April 9, 2025 • 18 mins
Stories have power—especially when they challenge expectations and break barriers. This is exactly what novelist Nkrumah Mensah demonstrates through her fantasy series that starts with "Anne of Survivor," featuring a young woman who flees an arranged marriage in the 1500s and finds herself entangled in kingdom-wide intrigue.
During our captivating conversation, Nkrumah reveals how her own background shaped her storytelling journey. Despite facing dyslexia as a child, she comes from a lineage of natural storytellers on both sides of her family. What began as tales for the children she babysat eventually transformed into published novels when her daughter discovered an old manuscript in a dusty box.
The spark that ignited her first novel came unexpectedly—sitting up all night with a college friend before her arranged marriage, wondering: what if they ran away? This thought experiment, transported to the limitations of the 16th century, became the foundation for a seven-book series featuring different female characters who each overcome unique challenges. Unlike many authors who create fictional versions of themselves, Nkrumah crafts protagonists with qualities she admires but doesn't necessarily possess—women who act decisively without hesitation.
Nkrumah's writing process reflects the beautiful chaos of real life. Working construction by day and writing by night, she steals moments whenever possible—sometimes with late-night sessions accompanied by popcorn and tea, other times in five-minute bursts throughout a busy day. Her approach balances planning with spontaneity, allowing well-developed characters to navigate situations authentically, often leading to surprising yet satisfying conclusions.
Want to discover more of Nkrumah's empowering stories? Find her on Instagram @theNkrumahMensah or visit her website at between-the-line.com. And remember her advice for aspiring writers: "Just keep on reading. And if you're looking to write and you want to know how to get started, all you have to do is take a blank page and get started."
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with
Curveball, If you believe youcan achieve.
Welcome to the Living the Dreamwith Curveball Podcast, a show
where I interview guests thatteach, motivate and inspire.
(00:23):
I interview guests that teach,motivate and inspire.
Today, I am joined by novelistand storyteller Nkrama Mensah.
Nkrama is a mother of two.
She loves Star Trek andShakespeare and ballroom dancing
, and she loves telling stories,so we're going to be talking to
her about her stories andeverything that she's up to.
(00:45):
So, in Krama, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Curtis, thank you for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Why don't you start off by telling everybody a
little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, I think you've given them just about everything
.
It's like my dossier.
Yes, I am a single mother oftwo.
I'm about to be an empty nester, Can you believe it?
And Star Trek is absolutelydownright my favorite TV show
and I love, love, love, lovedancing.
(01:15):
And I love anime too.
I guess that's one thing youdidn't mention On a different
note.
On a different note, I writebooks.
(01:40):
I used to tell stories to mychildren all the time, and
actually before them when I wasmuch younger, to the kids I used
to babysit, and as I got olderI decided to write a story for a
good friend of mine called Anne, and since then Anne has been
published because my eldestdaughter found it in a dusty old
box one day and asked me if shecould read it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Okay.
Well, how did you get intobeing a novelist in the first
place?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, I always loved to write In fact, I was talking
to my mother about this earliertoday and even though I'm
dyslexic and I didn't read muchas a child because of that, I
come from a long line ofstorytellers, on both my
mother's side and my father'sside.
(02:21):
So I grew up hearing storiesand I grew up making up stories,
and one day I decided, hey,maybe I should write these down.
It wasn't until I was in my 20s, however, when I was hanging
out with a college friend ofmine on the night before her
arranged wedding that I decidedto actually finish something
(02:47):
that I wrote.
So, taking the fact that shewas she hadn't arranged marriage
, I sat up with her all nightwondering well, what if she ran?
What if she didn't get married?
What if we crawled out thewindow, shimmied down the
columns onto the front porch andjust took off?
(03:11):
Well, in this day and age, youknow, women have a lot of
choices.
I know that it's not exactlywhere we want it to be, but we
have so many more choices thanwe used to have, and my friend
and I could have run off.
I already had a job, she couldget a job, and then we could get
(03:32):
an apartment and live our lives.
But what would have happened ifshe lived in the late 1500s,
early 1600s?
More difficult, back then,women were often thought more of
as property than people thatcould make decisions for
themselves and live on their own.
(03:52):
So when I decided to write astory about a girl who was
running away from an arrangedmarriage, I put it back in the
late 1500s and asked thequestion how would this work?
And from there Anna Survivorwas born.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
How much does your story mirror your life?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
does your stories mirror your life?
It doesn't, in fact.
I'm glad you asked thisquestion.
A lot of people ask me if Anneis me.
Anne is not me.
In fact, I wish Anne, I wish Iwere more like Anne, because she
(04:45):
doesn't hesitate, she's likethis is not what my life is
about, this is not what I wantto do, and so she just breaks
free of her family, me.
I have to think about it, like,okay, well, how do I do this?
It would take me, like I don'tknow, a full month of planning
before I would actually run awayfrom home, whereas Anne makes
(05:07):
the decision overnight and shetakes off before anyone else in
the house wakes up.
Also, there's an element ofsurprise around each and every
corner.
Things that she would havenever imagined could happen
happens.
So she's leaving home just toleave this arranged marriage.
(05:32):
She's not looking for anythingbut freedom, but in leaving she
embroils herself in a largersituation that basically has
consequences for the entirekingdom, not just herself, but
her family and the royal familyand other other islands off the
(05:57):
coast of her country.
So it's it's much bigger thanwhat she could have ever
imagined.
So mirroring my life?
No, I'm pretty simple.
I live in my little home withmy girls and I work in
construction by day and thenwrite my little stories at night
.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay.
Well, who are your targetaudience with your stories?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
adult women on this story too, and and a few guys,
which I'm really surprised aboutand really excited about
because I wasn't expecting themto be so interested in my story,
because it is more gearedtoward adolescent girls, because
I wanted to empower them to notjust listen to societal norms
(07:06):
but trust and believe withinthemselves and believe that they
can do what they put theirminds to and, being the mother
of two daughters, that wasextremely important for me to
put down and from there, anne ofSurvivor is actually the first
(07:30):
book in a seven book series andI decided to have the entire
series about the in this area.
So Anne lives in Ryland.
Her issues actually encompassRyland and predominantly the
island of Ildalay.
(07:51):
Well, the next part of the book, the next part of the series,
is about a different characterand it focuses on the island of
Ildalay.
And then the next part of thestory is another female
character and it encompasses acompletely different country and
(08:14):
all of them have differentsituations that they have to
overcome and different struggles.
And I wanted to show girls thatwith Anne's situation it's more
societal and family.
When the next character'ssituation it's still again
(08:35):
society, but it's also believingin herself.
And then the next situation isa girl who completely believes
in herself, but she has to useher smarts rather than her brawn
, like Anne or the nextcharacter, to handle her
(08:58):
situation.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well, explain to the listeners your writing process
and how you come up with yourideas.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So my ideas come from all over.
I can't pick one area oranother.
I could be driving down theroad and something pop in my
head, but honestly, I thinkwhere my ideas come from is I
see something and then I ask aquestion.
And once I ask that question, Iwant to answer it, and I come
(09:31):
up with all sorts of answers,and if one avenue excites me
more than another, then I mightpin it down and say, hey, this
could be a story.
As far as my writing process,oh, it's willy-nilly.
I'll tell you, first andforemost, high in the sky, my
(09:55):
writing process would be late atnight, when nobody's awake.
A bowl of popcorn, maybe somechocolate, some music in my ear
and some tea, some hot tea, andI would just sit and write all
(10:16):
night long.
I used to do that during COVIDand I just hang out with my
daughter's gecko and stay uptill three in the morning just
writing.
However, now, since I have somuch to do and so much going on,
I've got one kid in college,one who's in her junior year of
(10:39):
high school, and I'm writingbooks and running around all the
time.
I write whenever I can.
So that could be five minuteshere, five minutes there.
It could be an hour here, anhour there.
This morning I actually went toa coffee shop and spent several
hours just writing and writingwhile people walked around me.
(11:02):
I'd get up every now and thenfor a coffee or a tea, and it's
whatever I could possibly do.
I do like to, once an idea getsin my head, put a rough draft of
the plot together.
I really have to have abeginning, a kind of middle and
(11:28):
an end.
But I like to create thecharacters, at least the main
characters, and then, as whathappens to me when I ask a
question, I will put mycharacters in situations and
since I've already like kind offleshed out what their
(11:51):
personalities are like, once Ithrow them in a situation they
have to behave in a way that istrue to their personalities and
from there the story grows.
So if I come up with a middlethat doesn't coincide with where
the characters are taking thebook, then that could change and
(12:15):
it could also possibly changethe ending in one way or another
.
But I let the characters drivethe story forward and sometimes
at the end I'm surprised atwhere we end up.
Sometimes it's better than Ihad hoped, sometimes it's kind
of funny, but I like seeingwhere the characters take me.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Okay, well, who is your favorite author?
Who encourages you to do whatyou do, and what's your favorite
book?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
is Pride and Prejudice and, yeah, there've
been so many renditions, so manydifferent movies of Pride and
Prejudice, but it's just nothinglike the book.
And I've read that book dozensof times from different
character perspectives and Ijust love picking apart the
(13:26):
society in Jane Austen's bookand I love the fact that she
shows us what it's like forEdwardian women during the time
and how they try to find theirown happiness and how, in Pride
and Prejudice, the Bennetts havefive daughters and they all
(13:51):
have a different path, and Ilove that.
I love watching how each oftheir stories unfold and I think
she just did a beautiful job ofit.
If she hadn't, I wouldn'tcontinue reading it.
Not only that, it has a happyending and I tend to like
stories that have happy endingsbecause we live in this world.
(14:17):
It's, you know, I live real,real life.
I don't want to read real life.
That's me personally.
Now I've read stories that arenonfiction and I I really
appreciate them, but it's notsomething I would reread.
(14:40):
Not something I would rereadonly because I would rather, in
my free time, read somethinghappy and fantastical than to
read something that is is reallife.
If I'm, if I'm reading forenjoyment and not for study or
(15:04):
for research.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Okay, Well, kind of take the listeners into your
books, you know.
Tell us about them, what we canget them, what we can expect
when we read them.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Okay, well, anne of Survivor is available wherever
books are sold.
You can get them absolutelyeverywhere.
Now the second book should beout.
It's called Anne of Ryland andthat should be out sometime this
year.
So you'll have to wait and seewhere that comes out.
On another note, I writeromance novels under a different
(15:40):
name and my first romance novelshould also be out this year,
but that is adult.
I don't want to talk too muchabout that.
That's adult, adult, and Idon't want my young adults to
read that.
That being said, I also havewritten a web comic and I'm
(16:01):
looking for an artist to workwith to flesh out that, and
we'll let you know when thatcomes out.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
All right, Well, so people can keep up with
everything that you're up to.
Throw out your contact info.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Okay, so you can find me on Instagram at the Nkrumah
Mensah.
That's at the, and then my nameis N-K-R-U-M-A-H-M-E-N-S-A-H.
You can also check out mywebsite at
(16:38):
wwwbetween-the-linecom dot.
Between hyphen, the hyphen linedot com.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
All right, closes out with some final thoughts.
Maybe, if that was something Iforgot to talk about, that you
would like to touch on, or anyfinal thoughts you have for the
listeners.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Just keep on reading.
And if you're looking to writeand you want to know how to get
started, all you have to do istake a blank page and get
started.
I get that question a lot Likehow do you write books?
Yeah, get started, and it couldbe two words, it could be three
words, but you know what?
(17:17):
You keep working at it andsuddenly those two words are a
paragraph, and then it's a page,and then it's ten pages and you
just keep on doing it.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Hey, ladies and gentlemen, keep on doing it.
Check out everything inKramer's up to at between dash
the dash line dot com.
Please be sure to follow ratereview.
Share this episode to as manypeople as possible.
For more information on theLiving the Dream with Curveball
podcast, we have a new websitewwwcurveball337.com.
(17:55):
Check it out.
Share it to all your friends.
Thank you for listening andsupporting the show and Cromer,
thank you for all that you doand thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Thank you, curtis, you have a good one.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
For more information on the Living the Dream with
Curveball podcast, visitwwwcurveball337.com.
Until next time, keep livingthe dream.
Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with
Curveball, If you believe youcan achieve.
Welcome to the Living the Dreamwith Curveball Podcast, a show
where I interview guests thatteach, motivate and inspire.
(00:23):
I interview guests that teach,motivate and inspire.
Today, I am joined by novelistand storyteller Nkrama Mensah.
Nkrama is a mother of two.
She loves Star Trek andShakespeare and ballroom dancing
, and she loves telling stories,so we're going to be talking to
her about her stories andeverything that she's up to.
(00:45):
So, in Krama, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Curtis, thank you for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Why don't you start off by telling everybody a
little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, I think you've given them just about everything
.
It's like my dossier.
Yes, I am a single mother oftwo.
I'm about to be an empty nester, Can you believe it?
And Star Trek is absolutelydownright my favorite TV show
and I love, love, love, lovedancing.
(01:15):
And I love anime too.
I guess that's one thing youdidn't mention On a different
note.
On a different note, I writebooks.
(01:40):
I used to tell stories to mychildren all the time, and
actually before them when I wasmuch younger, to the kids I used
to babysit, and as I got olderI decided to write a story for a
good friend of mine called Anne, and since then Anne has been
published because my eldestdaughter found it in a dusty old
box one day and asked me if shecould read it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Okay.
Well, how did you get intobeing a novelist in the first
place?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, I always loved to write In fact, I was talking
to my mother about this earliertoday and even though I'm
dyslexic and I didn't read muchas a child because of that, I
come from a long line ofstorytellers, on both my
mother's side and my father'sside.
(02:21):
So I grew up hearing storiesand I grew up making up stories,
and one day I decided, hey,maybe I should write these down.
It wasn't until I was in my 20s, however, when I was hanging
out with a college friend ofmine on the night before her
arranged wedding that I decidedto actually finish something
(02:47):
that I wrote.
So, taking the fact that shewas she hadn't arranged marriage
, I sat up with her all nightwondering well, what if she ran?
What if she didn't get married?
What if we crawled out thewindow, shimmied down the
columns onto the front porch andjust took off?
(03:11):
Well, in this day and age, youknow, women have a lot of
choices.
I know that it's not exactlywhere we want it to be, but we
have so many more choices thanwe used to have, and my friend
and I could have run off.
I already had a job, she couldget a job, and then we could get
(03:32):
an apartment and live our lives.
But what would have happened ifshe lived in the late 1500s,
early 1600s?
More difficult, back then,women were often thought more of
as property than people thatcould make decisions for
themselves and live on their own.
(03:52):
So when I decided to write astory about a girl who was
running away from an arrangedmarriage, I put it back in the
late 1500s and asked thequestion how would this work?
And from there Anna Survivorwas born.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
How much does your story mirror your life?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
does your stories mirror your life?
It doesn't, in fact.
I'm glad you asked thisquestion.
A lot of people ask me if Anneis me.
Anne is not me.
In fact, I wish Anne, I wish Iwere more like Anne, because she
(04:45):
doesn't hesitate, she's likethis is not what my life is
about, this is not what I wantto do, and so she just breaks
free of her family, me.
I have to think about it, like,okay, well, how do I do this?
It would take me, like I don'tknow, a full month of planning
before I would actually run awayfrom home, whereas Anne makes
(05:07):
the decision overnight and shetakes off before anyone else in
the house wakes up.
Also, there's an element ofsurprise around each and every
corner.
Things that she would havenever imagined could happen
happens.
So she's leaving home just toleave this arranged marriage.
(05:32):
She's not looking for anythingbut freedom, but in leaving she
embroils herself in a largersituation that basically has
consequences for the entirekingdom, not just herself, but
her family and the royal familyand other other islands off the
(05:57):
coast of her country.
So it's it's much bigger thanwhat she could have ever
imagined.
So mirroring my life?
No, I'm pretty simple.
I live in my little home withmy girls and I work in
construction by day and thenwrite my little stories at night
.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay.
Well, who are your targetaudience with your stories?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
adult women on this story too, and and a few guys,
which I'm really surprised aboutand really excited about
because I wasn't expecting themto be so interested in my story,
because it is more gearedtoward adolescent girls, because
I wanted to empower them to notjust listen to societal norms
(07:06):
but trust and believe withinthemselves and believe that they
can do what they put theirminds to and, being the mother
of two daughters, that wasextremely important for me to
put down and from there, anne ofSurvivor is actually the first
(07:30):
book in a seven book series andI decided to have the entire
series about the in this area.
So Anne lives in Ryland.
Her issues actually encompassRyland and predominantly the
island of Ildalay.
(07:51):
Well, the next part of the book, the next part of the series,
is about a different characterand it focuses on the island of
Ildalay.
And then the next part of thestory is another female
character and it encompasses acompletely different country and
(08:14):
all of them have differentsituations that they have to
overcome and different struggles.
And I wanted to show girls thatwith Anne's situation it's more
societal and family.
When the next character'ssituation it's still again
(08:35):
society, but it's also believingin herself.
And then the next situation isa girl who completely believes
in herself, but she has to useher smarts rather than her brawn
, like Anne or the nextcharacter, to handle her
(08:58):
situation.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well, explain to the listeners your writing process
and how you come up with yourideas.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So my ideas come from all over.
I can't pick one area oranother.
I could be driving down theroad and something pop in my
head, but honestly, I thinkwhere my ideas come from is I
see something and then I ask aquestion.
And once I ask that question, Iwant to answer it, and I come
(09:31):
up with all sorts of answers,and if one avenue excites me
more than another, then I mightpin it down and say, hey, this
could be a story.
As far as my writing process,oh, it's willy-nilly.
I'll tell you, first andforemost, high in the sky, my
(09:55):
writing process would be late atnight, when nobody's awake.
A bowl of popcorn, maybe somechocolate, some music in my ear
and some tea, some hot tea, andI would just sit and write all
(10:16):
night long.
I used to do that during COVIDand I just hang out with my
daughter's gecko and stay uptill three in the morning just
writing.
However, now, since I have somuch to do and so much going on,
I've got one kid in college,one who's in her junior year of
(10:39):
high school, and I'm writingbooks and running around all the
time.
I write whenever I can.
So that could be five minuteshere, five minutes there.
It could be an hour here, anhour there.
This morning I actually went toa coffee shop and spent several
hours just writing and writingwhile people walked around me.
(11:02):
I'd get up every now and thenfor a coffee or a tea, and it's
whatever I could possibly do.
I do like to, once an idea getsin my head, put a rough draft of
the plot together.
I really have to have abeginning, a kind of middle and
(11:28):
an end.
But I like to create thecharacters, at least the main
characters, and then, as whathappens to me when I ask a
question, I will put mycharacters in situations and
since I've already like kind offleshed out what their
(11:51):
personalities are like, once Ithrow them in a situation they
have to behave in a way that istrue to their personalities and
from there the story grows.
So if I come up with a middlethat doesn't coincide with where
the characters are taking thebook, then that could change and
(12:15):
it could also possibly changethe ending in one way or another
.
But I let the characters drivethe story forward and sometimes
at the end I'm surprised atwhere we end up.
Sometimes it's better than Ihad hoped, sometimes it's kind
of funny, but I like seeingwhere the characters take me.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Okay, well, who is your favorite author?
Who encourages you to do whatyou do, and what's your favorite
book?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
is Pride and Prejudice and, yeah, there've
been so many renditions, so manydifferent movies of Pride and
Prejudice, but it's just nothinglike the book.
And I've read that book dozensof times from different
character perspectives and Ijust love picking apart the
(13:26):
society in Jane Austen's bookand I love the fact that she
shows us what it's like forEdwardian women during the time
and how they try to find theirown happiness and how, in Pride
and Prejudice, the Bennetts havefive daughters and they all
(13:51):
have a different path, and Ilove that.
I love watching how each oftheir stories unfold and I think
she just did a beautiful job ofit.
If she hadn't, I wouldn'tcontinue reading it.
Not only that, it has a happyending and I tend to like
stories that have happy endingsbecause we live in this world.
(14:17):
It's, you know, I live real,real life.
I don't want to read real life.
That's me personally.
Now I've read stories that arenonfiction and I I really
appreciate them, but it's notsomething I would reread.
(14:40):
Not something I would rereadonly because I would rather, in
my free time, read somethinghappy and fantastical than to
read something that is is reallife.
If I'm, if I'm reading forenjoyment and not for study or
(15:04):
for research.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Okay, Well, kind of take the listeners into your
books, you know.
Tell us about them, what we canget them, what we can expect
when we read them.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Okay, well, anne of Survivor is available wherever
books are sold.
You can get them absolutelyeverywhere.
Now the second book should beout.
It's called Anne of Ryland andthat should be out sometime this
year.
So you'll have to wait and seewhere that comes out.
On another note, I writeromance novels under a different
(15:40):
name and my first romance novelshould also be out this year,
but that is adult.
I don't want to talk too muchabout that.
That's adult, adult, and Idon't want my young adults to
read that.
That being said, I also havewritten a web comic and I'm
(16:01):
looking for an artist to workwith to flesh out that, and
we'll let you know when thatcomes out.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
All right, Well, so people can keep up with
everything that you're up to.
Throw out your contact info.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Okay, so you can find me on Instagram at the Nkrumah
Mensah.
That's at the, and then my nameis N-K-R-U-M-A-H-M-E-N-S-A-H.
You can also check out mywebsite at
(16:38):
wwwbetween-the-linecom dot.
Between hyphen, the hyphen linedot com.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
All right, closes out with some final thoughts.
Maybe, if that was something Iforgot to talk about, that you
would like to touch on, or anyfinal thoughts you have for the
listeners.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Just keep on reading.
And if you're looking to writeand you want to know how to get
started, all you have to do istake a blank page and get
started.
I get that question a lot Likehow do you write books?
Yeah, get started, and it couldbe two words, it could be three
words, but you know what?
(17:17):
You keep working at it andsuddenly those two words are a
paragraph, and then it's a page,and then it's ten pages and you
just keep on doing it.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Hey, ladies and gentlemen, keep on doing it.
Check out everything inKramer's up to at between dash
the dash line dot com.
Please be sure to follow ratereview.
Share this episode to as manypeople as possible.
For more information on theLiving the Dream with Curveball
podcast, we have a new websitewwwcurveball337.com.
(17:55):
Check it out.
Share it to all your friends.
Thank you for listening andsupporting the show and Cromer,
thank you for all that you doand thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Thank you, curtis, you have a good one.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
For more information on the Living the Dream with
Curveball podcast, visitwwwcurveball337.com.
Until next time, keep livingthe dream.
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