Oyinkan Braithwaite

And I started focusing on her mom and, um, who's Ebo and, and that wasn't so bad, but still, because bear in mind at this point, it's outside of the reincarnation aspect, it's actually a very straight story, um,

And it just wasn't working for me like that.

So it was coming back to it and realizing it was going to be three points of view.

That was going to also have the voice of the reincarnated person trying to work out what her... I was going to have her voice, but it was also going to be all around a more mystical story in a sense.

And that sort of worked.

Yes, I think I drew from my own, you know, my own mother, my aunts, my cousins and how incredibly meddling they are.

And, you know, how fierce their love is and how insistent it is, you know, and just trying to give all the layers away.

do justice to all the layers you know knowing that they they love you and everything they do is out of love for you but not everything you know not everything they do feels right for you or feels gentle or feels kind and you know just kind of trying to mirror the complexity of of the female familial relationship

was important to me when I was writing this, even though I think, you know, luckily, I don't think I've suffered any of the things that some of the women in this story suffered, but I do, I can kind of understand that kind of love.

To be honest, I feel like I try to balance it.

I try not, especially my main characters, I don't want them to alienate me too much.

But I was concerned about Ebumu, of the three of them, I was concerned about Ebumu the most because I thought, gosh, are people going to be able to get on her side at all?

And also, is her narrative going to be one of those ones that people are like, I've got to skip to find out what's going on with Munifer or going on with...

any um because her story as even though it's intense in its own way her point of view doesn't quite move the story forward in the way that maybe Monifera in any story does so I was a little bit concerned that she might be that her chapters might be the ones that people skip but also her actions readers might not be able to get behind thankfully some people have

Told me that everyone was their favorite.

Some people did find her hard to like or hard to to empathize with.

But there are people who have said, look, they understand the plight.

Somebody pointed out to me and I hadn't realized it writing it, but I thought, actually, I think this is right.

They kind of implied that they thought everyone had had the hardest time.

you know she was in the hardest position in many ways she had had the hardest but in terms of where she was placed in this family what how she felt what the things that she had to kind of see and deal with and and all of that um and in some ways i i think okay that might be true