I was asked if I feared alienating my audience with the depiction of violence in my latest novel.  I was surprised because I had gone through pains to minimize the actual depiction of violent acts. A novel about a real-life group of notorious teenage terrorists who rampaged/… Read full post »

We're doing a special Happy October book promo with free e-book versions of the historical novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang" through Oct. 6!  Click here, and at checkout, use coupon code: WB45M.  Hope you enjoy! Read full post »

 

President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and "put on your marching shoes" to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity.  AP

Follow him?  If the President wants anyone to follow him, he had better start leading -- something he has consisten…

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“How are these characters redeemed?” is a question I often get.  I feel as if I’d just slapped a puppy when I have to reply, “They aren’t.  They come to realizations, but they are not made pure or whole again.  Damage has been done.”  The freque… Read full post »

 Happy to report that "The Rap Sheet," a lit mag devoted to crime fiction, has just published a "Story Behind the Story" essay about "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven."  If you idly woondered where I got the idea or why the hell I wanted to write about it, here's your… Read full post »

Great sighs of joy mingled with the steam from fat free mochaccinos this morning as the Books section of the New York Times declared “Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show.”  The lede assures us that, contrary to the “doom and gloom” prognostications, the publishin… Read full post »

These days, books are too expensive, and pricing is one of the publishing industry’s most perversely quirky aspects.  To compete, small and self-publishers need to be more aggressive with pricing than the major houses.   I learned the hard way how difficult that can be.

Traditiona… Read full post »

Black marshalls, Indian lawmen, half-black outlaws, black towns, half-white Indian chiefs...  The former Indian Territories (today's Oklahoma), were shockingly multi-racial, and held all of the racial prejudices, contradictions, and conundrums that we see in our own 21st century multi-r… Read full post »

It had been a longtime dream; I had thought about it and wanted it since childhood.  But then, with my dream in hand, my only response was a small nod and a sotto, "oh, alright."  Akin to a tepid "how nice."  My book was to be published by a well-regarded NY/… Read full post »

The religious right and its conservative enablers (and that means you, Rick Santorum) are seeking support among blacks for their anti-Planned Parenthood crusade.  They blame Planned Parenthood for high abortion rates among African American women, calling it a kind of "genocide" against blacks.&n… Read full post »

Frank Rich wrote a progressive line that is becoming as clichéd and hilarious as the conservative’s “I am not a racist, but…”

The line is:  “If Obama is to have a truly transformative presidency…”

The line assumes (or accepts the statement… Read full post »

The web is a visual medium.  It grows more similar to television while it severs ties to traditional reading and increases its dominance of our political conversation.  It is the bitterest of ironies that a format once touted as heralding a new era of enlightened participatory democracy (re/… Read full post »

As I sat in a pew in Catholic church, I stared up at the enormous crucifix suspended from the ceiling on which a distinctly white man gazed theatrically toward the heavens.  I looked around at the other black folks sitting around me in the pews, and realized that even then, in… Read full post »

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be Afro-American, i.e., born to the culture of American descendants of African slaves. We Americans, black and white, have been taught to reduce it to a set of personal ticks (speech patterns, handshakes, musical taste) and socio-economic caste.  Y… Read full post »

Think of it a “Black History Month” for proto-Klansmen.  It’s like a Freshman Young Republican hanging a white hooded effigy from the second story dorm room window as a conservative career builder.  

Let’s consider: We are regularly invited to “celebrate”… Read full post »

As a child, the Catholic Church overwhelms you.  It vice-grips the imagination.  High ceilings ringing with stentorian echoes, all blood-red and gilt, intoxicatingly incensed and aromatic, dotted with black and red-robed men who seemingly glide a few millimeters above the earth we mere mort… Read full post »

It’s not the first time Rep. John Lewis has been called a “nigger.”  He’s a veteran of the civil rights movement.  He’s an old hand at that.  It’s not the first time that tea partiers have sufficiently loosened the mask and let the racism fly. … Read full post »

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are… Read full post »

YA author Justine Larbalestier recently made some headlines by complaining loudly and publicly that her publishing house had placed a photo of a white girl on the cover of her novel, the heroine of which was black.   The publishing house eventually acquiesced and replace the cover image wit… Read full post »

Chris Matthews has a long history of giving spontaneous voice to the Village attitude that  black people are icky and not  "normal" like white folks.  It just bubbles up, like vomit.  Yesterday, he did it again.  "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour," Chris Matthews sai… Read full post »

Progressives bemoan Obama’s failure to fulfill his perceived promise to challenge the status quo.  During the historic 2008 presidential campaign, Americans both black and white read his book, saw his skin, heard his occasionally preacherly speech cadences married to an academically traine… Read full post »

The music critic Martin Bernheimer wrote:

The story may be apocryphal, but I doubt it. A great diva, basking in the twilight of a long career, was singing Tosca one night at the Met in 1961. Before the performance, her dresser asked if she had yet heard Leontyne Price, who… Read full post »

It’s been difficult to watch fetal rights trump women’s rights in the abortion debate.  Back in the day, there were chants of “my body, my choice.”  Now, we argue at which month the fetus has the right to destroy a woman’s health, sanity, family, and even her l… Read full post »

Indeed, it's not just the Kansas and DC shootings. Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist and white guy, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh in April, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." Jim David Adkisson, a right-wing extremist and white guy, alleged… Read full post »