Hooray! I'm a Writer.

Years after sitting down in  front of my computer in my quiet Shaker Square apartment, to write my first novel, I did it. I became a published writer. It didn't happen quite the way I had expected or dreamed all those years ago, but when I typed my name into Amazon and saw my book cover appear on the screen, that didn't matter one bit. S

omeone, somewhere parted with their hard earned money to read something that I wrote, and I hope they are loving it.
No, my dream agent never showed, and I wasn't offered a million dollar deal, and Morris Chestnut has not signed on to play the leading man in the movie adapted from my novel, but I am an official published author.
Self-Published, Independent, whichever you prefer, I am a published author, which means, that I didn't let the no become the end of my writing dreams. I didn't abandon my story to a drawer, regardless of how many times someone said, "they just didn't love it enough."
Soon reviews will start coming in, I hope. And all of them won't be good, I know, but it won't change the fact that I am now a published writer. Years of writing, and re-writing, and editing, and re-editing, hoping for a yes, crying over the no, wanting to quit, being pushed to keep forward, and finally, I am a published writer. If you have a story to tell, push the button, and become a published writer.

The End

The first time I typed the end, I was sitting alone in my apartment on Shaker Square in Cleveland, Ohio. The novel, named Fat Girl at the time, was 580 pages long. I wrote it in nine months five pages at a time. The only thing I knew about writing is what I learned in Stephen King's On Writing, writers write, everyday, at least five pages a day, and I was going to be a writer.
At the end of each night of writing, I would email my pages to my guinea pig group, a group of friends and family, who read along as I wrote with the same fervor as if I was writing their favorite soap opera. And when I typed that last sentence, we truly believed that it was done, complete, ready for publishing, ready to made into a movie. We even casted the movie, multiple times, ahh dreams.
After a bit of polishing, me and Kevin Smith, musician, sometime writer, and all the time friend, worked together, to write a really good query letter. After some research, that mostly included reading the description of literary agencies in Writer's Market, I started sending out queries.
Shockingly, especially knowing what I know now, a high profile agent name Deidre Knight of the Knight Agency responded and asked for the entire manuscript, which I gleefully sent, immediately, sure that I was about to become a superstar. I feel like I should mention that this was pre-digital, which meant 580 loose pages via snail mail.
I've never met her personally, frankly I would be embarrassed to, but I have to say that she must be one of the sweetest women in the world. Not only did she let me down gently, but if I'm not mistaken, she even recommended an agent she thought might be a good fit, he wasn't.Considering the lessons I've learned along the way, this lady was a virtual angel.
After recovering from this first rejection, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and submitted to many more agencies, learning to hide my tears a little better with each rejection. Then, finally, I took the first steps to learn how to write.

Everybody's Got A Dream

If you listen to interviews of any successful writer, they always talk about how they started writing, basically as an infant, and how they always dreamed of being a writer one day, but not me. Sure, I've always been a bookworm. A real one, the kind that stayed up all night and read by the light of the moon, the kind that reads while walking, and earned her pop bottle glasses by the light of the TV glare at 3:00 o'clock in the morning. Still, I never even considered that I could be writer, not even once upon a dream.
Then one day, well into my 30's, single, unsatisfied with my job, and life in general, buoyed by a group of friends and family, who soon became my first guinea pig group, I sat down to write a classic story of love, loss, and pizza.  Of course they may have been a little too generous, with their praise, but without them my writing dreams would have never gotten off the ground. 
More years later than I can even believe, I've joined the best writing group any aspiring writer could hope for. I've attended several prestigious writer's conferences, including Big Sur in California, NY Pitch, and Killer Nashville, where I've met many other fabulous aspiring writers and wonderfully encouraging agents and editors, some even expressed interest.
Alas, I remain unsigned, so like many writer's before me, I've decided to go the Indie route. I hope that you will come along with me as I make the journey from aspiring to published author. 

A Divide Too Wide

The election of America's first Black President, Barack Obama, ushered in an era of out and proud racism not seen in this country since the Jim Crow era. 
While many of us, blacks and whites alike, stood shoulder to shoulder in Grant Park, Harlem, Times Square, DC, tears streaming unashamedly down our cheeks, holding hands, congratulating ourselves on how far we had come, and declaring a post racial America. Another group of proud Americans came together to develop a strategy on destroying this presidency beginning day one.
The Jim Crow Laws were officially the law of the land from 1877 until 1954. 1954. For most of my peers, if you are black then your parents lived under these laws. If you're white then your parents were either the enforcer of these laws, or they may have actively fought against them, that's just the way it is. While you can change a law, you can't legislate feelings. And It didn't take long for these proud Americans to expose the still open sore of racism that lies so close to the surface in this country.
Men that had previously been seen as respected businessmen, journalist, and even sitting legislatures brazenly spoke out on national TV, in front of God and country, questioning this President's citizenship, demanding he show his papers, his intelligence, demanding to see his transcripts, his faith, openly accusing him of being a terrorist, labeling him a Muslim extremist. They even called him the actual Anti-Christ.
Last week a group of Tea Party members hijacked a veterans demonstration, and with prominent members of their party standing by, demanded the POTUS "get off his knees, put down the Quran, and come out with his hands up."  The only thing missing was a burning cross and a hangman's noose.
As an American you might think that there would be repercussions. That perpetrators of such brazen racism and ugliness would be shunned by decent fair-minded people, but actually in many instances the opposite has been true.
Joe Wilson, who stood on the House floor and called the President a liar, was rewarded with donations in the hundreds of thousands. The Koch brothers uber billionaires, interested in financing their version of what this country should be, continually pump millions of dollars into these fringe hate groups, elevating them into a position of power, that they could have only once dreamed, while effectively quieting the voices of reason that may have once prevailed. These voices are gone swallowed by the fear of their own losses, leaving us with a divide that grows wider every day.
 I remember a time where being a Democrat vs. a Republican was literally, just a difference in how to get things done. It didn't mean you were the anti-Christ. It never meant we didn't want the same thing, a strong country. It certainly didn't mean that the country was going to be destroyed based on a political policy. I remember a time when you cast your vote, and either your guy, or the other guy won, but the next day you picked up and went on with life. I remember a term, respect the office if not the President. I wasn't a huge Regan or W fan. However, I remember being terrified when Regan was shot, sad when he died. I remember mine, and every person I knows, horror when Kanye West, said on national TV "George Bush don't care about black people" not because he was wrong necessarily, but because he publicly disrespected OUR President.
Tonight I listened to some pop psychologist on Fox news diagnose President Obama, based on the fact that he was raised first by a single parent, then by his white grandparents, as having issues of victimization, claiming he was transferring these feelings onto the country. He gave this as a reason as to why he would not "negotiate with the hostage takers" his words. I just sat with my mouth hanging open thinking, this can't be happening in America. What exactly would be considered too far. If the terrorist psychologically damaged anti-Christ is ok can Nigger be too far behind? What will be the justification for that.
The President of these United States has to interview for the job every 4 years with a limit of two terms. President Obama took his case to the people and won their vote 2 times, decisively. Republicans look forward with bated breath to 2016 and so do I. I predict that another Democrat will win the presidency, because despite the width and breath of our differences, I am holding on by the barest of the threads to the idea that there are enough of us left, who simply want the best for our country, and our family, and reject the hate speech, and ignorance, that has bombarded our airwaves and our spirits on a daily basis.
A divide too wide? I don't know the jury is still out.

What a world we live in when so many cannot find sympathy in their heart for a murdered child

I'm always backed up on my DVR, so as I sat down to catch up on the View, I stumbled onto the recording from the Monday after the Verdict. One look at Sherri's face brought all the pain I've been trying to deal with over the pass week rushing back. I saw the same horror in her eyes, as she asked Dan Abrams, the question so many black mothers are asking. What do I tell my son? I was proud of her for choosing not to sit at the same table with the defense team during their segment. I was also proud of Whoopi for challenging the ridiculous statements made by the attorneys in defense of their murderous client.

Having said all of that, it's been a week since this awful miscarriage of justice occurred, and just like the election of President Obama, it has brought all the racism, hatred and, mistrust, that is never far from reach in this country, teeming to the surface. Look at the comments from any blog posting, or article, be it Fox, NPR, or even your Facebook page, and it's there for all the world to see.

This is the fact. A 17-year-old boy was shot dead by an armed civilian. His crime, walking home from the store to his father's home, while covering his head from the rain with his hoodie, and refusing to answer the questions of a strange man stalking him in an unfamiliar car. For these offenses he was sentenced to death.

As horrible as that was, what has been even worse, or rather incomprehensible, has been the inability for a certain segment of this country to even see this young  man as the child that he was. Pundits, commentators, racist, all have catalogued every misdeed that this child has ever committed, and submitted it as evidence as to why he deserved to die. All the while ignoring the less than perfect past of the murderer.

They say he deserved he die, he was nothing more than a thug. They say he had the responsibility to answer George Zimmerman's questions. I'm not sure if they realize that the time where we have to present our papers to travel after dark is over. They say George was in fear of his life. Really? Then why would George get out the car and pursue this dangerous thug in the night. Oh yeah, he had a gun. They say Trayvon was armed with the ground. Okay, sorry that one just kind of makes me shake my head. They say Trayvon broke Zimmerman's nose and showed pictures where there were a few flesh wounds to the back his head. I think he had exactly the wounds a child could inflict when fighting for his life.

White people, Black people, Puerto Rican, an Asian, and every other race under the sun, are well acquainted with the monster that is the surly teenager. This little monster gets in trouble at school, mouths off at teachers, and parents, and some even experiment with drugs, or alcohol. Most grow up and mature to the point where karma visits upon them their own teenagers. Some grow up to be President, does George W. Bush, ring a bell? None are sentenced to death. 

Trayvon Martin won't get the chance to grow and mature, and possibly become the pilot of his dreams. He won't marry and get sassed at by his own teenage son or daughter, but maybe if the good people in this country, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, can take a moment and think about your own teenage child, nephew, or niece.

Think about what advice you give them as they walk out the door. Don't talk to strangers, run if someone is following you, fight if you have no other choice. Then think, if on their way home, a stranger stalks them, chases them down, and murders them in cold blood. Think about how it would feel to have to fight 44 days just to get that person charged. Think about a defense attorney digging through your child's short life and digging up every single mistake they ever made and using it to strip away their innocence, reshaping them into a monster deserving of death. Think about how you would feel when the 6 people charged to render justice, only see your child as the monster the defense created, and allows your child's murderer to walk away without any consequences.

If you can put yourself in that moment, for even a second, then you may be able to, not only sympathize with the family of Trayvon Martin, but maybe you will feel the need to fight, so that your child or anyone else's child will never be next.