BOYS OF THOSE DAYS, NOW
An adult upmarket queer thriller
Manuscript Blurb
BOYS OF THOSE DAYS, NOW follows two boys who strike up an immediate friendship on the first day in their all-male Nigerian secondary school. As the terms skitter by, the familiar insidious social order of school kingdoms stratifies them into polar corners; the charismatic soccer prodigy and the bookish straight A student. The friendship hangs on a titter. The damning chink emerges from the onset of adolescence – admiration morphs into attraction, attraction paves path for infatuation. Jealousy, desperation and sensuality make for a toxic concoction that bubbles over into a defining catastrophe in their final year.
Now adults, the prodigy has blossomed into a worldwide soccer sensation. The bookish one? rolling around in a wheelchair as he takes on one hired kill after another – Nigeria’s foremost assassin with an unbroken kill tally. One name has been searing for eighteen years in the space where a heart used to be – his former friend, his first love, the sensation dubbed “Black Beckham”. Opportunity collides with determination. An impaired assassin embarks on a globe-trotting pursuit of revenge …
About Me
Tokan crown
I wrote my first piece of creative writing when I was eight years old, inspired by a PSA on road safety. I still recall the giddiness of incorporating words such as “kerb” and “pavement” into my (then) wholesome lexicon.
Following those formative years, I wrote and directed plays for the Drama club during my undergraduate studies in Dublin, Ireland. Formal education steered me towards the sciences, been making my livelihood on the dime of big pharma for over a decade. But the siren deafening of creative writing was always bubbling under the surface of corporate hustle, waiting for me to answer. In 2019, I renewed my passion for writing (and purposeful reading). Many undertakings, false starts and wrong turns later, I’m proud to finally query my debut upmarket thriller, Boys of those days, now. As is the throughline across all my writing, my debut manuscript fuses the black experience with daring, contested queerness and promises all the trappings of a bona fide thriller.