What happens when freedom costs everything? | Anne Of Survivor with Nkrumah Mensah

This book was meant to be one book and in a sense become two books and now it is seven books. A one-off was not really a one-off. That's all because my daughter and her friends and I appreciate it so much. Hello this is Raymond Aaron, New York Times top 10 best-selling author, bringing you Respark Your Life podcast, the world's premier podcast to ignite the fire, to allow you to live life on your own terms. Every single Thursday I bring you a multi-millionaire world-famous celebrity to teach you about the most fascinating ways in order to live a far better life. Every single Thursday you just need to subscribe by hitting the subscribe button. I'll see you every Thursday to Respark Your Life. Yes this is Raymond Aaron again and you know the schtick. Even though I have lots and lots of world-famous friends and even though I have interviewed them on this podcast, the real delight is bringing you stealth wisdom that you would never find out about on your own. Now these people that I find are known in their own sphere of influence but if you ain't in their sphere then you ain't never heard of them and you couldn't get their wisdom but I find these secret geniuses and bring them to you and today I have such. Today I have Nkrumah Mensah, mother of two, lover of Star Trek and Shakespeare. She's a neem enthusiast and a ballroom dancer and she's now a novelist. Born into a long line of storytellers with the desire to share her tales with the world, Nkrumah is the first in her family to bring her characters to the written page. In a mystical place called Greensboro in the zany land of North Carolina, she works in commercial construction by day and toils on her writing passion at night. Wow, I would normally say you are a renaissance man but you're a woman, you're a renaissance woman. I have never heard that term before. I've never heard I love it renaissance person even but so you are, so you are and you toil in construction during the day and you write at night and your first book, is it your first book that you have out now? This is my first book. Anne of Survivor, Anne of Survivor. So tell us, did you, do you have brothers and sisters? I do, I have three siblings, an elder brother and two younger sisters. All right, now when you were young and you're just playing with your siblings and other kids down the street, did you think you were destined for greatness? Did you think you would be the first person in your family to ever write a book? Or did you think you were average? Tell us the background, where did this current necroma come from? Well I will tell you that reading and writing was not anywhere on my page of thinking. I am dyslexic so it took me a long time to read, let alone even consider writing anything. I did love stories, like I said my, on both sides of my family we have storytellers. My great aunt on my mother's side and then all of my dad's siblings tell great stories including my father. So storytelling wasn't ever a difficulty and I did tell a few fibs when I was growing up to get my siblings in trouble because they were all kind of bigger than me. But storytelling was never an issue but writing was and reading was. So it was in junior high school that I read my first book cover to cover and from there I realized there's a whole world waiting for me and from that point forward I read anything my mom would bring to my room. I would read anything and from there I decided one day it was actually after college I was hanging out with a friend and she hadn't arranged marriage and I asked her you know what would happen if you just decided not to get married? What if you decided to just jump out the window and shimmy down the columns and leave? And she thought I was crazy but then later I decided to write a story of a girl who does this. Now granted in our time and age that's not difficult. A woman can get a job, she can buy her own house, there's so many things that we can do. So it wasn't as interesting from an American current standpoint so I took a character and early 1600s to see how that would pan out. Very interesting. So you're a storyteller by voice but not by pen. But no no but then you changed and now you are. Yes. So Anne of Survivor is the coming of age of a woman who thought she was let's say imprisoned to do what the culture required her to do and then she broke free. Is that it? Yes yes that's it that's it. Now poor Anne she doesn't realize that she's a lower royal and this arrangement that her parents have found for her would raise not just herself but her entire family up the ladder of royalty and so she understands why her parents were doing it but she doesn't want any part of it and when she runs off she doesn't realize at the time that she's embroiled herself into a larger issue that involves the entire kingdom. So it's kind of action adventure swashbuckling at the same time and she gets into a fair amount of trouble along the way. I can imagine but this is the trouble that she would have never experienced if she did what she was told, if she accepted the rules of her society, if she accepted the higher royalty position that the marriage gave her, then she would have had a somewhat dull and frustrating and empty life but now she has all these miracles and adventures. Exactly exactly. It's as if I read the book. Okay I get it I get it the coming of age and the throwing off of the shackles of Anne of Survivor. Wow yes wow that's fascinating. Now tell me a miracle that's happened to you because of the book. A miracle that's happened to me because of the book I believe that it's opened greater doors for me because this book was meant to be Anne was one book and in a sense become two books and now it is seven books. So I'm in the process of writing a seven book series and that is because my eldest daughter who is an avid reader shared Anne with her battle of the books team which in North Carolina is a group of kids who read a long list of books and then they have Jeopardy like matches with other schools. Wow. So she she shared it with her group and then one day I came home from work and I had a group of young women in my kitchen demanding that I tell them the rest of the story and they wanted to know about different characters and you know what Anne's doing now and you know whatever happened to this character from the beginning and you know interestingly enough I before speaking to them there was one character that I really wanted to know more about and she was one of the ones that they asked about. So from there it became okay well I've got this one story now it's two stories now it's four stories and since I've written the second girl's story there's another lady that needs her story written and so I think from that I've discovered that a one-off was not really a one-off and that's all that's all because my daughter and her friends and I appreciate it so much. Well I'm glad you're giving such noble credit to your daughter but what I've noticed more generally is that the characters are part of the authorship of the book like you can claim you're the author because you're a human you have a name it says copyright by your name and a certain year however what I've learned about novelists is that the characters actually talk back to the author and they give their own opinions and even though you thought that the character would reply yes the character actually replied no and you have to say no what does that mean oh my gosh and so the undeveloped character in your first book actually is yelling out to you develop me develop me I want my own book. And you are so right about that because when I started writing Anne I expected her to go one direction and she chose another direction yes and in doing so she introduced this other character and this other character was like hey sorry excuse me I have a story that you need to write and from her story there is another lady who's like hello I'm over here so they don't they they tell me their stories and I write them down and they don't always do what I expect them to do and if they did it would probably be much more boring. Let me tell you something that I'm a publisher and I publish thousands of books for my clients and in the realm of non-fiction books like how-to books this doesn't happen when an author sits down to write a 10 chapter book he figures out what each chapter is about he figures out some bullet points in each one and he writes it and nobody's talking back to him there's no character that says hey teach them this instead of that so it's only in the fascinating world of fiction that the characters actually play a role in the production of the book it's fascinating it's really really fascinating yes and I don't see it as like like you said as me telling their really telling their stories it's like a conversation and at the end of each book it's I feel sad because now I'm saying goodbye to a friend if we've had this conversation over so many months and we're working out issues and we're developing things and then suddenly their story's done and they're they've moved off into the sunset and they've left me behind and so I have to pick up where someone else is beginning that's why the Harry Potter books for example there's lots of others like Lord of the Rings are so long because the author doesn't want to leave that universe and the readers once they learn that universe love it and they want to stay in it exactly but non-fiction readers they want to get the information get away as fast as possible exactly very good okay very interesting what is the biggest lesson that you learned that you haven't yet mentioned in this interview from writing a fiction just how hard it is to get into the industry I thought you know I'd write a few query letters and I'd find an agent and I'd break through because you have a good story there's so many good stories that don't get out there because the industry is difficult and people give up and speaking to some authors who've done that makes me very sad and it just it really has helped me keep going because even as hard as the industry is I'm determined like I just want my books are for young women I want them to feel empowered and just to have 10 girls read my book or 20 or you know 30 I that's enough for me if some one person comes up to me and says this story was great I learned this then I've done my job but you have to get it out there to find that one person so did you find an agent and obviously you found a publisher how did you do it I felt actually it was I want to say it was Kismet because I knew someone from high school who had met someone at a big event that he had been to and he had told this person that he knew writers but my friend didn't know that I wrote like we grew up we grew up across the street from one another he didn't know that I wrote so once he found out he put us together and it turned out that the the co-founder of this publishing company and I just hit it off and he read my book he loved it and that's and the rest is history wow indeed a wonderful history now I'm going to ask you a question that you have no ability to answer are you ready okay I'm ready it's off the wall it's out of left field it's crazy but you have to do it are you ready okay yes I'm ready would you rather be a fortune cookie or a birthday cake a fortune cookie or birthday cake hmm wow this is a crazy question I'm going to say I love eating cake I love eating cake so I'm gonna say a fortune cookie now why do you have to have a reason why did you choose fortune cookie well because there's a fortune inside I want to speak to people cake doesn't really speak to people and get eaten and it's delicious it's for a moment but if you get a really good fortune inside a cookie you might keep that around for a while you might tape it to your desk or carry it in your pocket and and I want to be around for people I want to I want to be with them for a while oh so the message inside the fortune cookie lasts a long time but a cake a cake only lasts about half an hour and that's it it's out of here no one has ever given me that answer that's an interesting answer so it it means to me or I'm guessing because of that answer that you have a small number of friends that you have kept for a very long time I do I do have a circle of friends that I've kept for a long time in fact my best friend and I in about three years wow it's a long time and I have I have I'm still friends with a group of my college friends we still meet up and travel together so yeah you are all fortune cookies yes friends who are fortune cookies wow if I was them all in this room they'd all say fortune cookie fortune cookie I don't know I think my best friend would say cake she loves sweets so why is Anne of Survivor a standout book amongst all the other books that attempt to empower young women why is yours different or how is it different I think that within the story it's not just it's not just Anne there are so many people who change because of her and including her parents and I think that her I think that it shows the domino effect of how one person can change all these other lives and not only that but it's she started out wanting to run away from home and then she realizes and I think a lot of us do this I've lived a lot of places so once you leave a place and even if you are ready to get out of that place when you return you feel like you're home and I think that Anne goes through this process you see her grow and then you see her realize that some of the things that she was running away from she actually misses and I think it's not just running away it's also as far as coming coming into your own and realizing who you really are so you've added an element of reality that it isn't all just wonderful to run away and it's not all bad to run away do you know yes I remember hearing an interview about someone who wrote novels can't remember who it was and he said that notice in every movie and in every novel the good guy has three characteristics two good characteristics and one bad and the bad guy has two bad characteristics and one good so the bad guy might hate kids and sell drugs but he loves his dog something like that and he says that's how you make a deep character you can't make the good guy all good or he becomes a cartoon character and you seem to have done that with your book she runs away from home because home is so bad and so stifling and everybody wants me to do what my culture's been doing for thousands of years and then she misses it so you yeah give it a a a fight you give it a conflict instead of just being all nice when she finally runs away very good i'm very intrigued for your first book it seems masterful and yes i have a commandment this is the way i'm going to end our interview i'm going to command my dear subscribers to buy an of survivor and is spelled with an e a n n e n of survivor by nakruma mensa and you might say but i'm not a young girl yeah well if you are a young girl then buy it if you're an old lady you're an old man i'm sure you know who you could give that book to as a gift because this is the ripple effect that she was talking about you can help her keep that ripple growing thank you and thanks for a wonderful interview nakruma thank you so much raymond this has been wonderful wow i sure hope you enjoyed that fascinating episode please make sure you subscribe and please tell your friends if you like it that they will probably like it as well for your information this experience this service this podcast has been sponsored by the orbit coaching program all of my friends all my world famous speaker friends all have coaching programs mine has been independently rated as the number one high level coaching program you cannot purchase it you have to audition for it by me personally if you're interested please email me at respark at aaron.com respark at a a r o n say that you're interested in being considered for the orbit coaching program and include your cell phone numbers that i personally will call you back