Minority Report: The Publishing Industry vs. REAL Reality

Now that Hollywood has had its annual opportunity to wallow in a night of self-aggrandizement before millions, I am reminded of a post on Facebook from a friend who cited a New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/what-does-the-academy-value-in-a-black-performance.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0 .

Reading this article lends a voice to others who see the same reality: If you make a film about the so-called "ordinary" lives of minorities, white audiences either want to see how it reconciles the racist past ("42"), or whites want to see a film that depicts how their relationships fare alongside a minority character ("Driving Miss Daisy"). Otherwise, the author writes, if the film features the story of an "ordinary" African-American, for example, then it is a "black film".

I shall not labor to repeat points of the NY Times article; however, I contrast those observations with what has been both my experience at attempts to get published as an author of interracial romance. Bearing in mind that I am playing off Molly McArdle’s February 24 article in Brooklyn Magazine, You Will Be Tokenized: Speaking Out About the State of Diversity in Publishing, http://www.bkmag.com/2016/02/24/you-will-be-tokenized-speaking-out-about-the-state-of-diversity-in-publishing/ , I see publishing as one of many arenas in the entertainment industry. Like Hollywood, which has historically been the citadel of majority white management, the publishing empires that exist today are woefully lacking in minority management, representation, and marketing from the bottom, up. "... publisher Lee & Low’s first ever diversity in publishing survey in January 2016 offered no surprises," writes McArdle. "Publishing is overwhelmingly white (79 percent), straight (88 percent), able bodied (92 percent), and female (78 percent)."

Makes me wonder about the incentive for change, let alone change itself, given those statistics. I surmise that publishing houses, big and small, are sustained by the perpetual influx of an upscale college-graduated literature-based Caucasian demographic, all of whom desire to make a living at what they love. They enter a publishing house, claw their way up the corporate ladder from intern to agent to editor to executive. They accept and publish what and who they are, with interests that embrace what they know.

And that is the key.

Would it be possible for a Caucasian agent or publisher to embrace a romance novel featuring a white man and black woman when their life experience, reading interests, social interactions, or even concepts of marketing potential cannot relate to such a relationship? Is it something about the unfamiliar that causes minority authors to receive the justification for rejecting a query with the phrase, "It's just not the right fit for me"? That their response is subjective and someone else may think differently, so good luck at getting published?

With humility, I once believed it was my writing, my plot, my genre. I certainly never believed I was better than a NY Times bestselling author; only that I was marketable enough to help make the difference in the profit of an agent or publisher. And so that you understand I am not merely treading on what may be viewed as my sour grapes, I do understand where publishing professionals are coming from: It is a business. They are there to make money, something I wholeheartedly support.

I shall give them benefit of the doubt, and unlike Hollywood, which does great injustice to minorities in propagating screen stereotypes, it is my hope that publishing is not that overtly unscrupulous--hopefully they are merely behind the times. And I hope I am not being naively optimistic about that. But what they need to consider is this: Writers and readers come in races of all colors, not only white! (Was I shouting? My apologies.) If anything, ignoring diversity in this literate entertainment industry is to deprive the agent/publisher matrix of a pool of minority talent as well as the extra income that would flow in from readers of color. Poor business, if you ask me.

So to post best-selling author Roxanne Gay's lament about diversity in publishing, or more accurately, the lack thereof, I leave you with her words about the real reality: "The problem is and has always been the exclusion of writers of color and other marginalized writers who have to push aside their own work and fight for inclusion, over and over and over again. We beg for scraps from a table we're not invited to sit at. We are forced to defend our excellence because no one else will." 

As for me, I not only know my ground, but I stand on it, head high as I push forward.

 

 

 

I sat down to my computer this morning after having had a tummy-filling green smoothie. As I am want to do, I tuned into my go to classical music FM station in order to suffuse the room with snooty background tunes as I type.

 

But instead of playing what generous subscribers pay to hear, the station host launched into a reading written by an effete intellectual who penned a reflection on a famous opera singer. The reading, done in the host's best ASMR-inducing voice, was riddled with otherworldly adjectives, such as "ethereal," "cerebral," "transcendental", and so on.

 

Not that I mind listening to discourse that works the less used muscles of my brain, but what struck me about this was the lengths to which the reading went; only an elite patron of the esoteric arts could keep up. It brought to mind, "I may not know art, but I know what I like," since I was familiar with the singer and enjoyed his voice.

 

So being the occasional snarky soul that I am, I questioned why it was necessary to employ such arcane, dare I say, highbrow, efforts at language to set one apart from the great unwashed. After all, the subject was the gifted talent of an opera virtuoso; but given the lofty verse of the reading, one would think we were appraising Jesus himself on the stage of the Met singing La donna e mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto. And even I would think a similar review of him could be overdone.

 

I wondered. Is the language of the elite in place to maintain some lordly impenetrable status reserved for but a few of the culturally enlightened? Or could it simply be verbal masturbation, an effort to make one feel supremely satisfied with how well he or she comprehends such supercilious prattle?

 

Whatever the reason, my advice to the proud is simple: Lighten up. Subscribers give donations to hear classical music, good jazz, and even listen to Garrison Keillor read poetry. (Or so I hope.) As for me, I still enjoy my public radio station; and if I want to have my mind boggled by cryptic over-the-top artsy-fartsy drivel, I can always enroll in a college psychology class.

Okay. It's decision time. I tell people that I'm a writer. I'm also a firearms instructor. I manage a household with a husband and family, including grand children. I love it all, but writing is my passion.

Perhaps I am here to convince myself that I should hone my focus and set myself up as a full time writer. And you know what? I am being swayed by my own argument, so I will go after my passion and goals: To become published in the interracial romance and women's fiction that focuses on women of color who have a lot to lose, but win in the end.

My one lament is that mainstream agents and publishers are still not up to speed on representing/publishing interracial ("IR") fiction. The reasons? I've heard that mainstream professionals do not believe IR fiction sells as well as white heroine centered regency, historical, contemporary, etc.

With the majority of readers being college educated, professional, African-American women, I believe the mainstream publishing industry is missing out on a huge under tapped market. Nevertheless, the readers are there; why not offer what they wish to read? It is not as if there aren't enough authors. Seems from a business standpoint that it would be well worth the risk to step out of the box and pro-actively go after writers of color to fill the increasing demand of minority readership.

So this is my decision: I will fulfill the desires of readers and get my stories into their hands. All I need is an agent and/or publisher who believes that I will be an asset to their career; and I will not quit until I do.

Almost a year? WTF? All right, I admit, there was a lot on my life's plate. Getting my fantasy trilogy completed and edited; a resurgence of the breast cancer that spread to the bone (bummer!), which had me working on health issues. Fear not. I feel fine.

 

I finally acquired my AR-15 rifle (I'm so covetous), and I did spend more time target practicing, with my pistol, something I find highly therapeutic. Most of all, I have decided to spend more time and effort at writing this blog. I tweeted that I have a lot to say, and I'm going to say it, damn it!

 

The state of affairs in society (as I see it) will be a source of material. I plan on commenting on what I see as trends in romance. And just wait until you read what I have to write about the cancer industry in this country.

 

Hope no one minds what will be my unabashed opinions. While there is still freedom of speech, I intend to exploit it. (Mwah-ha-ha.)



 

 

 

 

 

In Just Spring, New Life

Ah, spring. e e cummings best described my favorite season as, "... mud luscious (and) puddle wonderful ..."

Emergence and warmth, color and sound return after the doldrums of ice and forest silence. When winds that herald rains and the smell of earth suffuses my backyard, my gardening fingers get itchy and visions of flower beds dance in my head. Morning birds help remind me that rising early--rising at all--is a blessing that I should never take for granted. Sunlight feels like a delightful heated cloak, even when the breeze still chills a bit.

Forsythia, hyacinth, crocus, daffodils and magnolias ... Honey, you know it's time to put down that TV remote and join eddieandbill in a game of marbles.

It's spring. Time to walk the dog just a little farther. Yes, and enjoy washing the car yourself and not at the carwash. And better set out the humming bird feeder and await their return. Don't forget to tidy up the remnants of dead leaves and windblown refuse that was once buried by winter snows. Renewal, renewal.

Spring brings new life. Like a grandson. And a granddaughter. And new joys that come with another generation with which to share small things: The growing of flowers, tree leaves, the multi-colored marvel of a butterfly wing ... the sheer happiness of life, itself.

It's spring. Run along with bettyandisbel and play hop-scotch and jump rope. Be glad for the end of cold and look forward. The summer is nearer and we will continue to cast off heavy clothing, strap on our sandals, and worship long days replete with bar-b-queues, picnics, fresh fruit, and fireflies.

I love spring. Why I can almost hear that little goat-footed baloonMan whistling far and wee.

Interracial Romance: Fad or the Future

One might wonder why I would bother to ask such a question given the proliferation of interracial/multicultural romances with the last 10 years. If you are wondering if this is a fad or a harbinger of things to come, let me begin with this hypothesis: Mainstream literary agents and some publishers have two perspectives.

One, they consider this a fad; a recent boom coming from minority writers who dwell within our urban landscapes. They see the scores of self-published fiction on Amazon and elsewhere, and since this literary trend seemed to "come out of nowhere", it may fade as quickly it rose.

Two, they see it as the future. Yet because interracial (or "IR" as it is known in the trade), is a sub-genre within a sub-genre, my hypothesis is that it is still far too esoteric to be profitable. After all, the great amount of IR romance involves black women and white men; and because we always read about a heroine with whom we can relate, why would a white female want to read a romance wherein the heroine does not reflect her? Fair enough.

And we know that the largest demographic of romance readers are white females from the southern half of the United States, so it stands to reason that a literary agent who looks to the marketability of a good story first is going to decline representing a project that they perceive has limited sales potential. After all, this is business.

Yet I would like to add in a third variable which in no way impugns those in the business of representing authors for a living.

Might it not be that the many rejections that go out from long-established mainstream literary agent houses are because of a failure to fully perceive the rapidly changing racial, cultural, and "inter-relational" world around them? That from the competitive realms of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and other literary strongholds there lacks a visionary outlook which says, "We should represent more of this kind of literature"?

In part, I say, yes. Interracial romances are not a fad, and are not only here to stay, but they are going to grow and flourish. It is the future of romance much in the same way music like rap and hip-hop (once an anomaly of the urban fringe) have now gone mainstream.

I look to Kensington and Harlequin Publishing houses whose IR imprints do sell, and sell well enough for these giants to see profits generated from stories that feature non-white protagonists. Sadly, the reality is that by virtue of numbers in the population's demographic, white men/white women will continue to dominate mainstream romance submissions, acceptance by agents, and will end up on book shelves from publishers from now until romance writers go extinct.

But as the hearts and minds of people progress toward greater understanding and acceptance (notice, I did not say tolerance), of love across color lines, I do hope more agents realize they stand to profit by taking a chance on an ever-escalating trend.

Or perhaps I should reassure them that there are more than enough fans of IR romance; readers like me who would make it worth their while.

The Ides of March

Unlike Caesar, I don't believe I should be wary of anything except the ever expanding mud puddles forming in my front yard.

Yes, the weather is changing, and as the Sun grows warmer and the days longer, I feel that sense of incubation so prevalent in the final stages of winter. Call it the end of a hibernation? Not really.

Dormant, I am not. The winter for me is a chance to regroup, renew, and prepare for a "coming out".

What do I mean?

I am not sure, to be honest. Perhaps it is an anticipation of results after spending much in the way of  sweat equity, and other investments into my future. Right now, the investment I am making in my writing will, I pray, result in the acquisition of a book contract. It has been a long slog through piles of rejections, requests for chapters and manuscripts, and still more rejections.

I do take heart that my editor, author, J.J. Murray (who I also count as my mentor), keeps encouraging me to stick with it--something I intend to do, since the only way I can fail is to give up.

So write on, I say! Write, read, reflect, incubate, and write some more. I know that I have great stories to tell, stories that come from hard knocks, tough experiences, from pain and glory, and from the heart.

Is all that enough to sell a book? I shall be able to tell you that once one of my books is sold. And that will happen since I am not about to give up.

March has arrived. And it's snowing outside my window. I could lambasted this situation by hurling explicatives at the heavens, but would no nothing to influence the snow itself. I move on.

A recent comment from a fellow authoress bid me to consider venturing out on my own and self-publish my very excellent books. I am giving this some serious thought. Why?

Partly because after nearly three years of querying and receiving rejections for a genre that is a little too "fad" or marginal (I write interracial romance) for most agents; and in part because I get tired of waiting the months it takes for agents and editors to review my work. Why can't they just shove the gargantuan piles of queries aside and read mine first? Too much to ask? Really?

I believe the time has come to grab the creative bull by the horns and Kindle my way to success.

Yes, I know. There is no guarantee that success will fall into my lap--but if I seize it, hold it in my clutches, never let it go--yes, that's it... I...

Oops. Sorry. Don't know what came over me. Ahem!

Yes, self-publishing. It seems like a quick fix and a whole lot of work. Then there is the marketing, the need to get the word out in order to stand out. Internet access, blogs, book signings, media outreach; yep, a whole lot of work.

I could just wait and allow time to be my best friend. An agent does the footwork of getting the book sold to a publisher. The publisher does the leg work of formatting, printing and binding, or formatting and uploading, and some marketing. There's contracts all along the way, which nibbles at the take home revenue, but hey, they have to make a living, too. Right?

With that in mind, the thought of self-publishing look ever more appealing. After all, I believe in my work. I want the public to have access to it, I don't mind working for my success--not one bit!

Perhaps it is best to consider entrepreneurship, self-determination, and grabbing that bull.

And I've wrestled with enough bulls on this publishing quest to know enough to watch out for those horns!

Woodlands Awakening 2015

From a recent journey into the forest:

I stalk along watching above as trees barren of foliage sway in a wind that I cannot hear. Towering sentinels with sunken sap gelled behind bark skins stand in cold and silence, their gnarly limbs as bent and twisted carcasses, but still living, and they watch how I journey within their realm.

And I know the woodlands are full of life yet the living sequester themselves in fear and in comfort to avoid the icy hold of winter’s grip. A grip that does not claw with icy fingers piercing down through my neck or up my sleeves, but that cloaks me and chills me from the outside in, until there is no warmth, but always the hope of warmth.

I look down. Tracks of denizens, long trails searching from far beyond their origins and slinking to where they disappear into a distant gray curtain that is broken only by flecks of lighter gray. Movement, color, sound ... All lay denuded, insipid, and silent in a frigid kingdom of snow and ice.

And the bitter wind stings the face, cracks the lips, and forces the eyes to well with freezing tears. I walk with a heaviness that draws my cold feet to the earth like an icy magnet; they are numb, unwieldy, save for the ache of slowly freezing toes.

But I stand and I listen. Deliberately. There is a creak of limbs grating against each other; a snap of an ice-laden branch. I hear the rumbling of a silent wood broken but by the rapping of russet leaves of long dormant oaks, tapping on bark as icy fingers on glass, shivering as they await their mortal descent  to the forest floor.

Homeward, I walk on, rapt in muse of a realm where the language is a tongue of a sharp ear, a keen eye, and a clear scent. Here where God dwells, the road, not given, is shared. And I continue on into the wilds I love, aware and attentive—and I belong.

Getting Serious or Take a Breath and Start Again

Who am I kidding? How much more serious about being published can I possibly get? Any more serious and I would have to try bribing literary agents; you know, start selling stuff, like the family heirlooms, my dog, my firstborn ... Or I could fling my body across the desk of an agent, clinging to their lapels while bawling out his or her name, begging on pain of death that they represent me. Yep, that's pretty serious. Manic, but serious.

But who's got the time?

So I continue commit myself to more practical solutions to getting published. For instance, I have upgraded my website to where I'm quite proud of my branding and marketing. I now have website profile pages on Goodreads, on Romance Writers of America, and Wattpad (whoever they are). Speaking of Wattpad, I've even posted a novel for folks to read and offer comments. And there are the many Facebook pages that I have LIKED and groups for black women writers that I've joined. Now that's fun.

I'm starting to enjoy this writing community-group-profile-member-interracial author-kind of thing. I've entered contests (won first place in the 2014 CIMRWA), I am submitting to anthologies, sending out queries, sample chapters, and synopsizes. I stare at this screen until my eyes go blurry, I will be attending conferences, meeting folks, I may start a local writers group, and I may also find time to sleep.

And when all is said, I continue to write and envision what I will write next. And life will go on even after I get published.

Creative Hibernation

You heard me.

It's winter. Let's admit it. All most of us want to do is curl up under the covers with our favorite steaming beverage-- and a steamier body beside us to cuddle. I certainly do. And with the limited chances to stray outside and enjoy nature (for you urban dwellers), it comes to pass that indoor pursuits are a priority for spare time amusements. Am I right?

What about me, you ask? Well, I love winter. The more severe, the better. I know that sounds sadistic and insane, but ask me why.

Okay, I'll tell you. I, like my colleagues in the arts, take this cabin fever afflicted opportunity to flex creative muscle. Plainly, I write and I paint. Well, I write more than I paint. I have no garden to tend, I limit my walks to de-iced foot paths (something non-existent around here; everything is icy), and the hunting season is over. Not much point in venturing out-of-doors, so I stay within the confines of my cozy woodland home and I tickle the keys of my laptop, bringing to life those machinations of my romantic imagination.

There's something about gazing out the window at a stark winter moonscape--watching the swirling wind whipped snow, the denuded trees, and best, hearing haunting wind howling through the forest--ooh, that gets my prolific author on!

So until spring sets its combative sights on this dormant season of hibernation and quiet, I shall happily take the time to write, to breath life into my characters so that I my fall in love with them.

Ah, yes. Winter is good.

Back From the Brink

    Ah, tis a weary road I've travelled in these last six months. To start, my home of 20 years at New Hope Farms in New York came to an end. The owners sold the property where my husband and I worked as equestrian caretakers since 1994.
     Thus began an era of my life that involved finding a new home, yard sales, selling our horses and the horse trailer, disposing of sundry accumulations of stuff we didn't need, packing things into boxes, more yard sales, surrendering our beloved greyhounds, Dot and Dash (I don't want to talk about it), getting through my youngest child's high school graduation, sorting through mountains of books, selling fish tanks, finding a home for Jasmine, my eight foot boa constrictor (I don't want to talk about the, either!), helping realtors show the farm property ... Let's see, what else?
     Did I mention that I was doing my utmost to ignore my health? It's a crime of omission that caught up to me right around Labor Day, when on a sweltering 90 degree day, I hauled six heaping 55-gallon garbage bags to the dump, vacuumed four second floor non-air conditioned bedrooms (with a Shop Vac), and all without drinking anything but an iced coffee.
     Combine that with a visit to an acupuncturist for my heart, liver, kidneys, and a recurrent back problem, on the following Wednesday, I lay in bed giving my husband my last rites confession before I closed my eyes for the final time.
     Yes indeed. I felt that bad.
     After a visit to the emergency room, a very irate doctor chastised me for being overwrought, clinically exhausted, and acutely dehydrated. Yep, when your pee-pee is the same color as your hardwood flooring, you've got a big problem.
     Suffice it to say that I put the brakes on everything and slapped myself into the bed with a pitcher of liquids, my Kindle App, and my TV remote.
     Things occasionally came up:
     "Lesa, could you handle a class?"
     Nope.
     "Lesa, could you help at church?"
     Nuh-Uh.
     "Lesa, I need ..."
     Sorry. Not gonna happen.
     That was the first week of September, and here we are about to enter February. I'm finally feeling better, although every time something physically challenging arises, my body sends out the war party, telling me, "You better nor, or else!"
     And since I tend to take the lemons handed to me and make them into applesauce, I've spent these last months in cocoon mode, writing, editing, and sending out queries to agents and publishers.
     And you know what? I rather enjoy sitting here in our new Pennsylvania home, looking out over the 12,000 acres of state land butting up against my backyard. Like in the days when Mary Shelly and friends wrote their best works in the foul weather of 1816 (lucky her-it was summer then), I look out on a two-foot plus white mantle of snow, icicles draping off my eaves, and the barren trees surrounding my house.
     And I write.
 
  

Why I'm sometimes pissed.

Simple. Things anger me. Circumstances, people, news, events ...

For example, I become infuriated when my stinking fax machine makes copies instead of faxing my material. I want to choke some sprout-eating wiener hipster geek at Google when I constantly have to re-set my lousy password just to access my blog.

I get pissed when my truck tailgate drops down at 65 miles an hours and I lose a garbage can; when the dog pees in the entryway as I come home, when I can't unscrew a tube of paint, when I get rejection letters from agents and editors who don't want the story I labored to write. I'm angry about being spied on, listened to, and watched because I have the freedom to do what I want, and that fact pisses some power-hungry bureaucrat off.

Yes, I know. I let little things tick me off whenever I fail to keep sight of the big things. I know such is true in my head, but my emotions - well, there are times when I just need to vent, blow off stream, kick a can, curse, and go eat a Hershey bar (no, two Hershey bars!)

Then I'll go and hug that damn dog after I've let him back into the house, I fix the stupid truck tailgate, I'll keep querying agents, and then I'll take a hot bath. I still might throw that crappy fax machine out the second story window and delight as it splatters into the pavement. But that will give me an excuse to go out and buy a better one.

Looking Forward As I Look Back

April has finally arrived, and as I sit watching the sunset colors of ochre and slate, I mull over the transitions to come. Moving day will soon be upon me.

Changes are never easy, especially big, life-changing ones. By this time next year, I will no longer live at this farm, my home of the last twenty years. My youngest who was born here will be moving on after high school, as has her elder siblings. It will be my husband, my eldest special needs daughter, and me.

We will leave New York, and on one level I shall not regret that, given the ever-escalating encroachment by this state's tyrannical government. I spoke today with a deli owner who summed it up succinctly, "They just take everything you own," meaning personal income, freedom, etc.

What I will miss is this state's rural beauty, its wildlife, and the forests I have come to know as well as my own backyard. I will recall the days of autumn foxhunts; I loved a good gallop cross country. The memory of cool early-May mornings and the sound of the first birds as I waited to hear the tom turkeys gobble will probably fade. And would you believe, there may even come a time when I think I will miss cleaning out poop and pee from my horse's stall every morning.

But Pennsylvania horizons beckon. I look out the window of my studio and notice the sky changing from a pale cerulean to a pastel mauve, with the underlining of clouds reflecting the setting sun's glow. As I write, I will certainly miss these New York skies, and wonder if the skies of Pennsylvania will glow as beautifully, as brightly. I pray they inspire me with the same creative inspirations as I've known here.

Back From a Long Winters Nap

Okay, so I wasn't napping. I was busy with my writing, and editing my novels with the help of J.J. and Amy Murray's Editing Service. Love those guys!

I sat so many hours sitting bleary-eyed in front of my laptop, munching on sesame seed crackers and guzzling mineral water, to polish a manuscript worthy enough for the eyes of literary agents.

I recently dusted off a novel I began in 1990 and completed in 1992. It's an epic fantasy, suitable for the new adult market; the new adult genre being stories for the 20-something age group who are still too old to be young adult and too young to be adult-adult.

I looked at the message I was trying to impart in this romance morality play. I was happy.

It turned out to be more relevant today than in 1992, and far more entertaining given our current cultural shift towards interracial couples/families becoming mainstream. 

Looking ahead to getting it published. Wanting to be ahead of the trend. Getting ahead. Period.

Transitions

     Got up this morning. Sent hubby and the higher-schooler off for the day. Let out the dogs. Poured my morning tea. Checked the outside thermometer and I read -4.


     Minus four degrees! I mumble, "No matter what they say about global warming, they lie!" I look back at the calendar. Next month is March. March is an iffy month at best. Wind, snow, balmy sunshine, more wind, cold rains, mud, freak snowstorms, morning ice ... Did I mention wind?


     But March - for all its lion/lamb unpredictability - is a month of transition. Transition from how our planet angles itself toward the sun, from frigid to temperate, from a gray-brown landscape to a green-brown landscape, from minus four degrees to plus anything.


     Transitions are good. Why? Let us say that I hope all transitions mean forward movement. Progress. Onward and upward. Not backwards, and certainly not standing still stuck.


     As I approach my 60th birthday, I view seasonal change as a time for moving forward to new horizons, new challenges, new adventures. It is the Year of the Horse (yes, I was born this year-no coincidence), a year of blessing and freedom. I was also born on St. Valentine's Day, which I'm sure fate had a hand in, since I've always been a slobbering romantic, and I'm even more so now.


     Leaving the fifties and transitioning into the sixties makes my perspective on all transitions of time something that I see as far more relevant. It's clearer to me that life moves forward, whether or not I embrace it as something to be anticipated and appreciated.


     Perhaps that is why I have always looked forward to an unwritten future. As such, with another day at hand, I put my creative pen to page and write on as I wait for the frozen land beneath me to slowly transition into another spring,

Interracial Love Bothering You?

 

      I recently watched a CNN report about the horrid experience suffered by a tearful Tamera Mowry who is interracially married to her white husband. Someone jerk accused her of being nothing but a “white man’s whore”.

      Think back. Remember the recent controversy over the Cheerios commercial featuring an interracial family? How General Mills had to pull the comments section from their website because of hate speech? Many ads today include interracial/multicultural families, like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Hershey’s Chocolate, etc. Now Procter and Gamble, the makers of the Swiffer duster has an interracial family where the white husband is an amputee. Lord knows what kind of hate mail that’s going to generate.

     Which brings me to my point: And please indulge me while I get my vulgar Black Lady on. All right, y’all. I’ve had it. Now I axe you. Interracial love bothering you?

      Society calls it racism when white people hate everyone who isn’t white; and there’s so-called reverse racism when non-whites hate whites. Stupid from the start. All racism should be called mirror racism, the racism where you, the hater, look at other human beings of different skin tones, and you project on to them what you hate about yourself.

      Know what I mean? For example (and pay attention): You hate a white person because s/he is rich. That just means you hate yourself because you’re poor and too effing lazy to get off your people-of-color ass, get off welfare, get some education, and get yourself a damn decent job so you can be rich.
 
      You hate that a black woman has a white husband. No, you hate the fact that you ain’t got no decent love of your own in your own damn life where you are being respected for who you are regardless of what you look like.

      Keep going? Fine.

      You despise a black person because s/he is highly educated. Well, you’re just pissed because you ain’t never had the discipline to get off your lazy ass-of-whatever-color long enough to learn to speak well, read well, and write well, so you could carry on an intelligent conversation and be successful.

       You see? For the most part, racism is nothing more than a mirror in the mind-sight of the hater. It’s a twisted, wishful thinking contagion of envy, self-hatred, and vengeance based on your own despised image. And you act out by ridiculing, persecuting, committing violence on someone who is both content and innocent. May you burn!

        So what’s the best way to END racism? Man up or quit your bitchin’, and marry a different race. And guess what? You don’t become white if you’re black and marry someone who is white. You don’t become black if you’re white and you marry a someone who is black. If you like your race, you can still keep your race. Period.

        If that bothers you, what are you? Are you that stupid? How in the hell do you think we’re supposed to end racism when stupid racists bitch and moan about the love choices of others? You’re upset because of someone else’s choice in love? Damn. You need to put aside your ignorant, churlish, self-hating, arrogant, myopic, simpleton weenie-brained putz of an asshole mindset and grow up. Most people marry because of love. WTF is so hard to understand about that?

       Now for those of us who are interracially married: We are happy, and doing our damnedest to laugh in the face of the egotistical, ill-bred losers among us, because we know what the problem is: Jealousy, plain and simple.

       Our kids come out prettier, our hair is cooler looking, we love contrast, our cultural horizons are broader, and we eat better because our cross-reference recipes tastes better. We are different in the best way possible. And we are in love. Know what else? God and Jesus love us, too. Now there!

 

Taffy Days

When I was young, one of my favorite candies was Bonomo Turkish Taffy, which was about as Turkish as chopped liver. It came in a rectangular foil wrap in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. I loved strawberry the most.

As kids, we would run outside the store in search of the nearest cement stoop (a stoop is the mortar stairway leading to a house, for those of you unfamiliar with the term). There, we would hold the taffy flat in the hand, raise our hand high overhead, and with all our might, we would slam the taffy against the stoop, shattering it into bite-size, chewable pieces.

But some of us were far more adventurous. We dared to sit (yes I said sit) on the taffy, incubating it until it was soft and pliable. Then came the magic. We opened the wrapper, and with aplomb, we pinched an end between out fingers and stretched out the taffy into long, drooping strings, and gobbled it down.

Which brings me to my point. I often feel at one with that taffy. There are days when I feel sat upon. Yes, I said sat upon. I feel stretched until I droop, only to be consumed because I lack the strength to resist the pulling. And there are other days when feel that I've been smashed and shattered into a million pieces.

Sometimes I wish I were one with a Hershey bar. I could melt under the heat, and still be sweet. Maybe a piece of bubble gum: Get chewed up, and instead of being spat out, be molded into happy bubbles that appear and re-appear with more chewing. (Then again, I may end up underneath some stinky table top.)

Alas, there are days when I revert to my more primal instincts. You know, survival. I am like a jawbreaker. Go ahead. Bite all you want! Lose a tooth, so I can laugh and say I told you so.

I tell you, there are days when I can relate to the entire candy store. Yes, the ingredients are sweet to the taste, but beware. The after effects of all that sugar may result in your regretting having entered into my realm altogether.

I think if I tap into my original mind, the mind that sees being smashed, chewed, melted, etc., as being something positive, perhaps I should seek to feel more like cotton candy. You remember cotton candy. Wispy and light, delicate, and spun from pure sweetness. One taste on the tongue and you close your eyes, each mouthful is as good as the last. It reminds you of being young, innocent, and full of fun.

Yeah. I need to be more like cotton candy.

Bipolar Meteorology

Falling snows drift by my window. Too bad it isn't  sticking to the ground. Why is it that in the northeast, where you would imagine the cold would arrive and stay, that we get such a miserable fluctuation in weather.

Two weeks ago I dropped off my daughter and daughter-in-law to go skiing on a crunchy pack of crystalline powder. The only reason that I did not join them was because of the expense. But it was cold; damn cold.

Yesterday, I went out with a sweatshirt, sans hat, and thought about sitting outside for a suntan and a healthy dose of vitamin D3. My backyard was, as E.E. Cummings would have noted, "mud-luscious and puddle wonderful". I thought for a moment that I heard a far and wee whistle.

I fully expected that January and February would be the coldest time of winter here. I hoped so. It's getting frustrating to watch the logs by the wood stove gather dust, look at the mail lady in a tee shirt shoving my mail into the box, and having to pick muddy dirt from the hooves of my daughter's horse.

It's winter! I want it cold, damn it! I want it cold so I can sit by my window and stare out over a dreary white landscape in a melancholy mindset. That's when I do my best writing. Brings out the real poet in me.

Poet. Hmmm. Or perhaps I should take a page from old Mr. Cummings works and envision the coming days of a warm spring. I've written some good stuff at that time of year, too. Brings out the romantic in me. And you know, I am a romance writer.

Maybe I should keep my mouth shut about winter. Instead, I think I will look forward to longer days and overhead sunlight. Soon, I bet, a little lame goat-footed balloon man will whistle far and wee over the lands outside my window.

And just as I write that, I look outside my window at the falling snow. It's now sticking to the ground.

Write! Write! Write! The Lament of an Unknown

Write! Write! Write!  I suppose this is what an inspiring unpublished novelist like myself should live and breath to do. To read voraciously, write incessantly. Well suppose I don't feel like writing. Suppose I don't feel like forming a cohesive sentence with eloquent language to impress some literary professional long enough for them to tell me that they are willing to represent me to publishers. 

 

Suppose I don't feel like sitting for hours at a laptop to string paragraphs and thoughts and scribed images along just to satiate my need to create and a readers need for stimulation. What if I feel like sitting and staring at four walls when my creative juices go toxic and need purging with a little positive reinforcement - dare I say praise for a job well done.

 

Fuck it, I say. I don't feel like writing. My heart is wounded; my desire to re-enter the world of my characters and their environs ain't tugging at my heart strings, nor is my inspiration to re-join them burning. I miss them, yes. I love them, too. But what good is writing when the efforts of the hours, the missed dinners, the late nights, yields nothing but the rejection form letters from holier-than-thou literary agents who delete my query letters. I'm an unknown. A new author. Unpublished. A literary newcomer from the ranks of the great unwashed who seek to share their stories, only to be chastened by the shunning of literary giants.

 

It would be fine by me if everyone said my writing lacks what it takes to enter the published market. But my editor is willing to write a blurb for my book and he's an award winning, best selling author. He said it took him three years to be represented. But he's an English teacher. I'm a horse person. Not a college graduate in English literature or creative writing. Hell, I never took a remedial class on the studied works of dysfunctional lesbian authors who made good.

 

Since I have little collegiate credentials, maybe I should write about my life. I've got a story there. Write about how I ran away from home at age nine because I wanted to live out west and raise a bull calf. Something that was impossible to do in 1960's Englewood, New Jersey. Maybe someone would be interested to read about my anti-war activities and how I volunteered in the breakfast programs with the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party when I was in 10th grade. And how I caught the number 84 bus from the GWB bus station to get back to Dwight Morrow High School before my first class at 8:00 a.m. My parents never knew a thing.

 

Wow. I wonder if anyone would care to read about my college days at then West Virginia State College in Institute, West Virginia (WV being my ancestral home). I bet no one knew that I was nearly date raped, not once but twice in my dorm by guys I knew and considered my friends. I should have kicked their asses. I guess I didn't have to since I told them they would have to kill me before I would let them "stick it in".

 

I left. Burned and jaded about college. So I worked at WCHS-TV in Charleston, a CBS affiliate station. Humph! I guess that's where my writing career began since I was a copy writer for the local commercial spots. Hated that job, too. Loved to read though.

 

Read Reverend Moon's Divine Principle. I did after someone met me at a bookstore (duh!) in downtown Charleston. Joined the "Moonies"(I fucking hate that pejorative) in 1973. Sold my horse. Six months later, got four more. I taught Rev. Moon's children how to ride once I move to upstate New York.

 

I was more into painting than writing. Took some art classes at a community college. Helped edit student papers. Idiots couldn't write to save their Master's Degree butts. Got some of my poetry published in an anthology, my first real published works.

Got engaged to a white guy from Minnesota. Not a college man either. A farm boy and as innocent as they come. Wrote about that and got published in several church magazines. Got married at Madison Square Garden by Rev. Moon in a mass marriage. Good times, good times.

Lots of changes. Lots of travels. The pits and the peaks. Four kids, four dogs, and about a dozen horses later, we live in upstate New York and I'm still trying to get published as a novelist.

Write! Write! Write! I'm damn sick of it. I should have written about the real tragedies. Editors love that. How I missed my father's last sickly days and how I never got to say good-bye. They would love to read how my husband and I had to cut my nephew's body down after he had hanged himself from a basement pipe. I'll never forget the blue-black color of death on his face.

Had to bury my mother, too. I held her hand twelve hours before she passed. I missed her last moments, too. But that not what upset me. Some fat slob of a women in my church said to me hours later, "Let the dead bury the dead," quoting Jesus Christ in her self-righteous, cold-as-ice, heartless way. Bitch.

How about the days of chemo when I had breast cancer and refused to wear a wig while I taught riding lessons with my bald headed self. As soon as I finished radiation and was going to fly to Korea for a respite, I had a dream that my younger sister had died. The phone call came from my niece seven minutes later in the middle of the night. My sister was dead for real. Drugs and alcohol overdose. Saw her spirit ascending when I was in Korea. Wow.

Yep, I bet editors would love to hear more of that stuff. So here I am, trying o get published. Worrying about my health, worrying that my days are numbered and I'll have nothing to leave behind when I go.

I think deep down that I'm worrying for nothing. I get published and then what? Another book? Then another book? Would be great, but of all the stories that I could flush out of my imagination, my reality might be a better read. But that would bore me to tears.

I'm still with the Unification Church with all its traumas related to dramas since Rev. Moon passed. The caretaker home my family has lived in for the last 20 years is being sold. Fine. I'm ready to get out of New York anyway. Love the state, hate the assholes in the government. Setting my sights on Pennsylvania. I like what I see in the Poconos and so does my family. New home, new friends, new adventures. I just hope I survive the stress of moving day upheaval.

Having to start anew never bothers me though. It's having to write, write, write to impress readers that sometimes pisses me off. I can't sleep. I don't feel like it when a thought train rolls into my creative station. So here I am, sitting at this damn laptop at 12:10 a.m. writing, writing, writing.