passing this along

An AllAboutRace.com reader is working on a project and would like your help. I do not know her personally and I am not endorsing her or her project, but after exchanging a couple of emails I feel that her efforts are sincere and I am comfortable passing along this request:

“Are you a person of African decent who has worked hard to achieve the
“American dream”? Did you work hard in school, get into to college,
graduate, and do all the “right” things, but still found yourself
struggling professionally? Have you gotten a concussion, bumping your
head into that glass ceiling? Did you believe that if you just worked
hard and stayed out of trouble, that dream job and picket fence would
be yours? I am interested in talking to you about your trials and
tribulations. I want to know what types of obstacles you have faced
and what you have done to overcome them. I want to know what your
struggles are today and what your triumphs are too. Maybe it forced
you to start your own business or go in your own direction. Maybe you
eventually did get that “dream” together but the road was treacherous.
Maybe you are still struggling today and need direction…. I am
sure there are a lot of you out there because it has happened to me.
Ivy league education, top grades, all the right stuff, but still
struggling. Get in touch with me, let me know that you are out there
and we can talk about what I am doing more in-depth. I know that
these things can be painful and embarrassing because it feels like a
personal failure. Don’t worry about that. There are no judgments
here… just a kind ear and support for my brothers and sisters! I
hope to hear from you soon.”

If you are interested or have questions, please contact EA directly at: thestruggle2008@gmail.com

First Wind Follower book signing

Well, I'm all signed up. They are ironing out whether or not we'll actually be reading excerpts. Will see.


Carole McDonnell (Wind Follower) and other local authors will discuss and sign their books.

Carole's book is story about a quest, a vendetta, and a spiritual battle. It is a multicultural Christian fantasy about the relationship between race and religion.


WHEN: Saturday, November 17, 2007 @ 12:00 noon
WHERE: Barnes & Noble Cortlandt Town Center
3089 East Main Street, Route 6
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547
store: 914-528-6275

DAILY TEENAGE STATISTICS

Do you want to do something scary? For an enlightening and scary adventure, go and google "teenage statistics"

Here are a few DAILY statistics I picked up. NOTE: some of these statistics are old, from 2002 or 1998...so you can decide if they have gotten worse or better.

2353 become pregnant
367 have miscarriages
4000 have abortions
40% of teenage pregnancies end in abortions
1287 give birth
666 born to poor women
74 babies die before one mont
9 die from gunshot wounds
10 die everyday from car crashes
8984 every year from
10 die from suicide
one teen dies every five days from workplace injuries
3 die from drinking and driving
over 1000 teenagers die every day from smoking
600 gonorrhea
8000 with STD's
988 abused
3288 child run away
49000 in juvie
2999 see their parents divorced
There is a suicide every 17 minutes
More kids die from suicide than homicide

Second Chance Act

Hat Tip to Eddie Griffin,

Please take action to give offenders a second chance and help keep our brothers and sisters out of jail This is VERY IMPORTANT. Please visit this link to read more http://www.justicefellowship.org/generic.asp?ID=2225

This is the action alert...

Dear Friends,
We need your help immediately to pass the Second Chance Act, HR 1593. The bill is ready to be brought to a vote on the floor of the House. Yet, the poisoned partisan atmosphere may keep it from ever getting voted upon.
Leaders from both parties have reached agreement on virtually everything that will be in the bill, but there remains some Republican opposition. The Democratic leadership is reluctant to schedule a vote if it turns into a donnybrook on the floor. However, they will schedule a vote next week if they are assured that the bill has the support of at least 100 Republicans.
Therefore, I urge you to call your representative and tell them how important it is that this bill passes. If your legislator is a Republican, please ask them to call Rep. Chris Cannon, the lead Republican sponsor, and let him know that they will vote for the Second Chance Act. It is important that they let Mr. Cannon know by tomorrow (Thursday) so that it can be scheduled for a vote next week. If your legislator is a Democrat, please ask them to tell Rep. Hoyer, the Democratic Whip, that they support the bill.
The Second Chance Act will help ex-offenders with their transition to life on the outside—specifically, in five key areas: jobs, housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and strengthening families.
You can find out more about this bill at Justice Fellowship's Legislative Action Center, where you can also find out the name and phone number of your representative. Please do not close this email before you call your representative. It is that important to the bill.
In His service,
Pat Nolan
Vice President, Prison Fellowship



Second Chance Act is on the schedule for Tuesday Nov, 13th

http://www.majorityleader.gov/links_and_resources/whip_resources/weeklyleader.cfm?pressreleaseID=2091

Spotlight: Cecil Washington

Cecil Washington is the editor and Publisher of Creative Brother , a magazine that publishes and explores speculative fiction about the black culture. I recently interviewed both Cecil and Frank Creed. See my post on marginalized scifi below.

Creative Brother is a zine that contains fiction, opinion essays, poetry, and sometimes analysis of issues at the juncture of speculative fiction and Black culture.

Authors included in Issue #10, which I believe is the latest issue, include Paul Blakeford and Malon Edwards.

Creative Brother doesn't shy away from controversial issues, two of which are included in this issue.

The first is: The Sophia Stewart plagiarism lawsuit against the Brothers Wachowski asserting they stole the Matrix idea from her. (I've heard a lot about this lawsuit and honestly I don't know what to think about it. It's possible they used her short story as a seed for the movie but where does influence begin and plagiarism end?) Mr Washington seems to have taken up her cause. I'll stand mute. If you wish to read more about the lawsuit, you can check out Sophia's website. www.sophiaoracle.com She's pretty angry...and if she is indeed right about being plagiarized, she has every right to be angry. If, if, if. Whatever the outcome of the courtcase, it certainly should make writers pause about sending their unpublished novels off to folks in Hollywood.


Another controversial topic mentioned in Creative Brother is the philosophy of Dr Frances Cress-Welsing and Neely Fuller, Jr. In fact it takes up much of this issue. If you don't know what the United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept is, you can either count yourself unlucky (according to Felix) or lucky (in that you just don't get into such far reaches of racial flakiness.) Sorry, Felix, but honestly! I consider you a great writer and I'm not particularly wimpy about racism...but I seriously wonder how anyone could believe in that entire Cress-Welsing concept.

The ezine also contains a great segment on black scifi resources on the web and in print. If you want to read some race-based scifi...or if you want to get an somewhat biased analysis on the Sophia Stewart case or the Cress-Welsing/Fuller philosophy, check out the zine:

Creative Brother Website



Other bloggers taking part in the tour are:


Interview with Cecil Washington

Check out the spotlight of Cecil on:
Spotlight on moondancerdrake's livejournal

Gregory Banks' website

Rachel Lindley

Plus I did an earlier interview with Cecil and Frank Creed, another writer of marginalized speculative fiction.


Cecil's websites are:
http://www.cecilwashington.com/

Creative Brother Website


-Carole

Spotlight: Frank Creed

Frank Creed's new book Flashpoint has just come out. I think a day ago.

Here's the blurb:

Persecution in Chicago has reached the Flashpoint.

In the year 2036, all nations are run by a one-world government.
The One State has only one threat:
Fundamentalist terrorists.
The One State has declared that
Bible believing Christians are now ‘terrorists’!

But the One State has not yet encountered Calamity Kid and e-girl . .

As you know already from my previous post, Frank writes Biblical speculative fiction. This means among other things that the values, truths and prophecies used in his fiction are the same shown in the Bible.

That doesn't mean Frank slavishly follows the mold of other Bible writers. This ain't your Mom's (or Janet Oke's or Beode Theone's) Christian fiction.

Like Cyber-punk? How about trying Biblical cyber-punk?

Well,

Click here to check out the youtube book trailer fof FLASH POINT





Christian Fiction Review Blog

Buy on Amazon

And check out some of Frank's sites:

http://www.frankcreed.com/

http://www.frankcreed.com/TheUnderground.html

http://afrankreview.blogspot.com/

http://blog.lostgenreguild.com/

Interview with Biblical speculative fiction author, Frank Creed, and Black Speculative Fiction Author, Cecil Washington

I spoke recently with Frank Creed and Cecil Washington. . As you will see from our interview, both men are on the edges of Science Fiction. They write for audiences that are not considered mainstream science fiction audiences.


Cecil, you are editor and Publisher of Creative Brother , a magazine that publishes and explores speculative fiction written by black men.

CW: This is not correct. It is about people who live with or around what we call Black Culture. I do not only publish black men. I'm still waiting for a futuristic story about an Eminem type of character, other than the one I wrote called "Street Mind". I have not received one yet. Does that mean that there will be no Eminems in the future? I thought that only black people and other non-white people were in danger of disappearing.

I understand what you mean by disappearing. So often when one watches science fiction –especially the old movies-- one wonders what happened to the non-whites. But that has begun to change, I think. On Amazon, for instance, there are many multicultural speculative fiction books. There are also many Christian speculative fiction books . Not as many as one would like, however. So, in the future I’ll remember that Creative Brother also publishes Creative sisters.

CW: Creative Brother's Sci-Fi magazine is about black people, black culture.

Frank, you are part of the Lost Genre Guild, a group that specializes in Christian speculative fiction and you also blog at
A Frank Review a review blog of Biblical Speculative Fiction. Some people consider those to be marginalized speculative fiction? By marginalized I mean, "not in the mainstream."

Tell me, why have you chosen to write in such marginalized areas?

CW: People fill up the Internet with complaints about the lack of blacks in speculative fiction. I decided to be someone who would stop complaining and start acting. I read Octavia Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Delaney and John Faucette. I need to get on the ball and read more of Brandon Massey . I also decided to return to writing my own stories once I stopped actively writing Hip Hop.

FC: After years of fruitless searching, I stopped looking for Biblical speculative fiction in Christian bookstores or on religious shelves. I’ve been writing since very young and eventually started to write in the genre I enjoyed reading—but with the twist of writing in a manner that is respectful of Christian values. I’ve since found that there are many fans of spec-fiction who have a difficult time finding enough novels to feed their reading habit—connecting with them is the challenge I face.

Why not simply write stories that deal with what we have in common instead of what separates us?

CW: If you honestly tell your own story, can rip apart those barriers and dig out the raw expression, the common concerns and fears all humans have will be exposed. A good story is a good story. I like reading about other cultures, why can't others read about me?

FC: I think that history has proven the melting-pot to be a false idea. Our culture is a woven tapestry—what we have in common is our hearts. I didn’t deliberately set out to include characters of other cultures—I develop the characters as I see them in my mind.

Do you write for only those who are like you? And why?

CW: I write for whoever will read it because I want to be read and make money writing and publishing.

FC: My intended audience is anyone who was raised in church, and likes a page turner—no matter where they are in life now. I have been told by non-Christians, for instance, that the characters in, and story of Flashpoint have inspired them—perhaps not enough to convert to Christianity, but at least to search for something more in their lives.


Do you think that people who are not like you, not black or not Christian, would enjoy or understand your work?

CW: Yes.

FC: Yes, I have had reviewers indicate just that. The problem I face is that my work is labeled “Christian fiction” and that label alone may prevent someone from picking up the book and so there is a whole community of readers out there who will never get the opportunity to read my work. Part of the reason is that Christian fiction has had a reputation for slightly inferior quality. People remember the books they checked out from the church library or that they received as gifts when they were young.


True. Christian Fiction does have something of a bad reputation. But, accepting that you are indeed writing Christian Fiction and good Christian Fiction, wouldn't non-Christians think you're trying to preach at them? Cecil, would white readers think you're trying to preach to them or even to malign them? Frank, the same question.

CW: Some will, some won't, based on their own issues. One white reader told me I should have put more drug use in my first book because it reminded him of a dystopian story he read years ago where people got high all of the time. People are going to read into things what they want to read into them. All I want to do is tell a good story.

FC: A fiction author’s first job is to entertain. Nobody reads fiction for a sermon. If it's not about character and setting, people will stop reading. If a reader cannot identify with judgmental characters, yeah, they will feel maligned. Communicating Christ's love, reaching people where they're at in life, is all about the Golden Rule . . . do unto others.


Folks can be very uncomfortable with stories that deal with religion and race.

CW: That's probably why those are the good stories. Cannibalism and murder also disturb people. And let's not forget about sex. Shall we stop writing about things that humans are prone to do? If we do, we'll bore our readers.


FC: I'm hoping my novels will cross-over to seekers, but the Underground series is doomed to sit on religious fiction shelves, away from the eyes of a sci-fi readers. I pray the end-times sci-fi concept captures interest and catches-on. At book signings with other authors, I will take any opportunity to cruise the sci-fi shelves and talk to readers about Christian spec-fiction—most are very surprised that it exists and many immediately want to know more about it.

Do you consider your enterprises successful? Relatively speaking, that is. Do you have many readers?

CW: I have few readers. I want more. I'd like to be able to make a fortune from my enterprise. But, despite the few readers I go on because I know there is at least one magazine, mine, that is about black people in sci-fi/horror/fantasy settings.

FC: I founded the Lost Genre Guild to promote Biblical speculative fiction (most people don’t know what that is, so please check Wikipedia--a guild member wrote the definition), and I cannot believe the number of lives that have been touched. If the Boss strikes me down tomorrow, I've already lived dream one.

I just checked out the Wikipedia article . That’s a very good historical recap of Biblical Speculative Fiction.

My own short fiction has only been published in two anthologies—I’m nobody. I work in a factory. My first novel Flashpoint: Book One of the Underground , will be released on September 30, by The Writer's Café Press . Most of my readers have been reviewers for Flashpoint’s advanced-review-copy. I leaned on my publisher to make Christian-Pirate novelist ML Tyndall (Legacy of the King’s Pirates series), my front cover blurb. My three favorite novelists are George Orwell, CS Lewis, and ML Tyndall—so having my only living novelist on my front cover is dream two.

On September 30, my third dream will be realized. I was eight years old when I knew I wanted to write storybooks—dream three took 33 years.


Will you be content with a certain kind of niche audience for your works? Or are you aiming for fame in the larger marketplace?

CW: Again, I'd like to be able to make a fortune from my enterprise. I'm sure that people who are classified as black are not the only people who support black products. Do only Chinese people each Chinese Food? Do only white people listen to Mozart? Do only black people listen to James Brown?


FC: I hope sci-fi readers find me, but they don't look for their favorite fiction on religious shelves. I’ll be content with whatever he gives me: Christian science fiction is nonexistent as a subgenre, so if I'm ever able to pay the mortgage with fiction it will be a miracle.

Do you believe you're working from outside the mainstream in order to change the mainstream? Or don't you care about mainstream speculative fiction at all?

CW: I believe I'm working outside of the mainstream because the mainstream is not publishing me. If they published me, I'd stop working outside of the mainstream. You'll have to ask the mainstream why I'm outside of it. If I waited around for the magic blessing of mainstream publishing I'd never write anything.

FC: The big publishing houses have bought out most of the small Christian imprints, so I just hope to make a difference for my subgenre. As a reader through my whole life, I was so tired of only finding the atheist worldview presented in science fiction. According to Writer's Digest, religious fiction in general is predicted to be the big growth market in coming years. Cecil and I are in the right place.

Frank, have you ever read any speculative fiction by Black authors? Cecil, would you read white Christian speculative fiction? Have you read any?

CW: The nuns of St. Mary's Piscataway made sure I found out about C.S. Lewis when I was in elementary school. Barring that, I read whatever I think is good.

FC: *smiling at CW* most of the science fiction I've read was in paperback form, and paperbacks don't usually include author pictures. For all I know, these people were green!


What are your current projects?

CW: I've been writing poetry and just completed recording a rap song in my cousin's studio. I'm also working on a short story and the next issue of Creative Brother.

FC: I am working with role-playing game designer Mike Roop on a RPG based on Flashpoint; at the same time I am writing the sequel to it as well as collaborating with a small group of people who are writing in the Underground setting.

Thank you so much for the interview and good luck with your enterprises.


CW: You're welcome.

FC: Thank you, Carole.

Blessings Blog Tour: Stephen Todd Jones

First a note to Stephen:

Hi Stephen: The Bible tells us that the traditions of men have made the word of God to no effect. Loose translation: much of the stuff we believe about certain bad things that happen to us being God's will was created by human tradition.

Aiming for a miracle is a big challenge. But I'm also aiming for a miracle so you have someone else on your journey.

The thing we have to do right now is to tear down the strongholds of doubt and unbelief that the world, the flesh, and the devil have put into our minds. We have to cast down every imagination that raises itself against the power of God. We have to be transformed by the Word of God and let the Word of God renew our minds and we must not be conformed to the way the world thinks.

I would suggest going to www.awmi.net Andrew Wommack's website and downloading his teachings called

How to Get a miracle
A sure foundation
Hardness of Heart
Spirit, Soul, Mind and Body
You've already Got it.

I also suggest going to Emily Dotson's site. www.emilydotson.com She was paralyzed once and she waged the fight of faith and got out of it.

You might also go to www.sidroth.org and look around for tapes on healing.

In the meantime, remember that Communion is a healing service. It is true bread and true drink. It heals the spirit soul mind and body and feeds us in ways we can hardly understand or know. Take communion every night with your family or at least at church every sunday. And trust that the blood and body and word of God is working within you. The blade, then the plant, then the full flower.


TO MY BLOG READERS:

Please keep Stephen in your prayers.

Stephen Todd Jones is a writer and poet from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
While a sophomore at Liberty University, he sustained injuries in a car crash that left him in a wheelchair, and this perspective forms the basis for much of his writing. Through his poetry, he gives us a window into his world and his faith.

Here are some of his poems.


If Seen As God Sees

If I were transparent,
What would people see
Of which God is aware
Deep inside of me?

What blemish would
Appear-- before unseen--
If others saw, as God,
a panoramic scene?

Would some loving here
Draw back in disgust
If they knew, as God does,
Every deed and lust?

I am glad He is patient,
Loving and forgiving
When I come unto Him;
Sin is part of living,
Unfortunately.

I see the wickedness when
I honestly do inspection
To see what should not be
So on an introspection.

Who I Am Before

I must know who I
Am before
I can hope to be known
By one for---

If I am not aware
How can I
Expect others to distinguish
This guy?
(cont.)
I can not realistically
Hope for such
If I fail to really know,
Being out of touch

With reality. Reality, some say,
Is overrated here,
But we all need to dwell in
An actual sphere.

Why Sorrow Over

Why sorrow over
That had not
For the same is a
Heavy thought?

Why not enumerate
All here had
Rather than accounting
For those bad?

In content, do you
Not strive to
Obtain that reserved,
It seems, for few?

Or is content a state
Where you are
Never seeking that
From way afar?

Is dreaming wrong to
Do here when
You are dissatisfied in the
State you are in?

Are we not to seek to
Improve our lot,
Or as the fatalist here,
Are we not?

God, reveal to me the
Answer to those,
Or is there a definite
As I here suppose?
We Dream Still

Only some dreams
Are God's will
For us to obtain here;
We dream still.

Some are contrary to
His loving fill
Of events for our life.
We dream still.

Some are meant to be
Ours though until
Comes the proper moment,
We dream still.

Some of our dreams
God will not fulfill
For He knows better than we;
We dream still.

We think we know better
From our clouded sill,
Facing what we see dimly;
We dream still.

Through a glass darkly,
We see and we will
What may be impossible;
We dream still.

God, may dreams sifted
Be like wheat until
Chaff is winnowed out;
We dream still.

The First 48

If you’ve ever seen The First 48 on A&E, you probably – as I do – have found yourself avoiding dramatic cop-shows such as Law and Order. Praised and time-honored as the Law and Order franchise might be, their storylines are pretty much crock. Their bad guys are over-the-top truly villainous people whose crimes are planned around L&O’s need for ratings and penchant for preachiness.

The First 48 however, is the real thing. Painfully, terribly so. It’s a reality show, of course! But what a reality! The premise for the series is this: the first forty-eight hours after a homicide are the most crucial. Evidence, witnesses, and the bad guy can simply disappear, fade, or be forever lost.

Each episode focuses on two homicide squads, in different cities. On any Thursday night the viewer might find herself involved in the investigation of a murder in Dallas, Kansas City, MO, Las Vegas, Memphis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, or Miami.

Of course, we develop favorites. The Memphis and Miami squads are superb and stand-outs are Sergeant Caroline Mason, Sergeant Doreen Shelton, Sergeant Tony Mullins, Sergeant Mitch Oliver, Sergeant Eunice Cooper, Sergeant Ervins Ford, Detective Kevin Ruggiero, Detective Emiliano Tamayo.

We see these cops in their humanity. We see the adrenalin pumping in the adrenalin junkies who live to get the bad guy. We see the grief when they have to inform a family member that their loved-one has been murdered. We see their grief for both the victims and the victimizers.

That’s probably the strangest thing about The First 48. These cops know something that most TV cops don’t know: that murderers are not particularly evil. They aren’t even smart. The murderers are generally kids who haven’t got a lick of sense, who get involved in something that goes awry, who gave the devil a finger and the devil took the whole hand. The cops are educated, and mature. They understand common sense and they come in all sizes and shades. The murderers, on the other hand, unfortunately are of a darker hue: hispanic and black, they are often involved in gangs, fighting over the little 1% of the American dream the rich have allowed to trickle down.

When Sergeant Caroline Mason of the Memphis PD is on the case, she shows us that being a cop involves being part spiritual counselor, part trickster-manipulator, part maternal voice of the community, and part investigator. Yet, she’s got to be one of the most ultra-feminine cops you’d ever see. The woman has style, but she also has heart. A young criminal is like putty in her hands. At the end of the investigation, he is usually blubbering as much as we are.

He knows he’s wasted his life. He knows he’s not being the good Christian kid his mom wanted him to be. He knows that one moment of stupidity has cost him his future and possibly his life. If it’s a girl who was playing one guy against another, she knows how volatile hormones can be. And, most importantly, the murderer knows that another human died and didn’t deserve to.

Okay, I’m sounding a bit like a bleeding-heart liberal with a Law and Order fixation. But I can’t help it. The show makes even hard hearts weep. I kid you not. I find myself watching the programs and shouting at those young stupid murderers, “My people! My people! What are you doing to yourselves! And for what? The little cash a drug deal will bring?”

I know many parents don’t feel like sitting their kids down to watch documentaries or straight-up reality shows. But I’m the kind of parent who forced my son to watch Maxed Out, a film about the evils of credit cards; and SuperSize Me, a film about the horrors of fast-food addiction.

So, okay, I’m telling you to plunk your kid down in front of this show. Especially if the kid – like many teenagers in the hood – still doesn’t know how to think before he acts.

Writers of Color Blog Tour

Hi all:

My novel Wind Follower will be highlighted on my efriend's blog at myspace and Live Journal. Beginning September 15, 2007


My Space
http://www.myspace.com/moondancerdrake

my space blog:
http://blog.myspace.com/moondancerdrake

Live Journal
http://moondancerdrake.livejournal.com



This is a group dedicated to bloggers who are also writers, or to reviewers who review on Amazon. It's based on networking and the idea of virtual book tours

Every month, we will try to do reviews or post a comment on a book written by one of our members.

Reviews aren't necessary. Although if we do happen to do a review on the blog, I think we shouldn't forget to post it on Amazon or to the publisher of the book. If a person gets a pdf, they can post an excerpt of the book. Or not. If someone receives a review copy, it's only fair they post a review to their blog.


We want everything to be easygoing. We're all busy. This is not supposed to be a burden. Those who can't post a review will also be contributing if they post a jpeg of the book cover and a synopsis or small mention to their blog.

We should try to do the same book all in the same month. That's not too much to ask.

Members of this group may not be forced to tour books for one of three reasons:

1: if they object to the contents of a particular book.
2: if a blogger is sick or extremely busy
3: if a member of the group wants to tour the book of someone not in the group, that's fine. The other bloggers are free to go along but it is not mandatory if they do so. I just don't want us to get into the habit of doing tours for writers who tend be users and after one has spotlighted them they disappear.

Nor do I think we should let strangers email us with synopsis of their books begging us to spotlight them. We aren't there for them. And our goal is to help primarily bloggers in our group.

It would also be good if we posted each other's weblog links to our site if possible. If a blogger reviews a book, the other bloggers taking part in the virtual tour should post a link to that review.

She writes speculative fiction. We belong to a virtual book tour group called Writers of Color Book Tour. It's made up primarily of speculative fiction but there are a few romance writers in the mix. Pagan and Christian.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WritersOfColorBookTour/

It's a nice group...just starting out though.


--- -C

Top 110 banned books

Here's a list, according to Alnita's blog, of the top 110 banned books - clearly from various times and places.

Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've partially read. Underline the ones you specifically want to read.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Qur'an
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh (Mayan creation myths)
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

My committment to avoiding racist, sexist, and violent hip-hop

Well, this is gonna be hard...cause i really do like rap. And rock and roll. But I'm not liking what it's doing to black youth. So here goes:

I hereby solemnly declare that I will no longer watch or llisten to musicians, videos, movies, or comedians who use the word

"hoe", s***, w**** when discussint women.

I also solemnly declare that I will no longer listen or watch any performer who uses the N-word or who does rap songs encouraging shallow mercenary values and Black-on-Black violence.

I believe that artists and performers are free to speak their own minds. I'm not against free speech. But honestly, I wish there are folks who were a bit more responsible in their speech to kids because most kids are pretty undiscerning.

I am tired of seeing kids kill each other over sneakers, bling, etc.

Update on Daughters of Men.

Right now I'm thinking Daughters of Men will be a combination of

Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur and Tristan/Isolde/Mark and Wings of A Dove moral treachery kind of thing where two noble men love one woman. Adultery, etc.

But it's also got that Queen Esther --representation of her people/savior of her people kind of thng.

Plus the Guinevere and Isolde trapped in love versus power kinda thing.)

There's also that Wings of the Dove moral treachery thing happening because Siddhart is betraying Woden and thinks Medusa is using her telepathy to protect him.

So then. One woman -- my queen Esther figure-- has all these men loving her. And one of them, the Medusa character, is unloved. So we have Medusa as Medea/Clytemnestra/Antigone (and all those angry Greek women) as savior of her own people and rejected lover. Female Anger.-- Working out this strong rejected grief-stricken-til-she-loses-her-mind kind of woman


Then there is the lone human guy in all this mess. And regular human male doesn't mean much in this particular world.

These are the two daughters of men in the story and I want them to go to town.

The other problem is that this novel is full of prophecy. I had this idea of how prophecies can be misunderstood and misinterpreted. But then, I wrote Wind Follower. I really explored that issue a lot in WF...and did a great job at if, if I do say so myself. So why repeat myself? I don't want people thinking I'm a one-note writer. So I want to get rid of the prophecy business.

But some of those prophecies matter -- because there is "looking for a savior" issue that's really big in the story.

Daughters of Men is over seven years and I started it when I was just learning how to write novels. It looks as if I have to re-read the thing and diagram the chapters.

Robert Fleming, author of Fever in the Blood gave me the following advice:

Go slow and be methodical.

Try to fit the chapters into the larger scheme so that they can have
greater momentum and clarity.

Build it like a piece of music.

Let God work his magic through me...as he did with Wind Follower.

Don't let fear rule me or my work.

Read the whole piece and remove and retool the weak segments.

Believe in the story or suffer the sophomore curse.

Make a list of the themes.

Accentuate those points but keep in mind that tension and suspense rules.

Find the underpinning of the book.


So here i am wading through a mess and committing myself to simply tossing out what doesn't work. The thing is over 600 pages...and very episodic. Plot points all over the place instead of tight scenes leading to other tight scenes. It seems the best thing to do is to begin again because these many scenes are useless.

Plus i have to figure out how the needy eroticism of the novel will work with my Christianity. The book seems to be want to be about male sexual need. Will see. A Christian erotic novel? The last Christian erotic novel I hear of was Marian in Ecstasy.

And the eroticism was aimed at Jesus.

Oh well, will see what happens with DOM. Must however get out of Wind Follower mode. That book is done and published. Move on, Carole

Wind Follower in my hands

Wind Follower is published.

Hand over eyes and screaming wild joyous songs!

Dancing a two-step and generally flaking out.

Didn't cry though.

Just wild, manic, joy.

So this is what it feels like to open one's door and find a box of
one's VERY OWN PUBLISHED book on the front porch.

Borders is not ordering enough to matter, so push everyone you know to go to B&N or wherever to buy the book. If we show Borders sales elsewhere, they will order.

Yep....consider this a push.

Wind Follower has arrived at my door steps

Hi all:

I just got my novel Wind Follower from the publisher. I'm sooo happy. My very first book. I am sooo happy. Soo happy. I'm a published author of my very own book.

If you know anyone who is into folkloric fantasy, or Christian fantasy, or ethnic fantasy, tell him/her to go on over to Borders and B&N to order it.

Thanks so much.
-C


Then said I, "Here am I. Send me."
Carole McDonnell
www.carolemcdonnell.com
WIND FOLLOWER
www.juno-books.com/windfollower.html

My inner gold-digger

Hi all:

I'm trying to get back into the Daughters Of Men work-in-progress again after a brief hiatus away from it.

I was so into thinking about the male motivation/issues in the story that I wasn't really exploring in a truly deep way the motivation of my female character.

I suspect now I have to get in touch with my inner gold-digger. It seems to me that women growing up in a bereft culture where there are men with power and men without....well, these women would see the overseers as sugar-daddies. This connects in some ways to my love of reality love-match TV shows like Flavor Flav.

Most of those girls were poor and in need and the show was their way of getting money...and fame...even in some small fading hip-hop hipster kind of way.

I have to decide if Ellie, main character in DOM, is needy enough to want one of these guys ...secretly. Or maybe she's a user. And even if she's not a user, she might very well be so oppressed by all the sorrows and responsibilities of life that she finds a part of herself that actually needs a relationship with a paranormal sugar daddy.

The problem is I have to decide if she is like me or not. Satha was pretty much who I would be if I were in that situation. Now I have to decide how noble a character Ellie will have to be. Or rather, how noble a character I would be if I were in Ellie's situation.

The true glory and the true blessing of Josh my main human male character is that he's human. The true horror and the true curse of Josh is that he's human.

An inhuman overseer has power, wealth (presumably), the power to heal, the power to understand everything going on inside a woman's mind. And all they want is love. A real guy can't stand up to that.

Women want real guys who happen to be super-human.

I want to find the real Ellie. Not an Ellie "feminists" or "Christians" or "blacks" or "good girls" or "bad girls" would like. I want to find the real Ellie who will make DOM work. And she probably is not a "pure" user. But an impure one. One with a mix of need and desires and insecurities.

-C

Wind Follower first review

Well, the first review of wind follower is up.

It's up at The long and short of it.
Long and shortreviews a site which specializes in romance.

I'm happy.
It has begun.

And it is interesting that the first reviewer of the book is a Malaysian Christian. The book deals with multiculturality.

She said, "Wind Follower had me hooked from the first page and I found it hard to stop reading. It is very different from the stories I normally read, but nonetheless, interesting."

And she also said, "Wind Follower is a page-turner right from the beginning."

Ooh, I loved that.

Who knew I had it in me to write a page-turner?"


Nice.

experience, observation, imagination

Quote of the Day: A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

--William Faulkner

This is sooo true. And I often see the lack one of these things...but often the other things that are in the author don't seem to supply the lack of the others. This is just my opinion. For instance, I didn't know much about observation. I was terrible about "showing" because I truly had to learn about the various kinds of body language. My characters tended to be talking heads. And they still kinda are...so i'm glad my crit friends remind me of these kind of things.

As for imagination, I've seen a lot of imitative writing. People think they're being imaginative...and they are being imaginative as far as they know...but honestly in a lot of allegories I've read, they're imagining a world that is already created. Or a concept that already exists...and they aren't using it or mining it...anymore. They think they're imaginative because they are stringing together a kind of plot....but it's really a plot based on something they didn't imagine. For instance, why are so many dragons in the stories of beginning writers named "Draco." It's a bit much.

The last thing is experience. This is kind of tough. We all have experience...It's not really about youth, i think...but about the ability to be in touch with your own experience of joy, pain, need, fear, whatever, and get it into the story. So many of the stories I've read feel so unlived in. Someone writes a story about an ugly brute who is being rejected by a beautiful woman. Yet when one reads the story it's as if they don't seem to understand rejection or what it means to be ugly....even if one knows they must have been rejected...or that they must have considered themselves ugly at one time or another.

I wonder why that happens. Lack of courage? Lack of the ability to see ourselves?

-C

passion, sex, love, shame

Okay,

this waiting around for Wind Follower to be published has been spent fitfully.

A couple of days ago, I did nothing but re-read the pdf version of it in my computer. Okay, I had to see for myself how marvellous it all was. Hey, sometimes we forget.

It is lovely, and wonderful...if I do say so myself. In it's folklore questing passionate spiritual way.

But then I happened upon a sex scene. There are six in the book -- of all kinds (pre-marital engaged couple, rape, concubine, plus a couple flirtations.

And what happens when I happen upon this sweet little sex scene which is kinda spicy and sensual (those are the words the romance genre uses) I found myself avoiding the scene. Yep, I SKIPPED over my own sex scene. What's that about?

Well, obviously it's either false shame or true shame. If it's false shame -- a shame that one shouldn't really feel but which one is gonna feel anyway because one has been brainwashed-- then I can only think that I've gotten so many tongue-lashings from my Christian friends who "NEVER" put semi-graphic sex scenes in their book...that they have made me very nervous about my book. And honestly, it's not so terribly, terribly graphic. Just kinda graphic. Or it's my own prudish upbringing.

If it's true shame, then it's God telling me I shouldn't have written the scene. At this point I don't think it's a true kinda shame. But who knows?

Wind Follower is an interracial love story. Okay, I don't really know if Loic the main character is Native American or Asian. I think he's South Asian. From the way I describe him.

There was a time I used to feel shame when I wrote interracial love stories. And I no longer feel it. So obviously that was brainwashing....

will see. -C

KultureFirst survey on African American Literature.

KultureFirst posted a short survey on Af Am literature .

Here's the survey for anyone interested in participating: African American Literature Survey