by B.L.in Other0 comments
I wrote FETCH, not too long after 9-11. On that day, I’d arrived at work around 8 in the morning. Performing my job as a senior property manager, I was reassigned to the main office at 100 Gold Street which was and still is six to seven blocks from Ground Zero. I remember thinking how beautiful the day was with its sunny, bright blue skies filled with fluffy, cotton white clouds. I worried about getting home before the crowds to vote in the Democratic runoff mayoral election for either former Public Advocate Mark Greene or Bronx Borough President Fernando (Freddie) Ferrer. Little did I know what tragedy was about to befall the adopted city I loved so much and I would be an eyewitness as well. All of the scenes I wrote about from walking through the thick blizzard of heavy ash dust; the jammed hospital across the street from my office; the hordes of frightened people scurrying across the Brooklyn Bridge and to the extraordinary silence of the streets filled with bewildered, shell-shocked New Yorkers who are normally loud boisterous; I actually experienced on that horrid but fascinating day. Most of the news stories I watched during […]
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We all be different now that Trump is to be our 45th President of these United States of America. I feel like I did when 9-11 happened. I was working four blocks away from ground zero. I watched as it happened. I felt so horrified, helpless, and unable to do anything to stop those planes from crashing into the towers, but I wanted to stop it. I wanted it to be a movie or a made-for-television movie that I could turn off at will. But it wasn’t a movie; it was real. Over three thousand souls died that day in New York City. The next day, 9-12, I felt sad, hopeless, and depressed as I tried to call friends and relatives to see if they were okay while they did the same to me. I wondered what would happen next to our country. What would happen next to the City? Years ago, my car was broken into for the first time. I was in shock. At first, I couldn’t believe I had anything in my car that somebody could want badly enough to break out a window. Immediately, I felt shock, then I was stunned, and finally, I was […]
by B.L.in Latest Novels0 comments
ARE YOU IN A JOB WHERE PEOPLE DON’T SEE YOUR TALENTS? DO FOLKS TREAT YOU LIKE AN OBJECT? OR LIKE YOU ARE INVISIBLE? TIRED OF BEING IGNORED? WANT TO DO SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER? READ A ROMANTIC NOVEL THAT ANSWERS THE QUESTIONS: HOW TO GAIN THE ATTENTION YOU DESERVE AND FIND THE LOVE YOU NEED? In FETCH, an unwilling love story, Artist Morgan Dunbar works as a doorperson during the daylight hours so she can afford to practice her art at night. Amber, a wealthy, snooty resident of the building, acts like Morgan is invisible. She never thanks Morgan for any of the polite services she provides. She is always snapping fingers at Morgan, then pointing and saying, “Fetch this” or “Fetch that.” One fateful day, Morgan reaches her breaking point. She finds Amber’s attitude particularly unbearable after hailing her a cab during a busy rush hour and receiving nary a thank you for her efforts. Morgan puts Amber in her place, but Amber chooses to ignore Morgan’s rant, slamming the taxi door in her face and nearly catching Morgan’s hand in the process. Neither woman realizes what destiny has in store for them. Later that day, […]
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I’m writing this post without knowing who are our next sitting president will be. It’s too late to encourage people to vote as the election has already happened. What I hope is that our country will maintain the same freedoms we have always had or hope to have and that our Constitution with its amendments and our Bill of Rights guarantee. This year is especially important for us appreciate that the United States of America is still the most democratic country in the world. As one of its citizen, I still have the right to debate that fact, write about that fact and publish that fact and scream that fact from the rooftops of the big cities of the north; to the prairies of the west; the farmlands of the south and the coal mines of the east. I say thanks America for being the country you are. I realize sometime you can be loud, not always fair, opinionated and wrong, but in the end, you allow us citizens to be. Happy Thanksgiving America and may you have many more. Thanks for reading this. BL Wilson
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When I wrote If Only, I could love again I had just broken up with my girlfriend of eight years. Actually, my girlfriend had broken up with me. She left me for some big, manly-looking female nearly thirty years younger than me. All the while she was backing away from me, my-ex kept claiming nothing was going on between her and the big witch. I knew better, I just couldn’t do anything. I suggested couples counseling or one-on-one counseling, and spending special time with each other. I even suggested giving up my writing but my ex-girlfriend had fallen in love with somebody else and there was nothing I could do about it. So anyway another weekend was coming up. I was feeling lonely, depressed and generally sorry for myself. Thank God for my friend Sheila and her two friends who invited me to hang out with them in the Village. We stopped by the LGBT Center and two women’s bars, Henrietta Hudson and Crazy Nanny’s (which has since closed). Somewhere between the three places, I spotted this tall, bald, well-built brown-skinned woman about the color of a ripe pecan. She wore fitted blue jeans stretched over nice tight a basketball […]
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I started watching Donald Trump again last summer. I say “again” because I’m a New Yorker. I remembered him from the 1980’s when he redid the Wollman Ice Rink. The city was supposed to rebuild the rink in 1980 but six years and million dollars later, it still wasn’t complete. Trump offered to renovate the rink in 4 months for free. After he completed the rink under-budget and on time, he asked the city to allow him to recoup his expenses by keeping the revenue the rink made until he’d been reimbursed for all of his expenses. He operated the rink and a nearby restaurant from 1986 until 1991. He also operated rink again in 2001 as a joint venture. One of his companies is currently operating the rink. Trump popped up again in 1989, taking out a full-page ad in the Times to bring back the death penalty for the Central Park Jogger’s “supposed assailants” before they were even tried or found guilty. Years later, the Central Park Five’s (as the so-called assailants were now known), convictions were vacated and they all were released from prison when another man admitted to the crime and his DNA matched what found […]
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In IF ONLY, I had the courage to love again, Beth Evans, after a failed relationship, is looking for a date. She tries a forward approach with a woman she finds attractive and practically accosts her on the street. Beth babbles about nothing and everything in her efforts to impress the woman, while the object of her desire, Joan Riley, wants to escape from the crazy motor-mouth. Beth feels embarrassed that she bothered Joan and does not even join her friends in the bar they are hanging out at for the evening. She stays in the car and encounters Joan yet again, and again, the chance meeting does not go well. The story should end there, but it doesn’t. Fate or just plain bad luck throws the two women together again. An ambulance whisks Beth’s daughter Pamela, the victim of a hit and run accident, to Saint Sebastian’s ER unit. Dr. Joan Riley becomes her trauma surgeon. As Pamela’s doctor, Joan has the opportunity to peek into Beth Evans’ life. She likes what she sees, but she is too relationship-shy to do anything about it. If only she could overcome her hesitation, if only she had the courage to love […]
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In October of 2014, I did something I’d been dreaming about for years. Here’s a little background about me first. When I returned to school in 1997 to earn my BA at the College of New Rochelle, I learned to use a computer for the first time to write my assignments, reports and papers. By 2001, I had graduated from Baruch College with a Master’s degree. I was an expert at using my laptop to do research then write about what I learned. During the same timeframe I was writing my papers for college, I was also playing around with writing romantic and erotic short stories. While most of my short stories never became novels, several did. One of them “Sweet Sarah’s Bluez” became an unpublished novel after I saw the movie “The Education of Rita.” The movie was a British hairdresser who wanted a higher education because she saw it as a pathway to leave behind a broken marriage and a low-wage job and attain success. I caught the writing bug but I needed to find my voice. I needed to write better since I kept getting pesky rejection letters from publishers I admired. I had shoe boxes filled […]
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Whenever I changed doctors and had to fill out new medical forms, I was always proud of my family’s health history. You know the forms I mean. The ones that have you check off any surgery you’ve ever had and when you had it. I don’t know about you but as I’ve grown older, I can’t remember all my surgeries a total of five or six when I had them. I’m much better at answering questions about all the diseases I’ve ever had and whether or not my parents and siblings had or have them too. On the health history part of the forms, I was proud to say that I didn’t have diabetes, or heart problems or high blood pressure but I did have arthritis and I was missing a gall bladder. My parents had their gall bladders along with high blood pressure and heart problem but they didn’t have diabetes. My father had prostate cancer by the time he died at 85. I wasn’t worried because I’d read somewhere that a high number of men had some evidence of prostate cancer after 75 or 80-years old. Neither of my sisters or I showed any evidence of breast cancer. […]
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I was re-reading through my notes about a workplace memoir that I’d written and published through a small independent publisher in 2008. I’d been collecting materials to write a book about where I worked and the heart-felt journey I’d made while working there. While reading my notes, I found something that captured my interest. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to add the information to the second edition of my workplace memoir, Mr. Jefferson’s Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories, or simply write another short story to post on my blog. When I opted to write a short story, suddenly, I traveled back in time. According to my workplace diary, Monday, October 13, was Columbus Day and a civil service holiday. Today was Tuesday, October 14, 1997. I read the diary note I’d written to my partner. I am so sorry. I know I promised I’d go to the PTA meeting but I can’t. As I read that note, I remembered thinking how I couldn’t say what I felt. Instead, for the past five weeks, I pretended I wasn’t worried about a damned thing. At forty-nine, I’d gotten my routine mammogram five weeks ago. I always hated the way that […]
