November 4th novel excerpt

"sink or swim, what's your game?"I eyed Billy Giggle with a narrowed grey lens,christ I hated this ginger bastard. What was his problem?With me, with humans, with life?
"It's a toy Billy," I groaned letting my jet black hair spool over my shoulder. It was my pride and joy my hair, mother said we originated from the first Cherokees, and my hair made me look lean and gamely long as it was. I wasn't wearing no weave like the other black girls,i may not have their features but when I run my hands through my hair in  Jermaine Clarkson's class him and his friend Claudelle are simply hypnotised. I pretend like I don't see then start doing all these things in the loreal advert I saw, you know, " because I'm worth it," then I  look at billy whose cracking up, make a fart noise and say in a really masculine voice," can I go to the bathroom please miss?" Those idiots fall for it each time, and look at each other in confusion. I love head fuckin people like this. Last year I was really popular, then Sheila Madsen started this rumour that I was a transgender girl who had been abused. The whole school went wild with it, she also put in,"and she smells as well." After six months of being avoided, ignored, and the object of ridicule I realised what a tough place the world was. How nobody was your puppet like you think when your popular, in fact most of them secretly resent you. The only kid that would talk to me for miles was this fat kid, Billy Figgle. The same thing had happened to him kind of with Roger fenis, the worst player on the rugby team.Word was Billy's dad was the complete opposite of Billy, his parents were divorced and lived two completely opposite lives. His dad was some hot shot sports agent who had refused to sign ' the Fenis," who to his face they called him terminator of the pitch, and behind his back...they called him crap. There's strategy in the good old game, to win you have to be a tactician,but poor old Rodge hadn't been born with any of that. The boy could run I kid you not my friend,first one in the dinner line every time. Yet on the field when he was dragged down....It....was.....merciless. The more people talked about Rogers failures, the more he resented Billy...and made his life as unbearable as it could get.

Anyway I miss my point,im always missing my point.Me and Billy are circling the pool in the sports gym after sneaking out of double science watching the teddy bear with the spliff in its mouth, to see if it sinks or swims.
" Sink or swim Dick sponge,"
"It'll float, or you'll have to put your lifeguard costume and jump in to save it."He smiles sheepishly. " Tranny I don't have a baywatch bod like you." I guess this is what my life has come too,i am defending my sister's Teddy Bear Albert. Shit I had no one else to defend anymore,dad was gone , "Olivia your mother and I are taking a little sabbatical from one another," translation DIVORCE.
"Were different people," and I wonder if he says that to convince himself when his sleeping with the tea lady at his job as a Market research team leader, or one of those stupid title jobs your supposed to grow out of when you finish uni. Funny that, how Dad doesn't think I know stuff, maybe it's the way I write things down, all those letters I sent him when he'd been inside. I wish they'd been neater, trimmed like a haircut, perched neatly on the page like an egg lined with soldiers, instead they were wild and erratic, panicked, with words like We need you, and Why did you do this, at the time I needed to understand.Now I know that things are charcoal and grey, or blurred in between watercolours. Mum made me understand as best as I could,ive found it hard to meet my fathers true gaze since then. Billy says a true gaze is when you see right through someone, like you trust them. " You should know what some grownups get up to,"my mother lied,her pencil frame almost a strand in the wind.I wiped the tears from her cheeks as she cuddled me on the landing, where the rats had half eaten her fake Persian rug.

I hang out with William Figgle because I guess mum and dad's divorce really messed me up,mum says figgs is messed up too.

Eyes On Me: Chapter 1, by Otatade Okojie

Eyes On Me: Chapter 1, by Otatade Okojie

Fifty shades of digitisation

I read somewhere that first drafts are like scooping sand into a bucket, so later on you can build sand castles. Thank-you Instagram. That helped so much. Many of you know I have been working on my series of novels for #deliciousDecember which I am extremely excited about. It's my opportunity to challenge that creative part of myself which sees the blank page and is absolutely horrified. There's nothing more frustrating than a barren page, or for me a pen which bears no fruit. This morning I endured another dose of #fiftyshadesofgrey, wow that film is sinfully hot. Would have liked to watch it with some butterscotch popcorn and some Bailey's😇,but enjoyed it none the less. I love the sexual tension and the chemistry between the two characters. What I love more though is the marketing behind fifty shades, how it was publicised and the fact that it was vanity publishing. I believe in this new age of evolving digital technology and independent authors there is much to learn.

The four billion hit challenge: Tune in

Four billion hits this is my goal for redebony this month,so those of you who are fans of the site, tune in, I plan to fail my way to success.  As a creative we need that daily dose of motivation,inspiration,and drive,i was flicking through my collage of manuscripts and looking at ways to channel creativity. Ideas are delicious things but we falter at the wake of them, terrified to implement action to those goals we put in place. Procrastination creeps in like a seductive odour charming us away with delicious fear. What is ailing you about your latest project? What is creating the block? Are you a perfectionist? A lot of people announce this as though it is something to be proud of, they tell you to announce it in interviews so you can get the job, we often think it makes us sound smarter,more organised, yet the reality is....some of the most stagnant people in our society,and the most successful are perfectionist. There are two sides of a very shiny coin. Perfectionism is also about anxiety, clack of confidence and procrastination. Believe in what you can do and take bold steps towards it.Redebony

Inviting a dream

I thought to myself this morning it must be a very frustrating thing to be a dream, to have such a future awaiting you, traveller, yet your means of transport lacks the fuel to give you the rebirth you require. It is a season for dreams to usher us in and whisper the deliciousness of their adventures. For them to be able to pitch themselves and auction their beauty for sale. For your mind, I will give you your dreams , for your vision I will give you your dreams, for your habits and your discipline, I will give you your dreams. Yet do not fear to be a unique signature on a stamped envelope, the universe demands. Do not fear to hold your colours boldly to the mass stand at the top of the lighthouse and wave for a tired dream to stumble it's way to your golden shores.

Focusing the mind

Life is full of distractions, at no time do you allow it when you've rolled the dice and have figured out the game, to get inside your head. It is a keeper of souls. It claims victims, and those with baggage become casualties of life in this torrid chess game. Your next move should not be to be selfish but to focus on s higher self, on a more intuitive self, that self will guide you, that self will heal you, and remove the clutter of yesterdays pain. It is maddening to believe life claims so many casualties without goals without tasks without plans. Be a keen observer and a lit match when it is time for action. The opportunities that came to you last year may not arrive this year, the story you sold yourself last year may be dysfunctional for this year. This year the conversations may have added up, demanding that you challenge the doubt within, so challenge it. Face it off. It is one of the opponent's blocking your path to a realised dream, doubt procrastination and the inability to focus. Channel the genius and simplicity of those who came before you, buckle down and focus.

Obsession and work

I was listening to a motivational video this morning as I often do to spur me on from writers block, or any negative chi blocks in the morning. The topic was being obsessed. The argument was that as an omnipotent figure in the design of your work, you have to become obsessed with it, consumed by it, go beyond the basic hard work skeleton. You see, a story is formulating already. We are the stories we tell ourselves, the beliefs we have in our potential. If we believe we can produce 2000 more words in the night , this night, we will. The mind is as water it is a free thing, mind and brain are separate. The brain has a structure, a format an organ, the mind is an infinitive. It will take you to where eagles soar, a phoenix laid it's first egg, man mated with sea beast to form the first mermaid, it is wizardry. To not tap into its Pandora, and allow yourself a little of the Jekyll in you, should be identified as self treason. Your life is your mind, the internal dialogue you have within yourself , a rhetoric we hold unto. Yet with the Mozart's, and the Einstein's, and the Marx I recommend we change a little of the conversation, tilt that gate open and let some of that river shimmer out.

Idealisms of love

Yesterday I thought about something so frustrating it baffled me. The ideal of love versus it's realities. Someone I know used to tell me that love itself is chemicals in the brain, signals the body sends, and yet even in my most jaded and awake moments I'd like to believe it's more than that. For me as an author a writer, someone very passionate, id like to believe it is more compelling than this. It is it's own animal, with its own story,and less of the scientific and the biology please. Love is expression, of the highest order of the truest self. We unleash a secret part of ourselves, gated and protected, letting the world creep in. We are both with and without form, a noun and nameless, a print, and an invisible stencil upon someone's heart. When you go through loneliness the ache is so bad, like a starving child in a third world country, you need that human interaction , that depth of conversation, those moments to admire someone separate from you, those moments to let the heat suffocate your sanity. Here's to love and all its madness.

Love as escapism?

Terry and Tommy, funny names for characters in love, but that's where my journey as a writer began...in dreams. When I couldn't get to sleep I used to tell myself bed time stories with these two characters that always fell in love after a series of very complicated events. One of them would hate each other from the start, and then over time they would begin to fall for the strengths and the beauty of one another. I was a hopeless romantic as a child, you couldn't keep me away from the Jude deverauxs, Judith Mcnaught  and my addiction Millsand Boons novels. The characters always met in the middle, the characters always fell in love, and their love consumed the busy pages of my notebooks scattered all around my room. Love has its trials and for me it's trials are the complications of the characters. When I was older I took to inventing my own nuances of love. A 5 ft something fair skinned guy that used to live two streets away from me in the sixth form. I used to scribble love letters to him at the early dawn and directly post them to his letter box, poor guy, beautiful smile. I remember the way his eyes twinkled and the butterflies I felt each time I captured that feeling on the page, then in time, I realised, it was my feeling. It didn't belong to him because he didn't feel such a way, I remember the way he walked commandeering the wind, his jacket slicing through air like a blade. He was a beautiful man, but I think I like Shakespeare have always been in love with the idea of being in love. Maybe if you love someone else for a minute you can escape yourself, after all , your attention is elsewhere. Yet in reality we should develop rather than try to escape.

The complex of inner truths

We tremble at the mercy of a pen, pinched words lost sentences in translation. A brain that is mercilessly stoic at times, we find ourselves engulfed in ideas and questions that keep us circulating hungrily for answers. Where do I see this work going? What is its progression? Who would it appeal to? I have half written up to a thousand books in my head, scribbled them out daintily signed and sealed the manuscripts posting them to some eager editor who awaited with baited breath. In reality I am still challenged by the quirks of constructing a novel, be it fiction or non,manuscripts are masterpieces of the mind, they are gateways into the soul , confiscating curtains which seal and barricade the mind from the truth. What you write may be fiction, but there is a part of it that awakens a sleeping Goliath, truth. Why is truth a Goliath, because in the mind as a writer it is so easily bent and folded, then after being worked and reworked , stands David, a shining reckless parable of complex components, yet a deeper truth. The truth is never hollow. It is founded upon stories that the eye whispers to it, and the ears gossip.

Leap to faith

It's with faith we do things, we take risks that there is no guarantee will pay off. No guarantee you will land on solid ground once you leap into the air blind, yet thrust yourself you must. Trust yourself you must. It is madness when we leap blind not to trust the self. I was thinking today about all the time i had to take a risk on myself, seeing the dream that others could not see, touching it, feeling it, enveloping myself in it. There were days when I felt like backing down, when the put downs of others kept me alienated from my highest self, wishing that I could be, or think like everybody else. It lasted but aminute, and I returned to seeing what I saw with my vision untainted. Channeling the wisdom and the faith that had planted itself deep within, like a stubborn seed, angry to be removed. My dreams gave me a voice, they fueled my hunger, they held my hand as I leapt ungracefully a stumbling gazelle in the mist of my own imagination. I tell you now, as I said to myself in journals, letters, on dictaphones, at least try and fail, then learn and grow. At least develop, at least challenge yourself and at least believe in your potential.

Method to your madness

It never stops does it. I was thinking about the anxiety we experience when it comes to our work, the fear of not being good enough, worthy enough, or sharp enough to execute. Everybody goes through it.It is a ear of two selves. The hardest thing to do is believe in something you cannot see yet, whilst the rest of the world, thrash at you with their commentary, and looks of disappointment. You must have tunnel vision at all times, this is not their vision, it's yours. This is not their passion it's yours, it's your promise to yourself. Have a schedule and execute daily, believe in your potential, even if your talking to yourself on the street challenging your mind, you must be able to talk yourself into success. You must be able to facilitate new habits that will get you to where you need to get to. There is a difference between wishing upon a star, a dream and having a method.