super gassed for my new book guys

Yesterday, I got ID’d trying to buy WINDEZE. For the mercifully unitiated, Windeze is a medicine that aims to relieve the pain from bloating- also known as trapped gas- a sexy phenomenon that is an unfortunate side affect of periods and stress. I was suffering from both conditions. Imagine, you’re barely standing up in Home Bargains of all places (I was looking for garden furniture as well as discounted pharma) , crippled due to pain, and a lady is saying that you look too young to buy WINDEZE. I, naturally, burst out laughing. She looked back at me, unsmilingly, alarmingly serious. “I can’t serve you without ID.” She then cast an eye at my packet of rapid-acting ibrupofen as if to say, “and you can forget these too.” so I couldn’t even make the joke I had planned to say (“what do you think I’m gonna do with these? Kill myself by farting to death?”) as it seemed kind of gauche.

Instead I said, “But…I’m 34.” which felt very very stupid to say out loud, and the stupidity of it wasn’t even worth it, as it changed nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she replied, and to her credit, she really did look sorry. Her countenance had the regretful demeanour of a person informing someone that their pet guinea-pig had to be put down, as she said, “I can’t serve these to people who look below 25 without ID.”

Now, before I go on, I have to clarify that this isn’t a boast. When I see my fellow millenials gloat about looking 25 as a way to dunk on Gen Zs, I genuinely feel a bone-deep embarrassment. I do not want to look 25. For many reasons, but not limited to the fact that I am like, 30% hotter than I was when I was 25 and my ass is fatter. Far from being flattered, I was extremely irritated at the notion that I was 25. All I wanted to do was to sooth my dysmenorrhea in peace, and I was being harrassed by this enemy of gut health.

I wasn’t wearing make-up and I was wearing gym gear which I think might have lended the air of jobless university student (no offence if you’re a jobless university student, I have been one) but still, I feel like I was holding my keys in a way that denoted a slightly harried, but world-wise woman in her 30s who fucking had trapped gas and felt like she was going to vomit. At the very least I thought I exuded the self-possession of a woman in her 30s. Incensed, I brought out my phone to show her a picture of both my driving license and my passport. I actively balked at the idea of being 25. I was offended!

It feels kind of trite to point out the societal obsession with female youth- or the appearance of such. It’s everywhere, coded into skincare fads, the newest injectables, the Kardashian-Jenner annual debuts of new respective faces and the enthusiastic use of Facetune, blah, blah, blah. We’re supposed to look ageless, and a by-product of this is looking characterless, because age, after all, helps to shape character. Age is knowledge, experience, discernment. Of course, I am not saying 34 is old. This may be controversial, but I actually think the youngest a real adult can be is 31, so actually, I’m 3 years old in adult-years. ( This is of course is variable, but crudely my theory is this: 31 and above is Real Adult, anything between 25 and 30 is practise adult years/adult training and 20 to 24 is what I like to call The AdolescencePLUS Package.)

My point is, I am grown and every year since 25, I have filled myself out more, learned myself more, felt more comfortable in my skin, become more curious, and acknowledged my cluelessness. I’ve worked hard to get to this 34, I have earned this 34. This age I am now, represents love poured into dreams, love poured into my beliefs, mistakes made and learned from, learning still, knowing that I don’t know shit, but knowing enough to know that I am the shit. I feel so firm in who I am now, that being mistaken for 25 (which again, I promise, is not a brag) felt like an affront to everything I have come to be now. Of course, I couldn’t say all this to the cashier, and she didn’t accept the pictures of my I.D, so I had to leave Windeze-less and gassy still.

I feel this particularly acutely now, less than week to the publication of my novel, SWEET HEAT, (in the UK). Sure, gassy, but mainly, this awareness of growth, of pride of how far I have come, this guarding of what it took to get here. I have never been so aware of a book coming out, and I think it’s because this one, initially, was specifically challenging to write. I have written about this before, but I was contending with expectations; my own, fictive, and real. I was reckoning with the fact that the very specific configuration of person I was when I wrote HONEY & SPICE does not exist anymore. The core does of course, but so many parts of me have evolved, developed, been slightly recalibrated, and greatly deepened. HONEY & SPICE was a book that had been gestating in me since I was about 20 to 30; it was my very first published novel, and in so many ways, it was my coming of age. I love it so much, and I am proud of it. It’s exactly the book I wanted to write (and read) when I was younger. When I go back and read my writings before HONEY & SPICE, I see primordial versions of Kiki & Malakai, me honing my voice, my message, the kind of story I wanted to share, a sharpening of the knowledge of the people I was writing for. H&S, and indeed LOVE IN COLOUR are manifestations of youthful dreams, and a declaration of the heart of my craft, the part that I know will remain unchanged.

In the embryonic stages of SWEET HEAT though, I felt an unfamiliar prick of discomfort of fear threaten to freeze my flow, my creativity. Whilst LiC was my first published book, and H&S my first published novel, SWEET HEAT was simply, a book- and for some reason, this terrified me. Out of fear (which was scary in itself, because like Mariah to JLo, I never knew fear), I then tried to pour myself back into the familiar mould of my past self who wrote those books, because I was scared to really embody who I am now, in the case that what she had to say wasn’t what “people wanted”. But it didn’t work. I didn’t fit anymore. I spilled over, got stuck. I was doing a complete disservice to my evolution as a person and the potential evolution of my craft. I was snuggling myself into stagnation, and in effect smothering everything I had bloomed into, could bloom into. I not only had to accept I was never going to be that 25 year old girl again, I had to embrace it. That meant sitting down, taking stock of the ways that I have grown and making space for new parts of me to unfurl. I was holding onto turgid ideals of what I thought I should be, and they were blocking the light needed to feed the new version of me. I also had to accept that ‘what people wanted’ was a fallacy that distracted from authenticity and integrity. What I really had to do was to be true to who I was in that moment. When I did that, fear shriveled. I learned that my voice was the same, but perhaps, sharper, delighted to find that the knowledge that has come with age has roughened some parts, deepened some parts and expanded some parts. I remembered that no book is “simply a book”; this was a stupid notion from a part of me that I had allowed anxiety to dull. Any book, any creation, anything you pour yourself into at any given time should be a sum of everything you are in that moment, an excercise- and celebration- of discovery, of the world(s) you choose to examine, and of yourself. When I came to that clarity, I found a staggering, acute freedom, a new, dazzling excitement.

SWEET HEAT is such a special book to me, because I know I will forever remember it as the book that had me fall in love with writing as an adult. Storytelling and writing has always been my first love- I’ve adored it since I was roughly 7- but often, when you don’t make space for the ways life has interacted with you as a person, of the ways you have changed, it can affect that love, make you frustrated, because you maybe don’t fit the way that you’re used to, like you used to; you’re clinging onto a fixed ideal. The fact is, though, nothing in life is fixed. Life, is, by essence something ever in motion, and therefore, love should be ever in motion, constantly looking inward, and then outward, acknowledging evolution and loving the love enough to trust that it can withstand expansion. In fact, it must to survive, and it will, if it’s real.

SWEET HEAT taught me this, both in the process of writing it, and in the story that formed, and none of it would have been possible if I had kept on trying to grip onto my creative youth. Writing (the craft) doesn’t work when the wrinkles are smoothed out or when you’re trying to mimic a time that has passed. You cannot cheat it. The process thrives when you lean into what age has taught you. I held the final copy for the first time earlier this week, and despite it being roughly the same amount of pages as H&S, it felt weightier, and more textured with life. Packed with more experience, knowledge. The pride I feel, is not necessarily more (because I am proud of all my books, mother has no favourites), but it is, perhaps, denser. I don’t know if that checks out scientifically, but what do I know? I’m just a writer.

I cannot wait for it to be out in the world next week. I am so excited to share it with you. If I dare say so myself, it’s more complex, bolder, and sexier than anything I have written before. Much like, say, a woman gets with age.

(And it’s still available for pre-order here! It will be with you on the exact day of publication so you can verify my brazen claims ASAP!)

With love, and a currently, thankfully healthy gut,

B xxx