Mmayen Storyworks
Makoko
The waterfront settlement on the Lagos lagoon where Amara grows up — poor in money, rich in everybody knowing everybody's name.
Mmayen Storyworks
A story studio · Books & Film
Stories that touch hearts and encourage growth.
Home of The Balance — the novel readers are discovering now, and the feature screenplay it began as. One story, two forms, both rooted in the same belief: everybody is owed a fair count.
The Book
They told her the laptop was dead. She heard it listening.
In the Makoko waterfront of Lagos, Amara is the girl nobody counts — poor, brilliant, and quietly furious at a country where money only ever flows one way: up, and away. So she starts moving it back. Every kobo to its rightful owner. Every transfer clean.
A thriller about money and mercy, ledgers and lullabies — and the girl who decided that balance isn't a dream. It's arithmetic.
5 out of 5 starsFirst reader rating on Amazon
Watch the trailer
Step inside Amara's world — the water, the ledgers, and the night the money started moving back.
The World of The Balance
One city, seen from both sides of the water.
Where the Money Goes
Across the same water stand the towers — the ledgers, the accounts, the places money flows to and never returns from.
Amara
Sixteen, self-taught, and done waiting. Given a laptop everyone said was dead, she teaches herself to read the country's hidden ledgers.
The Film
Before it was a novel, The Balance was a screenplay — and it still is one.
A brilliant girl from the Makoko waterfront. A country's missing money. One rule she set for herself at five years old: never get caught.
The Balance exists first as a completed feature screenplay — the story in its original form, built for the screen. The novel grew out of it, scene by scene, into the book readers hold today.
The screenplay is available to producers and production partners on request. For production inquiries — options, representation, and collaboration — please get in touch by email.
About Mmayen
Mmayen (aka Kate Umohituen) is a storyteller writing about the people the headlines skip. The Balance, her first novel, began as a screenplay and grew into the story it was always meant to be: Amara, a brilliant girl from the Makoko waterfront in Lagos, who teaches herself to read the country's hidden ledgers — and decides to balance them.
Mmayen writes about money and mercy, family and ledgers, and the quiet arithmetic of ordinary people who are owed more than they are given. She believes a story can be both a reckoning and a lullaby. Her desire is to tell stories that touch hearts and encourage growth.
Beyond the page, Mmayen is an entrepreneur and a singer who loves sports and travel. She is a wife to her greatest supporter and a mother to two amazing boys.
— Mmayen
Get in Touch
Readers, reviewers, booksellers — and producers interested in the screenplay: one inbox reaches the studio for all of it.