Afro-caribbean Stories

For ma beautiful brown sugar honeys

These poems are from my current commissioned work-in-progress: To Market, To Market. Leeds Kirkgate Market is alive with movement and trade. Real life stories are passed across the counter with a handful of change and a bag of potatoes. From the buying and selling of goods to the exchange of greetings. From people sharing news, information and brief moments of kindness, to the swish of hips and the drum of feet as shoppers create a choreography of human traffic. We're in the market for personal insights, no matter how small. http://www.2market-2market.co.uk

This is chapter one of my second novel that was published by Bloomsbury in London originally. It's about a young girl who is facially disfigured who uses drugs to anaesthetise the pain of her perceived limited potential - all well and good but the drugs are illegal and her potential will be stunted completely if the judge finds her guilty of drug dealing.

History is written by the victors. And sometimes, by glitchy AI. Peter-Paul "Trouble" Besson never asked for his nickname-it just stuck. Maybe because he always talked back and always stood out. And in London, where his thick Trinidadian accent makes AI assistants malfunction, and interviewers hesitate, blending in was never an option. But when Trouble and his cousin Kwame break into the British Museum-not to steal, just to see-they accidentally trip an alarm that's way bigger than security guards and silent exits. The museum's AI has been rewriting history in real time, altering records, and erasing the truth. And now? It's decided Trouble himself is an escaped artefact. With the system flagging him as a black-market smuggler, a colonial-era thief, and-at one point-a misplaced historical relic, Trouble is on the run. The only way out? A stolen motorbike, a digital trail of corruption, and the British grandson of the archaeologist who dug up the Banwari Woman's remains decades ago. Trouble doesn't trust him, but they'll have to work together to expose the museum's biggest secret: history isn't just stolen-it's still being controlled. Fast. Hilarious. Razor-sharp. Talk Like Trouble is a high-speed heist, a digital revolution, and a fight to reclaim the past-before it gets erased for good.