Hello, LS family

Happy New Year.

It’s good to do this again, get on the blog and communicate with you.

I don’t quite know how to begin. It’s been so long, and in between times, you have heard a lot of things from me. But this is a new year, and I consider it a new dawn, so it’s almost like a fresh start.

We need to get this blog, Life and Spices dot com back on her feet. I need to do this, for this is my e-home, and I’m counting on all of you who have shared this home with me to help.

I have no wish to bore you with details as I have actually shared some here in the past. But the last two years, beginning from 2016 – late 2018, I have been in a place where I have mostly been unable to help myself. Things were happening that I couldn’t control. That I didn’t know how to control, or to manage.

Being in that place, I couldn’t write. When I managed to write, it didn’t come out right. Those of you who knew TM David-West from the days of Un-Break My Heart, Take Me As I Am and The Marriage Ultimatum can attest to this.

I would write, or try to write and stop again. I would come back to the blog, blog for a while and crash again. The back and forth went on until September last year when I published Not Fairy-Tale and after then, I couldn’t do it anymore.

I tried. I wanted to go on, but I needed even more to stop and take care of myself.

So, I did just that. I stopped writing. Not altogether, but not as seriously as I once did. I let myself rest. I let myself breathe. I let myself work through the issues I was having and I let myself begin to find me again.

In the last two months, I have found myself in a better place, and having a much calmer, happier and stronger state of mind, and heart.

I can write again. I still have not got it all back, but I can write again. And bigger than that, I can see my dreams and aspirations again and work towards them.

One of those dreams is Life and Spices dot com and I am here this morning to bring it back to life.

We started out as mostly a story blog. Well, that was what we were from the old blog, Alifediary. But I have to honestly tell you that I can’t write stories that big again for free read.

I once said here that I would never write free-reads again, and at the time, I meant it. But Life and Spices is partly about stories, because Theo David-West is partly about stories. So, I have thought about it and have decided that we can do short stories for free read.

I know I can do it. I know I will enjoy doing it. I know I will enjoy it more if you are here with me.

But that is not all we will be doing. We will talk relationships, life issues, faith, books and anything that matters to us. And more, we will write and read books by TM David-West and Sophia Bernard.

I am ready to do this. To kick off, I bought another theme (the other had bugs) and I’m almost done fixing it. I hope you like what you are seeing. I have plans to bring back our e-bookstore. This time, I am choosing Paystack as a payment gateway and they can receive payments even from those outside Nigeria.

So, here we are. Here I am. It’s 2019 and this is our fresh start. I invite to go again on this journey with me. Any story I never finished writing before, I will turn into a great story for you to read. Not for free, but I promise I will make it good.

Our first short story will kick off 5 February 2019. It is going to be a four-part story; most of them will either have four or five parts, at most. Some will have only three parts.

In the meantime, we will finish up with Marie-Antoinette’s story, Mama’s Little Girl, and there will be a couple of flash fictions and also other interesting posts.

I sincerely thank you all for staying with me all these years, being patient during my confused times and above all, loving and appreciating my works. I would not be who I am, and where I am, without you.

So, thank you.

I want to promise that you will read amazing stories. Nothing half-done anymore. Only the best I can deliver per time and I will work hard to make sure it is good. The first of these would be the long-awaited ONCE.

ONCE is the combination of Once and Forever (previously One More Time and Forever) and Just This Once. It’s a 2-in-1 novel… that is, in this one novel you will get two stories. It’s a style of writing I will be presenting every now and then.

I am still working on ONCE and cannot reveal a release date yet. I don’t want to until I am absolutely certain. I no longer wish to disappoint you and only want to do things in a sane and defined order.

So, ONCE is coming first. And it’s going to be amazing, I guarantee it.

We are back on the blog, folks. Our schedule will be:

• Jokes on Monday. Nothing heavy to kick off the week. And also, a post on writing, if I have it available.
• The blog’s short story on Tuesday.
• Guest Story on Wednesday if we have any and a post on books we love where we give readers review on any book we enjoyed.
• Relationship talks on Thursday.
• Flash Fiction on Friday and jokes.
• Another episode of guest story if available and jokes.
• Faith talks on Sunday and any blog announcements.

It’s a light schedule as you can see, and this is because I want to be able to do this and keep doing it.

That is it then. Welcome back to Life and Spices dot com. Happy New Year and let’s begin a new and good thing together.

Good morning and have a splendid day.