The Caste of Characters in My Novel Set in Rural America.

The canopy of trees also covers a diversity of wealth in rural America.

As a writer from the lower middle class, who has only peeked around the corner to catch glimpses of wealth, I do not wish to put wealth on a pedestal. In my novel, "Severed," I don't drop too many designer names and I purposefully stay away from the bling-bling trappings of so many contemporary American novelists, who place wealth as the real protagonist. However, the concept of wealth is a very important subtext to the novel. The lengths that people go through to become wealthy forms part of the mystery.

Set in a rural pocket of Northwestern Louisiana, Nakadee is a university town with a population of under 40,000.  Luscious in its comparison to swampy, crowded New Orleans and its northern neighbor, a complacently citified Shreveport, Nakadee is a fictional sleepy hollow that is likely to grow in leaps and bounds given a potential natural gas pipeline construction project which will change its economy.  Some Nakadee residents can't wait, while others don't care: the rich will only get richer, however, the lower classes might get some good jobs, for a change.

The citizens of Nakadee, whose ancestors have lived there for several hundred years, while trapped in its relative remoteness, are thankful for its refuge. They purposefully wish to live life in the slow lane.  The town is a mix of Americans, Black, European, Creole and Cajun, the latter two a melange resulting from questionable "hookups," over the centuries, between the first two racial groups, that defied racial sexual taboos back in the day. Nearly every native of Louisiana is a variation on that theme.  All citizens have their crosses to bear in living, out loud, the ancient roles of slaveholder, slave, today, as a Louisianan.

Even rural roads lead to power

The wealth of those groups is also relative of one's color. But there are exceptions, and my novel explores it through the eyes of the protagonist, Dr. Lula Logan, a Northerner Black woman who grew up solidly lower middle-class.  Hailing from California, her father had a secure job in the U.S. Postal Service, and scrimped and saved for his only child. He was frugal to a fault, and managed to handle his government benefits wisely enough to grow a trust for her that is worth several million dollars.  Lula's mother, his widow, is still alive and Lula is gainfully employed, with no need to draw upon her inheritance. 

Growing up, Lula lived on the periphery of the Black social circles of debutante balls and elite Black social clubs. Not prone to class-isms or people-pleasing, she is more intellectual than social. While no stranger to the good life, she knows she has to pay for it herself, so when the investigation in which she becomes involved relates to several wealthy individuals, she's intrigued by what she witnesses, and must, herself, decide whether she has any biases against the people she comes across as part of the investigation.

Mind you, the wealthy she's dealing with are not the nouveaux riches Kimyes and Jay-Zs of the world who sing about their acquisitions, but old money and old power, whose wealth is very much unseen, and more hidden in their closed door Congressional offices.  Lula must come to terms with her professed values and her feelings, which are muddled after meeting Congressman Girabeaux.

A Black Republican who is from a family of freeman who owned slaves in the antebellum South; the other, an older, more traditional White Congressman whose patted enough backs and greased enough palms to place him next to the highest players in Hollywood, his constituency.  Though they are rich, they are only bit players in a grand scheme. In fact, they are hired guns of the real power brokers of the uber wealthy--twelve degrees, instead of six degrees of separation. But they know that to stay in power they must do someone else's bidding, even if they never meet the person whose interests they represent.

When Lula meets the Black Congressman, despite her progressive politics, she finds herself falling under his spell.  Is it the limousine driver or his personal chef that makes him so appealing? And what does she truly feel about her ex-boyfriend, a Creole detective, the only one of color on the police force, who is comfortable with his place in town, but who, to Lula, manages to always play it safe?

In the U.S., we witness the lives of the rich and famous on television. But how do you handle it when you see it up close and personal? The cast of characters in the novel is large, and wide, intentionally so; any small town has its own variety. In this investigation, however, when severed fingers start to appear in different parts of the small town, Lula comes across some of the town's characters beneath the surface of notoriety, but characters just the same.

The South is one big caste system through which Lula must negotiate. Although never on the surface, her beliefs about race are a major factor in her own metamorphosis as she comes to terms with her new home in Nakadee, Louisiana.

I Used to Like the Police--Until I Stopped Working For Them

The television show Girl From Uncle, one of America's first female law enforcement protagonists, was the bomb when I was growing up.  Stephanie Powers was the coolest woman on the planet, as far as I was concerned. I remember pretending to have a Walkie-Talkie (sounds funny, now, doesn't it, given smart phones), talking loud enough so my colleague, Donald, another kid with a vivid imagination, could hear me through his own device around the corners of the neighborhood houses where we'd hide out, going after our invisible prey. I'm not sure what we held in our hands. It wasn't Walkie-Talkies.  It might have been cardboard candy boxes. Who knows.

Back then in 1966, my family and I were living on 41st Street, close to downtown L.A., where, one evening, I sat outside on my grandparents' porch with my friend, watching the flames from a local riot nearby light up the sky a deep orange. I didn't know what was going on. Apparently, it was a left-over remnant of the Watts riots, a release of pent-up anger of the infamous mostly White police control over a poor Black community.

My family hailed from a college town in Ohio, a bastion of interracial marriage and co-ed education, and were thrust into an all Black environment, something quite alien to the six of us kids. Our new peers in L.A., thought we were from England because of our mid-Western accents, and we found them to be a rowdy for our Northerner bookworm tastes. But I knew to love my black brethren, because we were all living under a yoke none of us asked for.

For many years I did play de facto real life "detective" as an attorney for the federal government, where I learned close hand how law enforcement works.  Or doesn't work. I left when I realized that I was feeding into a system that was propagated to pursue only the most vulnerable, not the most criminal.  Drug dealers were being set-up for capture while corporations were getting away with untold criminal acts; monied interests were untouchables, their schemes too difficult to comprehend.  So, I took an interest in white collar crime cases.  Ironically, notwithstanding my biases against the rich and infamous, my work led me to assist in prosecuting Africans, which I felt duty-bound and compelled to do because Americans were being bilked out of millions of dollars.

I had become the go-to person for handling international inquiries concerning Nigerian organized white collar crimes. I had created a task force among federal government agencies to tackle those letters from Nigeria--you know--the ones from "Prince Okoye," inviting the recipient to provide bank account numbers and permissions to deposit alleged millions into the lucky American [sucker's] bank accounts.  Those letters were called "419" in Nigeria, and advance fee fraud here in the U.S.  From rocket scientists to retirees, the American victims' love of money caused them to conspire with faceless Nigerians with the smarts to know Americans' obsession with being rich. 

My work had garnered me an Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy, an appointment by United States Attorney General Janet Reno, which allowed me to live in the UK for a year.  My thinking was that by isolating Nigerians from other Blacks in the diaspora, law enforcement would learn how to distinguish them from other Blacks, instead of painting all of us with the same brush stroke. It was a burden for all Blacks to be responsible for every other Black persons crimes, because the only definition of a suspect might be that s/he was "Black."

Publicity wasn't stemming the tide of Americans who were "corralled" by the Nigerian scammers. When I suggested that prosecutions of Americans for being co-conspirators (aligning themselves with individuals who were conspiring to secret money away from coffers in Nigeria to the U.S.) would be a good deterrent, that fell on deaf ears. The inference in the push-back was that law enforcement did not want to have to prosecute White people.

Criminals were criminals, I thought.

Not in America.

Criminals are Black, in America.  We are drug dealers, thieves and sexual predators, a perception drilled into the American conscience by Hollywood.  Are Blacks innocent of all those negative labels? No more so than any other group or nationality. But, like cowboys on horseback killing Indians, back in the day (well, centuries ago), going after Black people is today's bloodsport; only the horsepower is an automobile.

The people in law enforcement with whom I worked were good people, overall.  They carried out their duties diligently. They believed in their mission.  I was never treated with any disrespect. In fact, I was feted by the government agencies with whom I worked.

The problem with American law enforcement is that those tasked with investigating and nabbing criminals are trained to do only that.  They are not trained in the bigger picture history, or in other techniques and methods--only those missions championed by their own. They are like guard dogs whose job is to find the culprit, and are rewarded with a dog biscuit in the end: a bonus, a promotion.

When I worked with Scotland Yard, I was impressed with their level of investigatory research. They knew they were dealing with people, and they sought to learn who those people were. Their charts and graphs of operations were truly phenomenal (before computer technology could create sophisticated graphs).  I can't say the same for law enforcement in the U.S, because I was an attorney, as opposed to an agent, so I wasn't one of them, and never learned their operational tactics and techniques. But the Secret Service agents were eager to learn from Scotland Yard, and we traveled there and Nigeria. One White agent, Tom Johnston, was exceptionally engaged in understanding Nigerian crime and, eventually, used my policy paper for a class he taught at a local college in Georgia. He had a heart attack after returning to the US on a family emergency, after traveling on assignment in Nigeria to work closely with Nigerian police.

Mind you, I worked for federal law enforcement, which has a more amorphous mandate than going after bad guys on the street. The agents I worked with all had college degrees, as was required for the types of cases they were investigating. My focus was white collar crime, sophisticated crimes by highly intelligent and charismatic suspects who, under the guise of business, would take your home from under you (sound familiar?).  That Nigerians were as sophisticated as the average American businessman was a real quandary for law enforcement, and they didn't know what to do about it. This was before the terrorist attacks when America was still innocent, gullible, and without much knowledge of international crime except for the Mafia and Mexican drug lords.

When I asked for and was denied leave without pay to finish my report, after seeking three additional months to complete my assignment, I left the government and completed it. I believed my research was more important to the British and U.S. government than my being employed. I had several recommendations that I offered, but know not which, if any, were implemented. The essence of my paper was that the whole world shows acts of criminality; we must come to grips with our own criminal pasts before we accuse another people of being perpetrators. 

Since leaving law enforcement in the late 1990s and witnessing what's happened to the world post-2001, when the World Trade Center towers were struck down, I'm at a loss to explain what has happened to our country. The attack on New York has had an indelible blow to the greatness of our crime-fighting apparatus. Instead of preventing the occurrence of the attacks, we unleashed our angry bulldogs on the world, suspicious of anyone who is foreign-looking, foreign-sounding, and non-Christian.  The militarization of our police, untrained in warfare, but given the powerful tools to wage it, has created a police state in our own country that has made Americans afraid of those sworn to protect. This professor's compelling essay explores the phenomenon of private funding of police as a new development in explaining our current problems.

And given the rash of news of minorities under siege, it would appear that our own police have taken sides and believe that we Blacks are the terrorists among us.  So the local police are the new investigators of all things suspicious. Forget that this weekend is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, where a White terrorist killed Americans on our soil -- it is still the brown-skinned who have scarred the American psyche.

I am neither male nor White, but I know that for centuries, they have grown up believing they are the good guys. This facile explanation of American crime-fighting, "good guys versus bad guys" is also a problem. When people are reduced to those descriptions, there are bound to be consequences.  What happens when the prosecutors are the bad guys? What happens when the police or agents are the criminals who, until the advent of the smart phone, have gotten away with it and live their lives among us as upright citizens?

Official NRA Police Target

This country has always hunted Black Americans, as slaves, and not only in the South:

[A] legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.

http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing


The moral of the story is that there is no race immune to criminality.  But for Blacks in America, we all hope to not be stopped by the police. It is easy to see how a Black man's instinct would be to run, because chances are he will be beaten, shot or strangled to death--while handcuffed.

Better to die a free man than in custody.

This link is not necessarily an endorsement, but definitely gives us food for thought: http://www.thrivemovement.com/our-justice-system-fails-protect-your-rights

Yes, Mr. Giuliani, Our President Does Not Love "Your" America. And Why I Love This President.

How DID you grow up, Mr. Mayor?

I had to weigh in on the recent debacle concerning Rudolph Giuliani's comment that the believes that the U.S. President of the United States, who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, to defend against enemies - domestic and foreign - does not like America. 

What is apparent to me, in Mr. Giuliani's comments, is that it is he - Giuliani - who does not like America.  America's once Mayor,does not like what America has become, and is chastising the President for not reveling in its halcyon post World War II past, one that he and his Republican cohorts still cherish. Giuliani's claims that Barack Hussein Obama didn't "grow up" like most Americans somehow makes the President seem other than ... can he say the same to the millions of other immigrants who did not grow up in America? Are they any less American?

According to Giuliani: yes.

According to Giuliani, there's only one way to grow up in America.

America Accepts Everyone, Mr. Giuliani. Even You.

The irony is that Italians were not considered Americans, even when they grew up here.  They were called every derogatory name in the book, and were considered strange, with their garlic smells and pasta and accents, opera, and alleged hyper-sexuality. They worshiped a man other than the President, who lived in Italy and wore strange robes.

What a difference four decades makes.  Now, Giuliani would have you believing he was part of the White Anglo-Saxon Ozzie and Harriet family.

What does Mr. Giuliani say to the children of parents in our Armed Forces and our diplomatic missions who live in secluded American communities, going to American schools in foreign countries? Are they not American?  What does Mr. Giuliani say to the Japanese gardeners populating California in the 1940s and '50s, who tended people's gardens and lawns, but whose children grew up speaking fluent English--yet were put in concentration camps in the USA? Were they not Americans, too?

Oh, right. They were Americans.

Just the wrong Americans.

Was Elvis Presley an American, growing up singing and gyrating his hips like a Black man?
What was America before the African slaves brought watermelon, yams, okra, and any number of "foreign" foods to the American natives' shores?

What does it mean when an Indian woman wears a sari, or a Muslim woman wears a hijab? Does that make them any less American? When Catholic women wore scarves on their heads when attending mass, were they less American?



What does it mean to "grow up like us?"  Mr. Giuliani thinks it means living in a community whose only foreign food was Chinese take-out and whose only foreign language knowledge was the words  "Adios muchacho." That was fifty years ago. And Giuliani and his ilk want all of us to go back there.

The Giuliani faction of the Republican party is like overweight men who still talk about their high- school touchdowns as if they were yesterday.  We all grow old. And America will always change.

This President understands that.

Barack Hussein Obama, in name alone, is a bridge from the past to the future. He knows that his Presidency is a harbinger of a real recognition that the storytellers have not scribed: this country belongs to no one and everyone.  We are learning that being American is a state of mind, and those minds can beg to differ about what it means to be an American.  And that's why a faction of the Republican party does not like this President. And the very reason why I love him.


Mr. Giuliani is upset. That he isn't Presidential material, and that his own greatness as America's Mayor has been eclipsed by a two-term President who speaks and communicates to the world with respect and equality, not the superior might that White means right.

And where are the voices of Italian Americans who could silence Giuliani?

Quiet.

They are exercising the privilege of being White now, something this half-White President cannot do.

Shame on Giuliani.

Warning: Being Famous Can Kill You.

Drug overdose (?)

In thinking about what to blog about next, I had a list of options, but the one I've chosen is not the topic I wish to write about.  However, much like my novel, I have to write it, to have my say, before I can move on to other things.

My heart has been heavy for the past week.  Famed singer Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, may die in the next couple of days, perhaps on February 11, 2015, the three year anniversary of her mother's death. I hope that I am proven wrong about this, so I'm perfectly fine if it turns out to be the case.  And tonight, the Grammy's will be televised, feting the musical accomplishments of some of America's most popular singers. You will note that I did not say, "talented." I believe that term has been lost in translation, nowadays, as it is personalities that become celebrities, not artists, necessarily.

No need to explain this one.

Clive Davis, the mogul who has created mega-stars, throws a Gala, every Grammy night, anticipating his artists' big wins before the Grammys airs on television. In fact, he was partying in the hotel in 2012 year when his top-grossing singer was lying in a bathtub, dying of a drug overdose, upstairs. Alone. A victim of his genius. And treachery.  He is a poster boy for so many other "maestros," handlers (managers, agents, posses, handlers, hangers-on, and sheer leeches) of talent, who breed and nurture fame, like a plant, but then let it go wild and choke itself with too much sycophantic, and ultimately, murderous adoration. Anyone who can shepherd the talent of a young, raw, street-talking songstress into the epitome of American beauty, grace, and talent should also know the heart of his client, know of her troubles, her weaknesses, and nurse her to mental health with the same acuity and adroitness with which he nursed her talent as a singer. And let us not forget those bereaved who eulogized her at her memorial service. They were actually lamenting their own scarlet letter A, not for adulterer, but for being "At Fault," for using the carcass, eating it alive, siphoning away the money and life joys from artists too disturbed by drugs and fame to know what was happening to them.

Adulation is the ultimate orgasm, nowadays. And the problem is that we have chosen fame as a career goal, without the job title that goes with it.  It is enough to "party like a rock star." I wonder if any of our dead stars would want their anonymity back, to be alive and on Earth now.

Natalie Wood - drowned at a drunken
yacht party

Except for historians, no one wants to hear God Bless America sung by Kate Smith. Now, it is Houston's rousing, soul-filled, heart-stirring Star Spangled Banner, lifting our military's voices to kill Iraqis soon after the first unnecessary Persian Gulf War. Whitney Houston was trotted out like Helen of Troy, her [voice] hailing the launch of a thousand rockets (instead of a thousand ships), of U.S. "bombs bursting in air."  This iconographic woman, who marshaled our nation's military might, would find herself vulnerably alone, naked, in a warm tub, retreating into the womb of Mother Earth, a reverse embryo on the verge of nothingness.


Fame is our crack cocaine.  The human ego has reached gargantuan solipsistic navel-gazing to a degree that even the famous can't get enough of themselves. I recall my stupefaction learning that when he was younger, even Prince William, already a teenage heartthrob and legendary heir to the Windsor throne professed his desire to be...an actor.

Let that sink in.

River Phoenix -- drug overdose

This then-boy, likely already the most famous "son" in Western civilization, whose mother, Princess Diana, Duchess of Wales, died a horrible death from being hounded by paparazzi, could not get enough adulation for being born to a rich family who crowned themselves rulers of the Western hemisphere. He wanted more. And when he visited the United States, his blushing wife, in tow, where did he go? To meet legendary Jay-Z and his wife, Beyonce, American icons: the swashbuckling, hip-gyrating, songstress-rapping storytelling duo that has whipped the world into a frenzy of adulation so much so that old moneyed uber super stars want to be aligned with them to secure the street cred to "rule" the future Britannia even better.

I haven't touched on the infamous famous, like Monica Lewinsky, who is a household name because she performed fellatio on the President of the United States.  Having accomplished this Herculean feat, she is now qualified to write articles for Vanity Fair, sitting among a pantheon of meritorious writers.

It is not the love of money that is the root of all evil.  It is the love of fame that is evil. It is a cancer that has infected our world and it will only get worse, as the masses continue to be fed stories of "rags-to-riches" triumph that inevitably crash and burn in a drug-addicted death, a dangerous driving accident, or a tragic life of looking everywhere for love, not realizing that loving yourself is the best admiration to which one could ever hope to aspire.

I have shied away from idolizing any living person except my grandmother, when she was alive, and my mother, who lives and breathes--yet, she, too is only human. We can all cast our gaze and applaud the feats of hard-working individuals who have climbed from anonymity to be known to the world. But don't get it twisted. For those who seek only fame, it comes at a price.

Michael Jackson, Drug overdose

Bobbi Kristina is paying for it, as are Michael Jackson's children.  And our nation is paying for it, too, while we spend hours reading the gossip sheets and internet sites, reveling in our celebrities' latest perils, instead of helping each other solve our own.  Our nation is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, addicted to being everyone but our individual selves. We are in a perennial state of youth, where nobody grows old, and everybody is consumed with consuming like a rock star.

Whitney Houston's death, and her daughter's impending one, should remind us all of the price we pay for fame that no one is accustomed to handling without special assistance. We would all do better to  wish for a long life of happiness, creativity, self-improvement, an income in which to live comfortably, and the love of family and friends. 

Grow up...and old, America.  It's better than dying young. And famous for dying so young.

My Cautionary Tale [or Ten Questions to Ask a Prospective Agent].

Agents with an Ulterior Motive.

For those who haven't read all of my blogs, you may have the impression that I am a New Englander.  Although I have lived in New Hampshire for almost 13 years, I have only called it my true home for the last four years, and had a previous life growing up in Ohio and the suburbs of Los Angeles. Most of my wonderful siblings live in southern California, and my dearly departed grandmother (she passed away at 104 in 2013) lived there, too. She was always a catalyst for my calling California home.

When I decided to leave the security of my employment as an attorney, in Washington, D.C., I took a vow of poverty. After doing my Peace Corps stint in the Philippines on an island village where there was no running water or electricity, I understood that living well is a relative term.  My older sister and her doting husband let me live in their home in the South Bay area of Los Angeles so that I could pursue a television writing career.   My belongings were in storage in DC, still, but I had my hybrid bicycle, clothes, and a nice comfy bed, and virtual hegemony over their home office while they worked.  In exchange for their largesse, all I had to do was wash dishes, and run errands for them.  I had my computer, that I had bought from a Writers Guild of America East Foundation screenwriting competition that had garnered me $4000 many years earlier.  Mind you, I wasn't the only winner. There were 11 of us. Although we were supposed to receive an established screenwriting mentor to assist us in our screenwriting pursuits, mine never materialized. But I was busy as an attorney then, and had developed an interest in making my own film. But I digress.

While in Los Angeles, I wrote a spec script for a television series, and a television pilot named, "CON LAW," a proposed series about new law school students matriculating at the same time one of their professors is killed.

Over a decade later, after moving to New Hampshire, I would receive a notice in the mail that I was potentially a member of a class of writers who had been discriminated against by the industry, meaning, "Hollywood," as, apparently, I was an older writer who had been thrown in the dustbin with other more successful writers.  Considering that my attempts to enter the industry were unsuccessful, I was flummoxed as to how I could even belong to the class of writers.  I was not successful, so how could I be getting the letter?  Then it dawned on me.

I had an agent. Once.

How could I forget that I had an agent? I couldn't even remember the agency's name. I had to look up my records to be reminded that I had signed a contract to potentially write for a very popular television series dealing with Washington, D.C., where I had hailed for 11 years as an international criminal attorney for the US government. The contract was for one already successful television series. The agency didn't plan to represent me for any other potential writing gig.  When I called the Writers Guild of America, West, the union for writers, to ask them about how usual that practice was for one to be represented for one show only, they said that they had never heard of such a thing.  The literary agency that sought to represent me for the one project was a boutique agency with lots of established writers, but no big names from what I could gather (although, truth be told, I was interested in #screenwriting, not literature, so most writers' names would fall on my deaf ears). I would place this agency in the second or third tier of literary agencies; but they had nice offices, and seemed quite legitimate.  And, apparently, the agency was one of the defendants, among others in the lawsuit. Mind you, some of those plaintiffs were already established writers, whose sell-by date had passed.  It's no secret that Hollywood wants nubile, impregnable youth, not seasoned adults running around a set, hence the colossal lawsuit by the elder statesmen #writers, to which I haphazardly belonged because I had an agent for all of -- not even six months.

Fanfare for the Uncommon Agent, Jerry Maguire

I severed ties with the agency after querying about the progress of my entree into writing for the already-established television series, once I learned that the writer of the successful series had used my work.  It was the type of show that hinged upon the lead writer finishing his or her writing so that the show could immediately go into production and air two weeks later. I saw my work in three or four episodes of the then current season, and into the next season.  When I returned to the agency to ask what happened, an Englishman, with a decidedly stuffy voice, whom I'd never met before said, "We never gave it to them."

Welcome to the whoring world of agents.  I don't know anyone besides the football player in Jerry Maguire who had a good relationship with one (and, well, you know how truthful that is). 

Never in the annals of moneymaking has there been a more bloodsucking species of human being than a Hollywood agent or manager.  They manage the careers of people who do all the work, have all the talent, but who are indebted to the agent--for doing what?  Talking about them in passing with their friends. Because that's all that happens. Most agents are struggling to be seen, or have their calls returned by anyone; and more often than not, they are more interested in establishing relationships with "Hollywood" or the publishing houses, themselves, than helping you, an upstart, to get your foot in the door.  Two other literary agents whom I approached (about this blog posts novel, yet to reach Amazon virtual shelves), one in NYC--who asked for my work, the other, in the UK to whom I sent my novel's synopsis--gave my work to already established writers, to review, who, rejecting my work, instead incorporated it into their own. You can purchase their versions of my novel on shelves to this day.

I know there are people who swear that their agents are a godsend. However, everyone I know seems to get their work on their own, and they do all the hustling to be known, to create a buzz, to get attention.  Think about it: agents have many clients, not just one, so how can you expect them to be singing your praises at all times?  And then you pay them 15%? For me that's like charging the New England Patriots a fee for liking them.  I know that some agents do much more. But, for the life of me, most people that I know bemoan the difficulties of getting their agent to pay any attention to them, or they chafe when an agent says that s/he was responsible for getting the agent a gig--that the client had told them about.

Agents usually want you when you're famous and a known commodity who, unequivocally, can add income to their wallet because you've earned the money already.  So, think twice about signing on the dotted line to give away your hard-earned money to somebody who merely "likes you" because they think you have promise (at making money on your own that you can then give to them).  If you are going to look for an agent, ask your prospect or consider the following questions:

You'll Have a Devil of a Time finding a Good Agent

1. Do you work out of your home, and if so, how frequently do you visit potential contacts, such as publishers, editors, book designers?

2. Ask for a look at the telephone directory on their smartphone or tablet. If there aren't hundreds of names in it, don't use that agent. You want an agent with contacts.

3. Name 10 people whom you know (not just that you've met) who are influential in your field. 

4. Who won't return your phone calls? If they can't list names, run for the hills. They are lying.

5. What role does social media play in your life as an agent? Is s/he a dinosaur, or contemporary?

6. How does the agent dress? Is s/he stylish, or frumpy, with bread crumbs all over her clothing? Is his tie stained?

7. Does the agent have an opinion about any other agencies that s/he respects or reviles?

8. Has the agent committed to the Association of Author Representative's Canon of Ethics? If s/he answers yes, s/he's likely a liar; (at least 2/3rds of agents don't belong to it).

9. What does the agent really do to earn income? Is he or she moonlighting, hoping to make it big?

10. Get a list of the clients the agent wishes s/he represented. That will tell you about where you fit in. 


People bemoan lawyers. I bemoan #agents.  If someone has an agent that s/he truly respects, share his or her name with others (I don't need to know them), and spread the word. There are too many bad ones out there making it hard for the good ones to get any screen time, as it were.

The members of the TV writers' age discrimination class action lawsuit were given a time period to pick up their settlement check(s). Of course, one of the conditions was that anyone receiving the checks could not talk about the terms of the settlement or the lawsuit.  I didn't sign online to receive the check, which in my case was only a couple of thousand dollars, and let the time lapse, as the strictly worded acceptance instructions provided.  However, someone actually called me to confirm that I wasn't accepting the check.

I didn't want to accept the settlement amount, not because it wasn't a large amount, but, because my voice means too much to me.  I'm older now. I don't care. I do what I want to, say what I want to, and as I'm not running for office, have no filter on my opinions. I didn't want their hush money.

I'm writing this missive about agents tongue-in-cheek, of course, because if a big agent approached me and said, "we want to represent you...." I'd likely say:

"No. I mean, maybe."

"Let me think about it."

Naaaa. Here's my answer: "Go to hell."

Oops? Am I burning bridges?

To hell?

I'll take the long walk, any day.

On Which Shelf Do I Belong?

Book shelf color codes: where do non-urban Black writers fit in?

This philosophical question has been nagging me for the 13 years it has taken me to research and write my novel.  The ubiquitous "they" say that one should know one's audience.  Well, I wrote this novel for myself. I was tired of not seeing characters like mine. I was tired of publishers ignoring people like me. I was tired of reading characters whose identities are wrapped up more in their accoutrements and wealth. Wealth is not a bad thing, mind you. But not all of us live with it.

I wanted to create a black female character who is inherently proud of her blackness, but who is also aware of the fact that she is a minority in a country that extols whiteness. She is not bitter about it.  Lula Logan lives her life. She does the best she can to achieve in her chosen field, forensic anthropology, and has dedicated herself to learning her craft. She is a professional. She is not arrogant about her knowledge. She is comfortable with herself.  Period.  Unlike so many female protagonists (of all races) nowadays, who are awash in aspirational upper-income trappings of owning designer-labeled this and that, Lula doesn't equate her worth with what she owns, and, like most women, appreciates fashion, in her own style. She doesn't subscribe to fashion magazines, as she has no time for that.  She likes attending concerts, listens to music of all kinds, and usually has it playing in the background. She is a quiet intellectual.

Lula Logan is navigating through life alone, in search of the right partner, but not letting the world stop for lack of a soul mate.  She has dated different men, preferably of her race, but has not succumbed to an Afrocentrism that prevents her from seeing the merits of men from other backgrounds.  She lived in Oakland, growing up, but went to majority white colleges and universities.

Lula is a university professor at a majority white college, and works in a small rural town doing slave burial research in an open field where she works in a solitary atmosphere. She has few friends where she lives, as the town, though interracial, is segregated, and has not met people of her educational background.  She doesn't live a life of quiet desperation, but she's also waiting for something.  Her boyfriend is a Creole police officer with whom she has a comfortable relationship; the chemistry is there, but she questions whether the relationship is going anywhere.  

As far as protagonists are concerned, she prefers to blend in rather than draw attention to herself. She is strong in her resolve, but not dictatorial. She's not angry, disillusioned, or unhappy.  She's living her life on her own terms. My quest was to create a character that eschews the negative stereotypes of the "boss bitch," "the temptress," "the monstrous hellion," in books that make it to the shelves for Black masses quicker than you can say, "urban fiction." As my earlier blog post discussed the issue, I'm not totally dismissing rap, hip hop, or urban fiction as sources of entertainment, but not all Black writers can successfully write the urban fiction genres,  nor do we want to contribute to their already crowded shelves.

That's the back story of my character.  But that's not the novel's plot.

The novel is about a scientist whose work entangles her in the intersecting quirky worlds of macho police officers, wealthy eccentrics, and struggling working-class inhabitants in real town America-- who are trying to live their small town normal lives as well as they can.  I like to think that I am writing about real people, living in real time. 

So, here's my dilemma: does creating a black protagonist seal the deal in putting me on the shelf among other black writers?  I ask this, rhetorically, because when I read my first Alex Cross mystery, I swore that James Patterson, the author, was Black (although a couple of phrases or explanations didn't exactly jibe with me).  Does the fact that the famous author is not Black give him "cultural waiver" that allows him to be considered merely a "novelist?" I asked the question on a website for independent writers and was pilloried for race-baiting (I thought I was opening up a discussion from which I could learn, too, actually). I do think it's an interesting question, nevertheless.  I also asked whether it was best to get a Black agent for my novel about a Black protagonist. The answers were that I should. Yet, again, I wonder if James Patterson has a black agent.

Don't get it twisted. I am not running from my own Black race in asking this question. I hope that my Black brethren voraciously consume what I have to say. But the story that needs to be read need not only be read by Black people. We know our Black lives. We live them.

I wonder aloud if my quandary will be resolved once I decide whether to label it crime fiction or a mystery (I've yet to discern the difference between the two genres). I have a hint, however. In doing research about the labeling of Black writers, of course, the most famous Black mystery writer around, comes to mind: Walter Mosley.  Mosley is half-Black and half-Jewish (the latter of which was news to me), surely an asset to both groups to which he belongs. But even Wikipedia explained the dilemma of on what shelf to put him:

In 2010, there was a debate in academic literary circles as to whether Mosley's work should be considered Jewish literature. Similar debate has occurred as to whether he should be described as a black author, given his status as a best-selling writer. Mosley has said that he prefers to be called a novelist. He explains his desire to write about "black male heroes" saying "hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes... There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes.”^[8]

'Twer it that easy...

Even Time Magazine had to give him his due that he belonged to a hallowed category of ethnic writer's whose work "transcends category and qualifies as serious literature." I know it's a compliment, but it speaks volumes, essentially, saying, "Even though he's Black, we accept him as one of us." Which is offensive.  I've heard no Black critics exclaim that "Alex Cross has crossed the line to become Black like us." Can we not be Americans of different persuasions, without meeting a litmus test for acceptability because some of us might be ethnically different than the rest of our writing breed? 

“A writer whose work transcends category and qualifies as serious - See more at: http://www.waltermosley.com/#sthash.07Fs8BRO.dpuf

“A writer whose work transcends category and qualifies as serious - See more at: http://www.waltermosley.com/#sthash.07Fs8BRO.dpuf

“A writer whose work transcends category and qualifies as serious - See more at: http://www.waltermosley.com/#sthash.07Fs8BRO.dpuf

“A writer whose work transcends category and qualifies as serious

I am neither a journalist nor a professor; such  cache that would give me entree as an author worth of serious consideration.  So what happens to novice Black writers? How can we appeal to a larger audience? Do we sit on a shelf and hope a non-Black person walks by, or must we wait for Black celebrity status to be considered noteworthy for the masses?  I suspect that my literary identifier will become, like for most of my race, my pigmentation, rather than my strengths as a writer.  Other than being a descendant of slaves, slave-owners, and a half-Irish, half-Native American great-great grandmother whom I never met, I, like so many other Black Americans, are the amalgam of slave ownerships through the centuries, of forced sex, abuse of power, and perverse desire stigmatized by history's transgressions. But we're trying to live in the now.  That's what I write about. The now of being an educated Black woman in America.  The living day to day.


I am pretty sure that I won't have a photo on my ebook or hardback cover, because I don't think my face will sell novels.  Furthermore, my novel's jacket will likely not show colorful people or African mosaics publishers like to use as the code for "ethnic"--so you'll just have to keep your eye out for my title, I guess.  I might lose readers. But it's more important to me not to pander to the racial definition of what book is or is not shelf-worthy--merely based upon my pigmentation.

Don't get me wrong. I am going to be marketing the hell out of this book to a largely Black American audience and will welcome any attention my own people give to my writing. But the question still stands: can an intelligent writer "of color" get equal footing in America as a writer without waiting for a green light by Whites? Do white people visit the ghettos of the Black shelves in bookstores? Especially if you are not Black, share your thoughts. You will not be pilloried for your thoughtful answers.

A True Black Man, Quiet as a Mouse, but all About Power.

A  brother with a quiet resolve

One mouse has already changed the world.  Not Mickey Mouse.  It's the mouse at your fingertips.  I have learned so much from it.  The world's economy is an ecommerce economy: we get our news online, watch movies online, date online, and shop online.  But our voices are online, too. Lately, with the events of Ferguson and exposure of police-instigated deaths of Black men in the U.S., that little mouse has made us all roar like lions on the #Twittersphere.

On #Twitter, especially, we speak our minds, we share ideas, and we are all pitching something for people to hear.  But, truthfully, raising our online hands to speak is like an audience member in a stadium yelling, "Choose me! Choose me!" amidst the cacophony of other people yelling the same words.  Can one hear anything else yelling herself?

Everyone is selling their jewelry, marketing/editing/writing services, and books, and I am no different.  After all, this blog is about my novel.  I do want to get followers so that when my novel does come out, some of you might be inclined to read it.  So, I cannot pretend that I do not want some level of notoriety or recognition through writing my book (I just don't think you need to know what I look like). Would I like for it to be a bestseller? Of course! But I have no delusions. I am grateful for each read that I get on my blog, here, and I'll be equally grateful should any of you purchase my ebook.


All the above kinda-sorta leads me to this brother that I met on Twitter.  When he likes what you tweet, he retweets it. He might say a couple of words to you, now and then, such that whenever I got an RT from him, it really meant something to me.  Then, I started to wonder why.  His Twitter avatar shows a handsome Black man with a kind face that also shows resolve, a Malcolm X kind of quiet.   He has a cool Twitter personality. Understated. And powerful, because he's not saying, "Look at me! Listen to me! I'm more important to listen to!" I recognized and understood his true depth when he tweeted a link to a Vimeo of a British documentary that totally shocked my conscience (first video), about how Americans have always been duped into being consumers more than people of conscience. It has confirmed what I always believed; but to realize that our consumerism was orchestrated as far back as the early 1900s was mind-boggling.  So, somehow we got to dialoguing on our direct message and I learned a bit about him. Who is this man, who seems too cool for school, who is perfectly alright with sitting on the sidelines?


The @TrueBlackPower handle belongs to Carl. He lives in Michigan, went to a four year university, but couldn't finish. He was happily married until he lost his wife to an aneurysm.  He grew up in a family that believed in striving, and had small home-based businesses (soul food dinners) in their local neighborhood. He is a student of a martial arts style called Isshinryu Karate.  He explained it as an Okinawan-based style of marshal arts derived from peasants who found ways to fight off invaders using common sense or practical tools and methods. He explained that he was bullied, growing up, and martial arts has equipped him with the tools to "redirect the pain and disappointment from many."


A quiet warrior.  

His moniker says it all. And so do his tweets: they are informative, commanding one's attention.  This brother keeps his nose to the grindstone and channels information for Black and other followers who want to be educated about the great history, culture, and sociopolitical plight of Black Americans.  His tweets are selective and each one is a treasure trove of information. Almost every tweet has info worth reading.  Given his tweets, and acknowledging his choice of identity, I thought to ask him via email where his head was at where Black people are concerned. His answers to my questions about what we regular folk can do about our circumstances were very commonsensical, real, and, though brief, are worthy of repetition:

Q: What about our economic situation? How do we, as Blacks, handle the economy?

A.  The problem is that many of us get stuck. We become used to one way and when things begin to change, we reject the change so we all suffer from generational stubbornness.  We also lack resources knowledge, and pride.  I'm all for celebrating our accomplishments as a people but many times it's condescending and used against us.  We should learn where we live, and understand that we cannot trust the financial industry. That's the first step for economic empowerment. The second is to just do our thing and keep our mouth closed while doing it. Third is to use and know all defense mechanisms for our survival and teach it through the generations.

Q.  How do we reconcile Blacks' contribution to the rampant commercialism in this country; are we not victims of it, too?

A.  The "haves" use media and culture to psychologically keep us, "the have nots," down, which is why the Internet is so dangerous. We now have the ability to research and think for ourselves. Nowadays, ignorance is voluntary. As for our victimization, Blacks are victims because we love our families and want to protect them and provide for them. But, of course, our families are in danger.  The suffering of our people is not as worse as our not fighting back.  We must go about our business, collectively, leave petty differences alone, and be realistic. In moving forward, disruptions are going to come our way, and will always be the case.  But we must adjust quickly and with purpose.  Once we learn to adapt and adjust more quickly, and with purpose, and we do our part for each other as a people, we will assert our power, sending a clear message: enough with the B.S.

I'm highlighting Carl on my blog because he is an example of how the struggle will be won: quietly, purposefully, and with resolve.  @TrueBlackPower

Explore more on Google + links below - I have not vetted the sites, so please research at your own peril. 

• #Racism
• #Ferguson
• #Obama
• #PresidentObama
• #President
• #Activism
• #Black
• #MichaelBrown
• #America
• #MikeBrown
• #CivilRights
• #FergusonDecision
• #AfricanAmericans

Happy New Year.  I wish all readers a prosperous New Year.  And thanks for reading my Blog!