WriteBlack

May

Doctor Who’s Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman)

By anika 1 Comment

Categories: check it out, sci-fi/speculative/fantasy and television/movies

OK, so it’s not exactly book-related, but since it is sci-fi-related, I couldn’t resist posting this interview from the Onion’s A.V. Club with Freema Agyeman, best known as the outstanding Miss Martha Jones on Doctor Who (or as I like to call her, Most. Kickass. Companion. Ever).

Martha’s a very different person than Rose: She’s older, more independent, more academic — you know, training to be a doctor. She lived alone, [but] she had this big family around her, and even though she wasn’t the eldest child, she was the one they turned to for advice, because she had this wise head on young shoulders. She was more challenging of the Doctor because of it, so all of those aspects made her very different from Rose. So instantly I was different, and it was being consciously done. I then, after that point, created her as my instinct dictated.

*Photo of David Tennant (Doctor Who) and Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) from FreemaAgyeman.com

May

Where do books by black authors belong?

By anika 2 Comments

Categories: check it out and questions

Yep, somebody else is taking up the question again.

Haven’t we settled this one already?

May

How is the publishing industry like the mafia?

By anika 0 Comments

Categories: inside publishing

Got a minute? Here’s a short but fascinating read about the tactics publishing industry big Peter Olson used to run Random House.

May

Hey authors, make me happy. Please?

By anika 0 Comments

Categories: uncategorized

(Cross-posted at Blogging in Black, where I got to write a guest column today)

You’ve got a MySpace page. Maybe you own a domain in your name and you’re blogging on it.

But are you using technology to its best advantage to remind your readers about who you are and what you offer them? Think iPhone, not rotary dial.

As a reader – and I have to admit, something of a technology nerd – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cringed when I’ve been disappointed by an author’s online offerings. When I was at Romance Slam Jam, author Donna Hill gave a presentation about promoting books, and from the questions she got, it became clear that not every author knows as much as s/he should about the various ways to present oneself on the Internet.

Hill talked a lot about MySpace as a place to present yourself and engage your readers, but why stop there? Why let the dark lord make money off the clicks that could be going directly to your site?

Continue reading ‘Hey authors, make me happy. Please?’

May

Walter Mosley, conferences, Rebecca Walker, Kindles, book clubs

By anika 1 Comment

Categories: author watch, cartoons/graphic novels, choices, comics, devices, future of books, inside publishing, mystery, news and questions

Some publishing odds and ends:

Walter Mosley is taking Socrates Fortlow to Basic Civitas
Are you ready for the East Coast Black Age of Comics Con beginning May 16 in Philadelphia?
How about the Black Writers Reunion & Conference beginning June 19 in Tampa?
I can’t figure out who makes my slapping hand itch worse, Alice Walker or her daughter, Rebecca
Is Amazon rilly, rilly selling 48,000 Kindles a month?
A national Latino book club
On a research paper about that wiki novel project published last year by Penguin Books

May

The Buzz: Blind item about author is solved

By anika 1 Comment

Categories: author watch and check it out

This one is disappointing.

You may recall Monday’s blind item from the former assistant to a “top-notch” African-American novelist, who said that the woman in question had one berated him in class for allegedly trying to derail her career. Well, a day went by and nobody guessed right, so Keith Josef Adkins decided to tell a more detailed version of the story on his Blogspot blog, giving the author the ‘fake’ name of “Xem Tilson Fartier,” which is a reasonable indication that he’s talking aboutXam Wilson Cartiér, the author of Be-Bop, Re-Bop and Muse-Echo Blues.

Man, it would’ve been ever so much more interesting had it been about Terry McMillan. I was so looking forward to the fireworks.

May

I really would read books by black authors, but…

By anika 0 Comments

Categories: check it out, choices, questions, reviews and romance

Yep, it’s that time again.

You know what I mean: Nonblack romance authors and readers say they really would read romance novels by black authors, but they don’t know who the good ones are, they have another whole pile to get through first, they don’t know if they can identify with the characters, and, and, and.

I’ve heard it before. If you’ve been paying attention, so have you. It’s come up at Dear Author, Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Romancing the Blog, etc., multiple times in the past.

Case in point: Smart Bitch Sarah over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books has started another discussion on what black romances are about.

This is totally not a knock at Sarah, because I love SBTB and lurk there like I get paid to do it. I’ve commented on her latest entry on this subject (and so should you).

But I do get tired of this discussion, which seems to come up every few months. At some point, wouldn’t it be nice if people stopped talking about this and just picked up the doggone books?

There’s so much analysis and hand-wringing that it seems to paralyze folks and make them unable to buy the books or think about them…until the next time the issue comes up, like clockwork.

It’s getting to be almost funny how the discussion never advances.

May

The Buzz: Author gossip

By anika 2 Comments

Categories: author watch, check it out, inside publishing, news and questions

The Internets haz been ablaze for the past couple of days with a blind item about a black author:

“The real doozy was the time she reprimanded me in front of a group of grad students for sabotaging her career. I was given the responsibility of removing an overabundance of praise from a story by a student of color. Her rationale: she didn’t want the other students to think she was playing favorites based on ethnicity. Well, apparently I screwed up. During a group reading, another student noticed an area on the story where things looked smudged. My employer was livid. In front of everyone, I was accused of setting her up to fail. For trying to destroy the career of an African-American writer.”

Lots of discussion about this one.

I still say it’s Terry McMillan. And if she finds out about this, there will be a nuclear explosion somewhere in northern California.

Who do you think it is?

May