The Best Advice I Can Offer A Writer

Here's the thing . . . if you're a writer, you're a writer. 

If you've written a book, you're an author. 

Enuff said, right?
 
Maybe. 

I cringe when I hear writers telling other writers what they HAVE to do in order to be a success. The most important thing a writer needs to do is to be true to his or herself, true to his or her story, and true to his or her characters.

HOWEVER, I cringe even more when I hear writers diss people whose advice they don't agree with. You can disregard advice, you know, without dissing the adviser. Perhaps not all advice is given as a way to offend;, maybe sometimes it's actually as an offer of help? 

I've said before, and I'll say again . . . all writers should forever be students of the craft. And you can't grow without criticism. The trick is to take what you feel applies to you, and gracefully disregard what you believe does not. 

The bigger trick is being objective enough to know the difference. 

We all want to think we're already experts (I think so, everyday, for about five whole minutes!), but when we get to the point when we can say, "Shyt, he can't tell me nothing," then we've made a conscious decision to stunt our own growth.

So, yes . . . always do you, and be true to what you write, but always be open to improve.

That's my advice. 

For what it's worth.

School Prayer? No, thanks!

December 14, 2012 - 26 people killed in a Connecticut elementary school; 20 of them are children. 

A true tragedy. And along with people using this as an opportunity to call for gun control, we also have people saying that this tragedy proves that we should have school prayer. 

But here is my question . . . how would school prayer have prevented the massacre? For those saying the school shooting proves we need school prayer- please stop using this tragedy to push your own agenda.

Do you think having God put back in our school would stop the school shootings? Is is it because you feel group prayer will stop devastating violence? If that were the case, would it have been possible for four little African-American girls to been killed in a church basement while readying for Sunday school in Birmingham, AL back in 1963?

School is a place to learn academics and secular things. Church and home is the place to learn about God and spiritual. To put God back into the school, would be to disenfranchise those who are either atheists, or who do not worship God in the way of the community majority. 

How would you feel if your Christian child had to sit in the classroom and pray to Buddha every morning; or to Allah?

I do think that children should be exposed to prayer every single day… And as a parent you should lead them in that prayer - and not expect the school to do it for you.

I am fervent about prayer, and I pray every day. And when my child was young and living with me, we prayed together every evening and every morning before she went to school. 

But to say that prayer should be practiced in public schools, with children of all different beliefs means that you are saying that the way you practice is the practice that all children should be subjected to.

Unless, of course, you are advocating for prayer in all of the different religious paths… Including allowing the Muslim children to make prayer five times a day in the classroom if it is their custom to do so?

 
Or do you only want the type of prayer that you practice brought back into school? If that is the case, then you should send your child to a private religious school.

The prayer that we choose, should not be forced upon others. The form in which we pray, should not be forced upon others. The religion in which we believe, should not be forced upon others.

I believe that prayer, religion, and faith in God… Should be taught at home and in our places of worship. Not in public schools.

Bumpy and Me

I can remember when the name Bumpy Johnson first meant anything to me. I was ten years old, and still upset that my family moved from Harlem to the Bronx the year before. I found it hard to make friends and would often convince my mother to let me to take the number 2 train to Harlem to visit my pals from the old neighborhood. On this particular bright sunny day in July 1968, and I happily trotted up the subway stairs, grasping the two shiny quarters – my weekly allowance which I planned on using to buy a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake at the Rexall Drugstore on the corner of 125^th Street and Lenox Avenue.

            As soon as I walked up the steps from the station I could see something was going on. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, the shoe repair store, which doubled as the neighborhood gambling spot, was closed. There were no shiny –faced Nation of Islam brothers hawking copies of Muhammad Speaks on the corner. Missing too were the winos who usually sprawled on the steps of brownstones, drinking brown-bag wrapped pints of Wild Irish Rose and Swiss Up. Something was up, and it had to be something big. A large group of people was milling through the streets – not a crowd or a mob, like I had seen during the Harlem riots just months before, but something gentler.  It seemed like a stream of swaying black faces, all pointing in one direction – east toward Central Park.

I pulled on the sweaty arm of one woman to ask her what was going on, but she looked down at me haughtily – readjusted her scruffy brown mink stole around her shoulders with one gloved hand, and gave me a slight push away from her with the other. Undaunted, and still curious, I tapped on the shoulder of a tall freckled teenage boy, dressed in his dark blue suit and a darker blue tie – obviously his Sunday best. “What’s everyone standing around for?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”

            On any other occasion I’m sure the teenager would have shoved me away, too, but he was excited, and he seemed to want to share his scandalous knowledge.

“Bumpy’s funeral!” he answered me in a loud whisper, as if we really were in church, and not in the middle of Lenox Avenue. 

“Bumpy who?” The name was familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it.

            The boy screwed his face up with disgust. Sadly, my question had revealed I was unworthy of his wisdom. “Bumpy Johnson, stupid. The gangster.”

            “Boy, what’s wrong with you?” A big hammy paw came down upon his head, and the woman to whom it belonged glared at the two of us. “Ain’t you got no respect?”

            A funeral? That’s why all these people were out here? Didn’t make much sense to me.

I quickly decided to move on, and forgetting about hamburger and milk shake, I headed toward the sanctuary of 115^th Street. 
Bumpy Johnson. Yeah, now I remembered where I’d heard the name. My Uncle Nicky used to talk about him . . . called him a “Harlem bad man,” meaning he was meaning he was dangerous. The kind of man you’d better be careful around, because if you said something he didn’t like, he’d cut you or shoot you, or have you cut or shot. My Uncle Nicky knew something about Harlem bad man, because he had a pretty good reputation himself as one of the best second-story man in Harlem. Nobody could break into a second-floor window better than my Uncle Nicky. But I knew that Bumpy Johnson was a real bad man. The kind of man I’d never want to meet. I wondered if someone had finally shot him before he shot them.

It was really stacked in front of St. Martin’s Church on 122^nd Street and Lenox. Many of the women were crying, and all of the men had their hats in their hands. I don’t know why I looked up, maybe I heard an airplane or the screeching of a bird, but when I did I saw that there were men on the roofs of  the buildings across the street from the church. But these men didn’t have hats in their hands, they had shotguns. Uniformed police officers with rifles were watching Bumpy Johnson’s funeral. Yeah, I decided, that Bumpy Johnson must have been really bad if the police was scared he going to jump from his coffin and start shooting or something.

I wiggled through the crowd and over to my friend’s house. Soon the tap tap of my double-dutching feet on the sidewalk jarred the thoughts of the funeral out of my head. There was no room  in my 10-year-old brain for funerals for people I didn’t know, or want to know. By the time I returned home that evening, the whole incident was totally forgotten.

It would be another twenty-five years before I thought about that day again.

I was a 36-year-old reporter for The Virginian Pilot, and living in Norfolk, Va., and raising my own young daughter. On this particular night I was doing my weekly ironing, and listening rather than watching, an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries.” The episode was about the only successful escape from Alcatraz Penitentiary, which occurred in 1962. The piece suggested that prisoners escaped with the help of a Harlem gangster, who used his connections to have a boat sent out to meet them in the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay. “Harlem gangster,” I said out loud to no one. They must be talking about Bumpy Johnson. I was right. I heard the narrator launch into a mini-biography on Bumpy – how he had fought a bloody war with the crazy Jewish mob boss, Dutch Schultz, over control of the numbers racket in Harlem. I knew about the story, of course – everyone in Harlem did. Bumpy may have been unknown to the white world, but in Harlem he was a legend.  And I had actually attended his funeral. Well, sort of.

As the show went on, I thought of another Mr. Johnson I had known. A man who once helped me in a way that seemed positively heroic at the time. He’d be the same age as Bumpy Johnson, but the two men couldn’t have been more different. I’d lost contact with him a child, and I suddenly regretted it. He was probably dead by now, I thought. I wish I had been able to attend his funeral.

I met nice Mr. Johnson when I was eight. My mother, my twin sister and my two brothers lived in a three bedroom apartment at 36 West 115^th Street, right around the corner from the real estate office where my mother worked as a minimum-wage bookkeeper. One of her sometimes co-workers was a woman I only knew as Madame, who was also the local number runner. I was a third-grader at P.S. 184 on 116^th Street
when I stopped in my mother’s office to hand her my report card. All  ‘A”s as usual, but there was something different on this report card. In the comment section it said that I had been selected for the Intellectually Gifted Child program. My mother simply gushed when she saw it, and she proudly showed the report card around the office. Madame, whom had never said more than a quick hello to me before, reacted with such delight you would have thought I were her child. She said she wanted to reward me for doing so well in school by letting me hang out with her once in while. The next morning Madame picked me up in her black Cadillac – she was the only woman I knew in Harlem who had her own Caddy – and drove me around for an hour, making stops all over the neighborhood, without ever saying a word to me until we stopped and got out at Graham Court – a huge apartment complex – at 116^th and Seventh Avenue. Oh, God, I was so impressed! Graham Court was huge, and had a gated courtyard with entrances to the four buildings which made up the complex. All of the buildings had locked lobbies with intercoms, like I had seen on television. The doorknobs and railings were shiny brass. The steps were made of veined marble. I had seen the apartment complex all my life, I once lived right around the corner, but I had only dreamed about actually going inside the gates. I was already feeling well-rewarded for my academic achievements. 

After we were buzzed into the building on the southeast corner of the courtyard, Madame leaned down, told me to mind my manners, then knocked at the door of a first-floor apartment. A giant of a man with a tiny hat perched on the side of his head, grunted us in. Madame left me sitting in an overstuffed chair in a room full of strangers – mostly men – all waiting around, some playing cards, while she went into a back room. I didn’t care for the half-hour or so, I was busy taking in the apartment. The ceilings were so high I knew even my tall cousin Wesley wouldn’t be able to reach it even if he were standing on one of our kitchen chairs. There was a chandelier, the first one I had ever seen, with a hundreds of tiny bulbs. I wished that it was evening instead of in the middle of the afternoon so I could see chandelier shimmer, or perhaps the warm glow of light that I just knew would come from the marble surrounded fireplace. I was so impressed with the apartment itself, I took no notice of the furniture. I just knew the person who lived in this grand residence had to be a millionaire. I wondered who it was. Certainly not one of the men who were in the room with me. They were big rough-looking men, not the kind of men who could be the master of this magnificent home.

I wondered if instead it was one of the people in other room who were speaking with Madam. I couldn’t make out what was being said among the raised voices, save for Madam, attempting to “explain” something. Fifteen minutes later, a distressed looking Madame walked back into the living room along with three men. One of them was Mr. Johnson.

He was dark-skinned, with hair so short he looked bald, and dressed in an elegant dark blue suit. When he entered the living room, everyone stood up. He paid them little attention, he looked angry, and was walking, fast, toward the front door when he noticed tiny me in the large over-stuffed chair.

“Well, hello there,” he said his face breaking out into a crinkly nosed smile.

“Ke-Ke, sweetheart, say hello to Mr. Johnson,” Madame said, suddenly all sugar. “Mr. Johnson, I’ll have you know that my little Ke-Ke is the smartest little girl in her third-grade class.”

Even as young as I was, I suddenly realized that Madame had brought me to the apartment because she knew Mr. Johnson, would be angry with her about something, and she also knew that Mr. Johnson couldn’t stay angry around children. Especially smart children who liked to read Langston Hughes.  He actually knew Langston Hughes, he told me at that first meeting.  I was impressed. The one question I had, I blurted out immediately.

“Is he nice?”

“Real nice,” Mr. Johnson answered with a laugh. “Go get this smart young lady some ice cream.” As if by magic, there was suddenly two bowls of vanilla ice cream on a large mahogany dining room table.

“What’s wrong,” Mr. Johnson asked as I slowly picked up my spoon.

“Um, I like chocolate.”

“Don’t be rude, Ke-Ke!” Madame said sharply.

“Go out and buy Miss Ke-Ke some chocolate ice cream,” Mr. Johnson said, his smiling eyes never leaving my face. “I like young ladies who aren’t afraid to say what they want.”

Our relationship was cemented over ice cream, vanilla for him, chocolate for me.

It was the first of many visits that summer. Each visit would begin a sometimes heated discussion between Madame and Mr. Johnson, and end with Mr. Johnson and me sitting at the table eating ice cream while he told me stories about Langston Hughes, and other literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance, most of whom I didn’t know. But his friendships weren’t just limited to writers. Mr. Johnson said that used to be good friends with the famous boxer Joe Louis, and that he had been best pals with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the man who tap danced the steps with Shirley Temple. I was in total awe. I always hated when our visits ended, and would pout when Madame said it was time to go, but Mr. Johnson would smile and pat me on the head saying, “You know you’re going to be seeing me again, Miss Ke-Ke.”

It was towards the end of the summer when Mr. Johnson sat me down and gave me a good talking to when he found out that I had been selected to go to a white school downtown because I was an “Intellectually Gifted Child,” but didn’t want to go.

“Miss Ke-Ke,” he said puzzled over my hesitation. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.” 

“I don’t want to go,” I insisted as I gulped down the bowl of chocolate ice cream he always kept on hand for my visits. “I don’t want to go to school with a bunch of white kids.”

“Why not?” he insisted.

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Just because,” I said, giving him my pat 8-year-old answer to all unanswerable questions.

But Mr. Johnson had a way with children, and it didn’t take long before I was confiding in him that I thought the children at P. S. 166 on 84^th Street and Columbus would laugh at me because I wore hand-me-down clothes that my mother didn’t have time to mend. Even the children at P.S. 184 laughed at me, and their clothes weren’t much better.

“Miss Ke-Ke, you don’t go to school to show off clothes, you go to learn,” Mr. Johnson told me with a quiet smile. “But I know just how you feel. The kids in my school used to laugh at my clothes, too.”

“Kids laughed at you because of your clothes?” I asked suspiciously.

“Yes, they did, Miss Ke-Ke.”

“And what did you do?”

“I beat them up.”

There were a bunch of men in the apartment – Mr. Johnson always had at least two or three really big burly men with him – and they hollered with laughter at his answer until he gave them a silencing glare.

“Now, I don’t want you go around beating people up, Miss Ke-Ke,” he said returning his attention to me, “because you’re a smart young lady, and smart young ladies should fight with their brains. But you have to go to school to learn how to do that. And you have a chance to go to a really good school. Don’t let the thought of people laughing at your clothes keep you from learning.”

I was pretty much convinced. Clothes or no clothes, I was going to that white school and get as smart as Mr. Johnson, and maybe I would get to meet people like Langston Hughes and Bojangles, and live in a grand apartment, too.

Madame stopped coming around my mother’s house to pick me up, and the rumor on the street was that she had been sent to prison for something or the other, so my visits to Mr. Johnson’s house stopped. But two weeks before school started there was a knock on our apartment door. My mother answered it, and a man gave her a white envelope that was marked “From Mr. Johnson.” Inside were five twenty-dollar bills, enough in 1967, to buy really nice school clothes for me and my twin sister and two brothers.

My thoughts were jolted back to the present when my cat suddenly leaped onto the ironing board, almost knocking down the iron. I took it as omen that I needed to break from housework. I walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch in front to the television just as a black-and-white mug shot of Bumpy Johnson appeared on the screen. I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was my Mr. Johnson. I couldn’t believe my eyes, or my ears as the announcer called him the “most notorious gangster in Harlem.”

The television show went off, but not before citing a book which the episode had been based. I hurriedly scribbled down the title, Riddle of The Rock: The Only Successful Escape from Alcatraz,” by Don DeNevi. I hurried to the bookstore that very afternoon, and bought the book, and devoured it within hours. There was only one chapter on Bumpy Johnson, but there were two photographs of him. Yes, there was no doubt that it was my Mr. Johnson. I puzzled how the nice old man who had been so good to me could be the fierce criminal of Harlem lore. The more I puzzled, the more determined I was to find the answer.

And thus my odyssey to learn more about Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson began.

In defense of the title, An Angry-Ass Black Woman

Why would I title my autobiographical novel An Angry-Ass Black Woman?

I know that's going to be one of the first questions I'll be asked in interviews.

  I think the term Angry Black Woman got a bad rap a few years ago. I’m not sure when the phrase was first used, but I know people started using it to describe certain African-American women. The term was used for women who were loud, abrasive, moody, and always ready to tell someone off -- for basically no reason.Then when the term was used to describe Michelle Obama, my question was . . . why? Not every woman is an Angry Black Woman. Why did they decide to attach that term to her? Personally, I found it insulting. Insulting in light of what the media has put forth as a definition of an Angry Black Woman.

    I think An Angry-Ass Black Woman is a woman who gets so fed up with a situation surrounding social justice – or other matters – that she stands up and does something about it, and in a very public and in-your-face way. Harriet Tubman was An Angry-Ass Black Woman. She got beat with that whip one too many times and she said, “To Hell with this. Why am I being chained, worked to death, and beaten? Because I’m a slave? Well, I’ll be a slave no longer.” And not only did she “free” herself, she made trips back and forth from the South to North to free hundreds of other slaves. She was An Angry Ass Black Woman.

And how about Rosa Parks. She got on the city bus, she was tired after a hard days work, and all she wants to do is give her feet a break as she traveled home. But then the bus driver tells her to get up so a white woman can sit down. Ms. Parks said, “No. I have every right to this seat as anyone else paying their fare. I will not get up.” She let her anger at the situation move her to make a stand. A stand, mind you, that helped start the Civil Rights Movement. At that moment, she became An Angry Ass-Black Woman.

Then there’s Sojourner Truth. Ida B. Wells, and many others. All of these were women who were being wronged and got angry about it, and instead of just slinking away muttering curses under their breath, they did something about it.

These were all Angry-Ass Black Women, and I am proud to count myself amongst them.

Got a problem with that? I thought not! <smile>

Writing Off More Than That 47 Percent

So, Romney is (was? Ha!) not concerned with 47 percent of the voters in the U. S. because they are not his people. He all but called them deadbeats, people who did not federal income tax, and were willing to live on handouts, and liked being dependent.

How insulting!

I'm not part of that 47 percent that Romney described, AT THE MOMENT, but I've been in that grouping more than once in my life, and I know -- save the Grace of God -- I may one day be there again. And no matter what my economic/social/political status . . . I should still be counted. My President should still care about me, and care about what I think.

Yes, I knew even before that videotape surfaced a few weeks ago that I was voting for Obama, and I can't even say that the tape cemented the deal. My decision was already concretized.

But hearing his words brought such fury to my heart!!!!!

How could this man, running to be President of the United States, say that he had already discounted 47 percent of the voters because they were comfortable being victims, and living on handouts!

And what kind of people made up his audience, that none challenged him on the statement?

But then people wonder why I identify myself as An Angry-Ass Black Woman.

<sigh>

Hearing and listening the tape brought to mind another event that happened more than 20 years prior, though . . . and by someone whom I felt very different about.

In 1991 I was one of eight students picked from around the country for the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, and one of the caveats of the program was that we would have nationally known figures in politics and journalism talk to us each week.

One week we had a columnist from Time Magazine. I was psyched, because my mother loved Time Magazine and I’d grown up on it, and this columnist was– hands down – my favorite writer. 

So he comes into the conference room where we were all waiting to hear his words of wisdom and encouragement, and I all but leap up and applaud his arrival. So we settle it down (meaning me, I settle down. I mean, I was the only one really hyped in the first place), and the columnist begins to talk about the noble occupation known as journalism; applauding us for our choice of careers, and reminding us of our obligation to look out for those who had no one else looking out for them; the socially, economically, and politically oppressed.

I was pysched!

But then he cautions us, that while it might be sad, he had to warn us not to spend time – not to waste time – trying to defend a certain class of people, because to do so would water down our efforts to defend the classes above them. These weren’t what people called the lower class, this columnist said, but the class in even below that. You know, he explained with a smile, the family who lives in the projects, the father not around, the mother on welfare, and herself having been raised by a welfare mom, none of the kids finishing school, and at least two in the immediate family on hard drugs.

Yeah! You go, Man! Tell it like it is, Man. . . . – wait!

What did he just say?

A family with at least two members on hard drugs. Well, that would be my sister, Kitty, who was on crack, and my brother, David, who was on heroin, and my father, Joe-Joe – when he was alive – on any drug he could find.

None of the kids finishing school? Well, me and Kitty dropped out in the eight grade. David dropped out in the seventh grade.My little brother, Joe T., almost made it through high school, but dropped out in the eleventh grade.

Mother on welfare and raised by a mother also on welfare. Well, um, yeah, Mommy was on welfare, but it wasn’t because she wanted to be. But, yeah, okay she was on welfare. And Nana – my grandmother – also went on welfare after her husband died when my mother was only 13-years-old and she couldn’t find a job.

Father not around. Yeah, I guess you could say Joe-Joe wasn’t around. Even when he wasn’t in the crazy house he wasn’t living with us.

And living in the projects? Well, the only time we actually lived in the projects was when we lived for that short time in the Bronx, but yeah, I kinda figured the Harlem tenement that we were always getting kicked out of for not paying rent would kinda qualify.

So . . . hold up! Was . . . my hero . . . actually be talking about my family? Saying that no one should even bother worrying about us because we were – for all intents and purposes – beyond being helped?

WHAT THE HELL?

I sat there, my hands pressing hard into the wooden conference table, trying not to hyperventilate. WHAT THE FUCK?

I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to blink away the red cape I felt being waved in front of my face, daring me to charge.

 WHAT KINDA STUPID ASS SHIT WAS THIS PUNK- ASS MOTHERFUCKER POPPING??!!! 

The next thing I knew I was on my feet, everyone was looking at me, and I was picking up my chair and throwing it across the room. I moved toward the columnist, at the same time pulling myself back so that I actually got no closer to them then a few feet, but the whole time yelling at the top of my lungs, “You’re telling them to just discount me? To forget about me? That I’m so pathetic that I’m beyond help? Who the hell do you think you are?”

My fellow interns, the facilitator, and the columnist were all shocked, and the columnist started trying to explain himself -- saying that he was not talking about me, not talking about my family. How could he be when he didn't know them, he explained.

"My mother and her mother were on welfare! My mom had to raise us on her own because my father wasn’t around. We lived in the projects. My father was in and out of the nut house before he finally died from a heroin overdose. My older brother has been hooked on dope since he was twelve. My twin sister is a crack addict. And, oh, yeah, none of us kids finished high school. In fact, I didn’t even make it into high school, I dropped out in junior high. So, what, Mr. Columnist? Just forget about me? I’m beyond help? How could you, man? I looked up to you! And this is how you think? Man, what the hell is wrong with you?" Tears were in my eyes, as I struggled to continue to speak.

"Yeah, I dropped out, but I’m in college now, and I’m on the dean’s list, I’ve already written articles that have made it into the Associated Press, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other prestigious papers. And I even made it into the very competitive journalism program that allows me to now listen to you lecture that people like me are beyond help. What are you talking about???!!!!”

I was about to tell him just what the fuck I thought about him when I saw the look on his face.

 Dude no longer looked shocked, he looked really sad . . . and I could tell he regretted his previous statements. And I knew he  meant no harm, Mr. Columnist was -- and is still -- known as one of the left-wing liberals who does care about people. I guess, though, me and my family was not just in his category of "people."

 That just depressed the hell out of me. I not only felt insulted, worse, I felt betrayed. And I suddenly felt drained. Deflated.  Not knowing what else to do I just shook my head, went over and picked up my chair, and sat back down at the conference table.

There were a couple of minutes of silence, then Mr. Columnist very humbly said that maybe he needed to rethink his philosophy.

My fellow interns had been mostly silent, but a few of them started speaking up, saying they felt bad about what I was going through at the moment, then added that if it made a difference, they’d never just write anyone off. And it was at the point that I had to really fight back tears.

I guess what happened that afternoon, the shame and anger I felt, was at least worth it. I just hope that they really meant it.

One day I’m going to contact Mr. Columnist to see if he remembers the event. I know I never forgot. 

I don't dislike Mr. Columnist. Didn't right after he made his statement, and don't now. I do believe he's a good guy . . . who felt he had to make some hard decisions, and then shared his decision-making process with those interns who would be soon enter the world of  professional journalism.

I think he was wrong, but I don't believe he's cold-hearted.

Bring The Boys (and Girls!) Home!

I am not going to front . . .
Yeah… I'm for Obama.

However, that doesn't mean I don't have issues with him and some of his policies.

I happen to be a veteran and, though I don't have any family or close friends presently serving in the military, I'm concerned about our guys/gals in Afghanistan.

When are they coming home?

We've killed Osama Bin Laden.

Now we have to stamp out al Qaeda?

Really?

How do know when we do?

Is there a particular person we're expecting to wave the white flag?

Who?

We can't judge our success/failure by the number of suicide attacks against our troops in that country… they will likely continue as long as we are there and available to be attacked.

Are they al Qaeda?  Are they not? Who knows? Who is to say?

I do not claim to be a foreign policy expert or a military strategist, but it seems to me that the problem with fighting terrorism, is that there will always be some fanatics committing acts of terrorism. Some will not be al Qaeda, but will title themselves so in hope in hope of giving themselves credibility.

So… how do we know when to  stop?

When can we come home?

I am sorry but 2014 is too long when there seems to be no specific goal that can be accomplished by waiting that long.

Our original aim  was to kill Osama bin Laden.

We accomplished it.

Unless you can give us another definitive goal, Pres. Obama, please...bring our kids home.

The Black Isle by Sandi Tan - Review Published in Philadelphia Inquirer

Twists and turns in a tale peopled with dark forces

August 04, 2012|Reviewed by Karen E. Quinones Miller for The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Sandi Tan
Grand Central Publishing. 480 pp. $24.99

---

She's an old Asian woman who lives by routine - making weekly visits to the store, to the laundry, doing what old women do.
Most important, she goes to the archive section of the library every Saturday to visit the book - the book that contained her photograph, surrounded by a story filled with lies but that revealed one truth: She can communicate with ghosts.
Then, one Saturday she finds the book she's been quietly visiting for decades has been vandalized. Most of the pages have been torn out. In the photograph, her head has been blackened out with marker. A feeling of dread descends upon her - someone, she decides, is trying to erase her life.
As she slowly makes her way back to her apartment, she sees two crows collide and then plummet to the ground. That, she decides, can't be good.
Later that evening, she receives a telephone call from a woman who identifies herself as a university professor writing a book on "superstition in 20th-century Asia," and asking for an interview. The professor punctuates her request with an ominous statement: "Someone - and this person or persons must really be obsessed - has been cutting you out of history."
The old woman hangs up, deciding she will not let herself be wiped out. "I will not become a ghost."

The Black Isle, the debut novel of Sandi Tan, tells the story of Ling, born to a middle-class family in 1922 Shanghai. She has a twin brother, Li, and a set of younger twin sisters. Ling's mother is agoraphobic, and her father is a quiet, hen-pecked schoolteacher.
She sees her first ghost when she's 7 - one of her mother's former housemaids who killed herself when Ling was an infant. The uproar created when she lets the household know about her vision leads her to vow not to mention her spiritual abilities again.
Shortly afterward, the family's fortunes take a drastic turn for the worse. The Great Depression that followed the 1929 American stock market crash makes its way around the world, and Shanghai is not spared. The family's savings are erased and the family patriarch loses his job. The only thing to do, the parents decide, is for the father to travel to the Black Isle to work and send his salary back to support the homestead. It is also decided that Ling and Li will accompany their father.
And it is while living in the Black Isle - actually, a band of tropical islands in the South Seas - that Ling's spiritual powers seem to go wild. She sees ghosts everywhere and spends most of her time trying to ignore their questions regarding their deaths or the whereabouts of their loved ones.
At one point, her father becomes the caretaker of a rubber plantation that is not only filled with ghosts that Ling alone can see, but that is supposedly haunted by pontianaks - spirits of women who die in childbirth. When a pontianak attacks Ling's family, she decapitates the supposedly mythical creature after it kills a visitor.
Shortly after, Ling separates from her brother and father and finds employment as a companion for the rich Wee family. World II looms, and the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Black Isle forever changes Ling's life - and she becomes an important part of the Black Isle's history. Her contribution is so important the few who know about her role realize the Black Isle might never have made it into the 21st century without Ling's help. So why would someone want her removed from the history books?
Beautifully written, with a storyline that spans 70 years, The Black Isle is a historical novel that is both breathtaking and haunting. The characters are vivid - some simply charming, some horrifyingly scary - and the plot has so many twists and turns it seems as though you're reading a winding country road.
There are some plot points, however, that some might find a bit more than controversial, including a somewhat incestuous relationship and an incident of bestiality that, to be honest, is so mind boggling it's hard to believe. And because the episode did nothing to move the plot forward, it probably would have been best to simply excise it from the story.
Minor flaws notwithstanding, The Black Isle is an engaging and engrossing novel that will absolutely captivate you and should not be missed. It will take you on a journey you will not soon forget.

Is There No Longer Honor Amongst Authors?

  Everyone knows I'm about my hustle when it comes to selling my books, so maybe that's why a young woman emailed me to boast about selling her own books in the parking lot outside the store where another author was having a signing.

I don't think that's hustling. I think that's some low-life stinky shit.

But maybe that's just me.

Me, however, being me . . . I told this author exactly how I felt about her actions. And while I always welcome other authors to my signings -- and always shout them out -- I asked to please make sure she misses mine.

I don't understand whatever happened to honor between authors -- but I find it more and more rare as time goes on.

I've always encouraged authors to help each other out by exchanging bundles of postcards and bookmarks. If one author is going to a book event in San Francisco and another is going to New York for a book event, then by handing out each others cards they are helping each other promote in places they may not otherwise be able to do so.

I've done this for years! Some of the authors whom I have supported and who have supported me in this include Gloria Mallette, Mary Morrison, Tracy P. Thompson, Zane, Victoria Christopher Murray, and many others.

So, I recently had lunch with a new author whose debut book I had read and enjoyed. She lives in New Jersey, but was in Philadelphia for a book signing. I couldn't make her signing, but I called her and arranged to take her to lunch to make up for it. Over lunch I gave her as much advice as she asked for, told her again how much I enjoyed her book. It was the weekend before the Harlem Book Fair, and I shared with her that I would not be able to attend. We then exchanged postcards and bookmarks, with the understanding that she would give mine out at the HBF and I would give hers out at the next events I attended.

Something came up, and I was able to attend the HBF after all, and I ran into the author. I was so excited, as I had arranged for one of my editors, Brigette Smith of Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster), to meet me with excerpt booklets for An Angry Ass Black Woman, but since Brigette wouldn't be there for another hour or so I hoped to get the postcards I'd given the author to give out.

The author seemed excited to see me, also . . . but then when I asked about the postcards, she turned and started talking to someone else. I waited until she finished talking, and then asked again. She again started talking to someone else. This time, I was rude . . . and broke in and asked if she had any of my postcards. She got a strange look on her face and said, "No, but if you can leave some here at my booth if you'd like."

I audibly gasped, and she averted her eyes.

If she had just said she'd forgotten them I would have understood. That happens. But for her to make believe she didn't know what I was even talking about . . . well! I thought it was rather disrespectful; and not a very honorable way to act.

I walked away, very upset. But upset or not, when I host my event next week that I will still give out her bookmarks.

It's the upright and honorable thing to do.

Book Review - Homer & Langley

Title: Homer & Langley

Author: – E. L. Doctorow
Publisher – Random House
September 2009

Reviewed by Karen E. Quinones Miller for The Philadelphia Inquirer

I need – yes, need – to start off this review of E. L. Doctorow’s latest novel, Homer & Langley, by saying that I’m a fan of Doctorow. I’ve read most of his books (Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and Waterworks are my favorites), and have been looking forward to reading his new literary work for months.

When I read the very first line in the book, “I’m Homer, the blind brother, I didn’t lose my sight all at once, it was like the movies, a slow fade-out,” I let out a sigh of pleasure. The writing already proved to be exquisite. And the writing remained a masterpiece throughout the book; it was the story that I found lacking.


Homer & Langley is based on two real life brothers who died in 1947. Homer and Langley Collyer lived in New York City and became infamous as much for the way they died as the way they lived. Sons of a wealthy gynecologist and opera singer, they were raised in the lap of luxury, but when they died in they were the city’s best known recluses. Though they were quite wealthy they lived in squalor. When they died the city removed more than 100 tons of debris and junk from their Fifth Avenue brownstone.

Being born in New York, I was familiar with the Collyer story. My mother would often come into my messy bedroom and tell me that it looked like the Collyer brothers lived there. Knowing a bit of the history made me all the more eager to read Homer & Langley.

In Doctorow’s book, the Collyers don’t perish in 1947, but in fact live through the late 1970s or early 1980s, and Doctorow manages to weave historical events from Prohibition through Watergate, into his novel. He also takes further liberties, making Langley the older brother, though in reality he was the younger. Langley serves in World War I, returning home shell-shocked (though never diagnosed), somewhat bitter, and utterly cynical. Homer is made the younger sibling who loses his sight in his teens (in reality, he lost his sight in his forties). When their parents die in the influenza epidemic in the 1919, the brothers set up housekeeping in their inherited brownstone.

Homer & Langley starts off at a rather slow pace, but there seems to be a promise of excitement. The promise centers around the brothers’ (especially Langley’s) eccentricities. Like the idea to have tea-dances in their home during the Depression, much to their neighbor’s dismay. And Langley’s theory that history simply keeps repeating itself and people are simply replacements for people who lived before. Therefore, he reasons, if he keeps track of every newspaper article written in a three, four, or five year period he can write an eternally current newspaper – only one edition needed – that will provide all the information that anyone need ever know. Though the theory seems dubious to Homer, he accepts it, just as he accepts Langley’s eccentric junk collecting.

And In the beginning of the novel, Homer is shown to be quite independent, having a relationship with one of the house servants, befriending the coronet playing grandson of the cook, and developing a crush on an assistant hired to accompany him to his job as a pianist at a local movie theater.

But while these eccentricities and events are recounted, they’re never fully felt by the reader. Homer, the narrator, has a distant way of detailing events that never fully manages to draw the reader in. Even the scene where a quartet of organized crime members take the brothers hostage in their own home falls flat.

Instead of fulfilling its promise of excitement, the book actually becomes more and more depressing. And Langley’s descent from eccentricity to full-blown madness is never really explained.

I won’t reveal the last sentence of the book, but it is as depressing as the first sentence is beautiful. The only book I’ve ever read that disturbed me as much was Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun about a World War I soldier who has lost his arms, face, legs, tongue, and face in the war. I kept reading because I thought there had to be some kind of payoff ; like some kind of series of surgery that would miraculously -- if not make him whole – at least allow the soldier some semblance of a real life. It never happened. But at least that book had a social message; war is Hell.

Homer & Langley has no such social or moral message, so it just left me feeling sad and miserable.

An Accidental Affair by Eric Jerome Dickey - Review Posted in Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer

An Accidental Affair By Eric Jerome Dickey Dutton. 396 pp. $26.95

Reviewed by Karen E. Quiñones Miller for The Philadelphia Inquirer

James Thicke is rich. James Thicke is a successful screenwriter. James Thicke is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, Hollywood star Regina Baptiste. And she just happens to be in the process of filming Thicke's latest flick to hit the silver screen alongside Johnny Bergs (also known as Johnny Handsome), one of the hottest actors in the business.

Then an anonymous person posts one of the scenes from the movie on YouTube.
A love scene.
A love scene that obviously has nothing to do with acting.
Johnny Handsome is actually — as in flesh-to-flesh — entwined with Regina Baptiste on camera.
The expression on her face, and the moans escaping from her throat, are just as real as the sex, and let the viewer know that she is undeniably loving every shameless moment — no acting required. And the realness of the moment was apparent to anyone. As the scene ends, the film crew can be heard giving a loud round of applause. And when Thicke sees it, he explodes.
Though master of the written word, Thicke is a man of few words when it comes to dealing with his own real-life situations. His response to this very public betrayal is to get into his quarter-of-a-million-dollar car, drive down Sunset Boulevard, practically run Johnny Handsome off the road, then pull him out of his car and beat him in the middle of oncoming traffic until the movie star is nearly unconscious. And handsome no more.
The next thing on Thicke's agenda is to change his marital status from married man to widower. With a .38 on the passenger's side of his Maybach, he takes off to find Regina Baptiste.
An Accidental Affair is the latest novel by New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, a prolific writer whose works include 2008's Pleasure and 2009's Tempted by Trouble.
Originally from Memphis, Dickey moved to Los Angeles after college in order to pursue a career in engineering, and worked in the aerospace industry before catching the showbiz bug and starting a stand-up comedy act. Though his writing career started with his comedy skits, he soon began to branch out, eventually writing short stories and then novels.
Dickey has managed to avoid the pigeonholing that plagues so many authors' careers; his 18 novels include romance, detective stories, erotica, and suspense thrillers, and his graphic novel Storm, based on a Marvel Comics character, even won a 2007 Glyph Comics Award.
Dickey's writing has never been better, and readers will find themselves sucked into his latest book from the very first page — which just happens to be a copy of an MSNBC.com news item detailing information about the Baptiste/Bergs sex tape making its way around the Internet.
Unable to immediately find his wife, Thicke opts to rent an apartment in a seedy section of Los Angles rather than return to his Hollywood mansion, which is surrounded by reporters. He leases the apartment under a fake name, but his problems mount as he hides out.
For one thing, Johnny Bergs' family, which just happens to be involved in organized crime, is now after him. Then there's Regina's ex-husband, who is trying to blackmail him. And the zany characters who live in the apartment complex and complicate his life. There's the married sexpot down the hall, who can't wait to get the newest tenant in bed. The older man shacking up with a youthful woman who, he rightfully suspects, has the hots for Thicke. And another more mature woman to whom Thicke finds himself attracted. In addition there are the self-recriminations about the woman he gave up for Baptiste.
But in the midst of dodging thugs, bullets, women, and regrets, Thicke gets an unexpected visitor. His wife.
If you're looking for a book filled with drama and thrills, An Accidental Affair certainly fits the bill: adultery, beat-downs, extortion, lies, sexcapades, and even murder are all there. And the writing is superb; the characters are well-developed and the dialogue is on-point. I would even go so far as to say this is one of the best written of Dickey's many books.
An Accidental Affair is a book that all Dickey fans should read, but even if you've never heard of Dickey, grab this book. You won't regret being introduced to a prolific writer whose talents evolve with every new volume.