A fictional series of short stories; a modern take on the legends of Kwaku Ananse.
Hello there! Yesterday was Green Green Grasses‘ debut day! New episodes will be out every Wednesday evening until all eight episodes are done. This post is more for the benefit of people who follow my WordPress and not my social media. So here you go:
Episode 1: Why The Spider Uses Its Web to Catch Food
Enjoy! Oh, and follow MoonSpider on SoundCloud! Oh, and stay tuned every Wednesday for a new episode! Thanks, love you!
-Akotowaa
I should have written this blog post long ago. Instead, here I am, announcing a project on the day it launches. Because, you know, life. Anyway.
Do you remember Kuukua Annan from the OTC short story series? Because I remember being asked why Kuukua’s cousin, Ntiwaa, always had to be in every story somehow. Well, for all you curious minds, here’s your answer: Green Green Grasses.
As soon as I finished writing Kuukua and the Magical Markers, I knew this podcast had to fokn camon. Approximately 1 year and 4 months since the conception of the idea, it’s about to go live!
Green Green Grasses is a scripted podcast, which means it’s entirely audio, but like, dramatic in a similar way as a play on a theater stage is dramatic. It’s 8 stories of Anansesem (you probably figured that out from the name if you grew up where I grew up), coming out every Wednesday (the Sacred Day of the Ananse, which you’ll know if you’ve read Kuukua’s stories) until the episodes finish. Each episode is loosely based on a Kuukua story in consecutive order. Real ones can probably figure out which folklore characters correspond with OTC characters.
Honestly, I think my only relevant roles in the GGG project were conception and scripting. Everyone else did all the important stuff. All my friends and their friends/relatives who agreed to voice act for this thing that they didn’t even fully understand yet, but somehow still killed their respective roles! My best friend, Tronomie, who, despite demonic afflictions, spent ages compiling, putting thought into audio effects, and mixing until he was probably sick of hearing everyone’s voices! I mean, I’d have gone mad if I’d had to play every line fifteen times just to get one thing right. Speaking of collaboration, GGG is being released under MoonSpider Productions, which is made up of literally two people: myself and Tronomie. OTC is an Akotowaa project, but GGG is a MoonSpider project. Does that make sense? It’s fine if it doesn’t, LOL.
Anyway, I’ve typed a lot. Watch the videos in my social media announcements, LOL. 🙂
Episode 1, Why the Spider Uses Its Web to Catch Food, comes out TODAY at 5.30pm GMT. [Update: Since I know many of you probably think it’s too much work to go and find our SoundCloud via another post, here’s the link. Yes, it’s out.]
So like, stay tuned and dat, and follow MoonSpider on SoundCloud. 🙂 Oh, also on Twitter and Instagram, if you want to.
-Akotowaa
Hello there. As you might have surmised from the title of this post, I have built an OTC blog. Its URL is akotowaaotc.wordpress.com and I have no doubt people are going to be getting confused because of how similar that URL is to this one. But ah well.
The reason I built an OTC blog is because I think the project is now too big for this blog. This is a good thing; it’s been the intention ever since the release of the first Kuukua story. Its first phase was the 8 Kuukua short stories I released monthly from May to December in 2017. The second phase is going to be a different product than the type I’m usually associated with, so I have no way to predict how the audience (that’s you, my loves) is going to receive it. Thankfully, I don’t have enough energy to be too concerned about that right now. LOL, I just want to launch it and then go to bed.
In the mean time, keep your eye on the OTC site, tell a friend about Kuukua and Yaw if you like them, and, if you’re interested in the forthcoming second phase, you might want to prepare for it by refreshing yourself on (or introducing yourself to) Kuukua Annan’s escapades, via the Complete Kuukua Collection PDF that’s now live on the site. The art, by the way, is by Kaz, who also did the art for If I Could Kill My Feelings…. I’ve been privileged to work with two of my favorite illustrators (Kaz and Xane Asiamah, who did the original Kuukua illustration) on OTC, and it’s not even close to done yet!
Issa litness.
Spider Kid out.
Yes, I finished the series! Now I can end the year in peace!
(Update: individual OTC stories are no longer available, but you can download them all in a single PDF collection on my OTC site.)
Snippet below:
Kuukua and the Killjoy Kente
Charlotte was on the ceiling of Mr. Dotse’s office. I didn’t understand how she had become so brazen, risking being seen by someone random. She had already surprised me enough a few months ago by deciding to befriend my roommate, Nana Konamah, but that, at least, was understandable; it was only decent to make sure someone knew all their roommates, human and non-human alike. But as for my school principal dier, I had no idea why Charlotte was frolicking so freely in his presence.
I was so tense about Charlotte being seen that I almost forgot the true reason for my anxiety: the fear that I was in some sort of trouble. There weren’t many other reasons I knew for students to get called into the principal’s office in the middle of the week. I almost felt like I did whenever I heard my mother yelling “KUUKUA ANNAN!” from downstairs, a surefire sign that I was in deep trouble. Now, I was trying to backtrack, see if I’d done anything worthy of being summoned by Mr. Dotse. The closest I had come to punishable trouble was yesterday’s skirmish with Ken, but as far as I knew, no teachers or staff had been around to witness that.
Ken, my classmate formerly known as Kennedy, had been getting on my nerves lately. This semester, I’d realized something about being in boarding school: annoying people start feeling more annoying, not because they’re becoming worse, but because you can never really go home from them. It had been easier for me to ignore Kennedy during JSS. Now that he’d transformed into “Ken” and I had to see him in the hostels even after school had closed, my tolerance seemed to be withering. It was as if nothing could properly humble him, not the trick Yaw and I had played on him during the long vac, nor the way our seniors treated him here. As soon as he got over anything, it was right back to the my-father-is-richer-than-yours attitude, and it irritated the hell out of me.
The exams this semester had rocked him roff, and it was as if he didn’t know how to deal with it in any other way than complaining plenty. Yesterday, he’d been making strings of ridiculous jokes about how if he could have his way, he’d have left school long time, just that he was afraid of ending up career-wise something “wack” like a mechanic or a carpenter.
Maybe it was the stress of exam week and sleep deprivation thanks to everyone who had been demanding my assistance with maths and physics over the past few weeks, or the fact that my Ananse training hadn’t been allowed to slack a bit even during the exam period. Or maybe it was the synchronized nightmares Yaw and I were having. Either way, the very second after Ken passed his comment, I was already getting ready to slap him.
I stood up threateningly, and interjected very loudly with, “And what is so wrong with being a mechanic or a carpenter, ehn?”
Ken had obviously been taken by surprise; he hadn’t even known I’d been listening, much less emotionally affected. To save face, he quickly recomposed his expression from shocked to haughty again and said something that made me even angrier. With his signature sneer, he asked, “Ah, where is Yaw Connor? He should come and collect his girlfriend before she comes to beat me, oo.”
When I lunged at him suddenly, people actually had to hold me back.
In my defense, this wasn’t usual behavior; I was just too stressed not to ignore him. In any case, I hadn’t had the opportunity to lay a finger on him, so I didn’t think that was quite the reason for my having been called to Mr. Dotse’s office.
I was still scanning through my possible grave offenses as I watched Charlotte carefully, even as I tried to pretend I wasn’t watching her. Drawing Mr. Dotse’s attention to whatever I was looking at was the last thing I wanted.
“So,” Mr. Dotse said to me, “Kuukua Annan.”
“Yes, sir?”
Because he was sitting down, I could manage to look at his face as I responded to him. In other circumstances, I would probably have been severely distracted by the mystery of how such a young man could possess such a huge stomach. He was my dad’s age, so he was only in his forties, but Mr. Dotse’s stomach made him constantly look like he had just finished a meal consisting of about two whole horses, drowned down with some omotuo and light soup.
Charlotte dropped a few inches without warning from a thread she had just spun. Although I was used to her doing this often in the confines of my bedroom, over here, my eyes shot back up to the ceiling in anxiety.
“Surely the spider knows how to take care of itself?” Mr. Dotse asked. “They are usually far smarter than you Annans like to give them credit for, you know.”
***
Download the story to read the rest! 🙂
Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Love,
Akotz the Spider Kid.
The Spider Kid's Blog 