I’ve been MIA more or less because it’s pretty difficult to promote AA romance when you haven’t been reading any, lol. But mostly, I feel the upheavals in the publishing industry (kudos to Dear Author for keeping everyone updated on these developments) have probably made it less interesting for black authors to fight for desegregation when they just want to keep the slice of the pie the industry has handed them. And the whole “segregation is bad” soapbox is pretty boring, IMO, if it just reaches the same people over and over.

Unless your head’s been in the sand, Carina Press debuted last week to much fanfare across the interwebs. I haven’t purchased anything because it’s mostly the same stuff and the same names I’m not interested in reading at other e-pubs. Still no AA or I/R romance so far; I wonder how Donna Hill’s e-publishing business is doing.

And I feel so American-centric, but I’m just like ??? over the World Cup. It’s kind of funny that the 9/10ths of the world is going nuts over this tournament, but in the US it’s a niche audience.

Other than that, I can’t think of what else to blog about. Perhaps I should drive traffic here by posting pics of Justin Bieber. lol

She blogs about it here.

Excerpt:

I see the appeal of self -publishing and even e-pub cooperatives. Anybody can learn to do a cover or pay somebody to do it. Anybody can learn to use the software to reformat their document in the various e-book formats. Anybody can pay somebody for editing–and I hear some e-pubs merely pay their editors and cover artists a percentage of the book royalties! What overhead? Even the stores a lot of the e-pubs use are free…anybody can put up oscommerce or zen cart. There are free WordPress plugin shopping carts that are nice. So why stick your book on somebody’s site and pay them 70-55% for something you can do on your own site? Why not get a cover artist and editor for a percentage of the sales like other e-pubs do?

Buy the results of her experiment here.

After hearing Karen rave about Dorothy Koomson’s books for years, I finally remembered to check my local library for any copies of her work. I was fortunate enough to find two:

Marshmallows for Breakfast

When Kendra Tamale moves back to her native England after a stint in Australia, she rents an apartment and becomes enmeshed in the lives of her landlord, Kyle, and his six-year-old twins. His wife’s recently left him, and his kids, not taking the separation too well, run rings around him. Despite the unconditional acceptance of her surrogate family, Kendra fears that her past hurts will be exposed, threatening her new-found security and catapulting her back into loneliness and misery.

My Best Friend’s Girl

When Kamryn Ryn Matika gets a call from college friend Adele Del Brannon, she reluctantly heads to the hospital where Adele is dying of cancer. The two had been odd couple friends (working-class Ryn is black, posh Adele is white) while attending Leeds University, but their friendship did not survive Del’s admission of an affair with Ryn’s fiancé Nate Turner, which also ended Ryn’s relationship with Nate. The affair did result, however, in the now-five-year-old Tegan, and Del has called Ryn to ask her to adopt the adorable girl. Ryn agrees, but must face down Del’s stepmother, Muriel, to do it. She finds surprising help from new boss Luke Wiseman, who, after meeting her unceremoniously, loves Tegan (and eventually Ryn, too), but the return of Nate, who doesn’t know Tegan is his daughter, promises to reopen old wounds.

–and would highly recommend both.

The only issues I had with the books were that I felt the “Englishness” was toned down, and they didn’t mix hilarity and wit with real life issues the way Marian Keyes does. Both books, for all their chick-lit look and tone, were emotionally muted, and focused overwhelmingly on the growth of the narrator, which made the secondary characters come across more as appendages to the plot and narrator than as real and realistic characters in their own right (particularly Luke in My Best Friend’s Girl).

However, I admit to feeling funny while reading both books. More than once I stopped to ask “Where are the black people?” or “Doesn’t Kendra/Kamryn ever date any black guys?” and I was often weirded out by how, well, “white” Kendra and Kamryn sounded. My reaction reminded me of a comment made by a black British blogger who was confused by the frequency race and racism is mentioned on blogs run by black Americans for a black American audience (not just political blogs, but personal blogs and entertainment/gossip blogs). When I read that comment a few years ago, I and others were quick to school this person of the fact that race and racism couldn’t ever be ignored, but even though I still feel funny about the Koomson books, I had to step back and assess the filter with which I view the world. Granted, I still think the black British commenter was a bit naive, but it made me realize how very American I am.

A month ago or so, a Clutch Magazine piece on uniting the black diaspora ignited a firestorm of comments from black people from the Caribbean and Africa who saw the obsession with the “black diaspora” as a sign of black Americans’ inability to know who they are and they wanted no part of the call to action. I was initially taken aback, and then came to agree with them because it’s true–by and large, black Americans continue to search for their “culture” and who they “are”, whereas the greater black diaspora have deeply entrenched ties to their country or even ethnic group of origin. Not to mention that unless we leave America permanently, we as black Americans will never experience living in a country where everyone is black–from the top of society to the bottom, throughout the government to the worker cleaning restrooms, and so on, nor will we ever experience what it is like to live in a country without the history of slavery and Jim Crow (not to say that Europe is a bastion of freedom from prejudice and racism, but the culture of race is so different).

In all honesty, while reading Koomson’s books, I found it hard to shake the feeling of “other” while reading Kamryn and Kendra’s stories because I knew they were black, but they weren’t “black” like me. But maybe I need to read more fiction written by black Brits? I’ve been eyeing Zadie Smith’s novels for some time, any other authors out there?

Over at the New York Times, Felicia R. Lee pens an article about the upcoming 10th National Black Writers’ Conference to be held at Medgar Evers College in New York, and asks: “But in the age of President Obama, when successful black writers can be found across genres and a Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison, can be tapped to be the honorary chairwoman of the event, do black writers still need a conference to call their own?”

I say yes, and no.

For the present, black writers remain marginalized and segregated from the mainstream. For the most part, black writers are handled differently by publishers and booksellers, and when a work by a black author is highlighted by mainstream publications, the focus is always on the race of the character and how this shapes the plot (and I forget who mentioned that black fiction=race because that is the only type of black fiction we’re assigned in school). Black writers are seen as token spots in publisher catalogs, and when one author hits it big with something different (Terry Macmillan’s women’s fiction or street lit), publishers flood the market with derivatives, or worse, they experience what Walter Mosley experienced in the ’80s: “An editor had passed on his first novel, about the detective Easy Rawlins, with the rationale that the publishing house already had a black detective novel.” Pit a black debut author against a white debut author, and they don’t start on equal footing, even if they write for the same imprint, and more than one black writer has shared the tale of sitting between white authors and being ignored by readers–so why not attend a conference where they know the readers who do show up are open to trying their books?

Yet, does the segregation exist because black writers don’t push for their inclusion? More than one non-black reader has experienced a bit of uncomfortableness with browsing the stacks of the AA literature section, or even walking to the register with a black romance novel because they feel it says “keep out.” The invisibility of black authors in mainstream circles further obfuscate their names, thereby making it more difficult for readers who want to expand their reading horizons but ultimately find it easier to go with the unknown non-black author whom they’ve heard about around the ‘net. I look at L.A. Banks, who has achieved a considerable amount of success with her paranormal romance series’ due not only to her talent, but her frequent inclusion in mainstream paranormal romance anthologies and appearances at events like Dragon Con, and who apparently views herself as a black author of paranormal romance, and not as a writer of black paranormal romances.

I also challenge the notion (which happens to be a topic of debate at the conference) “that black writers constitute a niche market and that the best ones would eventually find wider attention,” which smacks of the tokenism that plagues the wider black community and continues the myth that only a few slots are available for blacks in any given field. Within the realm of fiction I definitely agree there is a cultural hurdle to leap over, but I don’t think the issue is open-and-shut, with a nail in its coffin. What say you?

FTC Compliance: I was emailed a copy of Charm Me, Baby by Monica Jackson for review.

I’m always up for paranormal romance and interracial romance is niche genre I’m beginning to enjoy, so when Monica Jackson sent me a copy of her February ebook release, I anticipated a satisfying read.

Mia Washington has inherited her Aunt Estella’s spell-book after the woman passes away. Mia has a good life in Atlanta and is reluctant to hang around in the podunk southern town in which she was raised, in the company of her malicious and unlikeable family. She plans to get the hell out of Dodge until her cousin Brenda comes to her with a sob story of being seduced, impregnated, and betrayed by the hottest guy in town, Grey Taylor, who is also the doctor at the hospital where Brenda is a nurse. Mia breaks into Grey’s house to cast a love spell for her cousin, and he catches her in the act, whereupon she unleashes her new-found powers to a hilarious and erotic end.

The Good: the twists and turns in the plot surprised me, there was a fair bit of humor that had me chuckling aloud, and the sex was hot (sizzling L.A. Banks style!).

The Bad: the tone swerved all over the place (the story began kind of spooky and Octavia Butler-esque before veering into light and humorous), the character development, and the slightly unbelievable interracial aspect (I had to mentally recast Grey as black because he didn’t read “white” to me; plus this is set in the South).

Overall: a decent effort from Jackson and hopefully we’ll see more paranormal romance from her because she has a great way with a plot.

Grade: C-

Purchase Charm Me, Baby at Red Rose Publishing. Find Monica at monicajackson.com and on twitter @monica__jackson

And it is STUNNING. Much more beautiful and attractive than the previous cover, racial issues notwithstanding.

OLD COVER

NEW COVER

Thank you Bloomsbury!

Via Reading Extensively

I’ve been tapped to write an article for Clutch Magazine (helps to fill the gap left by the demise of Honey and Suede) on black romance authors who are keeping the genre alive and how they are doing so. Anyone have any personal suggestions?

You’ve explored life for 19th century African-Americans in Again, and now in Gold Mountain. What drew you to exploring the lives lead by African-Americans during this period in US history?
With Again, I was particularly influenced by two books I’d previously read that depicted the 19th century in rich, detailed imagery – Robin Schone’s Gabriel’s Woman (romance) and Caleb Carr’s The Alienist (a historical forensic mystery/thriller). Both stories were intricately told, where even the minutiae presented helped to provide a well-developed sense of those places during that age. You could tell that both novels were well researched and I wanted to integrate that kind of essence into my own story. With Gold Mountain, the publisher’s call was for a historical to mark African-American History Month, and I decided again to present the 19th century because it is a distinct American period that provides so many rich tales as well as some unexplored history.

Does the interracial aspect enhance the story and the history? Does it make historical accuracy more difficult to maintain?
The interracial aspect provides an interesting turn in my stories as it provides a challenge in telling the historical tales as accurately as possible. I/R romances have existed since nearly the beginning of time and are even presented in the Biblical accounts of the lovers in The Song of Solomon and the relationship between Moses and his Cushite (Ethiopian) wife. Yet, it is only recently that publisher’s have seen that there is a market for interracial stories, especially those that feature African American women. Because the stories are only now being told, the interracial facet provides a fresh twist to often-told romantic tales.
As for maintaining historical accuracy, it is important to present the barriers that were in place during that time. However, although not as prominent as intra-racial pairings, interracial pairings did indeed happen despite cultural, racial and sometimes legal barriers. In Again, however, those barriers were too much to overcome for Joseph and Rachel, the historical protagonists in the story and led to their tragic end. But know that this outcome would have been rare; pairings of different ethnicities did flourish during this time. The persistence of love and affability does indeed overcome many difficulties, not to mention just good old fashion attraction.

What sources did you use to create a balanced, yet truthful viewpoint for your novella?
Because of the stringent time limit (I had about a month to write Gold Mountain ), I relied solely on the Internet to find sources regarding what happened not only with African Americans in the west, but also with the Chinese immigrants working the Transcontinental railroads and the gold mines. Years ago, I’d read about the pairings between Asian men and black women in the 19th century west. Many of these relationships arose because of the lack of Asian women in the States at that time. I was surprised to read about these romances because I had assumed that during that particular time the insularity of the Asian culture would have prevented these women and men coming together. But the burgeoning West of the 19th century was also a time of breaking down many social barriers. Black women figured prominently as entrepreneurs and community leaders. Chinese workers actually fought for their rights through the enterprises of the corporate families or through legal means. They brought law suits against unfair working conditions and wages. Pioneer women fought alongside men and had to survive the same travails that men often encountered. All of these facts are easily discovered through the many sources available from just a few Google searches.

What do you feel is the main purpose/goal of an African-American historical romance?
I believe it is important that readers know there is more to the African-American saga than just tales of slavery and ignominy. African Americans have rich tales of love and family but rarely are these tales presented in the fully developed way other stories are told. These romances simply open up the historical vista for many readers, providing them with a more precise perspective of blacks throughout the ages. We as African Americans lived, worked and loved as did any other ethnicity on this Earth. The tale of love and sex is timeless no matter the variances in melanin of the skin.
How do you reveal the ugly side of history as it pertains to minorities?
History has its ugly side and some of that ugliness persists even today. I feel it is important to present the violence and prejudices that real people faced at that time. I sometimes flinch at the derogatory language that spews from a character’s mouth, but that is the language that would have been commonplace during that age, and it would be less than honest to substitute euphemisms. For example, in Gold Mountain, the words “coolie” and “Chinamen” are featured consistently; although they are considered derogatory in today’s world, back then, that was how many westerners referred to Asians. Although I may hesitate to write the N-word (as I do now), I feature the word in all its ignoble venom in my works. Not only does the slur define that time period, it also defines the characters that use it. Regarding violence, I try not to use it salaciously, but rather to underline the dangers my characters face.

Did you discover anything unexpected during your research?
I did discover many details surrounding the life of an Asian immigrant working the railroads. They were fastidiously tidy and clean, self-sufficient and admirable workers. Also, I did not realize until my research that the Triad and the Tong existed even during this time, and that despite their subsequent criminal enterprises, they arose as a protective society for the newly arrived immigrants. I already knew from previous research the many inroads black women made in the west, but had not realized how varied and multifaceted those inroads were until researching for the novella.

Do you think it possible for historical romances featuring non-white characters to appeal to the general historical romance audience?
It’s possible and probable for mainstream readers to be attracted to historical romances featuring non-white characters, as was the case with some readers who bought Again. It has also been proven with Suzanne Brockmann’s books featuring the Sam and Alyssa characters that mainstream readers will not let racial differences interfere with a good romance. However, unfortunately, there will always be that contingent of readers who strictly define their romances to those who they can racially “relate” to. And the misfortune is theirs as they may be missing out on some wonderful stories.
As an interesting aside to this issue, I’ve long noted that mainstream audiences are open to interracial romances featuring black women and white men when they have gotten a chance to know the characters. Somehow race takes a back seat and attributes like attractiveness and personality become the driving force for a pairing’s popularity. I saw this some years ago with the fans of Poltergeist: The Legacy who wanted a romance between the characters Derek Rayne (white) and Alexandra Moreau (black). Unfortunately the writers never gave their fans what they wanted. Currently, I see this same fervor with many fans of the new drama Vampire Diaries. I am somewhat surprised to read the many fan forums asking for a pairing between bad boy vampire Damon (white) and nascent witch Bonnie (black), who ironically was white in the books but has been transformed for the show. The zeal can get almost vehement for the Bamons (the pro Bonnie-Damon fans), and it would be interesting to see if the show’s writers will take this zeal into account for future stories.
I would very much like to see this zeal for well-presented romantic pairings no matter their race or ethnicity. Actually, sometimes the differences make for an added level of excitement and complexity.

What do you foresee for your career in the future?
I wish I could see that far into the future, but for right now, I’m slowly easing back into writing longer works of fiction. For a while, I subsisted on writing short, short fiction having taken a hiatus due to personal issues. Given the economic climate and the general decline in hard book sales, I’m sussing out the viability and durability of e-book publication and may concentrate most of my efforts there for the meanwhile.

Since you’ve been published as a contemporary romance writer, could you see yourself writing historical romances, permanently?
I don’t see myself writing any particular genre exclusively. I tend to go where my imagination takes me. I’m interested in writing some romance, but am equally interested in contemporary thrillers or mysteries, and maybe even some horror and sci-fi.

Finally, what would you like readers to take away from your novella?
Just a good old fashioned tale that entertained and revved their hearts a bit.

Visit Sharon Cullars at her blog, and purchase Gold Mountain at Loose-Id February 23rd.

The black church has a history of being the pillar of the black community, and admittedly, most blacks–that is, blacks who consider themselves Christian–are pretty religious and/or spiritual. I have observed, however, in online conversations between black women and the issue of interracial dating, that a few of the black women conversation who are married or who date white men, have mentioned their lack of religion. What strikes me about this is that Sunday, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, is the most segregated day in America. In all my years of church-going (though I haven’t attended regularly in years), the eensy number of interracial couples I do remember seeing were that of white men with Asian or Hispanic women.

Mind you, I’ve only attended an all-black church for one period in my life; the churches I usually attended were mixed with either a predominantly white congregation or a predominantly black congregation, depending on the ethnicity of the pastor (funny isn’t it? a white pastor rarely attracts a large black congregation, and vice versa). Even then there was hardly any interaction besides the old “turn to your neighbor and say Hello/God bless you” shtick pastors used to force camaraderie between people who wouldn’t say hi if they saw one another at the grocery store.

After hearing about some crazed pastor who told his mostly black female congregation to stay single rather than marry a white man, I’ve begun to think about the role religion plays in subtly prohibiting interracial relationships.

What do you all think?

The title says it all.

The relationship between black women and their hair is a weighty matter. It is at once a political message and a beauty standard, the main, perhaps the only, physical attribute (since plastic surgery) that distinguishes us as “Other.” A man can run his hands though a European girl’s hair, through a Puerto Rican girl’s hair, through a Korean girl’s hair, through an Indian girl’s hair, and find it somewhat indistinguishable, but let him touch a black girl’s hair and no matter how light her skin is, how narrow her nose is, or if her eyes are a shade other than brown, she is undeniably black.

However, after reading a few romances with black heroines* I was struck by how, well, non-black these women were in regards to their hair. I can count on my fingers, toes, elbows, knees, etc, the countless references to “silky black hair,” or “glossy tresses,” or “shoulder-length curls” with which the authors chose to describe their heroines. Even the hero’s weren’t exempt, with their tight curls (Ginuwine?), close-cropped hair, and other vague descriptions that fall short of truthfully describing how black hair feels to the touch.

And don’t start on the prevalence of “mixed” heroine so the author can push away the burden of dealing with black hair (never mind that biracial hair is a bugbear in and of itself).

It was also interesting to note how many black heroines always have long, straight, silky hair with no recourse to the tracks, wigs, half-wigs, quick weaves, braids, and other hair enhancements black women from Gabrielle Union to Linda at the DMV blithely use for a different look. It’s also odd that black heroines rarely have funky hairstyles, like the ones sported by Rihanna, or Martin-era Gina Payne, or Salt-n-Pepa, particularly when many of them are in their late twenties/early thirties, a time when experimentation is accepted.

But a glaring absence is that of natural hair, be it afros, locs, and the like. After years of reading and seeing black women with shiny, swingy processed hair to their shoulders, it was a surprise to read L.A. Bank’s luscious descriptions of Damali Richards’ locs, and even more surprising to read of how Damali’s longtime lover, Carlos Rivera, responded to her hair.

I’m not going to lie and say I rock a natural, or that I wish relaxers would go the way of the dodo, but with the growing awareness in the beauty of black hair in all its texture, it would be interesting to read romances with black protagonists who don’t have the vague long, silky, straight hair. Not to mention that you can’t deny the women found in the le coil community have awesome hair.