She worked on the story for four years (from 2015 until 2019) and asked her trusted friends to read it and provide her with feedback. However those were the words that she needed to write in order to learn about pacing, character, and craft. In print, the book is around 120,000 words, however if you take all of the words that she wrote, deleted, and revised it’s much closer to 500,000 words. There were a bunch of false starts and many scratched drafts. The combination of these experiences inspired her to begin writing the story which would eventually become “Beasts of Prey”.Īyana began a bunch of mini-stories before finishing the book. Six months later, she studied abroad in Ghana (West Africa) and was struck by its complex history, beautiful landscapes, and the connection that she felt to it as a person of the African diaspora. She took an honors colloquium on political violence during her third year of undergraduate study which made her wrestle with how easily concepts of “evil” and “good” can be manipulated. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she avidly reads, follows Formula One racing, and worries about the varying moods of her mini goldendoodle, Dolly, and her adopted baby black rhino, named Apollo. Once again, she'd reacted instead of thinking things through.Ayana Gray is a lover of all things mythos, magic, and monsters and a New York Times bestselling young adult fantasy author. That opportunity had been generous, but she'd said no without real consideration. She focused on the woman's words, on her job offer, and felt the bite of regret. Their encounter felt increasingly dreamlike, though Koffi knew absolutely that it had happened. It was strange only a few minutes had passed, but she was already finding it difficult to recall the details of the woman's face. She thought back to the old woman sitting quietly with her blanket of trinkets, almost wistful. ![]() It was no longer a beautiful rhythm and flow the longer Koffi stayed in it, the more overwhelmed she felt. Someone barreling through the throngs bumped her hard to the right, which caused someone else to yell at her to watch where she was going. The roads, still packed with vendors, felt even more crowded than before, so compressed with people that it was impossible to walk without being jostled. If the city of Lkossa had been stirring when Koffi first ventured through its streets, it had fully risen in the time she'd taken to sit with the old woman. The sight of them had prompted an unpleasant reminder. She gnawed on her bottom lip until she tasted blood, until she could no longer see the three warriors. Two warriors had come after her and Mama, chased them down like animals. Newfound anger boiled her blood as she watched their retreating backs and remembered yet another piece of the night before. Not a single one of them even looked her way as they passed, but she still ducked behind a fruit cart until they were farther down the street. They looked smug, superior, like the kind of men who were used to holding power. Those were Sons of the Six in broad daylight, perhaps some of the very same ones who'd come into the zoo. A few of the vendors stepped out of their way as they walked, but most paid them little attention. They wore telltale blue kaftans and gold belts, and each had a hanjari dagger looped on his belt. A trio of young men had just entered from the opposite end of the street, weaving through it in single file. She searched the road, tensing, until she found where it was coming from. That new sound, the marching, was distinct from the rest of the city's morning din. She'd never seen any of that goodwill returned she never would now. That was all Mama had ever done, put others before herself. Even last night, before they'd run, Mama had been prepared to take a punishment that she hadn't deserved, to give up her own freedom so that Koffi didn't have to give up hers. Koffi suddenly remembered all the little moments too, the times Mama had shared her food when meals were sparse, or shared her blanket on colder nights. That sacrifice had ultimately made all the difference, but it hadn't been the only one. ![]() Mama had understood that there was a chance they wouldn't both make it out of the Night Zoo, so she'd followed a maternal instinct and told Koffi to climb the wall first. ![]() New truths took shape the longer she stared at them. Those two tattered rags were literal pieces of her mother, the only things she had left now. Koffi stared at her hands, still loosely wrapped in the bloodied strips of cloth Mama had torn from her own tunic to help her climb the vines.
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