Source: Meme Generator
Hello everyone.
It’s been a while since I last blogged. Oh, who am I kidding. I haven’t put up a blog post in two months and I’m so sorry about that. My life has been kind of… stuck in limbo and it reflected both in my writing, my health journey, and my blogging
I will now take each of these issues one, at a time.
Source: Goodreads
I’ve always been a person that those who know me will consider as being not totally normal. Which is good. I’m okay with not being like everyone else. I smile when people say jokingly, “You know you’re not normal right?”
That’s how much I love that term.
So it is to be expected that when I stumbled onto a book with the title How to be a Normal Person I was intrigued.
Then I read this synopsis:
Gustavo Tiberius is not normal. He knows this. Everyone in his small town of Abby, Oregon, knows this. He reads encyclopedias every night before bed. He has a pet ferret called Harry S. Truman. He owns a video rental store that no one goes to. His closest friends are a lady named Lottie with drag queen hair and a trio of elderly Vespa riders known as the We Three Queens.
Gus is not normal. And he’s fine with that. All he wants is to be left alone.
Until Casey, an asexual stoner hipster and the newest employee at Lottie’s Lattes, enters his life. For some reason, Casey thinks Gus is the greatest thing ever. And maybe Gus is starting to think the same thing about Casey, even if Casey is obsessive about Instagramming his food.
But Gus isn’t normal and Casey deserves someone who can be. Suddenly wanting to be that someone, Gus steps out of his comfort zone and plans to become the most normal person ever.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Okay. I’ve been a very naughty girl. Lol. Forgive me though. Life gave me a kick in the nuts and then proceeded to pummel me into the floor. But it was only to give me an idea of what it is I actually wanted from said life and how off-course I am at the moment.
Trying to put things into play to make sure that I’m on the right path now and I’m happy to be back. Somewhat back I mean. Don’t have anything for today. Not that I haven’t heard any album/song I wanted to review (I have) or a new audiobook/drama I wanted to share (there are a ton). Rather, it’s just been a long day and I’m not in the mood to do an extensive review at the moment.
I intend to take the weekend to regroup and then would be back, hopefully by Monday, posting my Monday review.
For those who are wondering, I finished Otaare. Or rather, I semi-finished it. Will still go back and re-write parts of it, but I have the bare bones of the story down.
Started another story, this one suited to the friends to lovers call and so far, the story’s flowing and I’m having fun with it. Will share a snippet of it some time soon.
A huge thank you 😀 to Damaria for reaching out to me. You’re right. Your mail made me feel so much better and was part of the reason why I came back to the blog. Thank you for making my day yesterday. And I’m really sorry that I’m just replying.
Until Monday… Here’s hoping we all have an amazing weekend.
Source: giphy.com
I’m working on yet another story. Put one of my old stories on hold so I could see if I could possibly make an LT3 call for Enemies to lovers.
It’s a work in progress and I’m almost 40k in. Of course there are days when I’m writing and all I can think is ‘this is crap. No one’s going to want to read this!’ But I keep right on writing. Edits will come and it will get better. That’s what I tell myself.
So, as is my usual refrain. Please forgive all grammatical errors and inconsistencies and enjoy:
Life didn’t just interrupt a couple of days for me. It interrupted my entire week. For the past week, I’ve been working 12-16 hours day. I’m exhausted and my brain is crying. I did manage to do some writing though. The only question is, how fruitful is said writing. Some days, I feel like I’m writing garbage. But I do know that a couple of weeks after, when I get a look at the script, any problems are things I can just as easily fix.
That’s what I tell myself every day when I wonder what the hell I’m writing.
Today’s snippet however is not what I’ve been working on since last week. Instead, it’s a story I started last year but couldn’t finish. This is the year I shall finish writing it :). So, enjoy. And like I usually say, ignore all grammatical errors and typos.
So, I wrote this story late last year because it was Christmas at Lagos and I just felt like writing the story. So, I ended up writing it, and I put it away for a while. I’ve started editing it and I should hopefully be sending it to a beta reader so. When it’s all ready, I should be sending it to a publishing house for hopeful publication. Will fill you guys in on how things go.
For today, here’s the snippet. And as is my usual refrain, please ignore any typos or grammatical inconsistencies as this is a rough draft:
After work and my internet got in the way of me putting up this post yesterday as well, I figured I could start a new segment on the blog and call it Life Interrupted. So for the days like last Wednesday when I had no concept of time till Friday or yesterday’s madness, I can still put up the day’s post, just on the day I have the time to do so.
Either that or I should just have the posts pre-written like days before :). I’ll keep you guys posted on what I do end up deciding on.
But anyway, on to today’s review!
When I first got into M/M romance (and by that I mean the novels and not the fanfiction which started years before that with SasuNaru, the ultimate pairing. Lol) the first author I discovered was Megan Derr. The second author was Sasha L. Miller.
Source: Tosin Sanni on Tumblr
I decided today’s Friday review would be the series on a Nigerian woman’s sexuality that a friend who’s one of the most talented artists I’ve ever met just recently completed.
I met Tosin Sanni a couple of years ago when I travelled to Cannes and we got to talking about art; his art to be precise and mine (hey, I’m a writer! I count as an artist ;)) and when he showed me some of his pieces I was awed. I know it’s said that art is subjective and people have different ways they respond to it. In my case, I responded to his art. From the paintings he did of Grace Jones and Fela Anikulapo Kuti, to his illustrations and even those little scribbles I sometimes catch him doing when he’s bored (he scribbles a lot. Lol).
So when he told me he’d done a new series on women embracing their bodies and their essence and asked that I help write a short piece for him about what I could see from the paintings, I jumped at the chance.
Here’s the write-up, followed by the paintings in the series–Sorry it’s not so clear. I took it with my phone–and then an attached image that links to his tumblr site if any of you’s interested in seeing more of his work.
Growing up in a secondary school in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria, there were two things pretty common in the bags of the students (mostly female and some male) that were within my age group of 13-16. One was the stacks of shiny CDs containing the latest blockbuster hits which we turned into some sort of barter system, in that, you have a movie I want to watch? Well I have one for you as well. The second thing we had in our bags were Harlequin Present novels. Sure we had the occasional Harlequin Desire or Blaze (and Silhouette if you wanted something with a bit more volume) but Harlequin Presents was our currency. Damn we had a ton of Harlequin novels. They were short and handy and you could lose yourself in the crazy zaniness of the characters and the plot. And the best part? They were cheap. I mean, I could buy a whole stack of them over the holidays and they wouldn’t put a dent in my savings. Seriously? Look at them:
Source: willreadforfeels.com
Every time I see an Harlequin Present cover, I smile and remember happier times. Sure the stories were crazy but that was why I loved them! (Same goes for Kdramas :)). Now imagine my delight when I found out in the later part of December last year that Dreamspinner was releasing a new category under their publication, titled Dreamspun Desires. And this was the cover…
Source: Dreamspinnerpress
I mean, can you see the connection. The circle. The main character/characters in said circle. The title that promises a very crazy ass ride? It was Harlequin Presents meets M/M romance. And that for me was a double whammy! And when I found out that it was just as cheap ($6.99 for two books!) I hit subscribe faster than you can say Holy smokes it’s Harlequin with two men.
So, after I hit subscribe and told them yeah, take my money every month. I can part with 6.99 for such craziness, I had to wait two weeks for the first set to be released (they released it on January 1st & 15th).
So, whilst everyone was looking forward to the New Year for various reasons, I was as well, although the principal reason for me was the realization that I was going to get Dreamspun’s first story on the very first day of the year.
Source: Rihanna’s Twitter Page
Quick confession. I am a huge huge Rihanna fan. I’ve been following her since she first came on the scene and sang If it’s Loving that You Want, to when she went bad and gave me Umbrella from her album, Good Girl Gone Bad, to when she was crooning Te Amo in Rated ‘R’, to her talking about wanting to feel Skin in her Loud album, to her asking Where Have You Been in Talk that Talk, and to her crying out that we should shine bright like a Diamond in Unapologetic. Through the years, I’ve loved her. I’ve grown to love her so much that all I have to hear is a beat and just the a note and I know she’s the one. I’ve laughed to Rihanna, danced to her songs and cried with her. She is one of my favorite artistes and although a lot of my friends don’t get it (my colleagues most certainly do not!) I haven’t cared as much because I. Love. Rihanna.
So when I discovered that Anti was released yesterday, I screamed. When I found out that Rihanna was offering us free download of her album, I just about fainted. So I followed the link, downloaded the album and settled down to play it out loud, using my Mac speakers for everyone in my office to also partake in the goodness that is Rihanna releasing a new album.
Boy, was I in for the shock of my life.
Alessandra Ebulu 