musing for fun – caeblogs

Alas, it feels like I’ve formed a habit of only posting on here once or twice a year, and only when there is something to share. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really, really, going to try to work on getting more writing done here.

Anyway, remember the short story, Locked, which I posted about back in 2019 following an unsuccessful BAME competition entry? Well, as promised, I didn’t lose hope and decided to enter it into another competition, because I truly believed in it enough to give it another go elsewhere. With the saying “go big or go home” in mind, late last year, I took a deep breath and entered Locked into an international competition, the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. To my shock, this time, I got a little further in the process. On Tuesday, I received an email from a rep at the Commonwealth Foundation informing me that my story hadn’t been shortlisted, but it had been longlisted out of 6,423 entries from 50 Commonwealth countries, and urging me to keep writing. I was so happy to hear this, you would have thought I had actually won the competition. Not that I would ever dream of stopping writing, but it gave me some validation that what I do can be appreciated in a much more prestigious circle than I had imagined possible. If you are interested in reading the story, you can find it here. Feel free to let me know what you think about it.

My second bit of good news came a little later that day. I originally published an ebook version of The Yam Po Club back in 2013 and had been procrastinating about producing a paperback version ever since. This was mostly because I felt it needed a more vibrant cover for a paperback than what I had. Seeing as I am the queen of procrastination, I kept putting this off until earlier this year when a number of my high school friends enquired about the availability of a paperback version for their kids to read. There’s nothing better to inspire productivity than a challenge, so I spent a good chunk of time editing the text and creating a new cover. The updated ebook and new paperback became available for sale last week, but I was really not expecting to see the paperback version climb up to the number one position for new releases for Children’s Africa Books on Amazon.com. It was even ahead of Shuri! That alone made me smile. You can get your ebook and paperback copy of The Yam Po Club at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Scribd and Okadabooks.

My third good news is something I was hoping to post about today, but I’ll have to leave it for a few days more due to publication delays on some retail platforms. Just know that something else is coming. It involves a translation into a language I haven’t ventured into yet. So, if you’ve been following the translation journey of my books, it’s not another German, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian translation. Any guesses? Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough.

Catch you all sooner than later!