May 28

DECORATION DAY & MY UNCLE HERBIE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
On this Decoration Day, also known as Memorial Day, I wanted to honor my uncle, a Black veteran who fought in Germany during World War II in some small way. The photo you see above was taken in 1989. I’m not sure what my son and my uncle are looking at. My son was probably grinning at my younger sister, who was taking the picture. I imagine Uncle Herbie was thinking about his big sister, my Aunt Sadie, who had just died. I tried to find a photo of my uncle alone and in uniform, but I couldn’t find one. When I was a kid, I really admired my uncle because he was s-o-o different from my father the medical doctor, who was also his big brother. Uncle Herbie was the only surviving uncle that I had. My father came from a very large family of nine kids, but only three survived to adulthood (my father, my uncle, and my aunt). He was the first one to attend college and went on to get a medical degree. In contrast, my uncle worked in a factory. I’m not sure whether the factory produced tires or automotive parts. We lived in Akron, […]
May 22

WHY I WROTE GET RECKLESS WITH THE TRUTH BUT DON’T LIE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I know this sounds crazy but I do try to listen when my characters speak to me. I introduced several interesting characters in Two Moons Bakery and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez, I felt they wanted me to tell their stories in a novel of their own. That’s what I did when I wrote Get reckless with the truth but don’t lie. I wanted to tell the secondary characters’ stories. I was particularly interested in telling the story of the two older women from Two Moons Bakery. I wanted to explore their budding romance. How they met. Where they met. What did they do after they met? Would they hook up right away? Or how dates would they have before they ended up in bed? Where did they end up in bed? Did they have friends, children, grandchild or ex-lovers that might interfere with their relationship? How do they handle introducing the new lover to friends and family? What I really wanted to find out if older lesbians were really all that different than their younger sistahs. I tried to answer all of those questions and more when I wrote Get reckless with the truth but don’t lie. Connect with BL Wilson […]
May 15

ACTIVISTS: WHO IS KENDALL JENNER ANYWAY?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I finally saw the famous Pepsi commercial starring the one and the only Kendall Jenner who is part of the Kardashian clan. I started thinking about what it means to be an activist. When I was around Kendall’s age, I volunteered to help the Robert Kennedy campaign for president at Ohio State University. I believed in the things he said he would do for young people, old people, poor people, Black, Brown, and white people. Mainly I thought he would get us out of the Viet Nam War. Along with multitudes of other young people, I went on trips across America to encourage people to vote in the presidential primary and then the election in November 1968. The things I saw lead me to believe America was great for some people, but for most poor people, living in America was sheer hell. The people I met lived in tarpaper shacks. I couldn’t believe that in 1968, people lived in the kind of housing I’d only seen in history books 100 years ago. The center picture is me, my son, and my co-workers gathering on September 19, 1981 to participate in the Solidarity March on Washington for PATCO, the disbanded air […]
May 08

BLACK HAIR IS PERSONAL & POLITICAL

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I just read some trolls’ tweets about how Michelle Obama was disappointing Black women everywhere because her hair wasn’t permed or relaxed. She was wearing it natural. At first, I thought, What? Since when did Black hairstyles become anybody’s business but the wearer’s? Or at least that’s what I first thought until I started reading women’s tweets and remembering way back when I first started wearing an Afro in college in 1966. When I was a kid, there two huge things I hated about being a girl in the Baby Boomer generation. I absolutely hated wearing dresses. I hated getting my hair straightened, combed, and braided every day. My mother decided her girls, meaning my sister and me, should dress like little ladies every day. The more frilly or trimmed in lace, the better the dress was for “her girls.” My mother somehow managed to find socks trimmed in lace and hair ribbons to match our dresses. Oh, how I hated going to school looking like that. The only saving grace for me was that everybody’s mother dressed her girls exactly like my mother did with us. My mother decided that her girls better wear neatly braided hair every day […]
May 01

Get Reckless With The Truth, but don’t lie

by B.L. in Latest Novels 0 comments
It’s been nearly six months since the main characters from Two Moons Bakery met and fell in love or broke up. This Forever Woman sequel, Get Reckless With The Truth, but don’t lie, follows secondary characters, executive assistant Edith Mack and legal eagle Danielle Turner into a tumultuous affair that ends almost before it begins with an attempted murder. Ex-wives who think they are still married. Lovers who hate liars but sleep with them anyway and lesbians who fall for their stalkers –oh my! Get Reckless With The Truth, but don’t lie, is available for pre-order 4/22/17 on Kindle. The release date is 5/2/17. ASIN: B071KQ1ZY3 (Kindle Version $2.99) ISBN-13: 978-1545506134 (Print Version $9.99) ISBN-10: 1545506132 (Print Version $9.99) Here are the links for: GET RECKLESS WITH THE TRUTH, but don’t lie: Amazon Kindle USA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071KQ1ZY3 Amazon Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071KQ1ZY3 Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/7109727 Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/719828 Book trailer: https://youtu.be/G5Lz0RcYF24
Apr 24

Why I Wrote Two Moons Bakery

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Long before the L word and The Planet, I wanted to write a story about a meeting space in Central Harlem where African American lesbians and their friends could meet, mix and mingle. I envisioned telling a series of short stories about the women who inhabited the place but first I had to decide what kind of place would women want to meet and greet each other. At first, I thought about making the meeting place a bar. I decided against it because I’d always had bad luck meeting people at bars. I’m not a drinker and the smoky fog from them always gave me sneezing fits. I never met nice people I’d want to spend more than a minute talking to in a bar. For me, hanging out in bars was torture. I discovered I was allergic to cigarettes and I hated the barflies I met. I quickly nixed the idea the centralized meeting place should be a bar. The more I thought about what to write, the more I realized my story could take place in a restaurant, a sandwich/coffee shop or a small boutique store or a bookstore. My newly created meeting space needed to be someplace […]
Apr 17

Wade In The Waters

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I’m not one for religious symbolism but the more I hear about foreign involvement in our democratic election system, I keep thinking of a song I used to hear in church Sunday mornings. I was a kid back then. Everybody knows Baby boomer children couldn’t say. “Mom, Dad I’m not going to church. It’s Sunday morning. I think I just sit this visit out. I don’t like how that old guy wearing that long robe talks to us. He’s always screaming about devils and doing bad stuff from that platform he stands on. You and Dad might like him but he scares the mess out of me. Today, I’ll just sit home and do something that makes me happy. Watching Sunday morning cartoons makes me happy so I’ll be doing that today, okay? I’ll see you both when you get back from church if I’m not napping, right?” No way was that going to fly with my parents back then. In the only thing flying, would be my butt into next week. That would be after I was released from the children’s ward of the hospital my father’s opened can of whup ass sent me. So anyway, there’s a line […]
Apr 10

Sound Advice In Trying Times

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
  My sister sent me this message several months ago, when I was feeling low down and a bit helpless. I loved it so much I decided to pass it on. Thanks Sis. My only comment, I would add some additional suggestions to Number 9. If you can’t show up and be counted because of limitations, you can still do something. Call your representatives like I did or email them or write to them like I did. All of that works too. The point is to do something positive. Don’t stay in your own little bubble world and complain about how bad things are if you aren’t willing to do more than complain. Read the rest of the advice below. It needs no further explanation From a friend’s page. Sound advice for the times. This is also going around and for good reason: Don’t use his name. Remember this is a regime and he’s not acting alone. Do not belittle those who support him–it doesn’t work. Focus on his policies, not his orange-ness or his toupee. Keep your message positive; they want the country to be angry and fearful because this is the soil from which their darkest policies will […]
Apr 03

Two Moons Bakery

by B.L. in Latest Novels 0 comments
Two Moons Bakery is a trilogy of novellas about relationships among African-American lesbians, their friends, and family who live in NYC. The three stories interconnect through a central meeting place called Two Moons Bakery. Terry Samson and Essie Brooks are the co-owners of the bakery. In the first novella, entitled MAYDEANE, a middle-aged, conservative businesswoman, Sylvia Royce, must learn to accept the love of a younger woman, Fredericka Hicks, who drives cabs for a living. MAYDEANE also touches on a problem baby boomers face: to put an aging parent with Alzheimer’s into a nursing housing or not. The second story, LEGS, introduces the reader to an unlikely pairing. Somebody’s been whistling at Delaney Peters, an ER doctor, for the last five days precisely at 7 AM. When she confronts a worker in the manhole, she discovers it’s female electrician, Andrea Joiner. They meet again in the ER when Delaney treats Andrea’s eyes for chemical burns from an electrical fire in the manhole where she works. In the third novella, WORKSPACES, Janelle Montgomery is a geriatric psychiatrist who works from her home. She wants customized shelves built similar to the ones in Two Moons to hold her never-ending paperwork. Terry refers […]
Mar 27

WHY I WROTE THE WEDDING THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Once again, I’ve taken aim at long lost love and ex-lovers meeting again after an acrimonious break up. This time, nearly three decades have passed between the ex-lovers. It’s been long enough that each woman now has grown children who against all odds, meet, fall in love and want to marry. If I was either woman what would I do? Would I tell my child who their fiancée’s mother is? Or could I or would I ignore the past and focus on my child’s future? What would it do to me or my ex-lover to become in-laws? I decided to add a subplot to the mix. One of the women has cancer while the other woman happens to be an trauma surgeon. Now what would I do if I was the woman with cancer or if I was the woman with the medical degree? I thought the premise was interesting enough to write a novel called THE WEDDING THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN, finding love after 27 years to answer those questions and more. Connect with BL Wilson at these links: Blog: http://wilsonbluez.com Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/patchworkbluezpress Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1BDmrjJ Linked-in: http://linkd.in/1ui0iRu Twitter: http://bit.ly/11fAPxR Smashwords profile page: http://bit.ly/1sUKQYP Amazon’s Author Page: http://bit.ly/1tY3e27
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