First Look: The New OTC
The stories were great. The writing was not. The facelift is worth it.
TL;DR - visit ontheceiling.xyz!
In May 2017, around my 19th birthday, I announced my rebranding of myself into “The Spider Kid”. It was a good year for me and I was bursting with creative energy, experiencing a youthful audacity that I never wanted to grow out of. I chose the spider as my new totem because, where I come from, there is one symbol, immediately recognizable, which sits at the nexus of many of the identities I embody: Ghanaian, Akan, rule-bender, storyteller, exemplar of creativity. That symbol—the spider—is also a folklore character: Kwaku Ananse. (I deliberately favor the Asante Twi spelling.)
Along with my new “Spider Kid” alias, I launched a passion project which excited me then and excited me now: On the Ceiling. The first draft of the first story in this project, “Kuukua and the Magical Markers”, was drafted in a single sitting. I thought I wrote only 4,000 words at a go, but in reality, the first draft was closer to 7,000. The story was about a teenage Ghanaian girl in JSS3 called Kuukua Annan, who played a mean trick on one of her English teachers for marking her down on an African Storytelling assignment. Kuukua Annan, who is full of nothing but animosity at worst or indifference at best towards the famous Akan trickster and his stories, is shocked to discover that Kwaku Ananse’s legacy literally runs through her veins.
I enjoyed writing the first story so much that I decided to turn it into a short story series with 8 parts (because a spider has 8 legs, and when Akotowaa chooses a theme, she goes all out to adhere to it!) From May to December in 2017, I released a short story monthly, and the following year, compiled them all into a single document: The Complete Kuukua Collection.
But even before I was done writing the short story series, I knew I wanted an audio series which sounded as close to traditional Anansesɛm as possible, when being delivered in English and written by a middle-class city girl (what Ghanaians would call a “deebee”) like myself. So, during Christmas break, between 2017 and 2018, I gathered several friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to create a scripted podcast—an audio theatre performance of 8 original Anansesɛm stories. I called it Green Green Grasses. Ladies and gentlemen, it was a hit. So much so that my audience all but forgot that each episode was merely an artform translation of its corresponding Kuukua story. So, Green Green Grasses (OTC 2) wasn’t so much a sequel as it was an adaptation—albeit a very cool, fresh, and innovative one.
And yet, I was barely halfway through writing the original Kuukua series when I realized the sequel was already forming in my mind, and it was going to be epic. I was right—but clearly, it was so epic that it has taken seven years to see it through to completion. I am excited that OTC 3: The Okonore Trilogy, is finally ready to be shared with the world.
But before I do that, I want to give my audience some more buffer time. My OG followers and readers might have read The Complete Kuukua Collection before, but that was ages ago! And besides, the writing was rushed and a little bit atrocious. The project was both too good to throw away and too badly written to leave it available as it was. That’s why I took the time earlier this year to revise every single story. I present to you the new and improved Complete Kuukua Collection, with revised cover art by the one, the only, Kaz Aninkorah! In addition to that, I took the liberty of building a brand-new OTC website from scratch to host my passion project. Best believe the Spider Kid will be adding “WordPress web developer” to her CV. The spider/web pun deserves to be made!
New readers, this is your chance to get into something new, nostalgic (if you’re Ghanaian and Gen-Z or slightly older, that is) and fun—and to do it entirely for free! (But if you love it and want to support me financially, there’s no way I’ll say no to MoMo. Building a website, and making and distributing art is expensive, no matter how much I love it.)
In the weeks leading up to the release of OTC 3, I’ll be sharing some craft-related BTS from my creation process right here on The Spinneret! And I hope the glitter of OTC is enough to entice you into the Spider Kid’s web. This project brings me immense joy and I want it to do the same for you!
-Akotowaa 🕸️