National Buy a Book By A Black Author and Give It To Someone Not Black!
It's December! My favorite month of the year!
I've always loved December because I cherish the Christmas holiday. I now have another reason to love this month. It's
National Buy a National Buy a Book By A Black Author and Give It To Someone Not Black month!
National Buy a Book By A Black Author and Give It To Someone Not Black month is the brainchild of author
Carleen Brice. Her blog,
White Readers Meet Black Authors, was started this last year to raise awareness of books by black authors and show readers that it's okay to venture into the black/African American section of the book store.
Make sure you check out her video on YouTube. It is hilarious.
As a special treat, I'm giving away a copy of Carleen's absolutely fabulous novel
Orange Mint and Honey. I just read the book and was blown away. Shay, the book's main character, will fascinate you.
Orange Mint and Honey will make it's television premier on the Lifetime Movie Network on February 7, 2010. The movie, titled Sins of the Mother, features the extremely talented Jill Scott. I know she is going to be great as Nona. I cannot wait to see these characters brought to life. (A plea to LMN: Please do not mess up this book!)
To win your own copy of Orange Mint and Honey, simply recommend a black book you would give to someone not black.
When life gets in the way of life
You ever found yourself wondering just where in the heck two weeks went? That's how I felt tonight when I checked my own blog and realized it had been several weeks since I updated.
When I first started this blog I religiously posted every week. My blogging days were either Tuesday or Wednesday. Sometimes, I'd throw in a random post over the weekend, just to keep my readers on their toes. But over the past year, life (i.e. a full time job, two-book contract, tons of outside obligations) has gotten in the way of what was once my normal schedule. There is no such thing as a normal schedule anymore.
As I forge ahead into the busy holiday season I don't see things calming down all that much. Well, except for the week that I'll be on a cruise ship sailing around the Eastern Carribean. Things should be
very calm that week, but you won't see me posting.
However, I plan to return to a regular posting schedule and I'm hoping to bring a different flavor to my blog. While I'll continue to talk shop--because, hey, I am a writer and writing is what I love to talk about--I also want to bring in the sights and sounds of the world around me. Prepare for more "vlogs" (that's video blogs), pictures of a few exciting places I plan to visit in the near future, and sights around Austin, this wonderful city I now call home.
Oh, and stay tuned for my next post. I'm planning to usher in
National Buy A Book By A Black Author And Give It To Someone Not Black Month with a contest!
My Friend, the CIA Operative!
Okay, so I know this will sound like something out of a fiction novel, but believe me, I can't make this stuff up.
On September 20, 2009, I lost a very dear friend to breast cancer. I hate cancer. Despise it. Wish I could run it over with my car. But I digress...
I met my friend Andrea via a message board nearly a decade ago. She, along with a group of the coolest women in the world, became some of my closest friends in the world.
Several years ago Andrea moved from Texas to Washington D.C. and joined the State Department (or so everyone thought. The title of this post should tip you off to how this story will end). Andrea went to Iraq twice. Her first trip was interrupted by the breast cancer diagnosis. She came back to the States, kicked the cancer's butt, then went right back to Iraq. I remember thinking she was out of her mind to go back and do "administrative work for the State Department" in Iraq. Why couldn't she do it from a safe little office in D.C.?
Anyway, earlier this year, Drea (our name for her), was once again forced to leave Iraq due to cancer. This time the news wasn't so good. Stage Four cancer in various parts of her body. It was a crushing diagnoses, but she would not allow it to ruin her spirit. She fought harder than anyone I've ever seen with this disease. She was such an inspiration.
Several weeks ago at her memorial service on the campus of her beloved Texas A&M, the sixteen women from our group of friends who were able to make the service found out there was much more to our friend Andrea than any of us knew. That job with the "State Department" was actually with the Central Intelligence Agency. She was a covert operative who performed dangerous missions to gather intelligence for US Special Forces.
That's just cool, people. Seriously, seriously cool.
I still can't wrap my brain around it. For such a girly girl, it's so amazing to imagine her carrying weapons and infiltrating enemy sites. My friend, the CIA Operative.
Check out the picture of her with a rocket launcher! Yes, a rocket launcher! I'm so proud of our girl.
Rest in peace, Drea.
The Great NaNoWriMo Mistake
This past Sunday I blogged about November being National Novel Writing Month, and my sudden desire to participate. After less than a week, I remembered why writing events such as NaNoWriMo are detrimental to my writing. I’ve been totally obsessed with word count!
This constant checking of my word count after every paragraph is driving my crazy. I don’t want to be a slave to word count. And I don’t want to compare myself to others who are churning out 4000 words a day. That’s not my natural writing rhythm, and usually I’m fine with it. It’s not until I join something like NaNoWriMo and start questioning why can’t I do that that it becomes a problem. I need to be okay with having a 700 word count day, because I know the 2000 day will come soon enough.
So after less than a week, I’m out of NaNoWriMo. Best of luck to those who are participating. For me, it’s back to one page, one paragraph, one word at a time. That’s good enough for me.
#NaNoWriMo
Today is November 1st. Being a Catholic, for most of my life this date has meant visiting cemeteries and placing flowers on grave sites. But ever since I stepped into the world of writing, the first of November has taken on a whole new meaning. Today is the start of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short, or even NaNo for the really lazy people.
I'm pretty sure my blog readers who are also writers have heard of this growing phenomenon, but for those of you who haven't, here's how it works: You write. That's it. From November 1st to the 31st, you write your butt off with the goal of reaching 50,000 words. For me, that's a novel.
I had pretty much made up my mind not to take part in NaNoWriMo. I don't do well with structured writing tasked. However, when I awoke way earlier than I wanted to this morning (the sun shines right into my bedroom window, ack!), there was a sense of purpose surrounding me that had not been there when I laid my head on the pillow last night. November is the month I promised I'd have my current work-in-progress completed, and I knew I had to do something.
So, yes, I'm now "unofficially" taking part in NaNoWriMo. I'm debating whether I should login to the
official site or use places like
Facebook (there are several groups there), or even
Twitter (use #NaNoWriMo) to keep track of my progress.
Whatever medium I choose to track my progress, the most important thing is that I make progress. I will have this book done by Thanksgiving. Hopefully, NaNoWriMo can help.
The obvious question is how many of you out there are participating in NaNoWriMo? If not this year, have you done so in the past? How did it help or hurt?
Labels: NaNoWriMo
"The" Discussion Again
Because I've been super extremely busy these past few weeks (not just extremely busy, but
super extremely busy), I'm taking the lazy
blogger's way out and directing you to a very interesting post over at
Dear Author. It's about "the" discussion: race and romance novels.
I've only had a chance to skim many of the responses, but there's good dialogue going on over there. I sometimes grow weary of this debate, but the non-colorblindness in genre fiction--specifically in romance--is something I personally want to keep in the forefront of people's minds. In my own little rose-colored-glasses view, I think it will eventually make a difference that goes far beyond romance novels.
Labels: Dear Author, Race and Romance
Historical Fiction Writer Shauna Roberts
I am super excited to have my good friend and critique partner Shauna Roberts visiting the blog today. Shauna's first novel, Like Mayflies in a Stream, was released on October 5, 2009. If you love history and reading about ancient civilizations, you need to go out and get this book right now! It is fabulous!
Shauna, I remember reading The Epic of Gilgamesh back in my World Civilization class in college, and being intrigued by the story. What interested you in this time period?
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When I was in high school, I came across Samuel Noah Kramer’s History Begins at Sumer and read it. I was totally blown away. Here was this civilization I had never heard of, that existed thousands of years ago, yet it invented things we still use today, such as writing, literature, and monumental architecture. Enthralled, I read all I could about ancient Mesopotamia (which today is part of Iraq) and took classes about it in college.
Why did you, a science fiction and fantasy writer, write a historical novel?
Personally, I consider many historical novels, particularly those set long ago, as part of the speculative fiction genre, along with science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Many science fiction and fantasy writers have also written historical fiction or alternate history—off the top of my head, I can think of Ursula K. LeGuin, Barbara Hambly, Harry Turtledove, and Robert Silverberg. (Silverberg, in fact, wrote a historical novel about Gilgamesh.)
Science fiction, fantasy, and horror rely heavily on the author making an alien world believable and engrossing, so much so that the reader understands that world and feels a part of it. Other places and other times are alien to us, and we have far from a complete record of history, even for some recent events. When a historical fiction writer recreates a place and time and fills in the blanks in the historical record in a novel, I consider it worthy of being called speculative fiction.
Interestingly, Like Mayflies in a Stream is the second in a series of archaeology-related novels published by Hadley Rille Books . . . a company that otherwise publishes science fiction.
http://www.HadleyRilleBooks.com
How did you go about researching the story?
Like Mayflies in a Stream is based on the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” so one source of information was Stephen Mitchell’s translation (Gilgamesh: A New English Version), which contains a thorough introduction and copious notes. The epic, other myths about Gilgamesh, and an ancient list of kings all place Gilgamesh in the city of Uruk, which has been discovered and heavily studied by German archaeologists. As a result, I was able to use actual buildings and the 
city layout in my book; I even worked in a huge vase from the temple of Inanna that had been broken and repaired in antiquity.
To keep from having to spend years reading primary and secondary sources, most of which were in French, German, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian, I relied heavily on tertiary sources: textbooks, books intended for students and laypeople, Wikipedia articles, articles found through Google.
For a more detailed discussion of my research, I refer your readers to my recent blog post at Novel Spaces.
http://novelspaces.blogspot.com/2009/10/researching-ancient-times.html
For those who know the story of Gilgamesh, what might they encounter in Like Mayflies in a Stream that may surprise them?
For one, my book is told primarily from the viewpoint of an intelligent upperclass woman. This woman, a priestess of the goddess Inanna, patroness of Uruk, has a quite different view of Gilgamesh’s exploits than Gilgamesh himself does.
Second, the epic we are familiar with today is a very late version from 1200 BCE. The Babylonian editor/author was, of course, unfamiliar with Sumerian society of 1,500 years earlier, so the epic is riddled with anachronisms. My book relies on archaeological and historical evidence to create as accurate a depiction of Uruk and its people in the time of Gilgamesh as possible.
Third, the epic contains many fantastical elements. The gods meddle in human affairs, Gilgamesh has superhuman powers, Enkidu the wild man not only survives but thrives on a diet of grass, Shamhat and Enkidu encounter a caterer in the wilderness, and so on. My novel is not a fantasy; nothing in it contradicts natural law as we know it.
Fourth, although I have kept some of the themes of the original epic—the conflict between civilization and chaos is still relevant today, as is the conflict between knowing we will die and wanting to live forever—I’ve added a few of my own, such as the conflict between duty and personal desire, which most of my characters struggle with.
What does the title Like Mayflies in a Stream refer to?
I believe I came across the phrase in an old translation of the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” I was struck both by the beautiful image and by how in a few words it encapsulates the epic’s theme that our time on earth is short and then, without exception, we die.
Fascinating! Thank you so much for stopping in at the blog and giving us some insight into what went in to crafting this fabulous story, Shauna.
Mayflies in a Stream is available now! You can also learn more about Shauna through her website, blog, and Novel Spaces.
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