One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2016 is to read more. Finding the time to read became really difficult once I entered the workforce. In school I used to average three novels a week. And more during the summer holidays. Reading was always my favourite thing to do. Even in university I still found time to read, even though by then I had dropped down to about a novel every 2-3 weeks. Once I started working, reading became even…
I often ponder the differences between various groups of readers in this world, when it comes to speculative fiction. What is speculative fiction? Wikipedia defines speculative fiction as “a broad umbrella category of narrative fiction referring to any fiction story that includes elements, settings and characters whose features are created out of human imagination and speculation rather than based on attested reality and everyday life”. The emphasis in that quote is mine, and it frames the crux of my wondering…
There is an interesting conversation I saw on Facebook today. It is about the mockery and hostility between Africans of various cultural backgrounds, and towards Africans who do not quite fit the stereotype of what a “real” African is. Specifically, Africans with a diaspora background. The question of which African culture will accept you is an interesting one. What is more interesting, in my opinion, is the inevitable change that all cultures in this world experience over time. Consider for…
There is something disturbing about how much progress humanity has made in science and technology, yet how little we have progressed as a human society. A common notion is for western or western-oriented societies to style themselves as progressive, tolerant and enlightened, while African, or Middle Eastern or Asian societies are often looked down upon as backward, intolerant and often primitive. The Middle East especially is presented to us in the CNNs, BBCs and France24s of this world as a…
The journal KUT asked me to submit a story for their latest issue, and so I submitted my new short story, The Crabface Contract. Today my short story got published, along with many other great stories from incredible African writers. One of my favourite short stories in this edition is an intriguing science fiction story titled Downgraded, by the amazing writer Akaliza Keza Gara. You can click here to read my story over on the KUT website. Image credits: Original image found at pixabay.com (License:…
The first Huza Press Award Ceremony for the 2015 Short Story Prize happened last Friday, 4th September. It was an amazing evening, and an impressively well put together event! My short story Nomansland had been shortlisted. Even though I missed out on the winning prize, as second runner up, I managed to get honourable mention. There was a tie and the Prize was split between Darla Rudakubana with her shorty story Of Fear and of Guilt, and Daniel Rafiki with…
The recently concluded Short Story Day Africa #WriterPrompt competition on Facebook had this photograph of rain falling on concrete, as the inspiration for 200-word limit flash fiction. Here is my submission:
The visual for the protagonist, Jahida, of my short story Devil’s Village is inspired by a drawing I did, in April 2015. My pencil drawing is a copy of Baby Cakes, a character by the artist Henrique Naspolini, who in turn based it on a Trevor Claxton concept. Here is the pencil drawing I made, and below it are three versions I created by running various filters in Gimp, an image manipulation program.
My short story Devil’s Village, which was shortlisted for the Writivism 2015 Short Story Prize, is part of a novel I am working on. The Devil’s Village story actually takes place well into this novel. What follows is the work in progress of Chapter One of that novel. Western and Central African Allied Territory had been living under uninterrupted martial law for a whole generation. The Committee had designated this a military issue and declared a state of emergency…
In the forest behind the other tree with the hole in it, the one with the hole in the ground behind it, the hole where the hairy things live, the hole in the other tree with the hole in it is a door to the village where the hungry things live. The hungry things that keep the hairy things down in the hole in the ground behind the other tree with the hole in it. The hole that is the…