Telling the Tale: The African-American Fiction Writers Guide, I devote a chapter to a discussion of how I develop chapters from scenes. Since my first book, I’ve roughly gone with 15-page chapters with three 5-page scenes. That’s just a rough guide. Some of my chapters are longer, some shorter, some have more scenes, rarely [...]
I’m a fan of The Wire. I didn’t join the bandwagon until the last season though. As I sought to catch up on the seasons missed, I kept hearing about Stringer Bell, played by Idris Elba. When I finally got to “meet” Stringer, I was not impressed. Avon Barksdale, played by Wood Harris, was my [...]
I learned this truth a long time ago, but it was refreshed for me a few months back when I read the back cover copy for Patricia Haley’s January release, Chosen, and almost had a heart attack. Here’s her back cover copy, courtesy of Amazon:
After Dave Mitchell abandoned his wife and business partner, Madeline, and [...]
I’ve recently become active on Facebook. I think the reason I like it so much is that it’s low-maintenance. By that I mean it’s quick and easy to post. Adding links, photos, videos and the like to a post is easy as well. For me it’s much easier than doing the same thing on my [...]
Okay, I have my Kindle 2.0 in hand. I already know it was a good choice for two reasons:
1) Even though the cover had to be purchased separately, it was worth it. My major complaint with the Kindle 1 was that the cover was flimsy and the Kindle back kept coming off when you tried [...]
In the world of publishing, there are a lot of things that are not under a writer’s control. Here’s a list of some of those things:
1. Print Runs
I’ve been thinking (and writing) a lot about siblings these days. I only have one — a brother — though there were many times growing up when I thought there were six of him. The boy was a holy terror, sometimes without the holy. I have the funniest memories of him growing up. Though he’s three [...]
I joined audible.com a couple of years ago when I first bought my ipod. My plan was to move from buying bound books to purchasing audiobooks. If you saw my house, you’d understand why. Well, that plan didn’t work so well. It seems I can’t walk around all day with that ipod earplug in my [...]
Early Monday morning I returned from the whirlwind 2008 Soul Expressions Author Tour. For four fun-filled, activity-packed days I journeyed via luxury coach (okay, a bus) with fourteen other African-American authors of various genres to ten Wal-Mart stores in Indiana and Illinois.
