Tag Archives: The Order

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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

I’m so excited, tonight’s the night! The new season of American Horror Story starts!! I have to be up at 5 for work so I might not make it to the end but I sure am going to try! It’s my only consolation to summer ending. So not ready for the green to go.

Last winter in Toronto was pretty brutal. It was the coldest winter I can remember. There were some days when it got down to -40F and below once the wind chill was factored in. Just before Christmas there was a huge ice storm that took out power to a huge chunk of the city, including my apartment. We didn’t have power, heat, or hot water for four days (other people went a lot longer, so I was fortunate). For the first few days but by Christmas Eve-Eve it was getting pretty cold. The animals and I piled under the blankets that night to sleep because it was down in the 30s (F) inside. I woke up on Christmas Eve morning to my next door neighbours’ generator. Did I mention I live in an apartment building? Yeah. My place reeked of gas. I had to open the windows even though it was minus God knows outside. But then the power went back on. My kitten freaked out. She hadn’t seen light in four days, couldn’t figure out what devil magic was going on. Anyways, yes, winter, not for me.

There’s going to be a bit of a delay on the release of Lost Days. I finished the first draft and while it wasn’t terrible, it just didn’t feel right, so I’m doing a much more time consuming second draft than normal. Typically during the second draft I only make changes that smooth out the story but this time the changes are much more comprehensive, but they will get done.

Dark Prophet is coming along slowly but surely and I have also started work on a smaller project, called Lydian, which I have been dabbling with for some time. Lydian is a vampire story (all authors have to dabble in vampires apparently), or rather a series of short stories that put together form a much longer, larger story. I have no idea when Lydian will be read for publication though as The Order series still remains my primary focus.

Anywho, back to work!

Taye

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September 17, 2014

Hi everyone! I wanted to share something a little personal, away from my writing. I have been a fan of Dear Abby for a long time but have recently stopped reading her column for reasons I explain in my letter to her below. It’s something that has been weighing on my mind for about a month now and, after seeing Dear Abby’s September 15th response to Linda, I had to get it out. So for anyone who’s interested please read and please think, really think, about it. If you don’t agree with my views then please let me know. I welcome any and all thoughts on the matter.

Why I Will NEVER Read Dear Abby Again

Dear Abby:

I am writing to you a second time regarding your August 10, 2014 response to “Offended Daughter” and for the first time regarding your September 15, 2014 response to Linda in Columbus, Ohio. You have neglected to respond to my first letter so I will refresh your memory as to what it contained.

In your response to Offended, who came to you for advice about how to handle it when her mother refused to allow her to wear a bikini in her home because she was overweight and her mother did not like her appearance. In your response, rather than being offended about the mother’s treatment of her daughter, you told Offended that it was her mother’s home and she had to respect her mother’s wishes while in it. You then proceeded to pick at Offended regarding her weight.

In my letter to you regarding your response I posed a question to you: What if the mother was Caucasian, Offended bi-racial, and the mother was telling Offended to cover up not because of her weight but because of her skin colour. Are weight and skin colour not both simply particular aspects of physical appearance?

Now I will pose another question to you: What if Offended was not overweight but rather a lesbian and had, say, a tasteful rainbow tattoo celebrating such that was visible only when she wore a bikini. Now say that her mother was insisting that she not wear said bikini because she did not like the tattoo; would you still have advised Offended as you did?

I recall a time in the not-so-distant past when you came down hard on a woman who did not approve of her neighbours’ “lifestyle” as they were in a same-sex relationship. You appeared to find it inappropriate that a person would discriminate against another because of their sexuality. Would you have come down as hard on this woman as you did if it had not been an issue of sexuality but rather an issue of skin colour, of physical appearance? And if so, why would you feel it inappropriate to discriminate against one physical trait, such as skin pigmentation, and not another physical trait, such as body mass?

Many of us know that it is currently – to say the absolute least – “unpopular” to discriminate against people due to their sexuality or race, whereas discriminating against a person due to their weight is not something that gets a lot of attention. This observation does raise an interesting question, however; do you actually believe that it is wrong to discriminate against people, or do you only believe it is wrong to discriminate against people under certain circumstances, perhaps the ones most popular in our Western culture today?

Unfortunately you never did respond to my initial letter and you failed to address this issue in your response to Linda. Because of your non-response I can only conclude that you do believe discrimination, in at least some forms, is acceptable. It is for this reason you are no longer welcome in my home, where I make the rules.

Thank you for your years of advice; it makes me sad that I no longer trust it.

Yours ever truly,
Taye

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Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve updated this page I couldn’t remember how to log in. That can’t be good! Oops!

Work on Lost Days is bumping along nicely and I hope to have it for sale by the end of the year. For those who don’t know, Lost Days takes place during the final days of civilization as we know it and follows the survivors as they struggle to make new lives for themselves. It follows the extraordinarily difficult life of Jordan Baylor, Josiah Baylor’s very-great grandmother, and those closest to her.

If you’re interested in reading a sample of Lost Days or Dark Prophet both are available in The Others, which is now available on Amazon and Kindle here! Set a world described as being imaginative as Hogwarts and with a plot described as more interesting than Divergent, The Others is a fantastic read; so if you’re looking for something awesome to read this summer The Others is it!

The wall protects the city from the disfigured, deranged world that the Old Ones left us after the Lost Days, the days when everything died.

The wall protected those first survivors as they rebuilt, but maybe it protected them too well. Generations later, there’s no room left to grow. The wall cages us, chokes us. We can’t escape it. And now there’s something dark growing here with us.

In Eneden we each get one chance to do it right and if we fail, we’re done. No food. No light. No hope. Nothing. I did it wrong. I screwed it all up. I let them down.

Worse than seeing what I’ve done to them is feeling it, feeling their grief as if it was my own. An empath, some would call me. It’s a curse. I’m cursed. I wish I could turn it off. I wish I could make it go away. I wish I could give my boy the life he deserves.

My boy… I fear he’s cursed too…

Click here to order your copy of The Others today!

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Monday, April 28, 2014

Hi everyone!

Big News! It’s looking like Lost Days will be available on Amazon come December, just in time for the holidays! And wow, is it ever freaky.

In the meantime feel free to re-read your copy of The Others, available on Amazon in paperback and for Kindle. Er… does anyone out there actually own a Kindle?

Besides being hard at work on Lost Days and The Others, I’m also thrilled to announce the a new addition to my little family; the squirrel who has made her nest on my balcony, who goes by the name of Numbnuts, has had her babies. I haven’t been able to see them yet but I heard them squeaking at her over the Easter weekend when she left them on their own for a few moments to go relax in a tree. Ah, the glories of parenthood.

Taye