Beautiful Ones

So I’m on the home stretch with Murano, aka Italian Knights 7, aka Beppe’s story. There are about ten or so scenes that will connect the story from beginning to end and finish the flow. It’s not been an easy write, I’ll be honest. I knew what I wanted to write and I knew essentially what would happen and that the focus would be on Bep. Everything played in my head like a Christopher Nolan story, to the point where The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack has been my go to with everything. I mean not the bang-bang scenes, that would have been weird – but all the deep bits, the funny bits, the ‘where is this going mate’ bits, have had Hans Zimmer cheering it along. But I had a George RR Martin moment. The story got too big for me. I worried about how people would take to Mimi. Really worried. Because everyone knows that the heroine has to earn the hero – rarely the other way around, especially if he’s been established in previous books. Mimi is like a best mate and I want to protect her from any nonsense. It made me think what Beppe likes about so much that he falls for her and pretty damn hard. Let me try to do this without giving anything away. No spoilers.

1.       She’s a surgeon and she really enjoys it to a sort of perverse level. You kind of have to, in order to cut up people for a living and go home to sleep like a baby at night, no drugs involved.

2.       Speaking of drugs, she understands Bep’s vocation. You’ll get that when you read it.  

3.       She listens. To be as distracted as Beppe can be and to be patient enough to wait for him to get to his point and to hear what he’s said to have a conversation with him, rather than dismissing him as weird is something wonderful.

4.       She doesn’t give a fuck and she will tell you to your face. There are few people’s opinions that matter to her and they happen to be the same as Bep. Kismet.

5.       She’s kinky like him. You’ll see.

6.       She accepts him for who he is and that’s a lot when you think about the type of dude he is. Man’s wild.

7.       She’ll fight people for him. Verbally and physically. What it is to have a girl bat for you and bat hard with all the tools she has in her arsenal and then some, can only be a sign of true love and affection.

8.       His happiness is her happiness. The simplest things makes them both delight in the world and that shared joy brings the world into focus, excluding everyone but the two of you.

9.       She doesn’t hide her affections, making her as straight as a die. In a world of coded messages and timed communications, it’s refreshing to not doubt how a person feels about you.

10.   She’s fit. Come on, he’s Italian! He likes good looking girls and Amelia Johnson is buff.

Let me do the same the other way around for evens stevens:

a)       Giuseppe Nardiello is ridiculous to look at let alone to touch. There’s a scene where he lets her put hands on and… yah.

b)      He’s a South Londoner and proud of it. He knows the city inside out and enjoys it with her.

c)       He does something for her that heals a crack in her heart like nothing else could have and no one else would have done. Actually, he does that a few times.

d)      He tear gases her neighbours for her. That’s romance when your neighbours are bastards.

e)      He appreciates her dedication to her craft and that sometimes, it comes first. It just has to.

f)        Beppe cracks her up. He’s said things to me that I’ve repeated to other people that has made them laugh just as hard.

g)       He’d kill to protect her. No questions asked.

h)      He loves his friends like family. You’ll see.

i)        He’s a feminist.

j)        He’s a clean freak. He has his places of sanctuary and they must be clean at all times. Good times or no. Think Naomi Campbell in flight mode.

Funny how that’s been the easiest thing of Murano to write – why Bep loves Meems and why Mimi loves her Beppe. They’re just two nice folks, with terrible things happening around and to them who hold on to one another to live through the storms. What they have together in the quiet, the stillness, after the rages have passed, is something that I’m rather proud of.

You’ll see when it’s done. Let me get back to it.

Good To Love

Now I've got all this time on my hands, I'm reviewing the stories that I started and abandoned due to, well the nonsense that's been going on in my life. Last week's post about Black-British history going back to Roman times was partly in connection with my research for a paranormal story that is so much fun to write. I wonder why more authors don't throw it back into the past. Black history is so much more than slavery and absolutely so much more than the Western World. Black women in the Netherlands, in England, in early 20th Century Hong Kong - we've been places!
This week, I've been thinking about my intersectionality, especially after the wonder that was UK Black Pride. If you saw some of the comments beneath the twitter posts from the organisations, you'd dislocate a retina rolling your eyes so hard - the melanin-deficient tears were abundant, despite there being plenty of the paler persuasion being present at the event itself. It made me have another look at one of my stories, and the daughter of my heroine - Jacqueline.
It's hard to be a black woman in this day and age, no doubt about it. We're the "least desirable" on dating sites, but the most frequently copied in fashion, style and looks. We're more than 5 times more likely to die in child birth related complications than our white counterparts. We're paid less even though we're more educated. Throw LGBTQ into the mix and life is inevitably harder. Reading the story with a neutral mind (really not that hard, it's been a while so I can truly question who the hell wrote that!) I can see where my prejudices have come through a little too obviously.
I'm too hard on Jacqueline. Her mother's perfect - truly Carole is a dream, I love her - her brother is getting all the support for his messed up love life, her sister can do no wrong and has the decency to be straight and her father is an emotionally abusive bully, who can't stand Jacqueline for being a lesbian. And I'm more critical of her than the other siblings because a little niggle in the back of my head keeps forgetting to beat me into remembering that her life is just that much harder and she's had to be just as hard to protect herself from a world that berates her for what it considers as "choices" and not what she can't help but be.
Jacqueline is a tough cookie who needs my understanding, for me to lean into that intersectionality I brag I know so much about. She is, despite what she knows, her mother's favourite. Like I said, Carole's perfect. And if Jacqueline is her mum's favourite, then she should be mine. I'm tapping away to do right by her.
It's what she deserves.

Remember the Time

I see Romancelandia is having one of its moments about historical accuracy and the existence of

melanated folks in the Western world before the 20 Century. Again. 

Did I ever tell you that history was one of my favourite subjects? And if I’d chosen a different path,

I’d be one of those mad history professors, wearing bedazzled glasses, full maxi skirts and pencils in my hair to mark my most treasured textbooks. It always intrigued me that I would never see anyone with my skin tone in period dramas and be told it’s a matter of historical accuracy after all, black people were only slaves.

Huh. Weird then that the Romans who conquered nearly the entirety of Europe and a good portion of the North and East of Africa, whose peoples joined their armies and were promoted in their ranks never stepped foot in Britain - also conquered by the Romans. But yet they did. Evidence of that was found of a lady of mixed heritage buried with seriously expensive jewellery.  The Ivory Bangle Lady. It shows that there was intermarriage and integration into England. Beachy Head Lady dated to 245AD was found in East Sussex. An Arthurian romantic novel depicts the hero as dark, save for his teeth.

Edward III’s consort was said to be a woman of African decent - Philippa of Hainault from 14 Century.  

In trading in gold from West Africa, men travelled to England to be intermediaries, to be translators, already extremely wealthy as a result of the sub-Saharan trade routes in the early 15 Century. 

We are well aware that Catherine of Aragon, in the course of her marriage to Prince Arthur (King Henry VIII’s brother who tragically died and thereby gave us the biggest marital drama of all time) brought servants and ladies in waiting with her that were from Africa. There is a wealth of information detailing the black Tudors - some freed from the Spanish colonies, others settlers following the trade routes between West Africa and England, others family members of European traders such as the Netherlands, France and Spain. There were Africans in the Scottish Court of James IV. Diplomats and statesmen were part of the Courts of this country. From Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Morocco, Libya.

Liverpool, outside of London, because it is a port, had what was considered to be a large black population, particularly in the 17 and 18 centuries, as not only did you have seamen of African descent settling in England, but you had attendants and servants, who married their white counterparts.

They were shopkeepers, composers, writers, musicians, cooks and soldiers. African Chieftains sent their sons to England to be educated - something that still happens to this day. 

On Nelson’s column, considered one of Britain’s greatest heroes at the battle of Trafalgar (a whole square is named after him!) he is depicted fighting alongside an unmistakably African man. Queen Victoria had a young girl gifted to her. That same girl, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, had a wedding that was a societal event as she was under Queen Victoria’s protection. Many former slaves found themselves at the patronage of rich Britons who gave them means and an education; not just as abolitionists but as just decent people. True Christians - who knew?

Far from writing a history lecture here - there are people who have done this much better and far more in depth than I have David, such as Olusoga’s magnificat Black and British: A Forgotten History, which has also a rather brilliant BBC series that accompanies it. It was his tv series that first alerted me to Nelson’s column and I went to have a look. I mean I live in London, it’d have been daft not to. 

Black people, especially in this country, have not been invented to guilt white people about anything at all. Simple acknowledgement of our existence in this country long before the general populace were able to read and write or even vote will suffice. If there can be hundreds upon hundreds of romance novels of earls and dukes of pale skin and sleek hair and all of their teeth and enormous penises that they know how to use(???), there can be and should be just as many of colour.

Not that I should tell any romance author how to write, but the threads of a thousand tales are woven in the very history of the U.K. They are multi-faceted as well as multi-coloured.

It’s not historically inaccurate to feature other races into a novel and to have those races lead, take your reader on the wildest of rides, to let them fall in love and be happy. The history is there: bold, accurate and realistic - let’s use it. 

Holiday!

I don't know if you can tell, but 2019 has not been kind to me. It's put weight on me. Made me commute on the Northern Line in the morning for work. Not allowed natural deodorant to work on me and I detoxed I swear! It's also trapped me in London - miserably. And I love this city, I do, but I need to be able to miss it once in a while.

My friends (experts in psychology) tell me that I need to have a break at least every three months as I work with members of the public in a stressful job. If you saw the number of grey hairs invading my scalp, you'd agree.

But this month begins the great travels of Billy! I'll be off to Oxford for a bit of boating. Then up to Leeds for some rebonding and meeting a new London descendant! Best of all, I'm going to Greece! Get me kalamalataed! Greece, if you remember, was the scene of drunken Lady London and I talking about getting Windows written up for other people to read. It was our first holiday away together and we spent a lot of it in the supermarket. I love a foreign supermarket! Cheap booze, cheap quality snacks, all those things you’d have forgotten at home are right there for you.

Greece also has an insane amount of mosquitoes who absolutely love the hell out of me and their repellent is the best, cannot tell you. Although I will be popping to Dulwich to get some natural repellent. Expensive as hell, but it smells like luxury, rather than chemical.

I'm not exactly returning to the scene of the crime but going to Corfu instead. It’s all beautiful, turquoise blue waters, sandy beaches, fresh fish and bread and olives and inching to 40 degrees C in August which will deepen this melanin to ecstasy!

I’ll be taking so many photos, probably of my toes in the water or in the sand, but lots that will carry me through the winter. At least until I’m back in Italy. Yep. That’s happening again this year too. I owe it to myself!

Our Father

It's Father's Day! I talked to my brother today, father of my beloved niece (who apparently counts me as one of her friends and I can't because she's too much) and he lamented the commercialisation of the day. That it's just for shops to make some extra cash. Then he talked to our dad, after I'd made him jollof rice, baked spiced chicken, salad, Goulder beer and some cake. When my niece is older and she's taken after her mother's extraordinary talent with baking, my brother will appreciate Father's Day a bit more. His daughter will be able to show her appreciation for him a little more.

It's a day fraught with complex feelings. Absolutely no parent is perfect, some imperfections can never be glossed over. I think of Marek Kaszinski's father and everything he took from his son. Things that can never be replaced. Auden Garceau's father who procreated him and failed to lift a finger to help him thereafter; an absence that cut so deeply it allowed an evil to take its place. Lily Asare's father who drank away her inheritance and her way to escape her horrendous, handsy boss. Pierce Callun's father who's selfishness put his son in the darkest of darkness that he almost missed out on the love of his life. Mical Wentworth's father who brought such evil into her life it destroyed her entire family. The unique pain they suffered as a result of paternal action or inaction is immeasurable. Only a parent can hurt you in ways that last a lifetime and sometimes beyond.

But some of those imperfections are shallow enough to lead to avenues that ultimately bring happiness.

If Art McWorth didn't have such compassion and connection to his father, he wouldn't have skipped out of his mother's wedding and started an inevitable path to meeting Patricia, who wouldn't have seen a photo of him to peak her interest. Without his utterly useless, criminally minded father Rocco Mamione wouldn't have become a lawyer, wouldn't have talked Lydia Atta Mills out of the trouble she got herself into, wouldn't have got Luca Cariso out of Italian prison so quickly and worst of all would never have met the storm that is Anna Taylor. Those children are so much stronger in spite of their fathers.

In a contrast to the evil stepfathers, there are the ones that step into that role quite literally as if they were born to be a father. Wynne Jones' stepfather who became a second and number one father after her own decided Scotland was too much for him and his daughter wasn't enough for him. The incredible Durante Da Canaveze who took not only Rufus Harrison under his wing, he stood between Arlo Vitale and utter devastation without hesitation.

Then you have the unicorns - magical dads.

Helena Sarpong's adoptive father who gave her siblings, purpose, calm and safety. Liam McNamara who built a whole website to talk through sex education with his daughter. Gina Robinson's father who loved and cared for her after her mother passed away with such dedication he became her friend as well as her lone parent. Lonan who killed to protect his child. Madeline Mpoyi's father who got her the hell out of Rwanda with only one bullet wound to show for it. There's another one, but I can't tell you about it because spoilers!

Not all fathers are dads. And not all dads are magical. For those of you that have the later, be ever so grateful, enjoy every single minute with them and pass the joy in remembered story for the next generation.

Island Girl

It’s that time of year again. Love Island time! Every evening (except Saturdays where they get to have a break, go to the beach and try not to crack on with each other without the cameras in tow) we gather via Twitter (Black Twitter UK v Fiat 500 Twitter) to watch, the laugh, to hype a gaggle of girls and a batch of boys find love and maybe win some money at the end of it. It’s fantastic TV and even better social media bants.

This will sound awful unless you understand, but I could watch Love Island in mental peace when there weren’t any black girls on the show. I’ll explain. Last year, Samira Mighty, she of ‘cutsie’ and the ‘yaaaaas’ scream as she got a text fame, was the last girl to be picked. Why? I cannot for the life of me tell you. Except for the fact that she’s a black girl. Her body as a dancer is fire. She connected strongly with the other girls in the villa, especially fan fave Dani but she didn’t seem to inspire the same in the penile of the species. Why? Coz apparently black is a type that men (of all races) are not interested in. The contestants will say this out loud. On national TV. With their whole chest. 

“She’s not my type.” 

“But you said you like brunettes.” 

“She’s not brunette, she’s…” cue awkward gesturing.

It was a disappointing end for Samira, even though she found love in the villa with then beau Frankie, we hardly saw them together to understand Samira’s breakdown when he was selected to leave. The editing made sure their connection was never seen by the light of day. We don’t talk about what happened after. We don’t.

This year we have the gorgeous Yewande. As soon as her face popped up as one of this year’s contestants, I groaned. I guessed far too well where the attacks would come. Her hair. Her teeth. Her mouth. Her sleek physique. But if I tell you the sheer amount of comments about a black woman’s hair in 2019 between 9 and 10 pm BST, you wouldn’t believe me. Brush it; tug it back; do something with it; it’s looking rough. Yewande was another girl chosen last and seemingly none of the boys were interested in because she wasn’t their type. How? She’s crazy smart, she’s got a banging body, and she’s Irish! Yesterday, an Irish girl entered the villa and one of the boys who had a date with her was sparkly eyed because she was Irish too. Guess what colour she was?

It’s ultimately disappointing watching this show fail in diversity time and time again. To keep prompting type as a colour. I swear, if one girl this year says “mixed race is my type” I will hurt people. A lot of people. It's stressful as a black woman to watch a healthy, beautiful, intelligent, young black woman have her self esteem chipped away day by day literally because she's not white and blonde. 

Some would query then why I write interracial romance novels, if I have such an issue with people claiming a type. You cannot unequivocally state that an entire race of people is not attractive because of the colour of their skin and call it a preference. That’s wholly racist, and if you don’t understand why, you’re lost. You haven’t met every single black person on this planet to say you aren’t attracted to them.

Further, black women are bottom of the list where dating and marriage is concerned. It’s exactly why I write stories with black women front and centre. With their hair in any type of way. Wig, extensions, braids, relaxed, twists, natural Afro (represent Miss Eva). It’s why I want black heroines to be appreciated for their beautiful skin. For their heritage. Their sparkling personalities and their pillowy lips (long before women with a surname that begins with a K began to extol the virtues of fillers). My heroines are first choice. Are the dream women. The quality that has been missing from the heroes’ lives. The one thing worth any and all sacrifice to keep in their lives.

I’ll persevere with Love Island. Only because it’s like watching tv with a family of comedians who speak my language. But I’ll keep writing the happy endings for black women that seems to continuously elude reality tv. And reality itself.

Music In Me

I saw Rocketman over the Bank Holiday weekend and if you could have seen my face after I came out of the cinema, I'd have been the heart eyes emoji. Elton John, God Bless him and his divaness, put his whole life on screen until the moment he emerged from rehab a bejewelled and bespectacled phoenix from the veritable ashes of his life. The way he used his own music to propel the story and to speak to the emotion each and every person felt in that moment, at that time, was extraordinary. Time used to be that I couldn't hear Rocketman without hearing Stewie from Family Guy pretending to be cool, singing this in his faux British accent, as a gig in a smoky bar. Now, I hear Elton or moreover, I hear Taron Egerton (thanks Spotify!). I feel how badly he wanted to escape. How he wanted to be true to himself. How different he was from the man in feathers on stage. And something I read struck me. Don't write to music. You won't convey the emotion of what you're writing as well as what you're feeling when you hear the song.
Or something similar. Don't quote me, but it was in the same vein as the above. What you're writing won't have the same emotional impact without the music. Look, everyone has writing advice for all seasons. You can't go on social media without tripping over someone starting a tweet yelling "AUTHORS!" I write to music full stop. It's the only way I know how to write. The entirety of Shibah's Monster came to me listening to when I listened to Storm  by Craig Armstrong and A R Rahman. Remains started with Vaults' Premonitions. I wrote a whole scene in Windows around Que Sera, Sera by Sly & The Family Stone. Wynne's Surprise wouldn't have been the same, if I hadn't listened to Jack Garratt's Fire. If I told you how many versions of Verdi's Requiem I listened to for the right soprano singing Libera me  for Verde Bianco Rosso you'd be concerned for my general mental health - also the perfect distraction: "It's for the book!" Army of Me and You's ending chapter has Ellie Gouldng to thank. It was better to cry happy tears, than just sad tears to Explosions. I wouldn't have had a clue what to do with Gabriel in Angel's Baby if it wasn't for Keaton Henson's To Your Health or with Auden's midnight strolls without BoB's Ghost in the Machine in Addicted to Witch. Sympathy for the Devil was a reworked old story that I'd never got around to finishing and without each and every track, I know I wouldn't have finished it. I could see Toni getting off the tube at Brixton while COOL played. Cari knocking the shit out of Pierce outside halls to Deadmaus. The same two sitting in that café while James Vincent McMorrow's Look Out tore at my heart.
I know when I was in the midst of my Sahara Desert (the time of Hank abandonment and all my various issues) I wasn't listening to music. No Coldplay. No Rudimental. No Vaults. No Missy Elliot. No James Blake. No Hans Zimmer. That serious, not even Hans got me out of the pit.
I had these crazy expensive Beats headphones and I was watching film trailers with them. Sad times. I can't recall which song/film/advert started it all back up again, but I know it was my link with music that Hank came back to me and said the immortal words "double decker Routemaster bus". When you read it, you'll know. And without the music, I wouldn't be at the finishing line of what is now the longest Italian Knights book in herstory.
So I say thank you for the music! Wouldn't be here without it. ps go see Rocketman. It's a joyous biography of a man who knows his music.