If Tomilola were to pick an era to be a grown-up in, it would be the late ’90s to the early 2000s. For her, that’s the period when R&B and black joy were at their most glorious form in music and film. This was the era that spurned several soundtracks to black Hollywood romances and that birthed some of the author’s favourite Nollywood romantic films. It was also the era that confirmed to her that one day she would bring her love stories to the world.
In A Very Gidi Christmas, Adeyemo’s debut novel, she explores the themes of love in a chaotic city like Lagos in the 2020s, passion, sexuality and the ugly side of social media. These themes are driven by a sweet and beautiful story about millennials in their early to mid-thirties whose lives are upturned by a scandal that threatens to destroy their careers. It’s a perfect blend of sweet and sour, LOL and WTF moments, and Nollywood pop culture.
Although her male lead is fictional, Adeyemo says that there are many aspects of the male lead’s life that were inspired by her own past loves, “I mostly draw inspiration from past loves of my life when creating leading romantic love interests. It’s personal. It’s real life. Some of the most compelling things about my male characters are drawn from exes. It helps me to connect with them and easily enter the heads of the characters during creation.”
Last year, Adeyemo became the first indie romance author of her generation to be invited as a guest to the biggest literary festival in Africa — Ake Festival — where she read an excerpt from her last indie-published work, an erotica titled Sugar Daddy Chronicles: Lewa. The reception was great but that wasn’t what compelled her to want to get back to the drawing board and bring her stories to a mainstream audience, it was the confirmation that in Nigeria, there is a steadily growing audience for romance stories set in Africa and that celebrates black joy, black women’s sensuality and deep undiluted love. A Very Gidi Christmas was accepted by Masobe Books in early 2024 and now the novel is set for an October 2024 release.
Reflecting on the journey that brought her here, Adeyemo says of the writing process for A Very Gidi Christmas, “A Very Gidi Christmas went through three iterations between 2022 to 2024. I’ve worked on that story from beginning to end three times. Writing is incredibly hard when you begin to write better. There were days I wanted to just pack it up. But as a true creative, your priority is the ‘bestest’ version of your work ending up in the hands of your readers. You do not want to take people who invest time in your work for granted. So I kept pushing and one day, I sent in a version that got me a call from the publisher that said, “Yes, this is good. We’d take it.” And now here we are.”
A Very Gidi Christmas tells the story of Biodun ‘BG’ Gomez and Kunle Bakare, two ex-lovers who are forced to reunite after a decade apart thanks to a scandal that threatens to destroy both their careers. Their proposed solution seems to work until another shock forces them to profer more unconventional solutions to their problems. While they grapple with the endless crises, they realize that their biggest issue isn’t with the unknown enemy, it is with how to deal with their resurfacing affection for each other.
A Very Gidi Christmas will be in stores across the country on 28th October 2024.