Atlanta what the F%@K!!!????

Well I'm writing to you from Hotlanta -- NOT -- It's freaking freezing here!! And foolish me only came with open-toed shoes! And I kid you not, 'round about five o'clock it started to hail....!

So this is the first leg of the FEVER tour and I've gotta tell u that it's starting off on a very interesting foot.

I came down from New York on Delta - First class dontchaknow! The man sitting next to me was traveling with his dog, who he kept checking on like a new mother with an infant -- now I like dogs - really I do -- but come on now -- you take away my right to cigarette and now I have to share first class with a canine???

Anyway, in between him checking on his "pooch" and reading his Balducci paperback - he kept scratching his balls! I swear on my mother -- I ain't telling no lie.

Chronic ball itching! For nearly two hours this man scratched and scratched and scratched -- he scratched so much I starting scratching. Is it catching? I mumbled...he of course was not amused.

So I get to my hotel, The Westin in Buckhead - and what a surprise to me -- the entire hotel is NON-SMOKING!

This is the south -- tobacco land and I can't light up in my hotel room??? You know I was fit to be tied. So I smiled sweetly at the front desk person-- well its not her fault - and I hope she takes the news calmly when she finds out she won't be getting her yearly increase because the hotel has lost thirty percent of their clientele -- meaning the heaving puffing Europeans and Asians....

Anyway, I mozied on over to the Lenox Sqaure Mall -- lawd, you Atlanta chicks ain't nothing to fool with, huh? You believe in your hair, nails and shoes.....the women here are slick! And there I was, in my flip-flops and capri's trying my damnedest to hold my gut in!

I passed this one young woman in a BeBe outfit -- which was basically - and I'm not speaking in hyperbole here -- a pair of bikini briefs and bra top -- red of course, with her ten inch heels -- mine you the child wasn't no bigger than a size two - but still............

I left there and went to this seafood restaurant - I figured I'd sit outside and have a glass of wine along with some fish and chips. Humph! The cod must have been a year old -- I've never had fish so tough in my life -- isn't cod flaky? This was like chewing on a rubber tire....

I'm ranting, I know....but I've got to flush somewhere...and this is MY blog.

So here I sit, waiting for my dinner -- seared tuna w/veggies -- my day starts early tomorrow so I'm going to hit the treadmill and sauna in the morning. I will blog when I get to Dallas tomorrow night and let you know how the Atlanta signing went.

Thanks for letting me bend your ear.

Nite - nite

Sun, books and a little flirting on the side....

Last weekend I attended the Pan African Bookfest and Cultural Conference in conjunction with the Broward County Library and Pyramid Bookstore, located in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I had the pleasure of sitting on the "Urban Stories" panel with authors Mary B. Morrison, Travis Hunter, Victor McGloughlin, Rhonda Swan, Daaimah Poole and the infamous Omar Tyree.

We were all supposed to be there for two days - Omar however, had other ideas and took off on Friday. If anyone of ya'll out there see him, tell 'em I said, "Dang, can't you tell a sister good-bye?"

Anyhoo, one of the highlights of the weekend, besides meeting my readers, was seeing an old friend from my childhood. Michelle (now a spoken word artist living in New Jersey)and I grew up together back in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. We hadn't seen each other for nearly twenty-three years!

On the last night us author's and a few supporters went to the Hard Rock Casino Complex for dinner and a few laughs. Accompanying us was my sister-friend and partner if Vino, Andrea Knight

.

As you can see, "her" night ended on a high note!

How Viswanathan got a contract, got published, got a movie deal and got caught......

It seems as if Ms. Viswanathan "unconsciously" borrowed a few pages from the novels of YA booksmith, Megan McCafferty. Read what the Washington Post had to say about it.

Well hey, it worked for J.K. Rowling, didnt it?

I must be doing something wrong -- oops, I mean right....I mean wrong...I mean right....okay I forget now, which one pays the big bucks???

When Good Writer's Do Bad Things...or James Frey to the tenth power

You "Book Heads" out there may remember this scandal which began to reveal itself a few months back. Well Vanity Fair has the scoop on the author who fooled the literary world, and made quite a few dollars in the process.

The Boy Who Cried Author
The literary parlor game of “Who Is J. T. LeRoy?” got its final answer in February: The mysterious boy novelist with the horrifying tales of childhood abuse was the invention of a 40-year-old San Francisco woman. But the untold story behind this literary hoax is even more outrageous than the fictions.

Click here to read the entire article.

EYE C U

Geneva is in South Florida - she's suppose to be back on Saturday...but I'm not sure, 'cause she's just a hop skip and a jump from the Caribbean -- and you know how she loves the islands......
I hope she comes home soon - my bird seed is starting to run low....

Eve's talk with God...

"Lord, I have a problem."

"What's the problem, Eve?"

"I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of
these wonderful animals, as well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm
just not happy."

"And why is that Eve?"

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for
you."

"Man? What is that Lord?"

"A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat and be vain;
all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster and
will like to hunt and kill things. I'll create him in such a way that he
will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless and will revel in
childish things like fighting and kicking stones about. He won't be as
smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great," says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, "but what's the
catch Lord?"

"Well ... you can have him on one condition."

"And what's that Lord? "

"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant and self-admiring .. so you'll have
to
let him believe that I made him first. And it will have to be our little
secret ... you know, woman to woman

(Thank you Aunt Laura for passing this on!)

FEVER HITS STORES NATIONWIDE TODAY!!

Happy pub date to me! Happy pub date to me, happy pub date to meeeeeeeeeeee!

FEVER is the follow-up to my debut novel GROOVE.


Do you have your copy yet???

NO! well what are you waiting for???

Get on out there and get your summer started early! Me, Chevy, Noah and Crystal get ourselves into even more outrageous predicaments than we did in GROOVE!

Hey, Do you know if you order your books from me directly - you automatically get a signed copy???? Makes a nice gift for that special someone who loves to read.

It's simple, just click here and place your order.

Summer 2005 and five was a hoot as well and I've been busy putting that story down on paper. I'm almost done. The third and final installment to the GROOVE trilogy - entitled HEAT - is going to send you all for a loop. Looking back, I can't even believe that it really happened - whew - but we survived it, because we're still here to talk about it.

Hold onto your seats - HEAT will be in stores next year -- and it's going to be Hot............

Can I get serious here for a minute?

I watched The Constant Gardener this weekend. Talk about movies that take you through a number of emotional changes before dropping you off at the corner of angry and hopeless??

The movie takes place in Kenya and is based on the novel by John le Carre.

The main character Justin Quayle investigates the murder of his wife Tessa. What he finds out is that her murder was ordered because she’d come across information proving that a major pharmaceutical company was testing its drugs on the Kenyan population.

This is the quintessential example of art imitating real life.

Don’t think that it can’t happen right here in the USA – because it has happened and still is.

I remember my grandfather telling me about gas experiments taking place in the New York Subway System. He was a motorman. That information stuck with me for years – so I went searching:

“In the 1950s and sixties, scientists from the Fort Detrick biological weapons program ran a series of tests to determine how easy it would be to expose large numbers of people to a lethal bacteria. Containers of nontoxic bacteria were planted in the New York subway…... And germs that were meant to sicken but not kill humans were tested on conscientious objectors in the military. “

Of course when my grandfather told it – the gas was just another way to kill off Blacks….not that I disagree with him. We have been used as guinea pigs for years. Black people are considered expendable, always have been.

There are people who want us gone – poof !

And "those" people do everything and anything to rid the earth of us – but we are some breeding people, aren’t we? It’s not going to be that easy.

And why do they want us gone so badly? Could it be that we hold the key to the kingdom?

And what of Mother Africa and all of what she is going through – is Africa not God’s Garden of Eden?

I’m just saying……we all need to take an hour out of each day and think about the things – they don’t want you to think about.

I’ll leave you with this quote from my friend, Bernice L. McFadden:

“Black people are magical at their centers and biblical at their cores.”
- Camilla’s Roses

Do you want to read more about government conspiracies? click here.

The History of the Easter Egg

Happy Easter!

I was speaking to my good friend last night - she was in Target at 9PM buying easter baskets, egg-dying kits, chocolate eggs and such. She couldnt talk long because she had to call home and tell her husband to put the eggs on to boil. I assume they were up until the wee-hours of the morning coloring eggs and then hiding them through out the house. It's like Christsmas all over again - just with eggs and dye.

My Mom did the same for us. It was a thrill and yes, one of the highlights of my youth.

I have to admit, I became a little nostalgic and went searching for the history of the Easter Egg --

As Per Fireworks.com:

Easter Eggs also predate the Christian holiday of Easter. When Christians first celebrated Easter, the exchange of eggs in the springtime was already a centuries-old custom. Eggs have long been a symbol of rebirth in most cultures, and they were often wrapped in gold leaf, or colored brightly by boiling them with the leaves or petals of colorful flowers

Big Love - the new Desperate Housewives?

The ladies of Wisteria Lane don't got nothing on BIG LOVE.

I don’t watch a lot of television – but I do watch a lot of HBO – ‘cause you know: It’s not TV it’s HBO…

Desperate Housewives never really pulled me in, but BIG LOVE had me hooked from the giddy-up!

HBO has kept me riveted over the years with their serial drama’s and comedies. My new favorite is BIG LOVE…

Don’t let the title fool you! BIG LOVE is chock full of drama….not to mention the Seven Deadly Sins!

"Think having three wives is a dream come true? Meet Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), a modern-day Utah polygamist who lives in suburban Salt Lake City with his three wives, seven children, and a mounting avalanche of debt and demands. The owner of a growing chain of home improvement stores, Bill struggles to balance the financial and emotional needs of Barb, Nicki and Margene (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin), who live in separate, adjacent houses and take turns sharing their husband each night. While managing the household finances together and routinely sharing "family home nights," they try to keep simmering jealousies in check and their arrangement a secret — polygamy is illegal in Utah and banned by the mainstream Mormon Church. Adding to Bill's woes are a series of crises affecting his parents (Bruce Dern and Grace Zabriskie), who live on a fundamentalist compound in rural Utah, and his ruthless father-in-law, Roman (Harry Dean Stanton), the powerful head of the polygamist commune where his parents live. Bold, funny and wholly original, Big Love explores the evolving institution of marriage through a typical atypical family."





Tune in Sundays - repeats on Mondays - check air times in your time zone!

Cabin Fever.....Spring Fever......Island Fever....FEVER!

It’s already April and I’ve only been on holiday one time. ONE TIME. Now those of you who know me – I mean know me well – know that that’s not like me at all!

Back in January I took a quick over to the city of lights. My first time there – it was a wonderful experience, but to be perfectly honest with you, by idea of a holiday is one that takes place on an island – or at least a small country with a fabulous beach.

It’s my own fault really. In my mature age I’ve become terribly responsible; paying attention to deadlines, paying creditors on time, mammograms……u know.

I attribute my conscientiousness to the current feeling of cabin fever. Yes, even though spring has sprung, and some of the fairer skinned sisters and brothers have donned flip-flops – the days haven’t warmed enough to make me feel like winter is behind me.

So based on this “blue” feeling – I’ve decided to visit one of my favorite places (albeit in pictures) to get me out of the rut winter has thrown me into.


This is the Blue Monkey Beach Bar and Restaurant located in Paynes Bay, St. James Barbados. The Gold Coast. See that table right up front, that's MY table. That’s where I spend the majority of my day, people watching, reading and sipping rum punch.




Of course I take frequent dips in the beautiful Caribbean Sea



This is Marc Anthony. (Yeah that’s his name) He’s a real cool guy and one of my favorite bartenders.


*Sigh*


I really need some tropical weather.......wait a minute, I'll be in Florida next week to promote FEVER.............I'm sure to get some tropical...somethin'- somethin', huh?

Books, Books and More Books

I buy books they way some people by shoes. There are books all over my house. My book shelves are full and so now I have stacks of books piled high on the floor of my office.

I need to move, because what I really want is a library.

I was at the Strand Bookstore the other day, roaming the aisles and it occurred to me, with thousands and thousands of books published every year, how does one even get noticed?

As a writer, walking into a bookstore can be very disconcerting and overwhelming - at least that's how it is for me at times - I immediately feel like a little fish in a big pond.

But I shake it off, because I must be doing something right - I'm supporting myself as a writer, right?

I guess if you believe in yourself and your ability, you can become the big fish in the big pond....even if only in your mind.

The Writing Life I

So I stopped eating meat some months ago and I have to say that I hardly ever miss it - unless of course I walk by a Subways or happen upon a Bodega in the morning when the fry cooks are doing their thing with the eggs, ham and bacon - then I become very nostalgic and wonder why it was I gave up something I loved so much!

I know why I gave it up - I'm trying to be a healthier human being. Now I know, some of you are turning your noses up and saying - healthy - we read yesterdays post, we saw the picture beside it - the one the pack of cigarettes!

Yes, I know -- nicotine has been my down fall for many years - but I'm trying my best to quit -- AGAIN -- it's a process ya'll, dang...

I'm an early riser, my eyes usually pop open anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30. I get up, do 125 sit-ups, some stretches and then head out the door for my twenty minute power walk.

Any-hoo, some mornings after I return from my walk and feel the need for something hot and heavy on my gut, I make a bowl of oatmeal, other times when I want to be naughty - like this morning - I make two pancakes. But most mornings I blend a health shake with the following:

Half a cup of Grapefruit Juice
Half a cup of Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness
Two dropper of Green Tea Extract
Two ounces of Chlorophyll
A scoops of Collagen Powder
A scoop of Ruby Reds
One Banana
Half pack of frozen Sambazon Acai

After I consume my shake, I take my vitamins:

Biotin
CoQ 10
Coral Calcium
Flax Seed Oil

That holds me for a good three to four hours and then if I'm really good, I'll have the same shake for lunch and a light dinner of steamed fish and greens or Soba noodles with mixed vegetables - and a glass of red wine of course!

I bought a bike a few weeks ago and took it for the first time on Sunday. Well, who knew how out of shape I was! I thought because I could walk the 3 1/2 miles around Prospect Park in an hour - that certainly could do it on a bike in 15 minutes!

NOT!

Forget the Hills have Eyes - what about the hills have humps - huge humps that I just could not manage - so I walked my Schwinn for most of the way and that fifteen minutes - ended up being an hour and half.

But I won't let it beat me - I was going out today but this morning was cool and rainy - the sun is out now - but I think I need to get out from behind this computer and spend sometime in the city. Browse the bookstores, people watch, maybe even catch a movie.

Look out for me -- I think my haunt today will be Union Square.

HELP, I'M A WRITER!!!

Okay friends, I wrote for twelve straight hours yesterday and I am beat! But I did want to share something uplifiting with those of you who are published or are on the road to being publsihed. We all know that sometimes this life can be a difficult one - sometimes the money ain't right and your space ain't right and your head ain't right - so thank goodness for grants, fellowships and colonies. Just click HERE and begin your search. Me I'm going to take a little nap and then jump right back into it!

OMIGOD! Angie Stone, Mel Jackson and Geneva Holliday - who knew?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending my Sunday afternoon at the theater. Well the Beacon Theater - that artistic haven for Black talent in New York City.

Currently on tap at the Beacon Theater was the Gospel musical "Issues: We All Got 'Em"

Starring Neo Soul Superstar ANGIE STONE, from the movie Deliver us From Eva, MEL JACKSON, VANESSA WILLIAMS from the TV show Soul Food, DAVE HOLLISTER, CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS, and from American Idol, LATOYA LONDON.

Dallas-based playwright Laterras R. Whitfield is changing the rules by confronting Christians and theater goers with the unadulterated truth in a refreshing, raw, candid, and unapologetic play. Let it be known: This is not your typical gospel stage play. Issues: We All Got Em brings you infidelity, unmet expectations, abusive relationships, paternity, and the hard won lesson that love and sex aremutually exclusive.

The highlight of my afternoon was getting to go back stage to meet Angie Stone!!!! Angie is a favorite songstress of mine.


And with us is the very talented and not hard on the eyes actor Mel Jackson.

Angie don't know it yet - but she's going to play in the movie version GROOVE -- as non other than Geneva Holliday.

Hey, don't laugh, you know the old adage -- speak it into existence and it shall be yours!

PSEUDO-CELEBRITY SIGHTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So today I was strolling through the village and stopped in at Barnes & Noble Astor Place and then ventured onto my favorite wine store:Astor Wines, which by the way has moved and expanded. They are now at 399 Lafeyette Place.
I picked up a very nice Spanish red (2001 Navarra) put out by AROA.
Anyway, from there I headed back up Lafeyette and around the corner where there was a street festival taking place. I ventured in, picked up a spring roll from a Thai cart and to my surprise who was walking past me with her little dog? None other than the woman (sorry her name slips me at the moment) who appeared on Oprah last year. She was four hundred pounds and underwent Gastrobypass surgery. She has since lost, I believe close to two hundred pounds. However, if you all remember, her massive weight loss left her with loads of hanging skin. When she appeared on Oprah she'd undergone quite a few surgeries to correct the problem and had many more to go.
I stopped her. Asked if she was who I thought she was, she smiled and said yes. I congratulated her on the weight loss and she said thank you, I still have a ways to go. And then I lowered the bomb - "Can I take a picture with you? Would you mind?" Her response was, of course, I get stopped all of the time.



Very nice woman. I wish her well.