Blatant self-promotion

Update: My essay is now up!

The movie "Sins of the Mother" on LMN THIS SUNDAY, Feb. 21st (8 pm EST, 7 pm CST, 6 pm MST, and 5 pm PST) is based on my first novel Orange Mint and Honey. Months ago I visited the set and met some of the cast, including Jill Scott and Nicole Beharie. I wrote an essay for The Defenders Online describing that experience. Here's an excerpt:

"While I wait for my husband, I turn on my iPod, select Jill Scott, and press shuffle. “Try” comes on and I begin to sob. Time loops in on itself. I remember all those days I cried, fretted, worried and prayed over my first novel. I remember Jill’s mama’s advice to her buoying me too, encouraging me to keep trying. And now Jill is playing the role of Nona, the mother, in my story."

If you go on The Defenders Online to read it, check out the rave review they gave Zetta Elliott's A Wish After Midnight, which pubs today. Happy Pub Day Zetta! Also, Happy Pub Day to Heidi Durrow, whose The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is also out today!

On this blog I encourage you to support authors. Now I'm asking for your support for my work. If you have cable (or know someone who does), please tune in to the movie. If you're planning to watch, consider joining in my watch party contest. You could win signed books from so many cool authors!

I'm also asking you to read my book, Orange Mint and Honey, if you haven't. If you like it, please check out this list I created on Indiebound of other books you might also enjoy.

Thanks for allowing me this commercial time! Next week, we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming with a guest blog post from Virginia Deberry and Donna Grant!



“…With great acting all around, including Mimi Rogers as Nona’s sponsor, this adaptation of Carleen Brice’s novel, Orange Mint and Honey is one dramatic powerhouse of a TV movie. It’d be a sin to miss it!“—NATIONAL ENQUIRER, Best Bets on TV

"As a reformed alcoholic mother trying to reconnect with her tightly wound, emotionally stunted daughter, Jill Scott (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) delivers a performance that makes you forget you knew her as a singer first." — ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“The magnificent Jill Scott shines as a former mess of a mother struggling to make amends to the daughter she abused…“—TV GUIDE, Hot List

RIP Lucille Clifton

1. Poet Lucille Clifton has died.
   In memory
   New Bones by Lucille Clifton
   we will wearnew bones again. we will leavethese rainy days. break out through another mouthinto sun and honey timeworlds buzz over us like bees,we be splendid in new bones.other people think they knowhow long life ishow strong life iswe know.
   
   

Guest post by author Donna Hill

The Beat Goes On

I want to clarify one thing before I get started so that there is no question or confusion. When I started my writing career twenty years ago I was a mere child! With that being said, I still find it amazing to realize that I have been blessed to be able to do what I love and remain in print for twenty years.

What is equally amazing to see is how the literary world has changed. When I began in 1990 with my debut novel Rooms of the Heart, there may have been six African American romances ever published up to that time. I had thought that the reason why I didn’t see romances with black faces on the cover was because black writers were not writing them. That wasn’t the case. The publishing industry was not publishing our stories. And it was a small black publishing company, Odyssey Books that changed the face of publishing when they published Rooms. They published many of the authors who became household names today such as Francis Ray, Rochelle Alers, Eboni Snoe, Sandra Kitt and others. The line of black romances from this small company put the industry on notice and in 1994 Kensington Publishing launched the Arabesque line, which began the flagship for African American romance. And the rest they say is history. We finally were on the map and the success of black romance opened the doors for publishers to begin looking at and publishing commercial black fiction.

I was fortunate to be able to publish in several genres, romance, women’s fiction, mystery & suspense, a little erotica and a paranormal or two, even got three television movies out of the deal. But many of my colleagues discouraged by the marginalization that black authors experience gave up, others were let go from contracts or didn’t get them renewed when some publishing houses wanted more sex, more drama, more pathology from black authors.

While it’s true that there are more black books being published, the success came with its own set of restrictions. Mainly that black books, black authors and the stories that we wanted to tell were only being marketed to black readers—no matter what the content or message and relegated to a certain section of the store. Separate but equal? And with so many writers vying for the same pool of readers it is inevitable that the well began to run dry. There is only so much sex, violence, drugs, drama and pathology that readers can take.

Fortunately, as with everything, publishing too is cyclical. And on the horizon is what could very well be the new black renaissance with novels by black authors that once again paint us on a global scale. Television and films featuring our books: Sins of the Mother [based on Orange Mint and Honey] by Carleen Brice, Joy by Victoria Christopher Murray, One in A Million by Kimberla Lawson Roby, and literary works such as Glorious by Bernice McFadden, Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Precious by London author Precious Williams [The U.S. version coming this summer will be called Color Blind], Uptown by Donna Grant and Virginia Deberry among others.

This is the kind of energy and movement I experienced twenty years ago. There was an excitement in the air and literary stars were being born, with the skill and talent to tell our stories in all of its glory and dimensions. But the future of this renaissance is up to the reader. Without reader support and word of mouth, this exciting time in our history will be no more than a blip on the screen.

Donna Hill celebrating 20 years with the release of WHAT MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME (March 1, 2010) the long-awaited follow-up to RHYTHMS. 

Meet: Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of WENCH

I finished reading Wench last night and I still feel shaken. The language is spare, the characters hop off the page and live with you, and the story is powerful, powerful stuff. I definitely recommend it!

I'm delighted to introduce you now to the author, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who was kind enough to answer some questions for the blog.

White Readers Meet Black Authors: Tell us about Wench. How did you come to write this story? What subjects/themes do you explore? What's your writing style like?

Dolen Perkins-Valdez: Wench began when I stumbled upon a fascinating footnote of history. While reading a biography of W.E.B. DuBois, I learned that during the 1850s, there was a summer resort near Xenia, Ohio notorious for its popularity among slaveholders and their enslaved mistresses. I was stunned to learn this little-known historical fact. I decided to do a bit of historical excavation and learn more. At the time, it was very popular among the country's elite to visit natural springs. This particular resort opened in 1852, and became popular among southern slaveholders and their enslaved mistresses. I knew that Ohio was a free state and many of the northerners were abolitionists. Yet I was fascinated to learn that because they did not enjoy vacationing with the southerners and their slave entourages, they stopped coming and business declined. The place closed in 1855. I began by asking myself: If the women entered free territory, why wouldn't they attempt to escape? Is it possible that they actually loved the men? As I made my way through draft after draft, I discovered that these were not questions easily answered. Even the answers I thought I would find turned out to be much more complicated than I'd imagined. (You can learn more in this NPR interview.)

WRMBA: What's your goal(s) as a writer? Do you set out to educate? entertain? illuminate?

DPV: Of course I set out to entertain. Always. I come to writing as a reader first. I judge any book by whether or not I am able to lose myself in it. I have a reading chair at home. With a good book and a stretch of time, I can disappear into that chair. I hope my book does the same for other readers.

WRMBA: What's your biggest surprise-good or bad- (so far) about the publishing biz?

DPV: My biggest surprise has been how nice other writers are. I was always a bit frightened by published writers. Yet I have met so many who are just the nicest people you'll ever meet. I suppose my fear was all in my head. There is a lot of love among writers in this industry, especially among women writers. It's a beautiful thing.

WRMBA: What's next for you?

DPV: At the moment I am concentrating on promoting Wench. Once things slow down a bit, I'll get started on the next one. By summer, I hope to be deep into my next project.

WRMBA: What's the best book (or whose the best writer) that not enough people know about?

DPV: There are so many!!! You are one, Carleen! I'm always telling people about you. Also, I am a huge fan of Tayari Jones. I hope people recognize her brilliance. [For Black History Month, I'm blogging about other writers you should know about over at The Divining Wand. Please stop in.]

WRMBA: Thank you!  Any advice for aspiring novelists? Someone asked me the other night how do you maintain some confidence through the long process of writing a novel. How did you do it?

DPV: So far, I have answered this question by saying "keep the faith" to every interviewer who asks it. But how does one keep the faith? There is no easy answer to that. I am driven by a passion for reading and the act of writing. Find what drives you. Gain energy from that. It is all that matters.

WRMBA: What else do you do with your time besides write--work? family? hobbies? Anything you want to share with readers?

DPV: When I'm not working/writing, I am spending time with my husband and daughter. That's about all I can handle.

Thanks Dolen and continued success with this book and all the ones to come! See you in April!

Hope on a tightrope*

Last week, I participated in a meeting of writers and a publishing house editor about what writers can do to promote our work as technology changes and we face even greater competition from other forms of entertainment.

All of us-writers, booksellers, editors, publicists-are more than a little nervous about what's happening in the world of books. And those of us who are Negro/colored/black/African-American/melanin-blessed even more so.

Here are some things that give me hope:

Writers
Confession: I have been jealous of other writers' success. Even with all the good fortune I have, I feel a little twinge when someone gets more publicity than I did/do or lands higher on a best-seller list. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. I suspect a lot of other writers feel that way too. Hey, we're only human. However, most of us put those feelings aside and still champion each other. That gives me an enormous amount of hope! Every time I see a writer tweet or blog about someone else's book (and they do it a lot!) my heart fills. As long as we writers understand that a rising tide lifts all boats, we will be just fine. For example, Bernice McFadden dedicated a recent issue of her newsletter to talking about other writers! She didn't have to do that. She's got a new book coming soon and she could have used her money to focus strictly on that. But she didn't. And that's a lovely, lovely thing. To thank her, please pre-order Glorious today! I already have.

Readers
Thank you to all of you who still read! Thank you blog readers who let me know that this blog has led you to writers you didn't know about! For example, I got this comment the other day:

"Dear Carleen,
I want to let you know this site worked for me. As a White woman, I've read quite a few of the famous-to-Whites Black authors, but due to your site I have bought works by several new authors I never would have heard of otherwise. I hope you will feel good about keeping up the outreach work. I'll post the link on my blog."

And recently there was this blog post about a reader who was happy to discover Victor LaValle's work.

Readers who point out what's still wrong with the system also give me hope. Though this blog post makes my head hurt, it's good to know there are people out there besides writers who give a damn.

Smart young people

Have y'all heard that Bloomsbury has to change yet another cover of one of their books? Yes, again, they put a white person on the cover of a book about a character described as dark-skinned (thanks Zetta for the clarification!). *Banging my head against my desk.* (And yes I know that doesn't help the already hurting head!) But what gives me hope is that Ari over at Reading in Color refused to let them get away with it. Ari, whose URL is blackteensread2, gives me lots and lots and lots of hope! Check out her blog for reading challenges, reviews and other good book-related stuff. You go Ari!!! I hope you rule the world one day! Also, if you're on Facebook, join Readers Against White Washing.

Awards
Marlon James' The Book of Night Women, which so many of you LOVED, has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award! (By the by, I found out about this when it was tweeted by author Julie Klam.)

Congratulations also to Attica Locke for her nomination for an Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America! (Thanks to the Happy Nappy Bookseller for letting me know!)




Organ donors wanted for anthology

In other news, a friend sent me this announcement:
Forest Hill Publishing is launching a book of stories from transplant survivors and donors of color. We are well aware that people of color represent a disproportionately high number of patients who need organ transplants—and die because they did not receive them—and a disproportionately low number of people who serve as organ and tissue donors. Our hope is that our book will inspire many more people of color to become donors and save lives. Information about the project is here

*today's blog title borrowed from Brother Cornel West

We are one

In honor of the MLK holiday, in support of helping those in Haiti and to reinforce the message of this blog, I quote Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

Peace everybody.

NOTE: This week's links are on the Facebook page.

A quick spin around the web

The NAACP Image Awards

were announced and the line-up looks great! I'm especially pleased to see Before I Forget nominated. Y'all know how I love that book.

Charles Johnson interview

The author of Middle Passage and winner of a MacArthur grant has a great conversation with The Root.

Breakout Book

Wench seems poised to break out of the pack! It's been in Essence and People and soon to be in O Magazine. Twitterers are tweeting rampantly about it.  I got my copy the other day and a quick peek turned into reading the first 2 chapters. I'm mad at you Dolen Perkins-Valdez for creating such an intriguing story! I need to finish Wildflowers before I crack open another book, and there's a couple other books in the queue. Luckily, Dolen's agreed to do a Q&A with me, so I have an excuse to move her book up the line. :) In the meantime, Tayari Jones has a blog post about the book.

More upcoming releases
Angela Benson, Marilyn Griffith and Tia McCollors have a collection of novellas about winning the lottery out next month called A Million Blessings. Who hasn't wondered what it would be like to hit the jackpot? But it might not be all it's cracked up to be.

Kayla Perrin has a romantic thriller Spring Break coming in March. Publishers Weekly says it builds a mood of "nail-biting suspense."

Support literary programs
The Literary Freedom project (which publishes Mosaic Literary Magazine) is seeking donations. (And here's their list of the best 6 books of 2009.

Color Online is discussing "art for art's sake" in their salon this week. They also seek books for their library. Here's their wish list. I have a stack of books I'm planning to send soon. Really!