siege (and it became less profitable to support it) that the beginning of dismantling apartheid in South Africa began. Now they all want to pretend that they were always huge supporters of Nelson Mandela and the ANC.

The narrative is the narrative until it's not.

That's why it's important not to wait for other people to tell you what to think. You must seek your own information and make up your own mind. 

The dichotomy of black and white, good and evil, is what trips people up I think. People think that if you fight back, using the same tactics as your oppressor, then you're not just as bad, you're worse than them. It's you, you're the problem, it's you.

Guys, it's all shades of grey. The meek might one day inherit the earth but they generally do not survive oppression or brutality.

They never give you alternatives for what you can do to mitigate this oppression - have you noticed? Every alternative is wrong. 

We've seen this with Black Lives Matter too. 

When it comes to Palestine though, there seems to be an extra layer of dgaf that happens. People are dead-eyed in the face of gruesome pictures of Palestinian children, shot, bombed, beaten, brutalized in every way imaginable. Somehow, it's all fine. 

It's all okay. 

It's antisemitism if you protest. It means you hate Jews. You want Jews to be killed. 

Jews are the victims. Don't you see that?

Hitler killed six million Jews a century ago. How many Palestinians have Jews killed?

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

I don't know how this is going to be resolved, but what I see is the Israeli government acting in bad faith. I see that they are the oppressors. And if there is to be any hope for humanity, we must all stand against this.