Ekari Writes

The rolling hills of the African Rift Valley Whenever I travel around Malawi I see these breathtaking landscapes which spark my imagination. The rainy season is my favourite time, since I adore the natural blues and greens - you see plenty of those when you're travelling as far up as the northern region.  I took the opportunity to work on the areas of my fiction writing I have always wanted to improve: descriptions. I get excited writing plots, characters, and action, but what suffers in the end is my settings and descriptions that immerse readers into the place the character is located. So why not use real settings for practice? So here goes: Nkhata Bay, Northern Region ~~~ Nkhata Bay had its own energy; unlike Mzuzu, Lilongwe, or Blantyre, something about the northern lakeside town gave the feeling of a holiday frozen in time. Although the season was not quite right for a holiday, with overcast skies that oscillated between pouring rains and breaks of b...

Meet Jember, the Ethiopian Superhero I had the privilege of chatting with an African comic book creator who is breaking out in a big way. Using the power of Kickstarter , he is raising funds to produce and distribute his brand new comic book from scratch. Since the popular Black Panther  movie, the doors have been opened for African superheroes (which have existed for years) to garner more global attention than ever before.  The strategic release of this creator's project duringUS Black History Month cannot be overlooked... The young man's name is  Beserat Debebe , and we discussed his brainchild;  Jember . Read more to find out more about the Ethiopian Superhero, and how you can be a part of bringing this exciting project to fruition. UPDATE: The Kickstarter fund surpassed its funding goals in just 4 hours! You can still contribute for the remaining days until the 4th of March for their stretch goal to do an epic comic book tour across Africa ... ...

Image Credit: Property of Disney - but aren't we all? I grew up in what I now consider a unique period, as I was really a member of one of the last generation to have no internet, and our options for recreation after school were "limited" to radio, CDs, the outdoors, and books. Between my twin sister and I, I was by far the introvert. So while we could play pretend together for hours (don't ask about the Blanket Fort, that's another post on its own), and listen to CDs on repeat until we knew all the wrong lyrics by heart, when it came to playing outdoors, I'd be more of the "Hmmm, how dirty is that though" inclination. So at times, when my sister decided she wanted to roam about to discover new trees to climb in the back yard, and wouldn't let the fact that I thought it was a terrible idea hold her back, I shrugged and retreated to the glorious, dry, clean indoors for my own adventures. With 5 bookshelves w e were never short of so...

My editing gig on Fiverr.com For a long while it seems I have been finding myself in the informal role of an editor.  Whether it has been friends and family asking me to edit applications and resumes, or as a natural part of my work selecting stories for Story Ink Africa events, I started to quickly notice grammar and spelling errors whenever I saw them, and correcting them became second nature.  At some point it hit me that perhaps this is a service people actually need. Not everyone is as obsessed with language precision as I am (thank goodness, otherwise no one would get anything done). Though they know the basis of what they are trying to say, many people may not have the time, experience, or willpower to painstakingly check that they didn't accidentally write "at" instead of "it".  Even those who work with language a lot, like writers, need a second eye to go over their work on multiple levels other than grammar and spelling. They also need to ...