A Buddhist at heart on I95 with no hopes of goverment aid

Over the weekend my daughter, her father and me, took a roadtrip to North Carolina for an open house at the University my daughter really wants to go to. This North Carolina city is very pretty, very clean and the people are over-whelmingly nice. I guess that is what is referred to as Southern Hospitality.

Turns out that my daughter has been accepted to this particular University and the tuition is a whopping $30K a year!

While we both make very good livings at what we do, we certainly don't have four years of college money socked away - and we've both agreed that dipping into our retirement funds wouldd be totally out of the question because we might have to kill her if after spending 120K on her education she graduated and suddenly proclaimed that her life's dream is to be a fry cook at Mickey D's!

That said, on the way back North, our minds grappling with how, when and exactly where we would come up with this money (while our daughter slept comfortably in the back seat assured in the fact that her dear parents, who've denied her little would magically present that "money" tree that we'd always insisted did not exist) - I, the person driving, experienced something so horrific, tht I'm sure it will haunt me for years.....

In the deep darkness of the 4AM morning, a squirrel shot out and onto the highway - right in the path of my vehicle - I was going too fast to stop and in an SUV - too fast to swerve - the poor thing was crushed under my wheels!

So there I was, in the safety of my vehicle, wondering if in the wider scheme of things, if this life taking would place a long black mark on my cosmic record and in some karmatic way come back to haunt me on the very day when I would have to addie up and pay the pied piper known as higher education.

Lawd, I hope not....

FEVER! COMING APRIL 2006

It’s another sizzling summer of flirtation, lust, and desire for Geneva Holliday and her friends Crystal, Chevy, and Noah. The hotter it gets, the more quickly they learn that there are plenty of different kinds of FEVER and everybody’s got one!

It's been three years since that last hot hook-up with her ex-husband at the end of GROOVE and even though Geneva was talking like it wasn’t any big thing, she has that night to thank for her baby-girl, Chartreuse. She's not falling for anymore lines from Big Eric, but she wouldn’t have time if she wanted to—she’s a single mom all over again, waitressing in a diner and taking college courses online.

Our favorite diva Chevy breaks down and takes a job, believe it or not, as a personal assistant to “Anja the Anaconda,” a radio personality so melodramatic and megalomaniacal that she orders Chevy to wear a T-shirt that says “Anja’s Bitch” across the chest.

Crystal, the girlfriend who had it all together, has gone to the opposite extreme, adopting an ultra-conservative celibate lifestyle since Kendrick Greene broke her heart. So what happens when Crystal’s mother sends a gigolo her way for a “visit,” and Anja makes Chevy an indecent proposal?

What about when little Eric brings home a friend who turns out to be the handsome customer Geneva’s been secretly lusting after at the diner? For now, only Noah hears everyone’s secrets, taking their frantic phone calls thousands of miles away in London. But just you wait, with these friends, secrets don’t stay secrets for long!

AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE APRIL 2006

Hurston Wright Foundation Awards

I went to the Hurston Wright awards last night at the Millenium Hotel in NYC. It was a wonderful event! Skip Gates and S. Epatha Merkuson hosted. Marie Brown famed literary agent, received an honorary award for her 40+ years of service. Edwidge Danticat received an award for the Dew Breaker ( i really wanted to meet her - but she just seemed to vanish!) I said a quick hello to Walter Mosley - we've met a few times in the past - but I'm still a stranger to him. Melvin Peebles was there too!

Afterwards, Donna Hill, Carl Weber, Venise Berry, Carol Mackey (Black Expressions) and Audra ? (literary agent), Valerie ? (bookspan) and another lady whose name I can't remember went out to dinner at McCormick and Schmidt - we closed the place down as we sat sipping, eating and discussing the plight, fate and circumstance of African-American literature.

All in all it was a wonderful and insightful evening.