My New YA Novel: An Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contender

I know, I know...I abandoned my blog a long time ago. But now that my new young adult novel K My Name Is Kendra is being considered for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, I need a place to express in my own words how I feel about this honor...

WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!! That's how I feel. And if I had a mic nearby, I'd sing you a song.

So up to five thousand writers submitted their books in the Young Adult category. Only a thousand made the first cut based on their pitches. Two hundred and fifty of us made the next cut (announced on March 22nd...I was in the hospital at the time...lifted my spirits) and are now Quarter-Finalists. Only fifty of us in the YA category will make the next cut to be announced on April 26th. I hope hope hope to be one of those that advances to the Semi-Final round. But even if I don't, the feedback I'm receiving on my work gives me validation that writing is indeed something I'm meant to do! I thank everybody for their constructive criticism.

Keep in touch. I'll write again soon...

Quick Updates

So much has been going on that I simply don't know where to start! But since it's late and I'm tired (having just returned from a monthlong sojourn to my home state Connecticut), I'll just give some quick highlights:

My new young adult novel K My Name Is Kendra is finished! It's amazing, though, how you think you have a solidly written project until you go back with a red pen and edit yourself. So even though the book and my first round of edits is complete, I still see a few holes in my timeline that I need to adjust before handing it off to a real editor. Even still, October is the scheduled release month. In fact, the book release party is scheduled for October 17th in my hometown in Connecticut. I may live in Northern Virginia now, but I can't think of anyplace else I'd rather release this next book. More on that later.

Quick shout-out to the young ladies of Won Myndz, a teen organization founded by Julia Moore (owner of the Universal Hair Salon) of Norwalk, Connecticut. I met with them last week at the fabulous new Tribeca Coffee House in South Norwalk, and we spent a few hours together chatting about a few of the things on their minds. I introduced them to my character Kendra (they loved the excerpts I shared from the book...phew), and we even did a little singing towards the end of our session. Talented ladies these...and ambitious! I know Julia will do her best to continue to nurture them and guide them toward fulfilling their dreams.

Lots of other stuff in the works. I'll keep you posted as I can! Exhausted. Going to bed now...

Out of the Mouth of Babes: The Wal-Mart Edition

Like everyone else, I've seen lots of commercials this holiday season. But not a single one of them could top the unscripted scene that occurred between my just-turned-four-years-old niece and me as we stood in the toy aisle of our local Target store:

Her: You know what I'm going to do first with my new wand,
Tata?

Me: What, mami?

Her: (with a little hop and a wide dramatic sweep of her arm): Change this store into Walmart!

Note to self: Send a copy of this blog post to the Martin Agency (Wal-Mart is an advertising client of theirs)

my.best.words.ever. (part 2)

Okay, so maybe I'd read this passage too (check out my earlier post on this):

Friday, October tenth, 2:03PM. That was the official date and time of Velvet Sharpe’s first day of freedom. The day she’d wandered out to the edge of the lonely country road at the end of her dirt driveway to meet Sadie, her one and only friend in the world. Sadie had been late, of course, so Velvet had taken those few precious moments of calm to sit by the side of the road and watch the cars go by, the way she used to back when she was a little girl in Sumter, South Carolina. Not that many cars actually came down this road anymore—it was one of the few in the county that seemed frozen in time, somewhere in the sixties or so, and had not yet been paved. Drivers trying to avoid damage to their hard-earned vehicles took alternate routes. But she’d sit out there anyway, wishing someone—anyone—would stop long enough for her to open a door and slide in beside or behind them and carry her off to wherever—the destination didn’t matter, just so long as it was far away from here.

The postman, of course, came everyday, though Velvet usually only saw him from a distance. He’d arrive almost three o’clock on the dot, just about the same time as her husband, Willie Sharpe, and Velvet would watch from her bedroom window as the two men exchanged greetings, chatted briefly, then went their separate ways—the postman miles to his next stop, and Willie Sharpe up the driveway to the run-down single-family home he shared with Velvet, his wife of twenty one years. It’d be at least an hour before he came inside, though, and when he did he’d be drunk “as all get out”, as Sadie would say, having spent the better part of that hour drinking homemade whiskey behind the old outhouse that sat at the far edge of the Sharpes’ property. He’d be empty-handed, too, whatever mail the postman delivered having disappeared somewhere between the outhouse and the front door. If there’d ever been anything addressed to her, she’d never known it. In the twelve years they’d lived in the house, not one single piece had ever reached her.

Until Friday, October tenth at 2:03pm.

On that day the postman—not the regular one—had come early, just moments after she’d reached the end of the driveway and settled herself on the wooden fence her husband had constructed two summers ago. The young man had pulled up in his truck, smiled the whitest smile Velvet had ever seen on a dark-skinned man, and handed her freedom in the form of a narrow, beige envelope with a New York City return address. Even now she wasn’t sure she’d uttered a word in response to his friendly conversation—in fact, what had he said exactly? She couldn’t recall. She’d been stunned at this stroke of fortune—Divine Providence perhaps—that had led her to the edge of the road on that particular day at that particular time.

Sadie had arrived moments later, and after seeing the envelope and deciding it was something very official needing to be opened right away, the two sped off in her station wagon to the small lake a mile up the road, but not before stuffing the other pieces of mail into the box in front of the fence.

“That way he won’t know you even saw it at all,” Sadie had pointed out, her voice hushed as if he could hear her miles away at the printing plant where he worked. Velvet sometimes wondered if he couldn’t.

“That one there,” he’d often say, “I want you to stay away from her. She ain’t no good—no good for nothing!” he’d hiss.

So Sadie had stopped coming around, except for when she knew he wasn’t home, and even then she only stayed a few short minutes. Sometimes they’d sit in Velvet’s kitchen and gossip, other times they’d park Sadie’s car far off the road and walk down to the lake and back, talking about their men or their lives or whatever other subject that came up, and still other times they’d just relax in companionable silence.

Today, though, there was much to discuss once the envelope was opened. Her freedom papers as they liked to call them—the documents that for all their legal jargon and verbiage simply said she'd inherited a furnished apartment in Harlem, New York—would send her out on a personal journey within just ten days' time, and there were preparations to be made before then. Preparations that would ensure she would never again have to darken the doorway of the home Willie Sharpe made sure she understood belonged to him.
[end]

my.best.words.ever.

If I had two minutes in a room with a publisher to prove my talent as a writer, this is the paragraph I'd read aloud to them (from my unpublished novel The Brownstone):

Nile turned and rushed across the room, her footsteps barely audible as she ran up the thickly carpeted staircase. Claudette followed behind her slowly, running her fingers along the intricately detailed banister as she went. It immediately felt familiar, even though it’d been years and years since the last time she’d sat at her father’s side and watched him work, no, create the masterpieces for which he received the accolades of men who from one side of their mouths praised his work and from the other side offered him pennies on the dollar as payment for it. He rarely took their money, though. Instead--with his head hanging low and his rough, soiled hands clutching an old worn cap--he would ask for the scratched, ragged pieces of old furniture that people like these always seemed to have stacked and strewn about in their garages or storage sheds. They always obliged, thinking their faces cleverly hid the ridicule in their eyes as they watched this seemingly foolish, uneducated black man haul away what they believed to be worthless junk. They never bothered to stay in their doorways for very long, though, or they would have seen the smirk on his face at having so easily acquired priceless period pieces that would be restored and sold back to these same unsuspecting families as antiques at, of course, exorbitant prices they were all too willing to pay.

Every now and then, Claudette recalled, there were those pieces that took even her father’s breath away as he restored them. Some of these he brought into their home for her mother, a woman who recognized and appreciated their value, even to the point of drawing up a will that would ensure they be passed on to her daughter and down through the family for generations to come. Other pieces seemed to mysteriously disappear from his workshop without explanation, though there had always been plenty of ugly rumors floating about. Her father, of course, denied them all. And young Claudette always chose to believe him…even though there was that one time when she and Daddy visited Velda Hodges--a pretty, soft-spoken schoolteacher who lived two towns over--and Claudette sat down on a fancy sofa just like the one her father had been working on in his workshop several weeks before. Even then she was sure there was a good explanation for it.

The DeShawn Snow Foundation

I can't write a book like K My Name Is Kendra without also providing a list of resources to which I can direct my young readers. There are many such organizations, I'm finding in my research, and some of them were founded by celebrities. The Joyful Heart Foundation (founded by Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay) is one of my favorites. There are many others that I'll be adding to the Resources section at the back of the book when it's published, but one that most recently caught my attention is the DeShawn Snow Foundation, which I learned about in an Essence.com article profiling the cast members of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Say what you like about the ladies (I only know what I read because I don't watch the show), but anyone who uses their celebrity status to provide a safe haven for troubled teenage girls of color deserves a round of applause for such efforts.

Excerpt: K My Name Is Kendra

Meisha gets quiet again for several moments, and then she finally gets around to asking about Uncle C.J., which I figured she would sooner or later.

“Has he been around lately?” she asks as she digs around in her purse. I get the feeling that she doesn’t really need anything in there. That she just really wants to hear about him, but she’s playing it off like it’s a casual question.

I don’t have too many memories from way back in the day, but I do remember clearly how tight Meisha and Uncle C.J. had been the summer before he was drafted out of college to play pro football. He lived in our basement back then, and he used to take her everywhere with him and buy her whatever she wanted. They laughed a lot together and always seemed to be sharing some private joke none of us ever got. She would pronounce his name seej and he started calling her babygirl. I remember wishing he would call me that.

“He doesn’t come into town much,” I say, trying to think of a way to change the subject because I don’t want to talk about my uncle right now. And I definitely don’t want to think about what happened the last time I saw him a few months ago.

He had come into town to do some pre-game interviews with the Redskins one Saturday and had stopped by the house unexpectedly early that morning to invite my father to go with him. Daddy was so excited that he didn’t even answer his brother, but he was upstairs and in the shower within seconds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so fast in my life.

Mama was out grocery shopping that morning, Jada had spent the night at a slumber party, and Philip had gone to watch Aris coach the local high school track team, so it was just me and Uncle C.J. in the livingroom once Daddy went upstairs. He sat down on the couch beside me and started asking me how school was and what my favorite subjects were. He wanted to know if I had any hobbies and what I liked to do for fun. After I answered all his questions, he told me how much of a young lady I had become since he last saw me, which had to have been about three years ago, I think, because Mama always seemed to have something to do outside the house whenever he called to say he was in town and wanted to visit with us, and she always took me with her. Then he asked me if I had a boyfriend and I told him I didn’t―that Mama was not having that. He laughed and said that with a body like mine, Mama was right to keep boys from around me. Something about the way his eyes dropped to my chest and then down to my hips made me really uncomfortable. I was glad I could use the excuse that I had to get dressed to meet Nita. I got out of there quick and fast.

“But he does come around sometimes?” Meisha presses.

“Every now and then,” I say. I figure she must really miss him, so I promise to call her the next time he stops by.

She nods and then stares off into the distance like she’s lost in a memory, probably thinking about all the fun she used to have with Uncle C.J. I promise myself right then and there that I’ll never tell her about that day three months ago. Especially the part about him popping into my room a few moments after I had left him sitting downstairs on the couch. He had claimed that he’d come up to see what was taking my father so long, and that he’d made a wrong turn at the top of the stairs. But the way he looked me up and down as I stood in the middle of my room in my bra and panties told me he was no different than the boys Mama was trying to keep from coming around me. Then he had called me babygirl and asked me if I wanted to hang out with him some time. Stupid me said okay, because I just wanted him to leave.

He had stepped into the room instead, though, closing the door behind him softly as he mumbled something about giving me a hug, since it would probably be a while before we would actually see each other again. I remember trembling as he held me because it just didn’t feel right. He didn’t do any of the nasty things I’d heard boys at my school whisper about. But he did hold me too close for too long, and his hands moved over my bare skin in too many different directions for an uncle hugging his not-even-sixteen-year-old niece, especially when she’s not dressed in anything more than a bra and panties.

We both heard the shower in Daddy’s bathroom shut off down the hall, and that’s when Uncle C.J. pulled away. He gave me a soft kiss on the cheek, put his finger to his lips as if to tell me we had some secret to keep, and then he was gone.

I’m not sure why, but I cried for half an hour behind that. I never told anyone about it. And I wasn’t going to do it today, especially not to someone who loves him the way Meisha obviously still does. I can’t break her heart like that. If she wants to see her favorite uncle again, I will just have to put my personal feelings aside to make sure they get together to catch up on old times.

More than anything, I want to see Meisha laugh the way she used to with him.

end excerpt

The Book I Want to Self-Publish

The name of my next book--the most important book I know I'll ever write--is called K My Name Is Kendra. Written in the first-person voice of a 15-year old teen, it's the story of a young lady whose low self-esteem and depression leads to her becoming the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a young uncle. The subject matter is tragic, but the message is ultimately an uplifting one.

So this is the book I want to self-publish. I've given up trying to get any sort of book deal. I don't mind self-publishing. I get to control everything, and I like that. But doing so costs a grip of money, as you can imagine. Why is why I keep trying different things to raise the money. Hopefully soon, something will hit!

Anyway, since my website is currently down (it's a luxury I can't currently afford), I've returned to blogging and will be posting excerpts from the book in the hopes that someone of note will take note and assist me in getting this book on shelves and me out on tour.

Enjoy the read. And feel free to drop comments here.

Will Sing for Money to Self-Publish

Seriously.

Times are tough financially. It's hard enough to pay for the necessities of life, much less keep up a website (which is why mine is currently down) or spend money self-publishing a book.

So I'm tapping into my other talents to try and put together a few extra dollars to go to print. I'd love to do some studio work. And I'd love to do a little voiceover work too. I can't afford the demos necessary to get the attention I need to book the jobs, so I did a quick YouTube video and I'm hoping someone will stumble across it and contact me to sing a hook...or do a radio commercial...or something behind-the-scenes like that.

You get the idea.

So if you're someone who has a PAYING gig for which I could use my voice, then drop me a line here at my blog. Thanks!

Oh, and yay me for losing another 15 pounds (65 down...many more to go)!

My Opinion: Under One Roof

Why?