₦airaland Forum

Has anybody read the second story? Any comments?

Macteejay2:
Please someone should kindly help me with the Author/Writer of "Somolu Blues" l guess its an African Writer, l read it long time ago and the story is basically crime/suspense/love.

The book is just too good. Please kindly help me guys

The name of the author is Temple Omare Boyo

kay9:
Bravo, Ayo. Bravo. Your story left me grim; do you understand? Grim. I can remember only two works that have given me that feeling of crawling awe/horror before - a novel simply titled "Juju" that I read way back in high school (I don't even remember the author's name); and Enya's Braveheart sound track (yes, a song). Stephen King, Bloch, LeGuin, Rice - they all good, very good in fact, but none of them has precipitated that feeling in me yet. Maybe it's because your story truly defines 'horror' in the Nigerian way - you know, concepts like "wicked fate" - so wickedly unfortunate and crude and heartless and diabolic, and oh so real. I salute your heroine's courage at the face of the sea, with her demons screaming at the shadows of her subconscious.
Bravo!

But hey, that's not to say the story doesn't couldn't do with a little tickering. iice was right: your paragraphs at the beginning (Mami-water, Xmas, Benin, masquerades) didn't quite connect. Mind, I don't mean removing 'em entirely - just "repackage" them so they bond more strongly to the main story.

And your style of breaking the story into three titled [/b]parts - why not use a free-flowing flash-back style? Just a line of asterisks when you want to link back to start of the story, instead sub-titles. It's just my view, though.

[b]P.S: You have to learn to ignore people who don't understand certain forms of literature - people who derogate stories simply because it offends them. Replying such posts is giving credence to their . . .umm, well, uninformed, lopsided views.

Holla back!

Hey Kay9, Howz it going? Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Regarding ignoring certain people, I had from the outset said I will give every response my attention (whether negative or otherwise), and consider every suggestion/advice given. I am gracious enough to acknowledge and thank every single person who has taken the time to first of all read the whole story, and secondly leave their comments/suggestions even when I do not agree with those comments. Now, whether I incorporate all these comments in the body of my work is a different matter. Let me say here that I take on board every single suggestion I think would make the story better and am quick to discard those I think do not do so.

^{And for morons like lepashandi who are incapable of a simple coherent intelligent sentence and choose to make a total ass of themselves, well, there is nothing to do with their comments except tell them to bloody well shut up.}

@ Sisikill, where should I send the story? If you don't want to post your e-mail address on here, you can e-mail me using my id name at hotmail dot com.

Baby Jinx:
Tee hee hee!

I'm here and ready to go. . . put to me to work!

Sorry I took for every, I was getting my Jinxi persona on

Hiya, What ever happened to your Sisikill ID? Have you decided to give it a final rest? Plese see my question on the "Analyse This. . ." thread.

Who knows the whereabouts of Sisikill? I have noticed his/her disappearance from the forum of late.

Sisikill I hope you are alright. Abi has Seun once again exercised his executive powers in a heavy-handed manner and banned you on (or rather from posting on) Nairaland?

omotofine:
Best story i have read on NL so far. I believe u might do better to expand it into a novel.

OMG! Thanks a bunch. I am not sure about the novel bit though. I am trying to work on another totally different idea for a novel. I do not know how long that might last though. My attention span is not the greatest. Thanks all the same for the idea. Did I say though that the story has a second part.

inspira:
i think you did a pretty good job of rising from d initial point to the "climax" of sorts. anyway,it's a very good piece and u really got my attention while readng d story, want to read more.
really don't have anything 2 criticise but i think u shld check d development of the story to see that as ur developing d story,the characters are developing as well, .there was a good description of d events but i suggest that the xter's feelings shldn;t be left 2 much in d backgrd, know what i mean

I do indeed know what you mean. You made a very valid point. Thank you.


@Sisikill, Abeg no forget about me o.

lepashandi:
@Poster

the time you should spend foking your man, you are using it to write one stupid story.

@ lepashandi,

You will do well to crawl back into whatever gutter you crawled out of. I can see that it would be asking too much to expect anything intelligent to emanate from your backward self.

Abeg where is Seun? Please delete the trash this uncouth element has used in defacing my thread.

zukkie4eva:
Good one Ayo, good one. The story seemed very real and i could imagine the pain & horror Ameze felt. This world is evil!, u can never please people, imagine the same people her father helped turned against them. Amaeze's mother's curse would surely prevail in their lives!. . . . . _{now don't get too emotional, it 's just fiction!}

I love ur writing style. . . .

Thank you. Thanks for reading and especially for your high praise. It is very much appreciated.

princesa:
Too horrible to be criticized, I mean ewww, this doesn’t happen in reality does it
I wish I had never gone to read this horror filled story what an imagination you really have
For me, the story was captivating, tension filled and horrific

LOL. . . I must say that the story is not to everyone's taste. One of my sisters found it too gory and unrelenting, while another liked it. Thanks a lot for taking the time to read it.

@ A.R. if you want to contact me, email me on my id name at hotmail dot com.

Nnenna1:
I read something along the lines of this in Hints magazine years ago.

Not to discredit the authenticity of the story, cause it's pretty disgusting. Very good descriptions.

I can assure you that it is my original work. Like most works of fiction, it has its roots on real life occurences. Parts of it is based on a robbery attack made on my home in Lagos almost two decades ago (when I was away in boarding school in Benin-City) where around a dozen armed robbers laid seige on the house and attacked my mother and brother. Though I must add that all the gory bits are pure fiction. I must admit however that the bit of the father and daughter was informed by a discussion I once had with a few of my school mates when I was at university (and we were swapping tales about accidents and robberies) and someone shared this fascinating tale she had read about robbers who for no fathomable reason made a mother sleep with her son and the father his daughter. Like everyone else, I was appalled, but I filed it away for creative use someday.

So, I do not know what you might have read in the Hints magazine you referred to, but I assert my right to be known/acknowledged as owning the copyright in this work (inclusive of sequence of events, dialogue etc.).

Banderas:
Hey man, excellent stuff. I haven't had time to read the entire tale, I'll do so later. For starters, you speak about bar beach. Do realise that majority of your audience haven't been to bar beach. So you need to include a more detailed description of bar beach, not a summary. How about the bar beach, a popular tourist destination in the victoria Island area of lagos.

Also, your dialogue about the different flags didn't quite, work. The information got across, but it took a while to realise that was an explanation and not an experience. Perhaps "A white flag was used to indicate that the sea was calm, " would have been better, since it would have changed the tense of the sentence, indicating to the reader that this was a quick detour from the story itself

mami water who lived in the sea. That's a bit of a tautology there - a repetition. Like saying a car which had four tyres, or a man who walked on his legs. Mermaids always live in the sea. Perhaps you need to indicate that this mermaid lived in the nearby waters of the beach, or something along those lines.

Vortex - Try something simpler - perhaps current? Whirlpool?? Vortex is a bit too complex in my opinion

There are a few more - but most are minor corrections that your agent will always point out anyway if you do get published. I'll make sure I read sometime soon.

Thanks for the observation. Good point you raised regarding the mami water and the sea bit (though in Nigerian folklore, "mami water" also lives in rivers etc.). I however disagree on issue of a more detailed description of Bar Beach particularly beacause the beach itself is not significant to the telling of the story save for the fact that it is where she has come to end it all (it could be any beach anywhere in the world). What I thought necessary to put in the story was an explanation of the flagging system because not many people are familiar with the concept, but I do recall that the first friend I gave the story to read told me to totally expunge the flag business. I shall try to revise it.

Thanks a lot for taking a look at the story.

P.S. For those of you who found the story too gory or sickening and can spare the time, there is a tamer story I had published months ago on "Hackwriters" the University of Portsmouth Journal. It can be found by clicking the following link - http://www.hackwriters.com/AyoMC.htm . I hope you enjoy it.

vescucci:
So, who's the winner? Mad_Max! Ayomorocco a close runner-up. But I'm most impressed with doyin 13, though I do not care for his vendetta with Bluespice. Biased, yes, but it's my teaser.

At the risk of sounding like an over competitive Arrow, how come I am only a runner-up when we both got three questions a-piece? Hmmmmmmmm, I wonder. Well, I'll settle for runner-up then. LOL

Mad_Max:
Was Charles Dickens an aristocrat? Naw. I faintly recall reading that his background to Oliver Twist was furnished by his own WorkHouse experiences when his very poor father was sent to debtor's prison over a ridiculous amount. It was a trauma he never forgot and quite got over, poor chile.

I do not know much about the biography of Dickens, but do you know any other book you might have studied in school that has a young character who asks for more (other than Oliver Twist)? If there is such other book, then it might be that other author and I would have been wrong to say Dickens [but I doubt I am].

bluespice:
wow!
thats all i can say

wow
wow
wow
i love the resignation
i love the distance
this is beautiful
wow
good job man

OMG. Thank you so very much. This has made my evening. Thanks for reading. At a point, I feared nobody would read it, so I am really chuffed that you guys like it.

vescucci:
3. She's simply the most prolific female writer ever. It is said she wrote a book from beginning to end in a week. She's an oldie too.

vescucci:
3. One of her step-granddaughters is Diana, Princess of Wales.

After seeing your original post, I was waiting for you to come up with Barbara Cartland (or a further clue that it was her you were referring to). And with your further clues, you did. Whilst she broke the Guiness records for most amounts of books published in a year (a good few times), she is not the most prolific female writer. That title goes to Mary Faulkner who the 1986 Guiness book listed as the most prolific writer with over 900 book published - though she no longer holds that title (also at a point, the Guiness book listed Charles Harold St. John Hamilton as the most prolific writer based on the number of words he has printed - but this does not count here as he is male). Also, Barbara Cartland is no longer an oldie as she is dead (and has been for almost a decade. . . well ate least 8 years).

No. 2 is Charles Dickens; and I believe No. 3 as said before is Barbara Cartland and No. 6 is Thomas Harris.

Ndipe:
Do you guys know that Adichie once grew up in the same house that Chinua Achebe once lived?

Yes we do (at least, I do). i have read/watched over half a dozen interviews/articles where this fact is mentioned over and over.

Sisikill:
I'll be honored to! I'm working up something for someone, hope to be done with it in a few days. As soon as I'm done, I'll let you know.

Oh! Thank you. I will look out for your message.

vini:
Great story! Blood spilling
i think Hadley Chase has a serious rival in you.
keep it up lady!

Muchas Gracias. I am really glad you guys like the story. I did have my doubts. Regarding the Hadley Chase angle, there is just one small problem. I cannot write a good thriller to save my life. But the comparison is beyond flattering and I am on the verge of having visions of a high flying second profession as an author. . . LOL. I have however noticed that writing is no picnic.

iice:
I love the end B.T.W, either that or off a cliff _{sorry, a bit weird here}
Goodluck.  [/color]

LOL! Thanx.

Sisikill:
WOW!!! That was SICK and very DARING! I applaud you! Not many people will allow themselves go there.

Personally, I felt not getting a sense of the girl in the beginning was a good thing. After that kind of ordeal, it is only logical that the victim feels a little misplaced, there but not there kind of thing. I also like the fact it was relief not sadness I felt for her at the end.

Finally, the matter of fact what you related the story was what made it. You weren't overly emotional about it. . . the experience spoke for itself, you didn't have to write things to tug at the readers heartstrings.

Apart from a minor edits grammer and structure wise, I think it is very good!

Well Done!!!!

Thanks a bunch for your kind words Sisikill. As with most controversial subjects, somebody has to deal with these issues. Like I said, I intend to clean it up (well it and the others I want to compile), but you know what they say. . . drafting/writing is a field in which familiarity breeds satisfaction, so my eyes have stopped picking up even the most obvious of errors because they see what I intended or a perfect page. So can I ask a little favour ^{(Okay a massive favour)}? I know you are busy, but would you be so kind as to help me run it over (i.e. do a quick edit). I can provide you with the story in MS Word format. Whatever your response is, thanks anyway.

Thanks to everyone who has read the story. Please keep the comments coming. Much appreciated.

iice:
[color=#9900ff]I think the idea is good, i don't know if its me but i think it needs reshaping.
For the first few paragraphs i wasn't getting much of a 'feel' of the story.
Not enough hatred, bitterness and angst too i think.

Just my opinion ooo[/color]

Hey Iice, Thanks for reading.  I know what you mean about the beginning dragging a bit. I am trying to work on it believe me. When you say not enough hatred, bitterness and angst, do you mean on the girl's part? If yes, I was striving for resignation, desolation etc. . . that sort of thing. But I will take another look at the overall effect. Thanks again.

blissfullynaughty:
WOW! Jeez man, that is some warped stuff you have there. It is quite long though and it took a whole while for me to get through it. I did not see the sick angle coming at all. It's either you have a sick imagination or Nigeria is one crazy sick violent country. I did feel some pity for the girl.

Thanks for reading. A writer has to have an active imagination to write stories.

Now I have done a bit of amateur writing over the past year and I am thinking of taking it to the next level by compiling my stuff into a collection, cleaning it up and trying to get an agent. As is usual with these things, I have given a few of my stories to friends and colleagues to read and I would like to have the opinion of people who do not know me. So, I am pasting an excerpt of one of my stories which was published on Author-Me. [I must warn however, that the excerpt is not the beginning of the story].


[center]EXCERPT FROM     Silent Night, Bloody Night - [/center]

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and started dreaming of the masquerade festival. In my dream, the masquerades came out flamboyantly dressed, dancing through the square and weaving through the crowd of people who had gone to partake in the celebrations. There were drummers who dexterously beat their drums producing rhythms which were simply ethereal. Enthralled, my cousins and I were dancing in tune to the beat, and the drummers, spurred on by our enthusiastic dance, beat their drums faster and faster. I loved it and started dancing like someone possessed. By this time, I was in the middle of the square and people had formed a ring around me, cheering me on and chanting in tune to the beats. The masquerades joined me and we gyrated in unison. This continued for a while until one of the drummers started to beat his drum out of sync. Frowning, I stopped dancing to rebuke him, but he continued banging on his drum unperturbed. The other drummers stopped beating their drums as the banging from the errant drummer grew louder and louder until the square and indeed the ground reverberated with the force of his banging.

I jerked out of my bed startled. The banging was not coming from the drummer in my dream. It was real. I hastened out of bed, put my house coat over my nightie and ran out of my room to the landing where I met Dad and Osagie. Mum was standing in the doorway of her room, her eyes wide with fear.

Dad whispered that there were armed robbers trying to break into the house. There was a loud racket being made by the robbers. Dad said that he had counted over a dozen robbers who had surrounded the house and he had tried using the telephone to call the police but the telephone line had been disconnected. Iyen and Idehen had joined us on the landing by this time. Dad told all of us to go and hide as he did not know how long it would take for help to come and he did not want any harm to come to his family.

Before we could spring to action, the house gave a shudder as the front door collapsed under the barrage it had been subjected to. In poured a gang of men who were heavily armed with guns, cutlasses and machetes. They looked extremely organised, as I saw them fan out in different directions. I managed to count seven of them from my position at the top of the stairs and I beat a hasty retreat to my room, locked the door and hid under my bed. Apparently everyone else had locked their bedroom door because I heard simultaneous banging on the doors to all the bedrooms upstairs.


To Read The Full Story, Click HERE


If you do get to read the whole story, kindly provide some feedback. Be as brutal as you want. My ego can take harsh criticisms. All I will ask is don't say things like "it's awful", "it totally sucks" etc, without telling me why you think so. Don't get me wrong, I don't need you to tell me what to do to repair the story or make it better (you can if you want to and I will take all constructive criticism/advice on board), what I principally need from you guys is if you think it does not cut the mustard, tell me why you think so.

Thanks for reading this far and for all anticipated critiques.