Feb 09

MY ‘LOVE’ STORY

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Back in 1982, contacting our marriage counselor was something I felt I had to do. I figured I should speak with him because I needed to know if my husband directly or indirectly mentioned his assault plans during any of his one-on-sessions. My husband had stopped attending our joint and his individual sessions with the counselor two weeks before the assault. I figured the counselor owed me the truth because I was still his patient, while my husband wasn’t so I called him. The counselor claimed that he couldn’t betray my husband’s confidence to confirm or deny my suspicions. I stopped attending his sessions after that phone call. I missed my husband at night when I was feeling particularly lonesome and didn’t have a warm body to snuggle against. I shared a fourteen-year history with my husband; but it was certainly over now. My husband saw to that the minute he let his fists do the talking for his heart. Looking back on that time, I’d love to tell you that I’ve found the most wonderful person in the world and that we’re happy. I can’t. I had a series of bad relationships after my divorce. Although none of them […]
Jan 26

Why I wrote Me & Mrs. Jones

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
AVAILABLE FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON AMAZON FOR $2.99, Me & Mrs. Jones, a love story This is my second book in the newly minted series “SONGBOOKS.” I give older popular songs, modern viewpoints that turn into novels. I always loved the song “Me and Mrs. Jones.” It was a ballad sung by smooth, jazzy Billy Paul in 1972. The ballad told the tale of a man committing adultery with a married woman. He knows she knows that it’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong to keep seeing her; but he can’t stop. She can’t stop the affair either. The two of them have a favorite meeting place where nobody knows them so nobody can tell their respective spouses about their affair. They can listen to their favorite songs and share their favorite meals together at this special meeting spot. By the end of the song, I understood how difficult it was to stop doing something that was so very wrong but felt oh, so-o-o very good. After hearing this song recently on a long drive to visit my mother and my sister in Ohio, I thought. Whoa! Wouldn’t it be interesting to write a novel based on the tale that I […]
Jan 19

Why I wrote What’s Love Got To Do With It

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
AVAILABLE FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON AMAZON FOR $2.99, What’s Love Got to do with it? In this age of social media, short-term relationships and instant gratification, I wondered what a long-term, lesbian friendship of twenty years looked like. How did the women meet? What would the women involved be like? Would they be saint-like women? Once these saints were engaged or married, they never ever looked at another woman and thought. “I want me some of that!” Or would the two friends be devilish women who wanted to sleep with every woman they saw? And tried to do so. What attracted the two women to each other in the first place. Why did they decide to become friends? The two women in question dated twenty years ago. They became friends when the dating thing didn’t work out for them. One of the women, Bianca was an attractive, charming single philanderer who loved women and lots of them. She dated Ernestine who later became her best friend and several other women simultaneously. Bianca’s unfaithful behavior hurt Ernestine who believed Bianca was the marrying kind. When Ernestine discovered Bianca’s infidelities, she decided she couldn’t trust another partner ever again. She became lucky […]
Jan 12

Why I wrote Ava & Patience

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
AVAILABLE FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON AMAZON FOR $2.99, AVA & PATIENCE, a purple love story. As I was writing another novel, “Me and Mrs. Jones,” I introduced two characters I really liked a lot. In fact, I liked them so much, I stopped writing “Me and Mrs. Jones” to begin creating “Ava and Patience, a purple love story.” I usually wait until I’m further along in one novel before I begin writing a new novel. If it’s a sequel or one of a series of reoccurring characters novels, I usually wait at least a year or longer before I begin. I don’t know why I do that. I just know that I do. A bit of self-analysis and an educated guess says, I needed time to step away from the primary characters to get a feel for the secondary characters. I needed to hear the two secondaries talking to me and telling me their stories. Yes, I admit it. My characters do talk to me and I do listen. Enough of my confessions, I wondered if I could create two female characters whose common love of purple was their first connection. Once my characters discovered they shared a commonality for […]
Jan 05

Why I wrote Trick or Treat

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
AVAILABLE FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON AMAZON FOR $2.99, Trick or Treat, who’s my sweet? Long before Bruce Jenner became Kaitlin Jenner, I’d seen this reality show that tracked a woman’s sex change process and operation from female into male. I grew fascinated with the program, the ideas and theories behind it. I wondered why would a person do that kind of major life change? I tried to imagine what it must be like to feel uncomfortable in the gender you were born into or to hate your body. What if you felt you didn’t have a choice in the matter? Every time you looked at your naked reflection in the mirror, did you feel at odds with what you saw? Would you want to change your looks? Would you change your gender, too? After you went through the testing, monitoring, and the gender change process, how would you feel? Would you be happy or sad that you’d made the gender change? Who would you be attracted to with your gender changed? I started to research the topic of sex change operations and bumped into another topic that was somewhat related … cross dressing. Did you know that women have been […]
Jan 01

Tyson with IAN badge

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
AVAILABLE FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON AMAZON FOR $2.99, TYSON, a sister’s love be limitless.   I’ve always wondered what Black lesbian life was like in the Harlem of the 20s and 30s. I decided to do some research before I started writing Tyson a bittersweet tale of loyalty, murder and romance during Harlem’s Renaissance. My purpose was to write a fictional murder mystery that takes place during that time. What I discovered was nothing. There were volumes written about white gays and lesbians living in New York during that time but very little, usually one or two paragraphs sometimes an entire page or two about Black gay life in Harlem. I found even less information, mainly antidotal information about Black lesbians living during the time period I was interested in. I enjoyed the research I’ve done on the subject of Black lesbians of Harlem in the 20s and 30s. Back in 2003, when I began researching this novel, I worked full time for the city so I did research at local libraries, cultural organizations like Herstory (lesbian archives) in Brooklyn, the LGBT Community Center’s historical collections at 13th Street in lower Manhattan, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on […]
Dec 29

DECEMBER OF SORROWS

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I’ve been thinking a lot about God lately. Unlike earlier this year, this time I know why. Permit me to explain as best I can. Towards the end of December, is said to be the birth of God’s son Jesus. It’s a wonderful time for amazing celebrations of his birth to a relatively poor couple. His foster father Joseph was an unemployed carpenter and his birth mother Mary was a simple housewife. For me and my family December has been a month of deep sorrow and regret. My father died on December 29, 2001. My sister only two years older than me, died in the early morning on December 11, 2017. I miss them both so much and wish they were both still here. At times, it’s difficult for me to celebrate Christmas or New Year’s Eve with their deaths hanging over my head like a permanent dark mistletoe. I try to remember with a great deal of fondness, celebrating Christmas when I was a child and now missing family members were alive and well. Back then, my mother loved this time of year. She hung ribbons full of hundreds of Christmas cards in the hallway by the front door […]
Dec 22

WHY I WROTE: GAME CHANGERS

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I decided to examine a gay woman, who was an ex-veteran with a permanent disability and what her life might be like. What is her disability? Is it visible or can she hide it easily? Does she tell people about her disability? Does she talk about her tour of duty where the disability occurred? Has she stayed in touch with her old buddies in the military? How does she handle her disability on the job and off the job? What kind of job does she have? How does she feel about her job? Does she hate her job? Or does she love it? What is her social life outside the job like? Does she have any family and who are they? Does she have friends and lovers? Who are her friends if she has any? Who are her lovers if she has any? I knew if I made her perfect, I never find out who she was. I decided to give my character plenty of flaws. I investigated those questions and more when I wrote my romantic drama. Game Changers, add one then two & everything changes is available for pre-order 11/19/19 on Kindle. The release date is 12/2/19. Here […]
Dec 15

CAN WE TALK? LET’S DO LUNCH.

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
On Thursday, October 11, 2018, I caught a snippet of one of the oddest sights I’d seen and heard in the White House in quite a long time. Kanye West startled President Donald Trump by hugging him. I was startled too. It was obvious to me that the president was uncomfortable with Kanye’s hug. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his own hands, which he raised in the air rather than return Kanye’s hug. The president finally resorted a friendly man-to-man back slap when Kanye finished the hug. I was surprised the president allowed the embrace in front of all the cameras. I’d read somewhere he was a germophobe. I was surprised he didn’t try to do a strongman handshake as he’d done before that pushed Kanye away or prevented the embrace altogether. I grew curious. What was Kanye doing in the White House? I knew he wasn’t an international leader of another country, nor was he a representative of any community organization. Why was he hugging the president? Why was he wearing that red MAGA cap in front of the cameras? Why was Jim Brown, the famous running back from the fifties, sitting next to Kanye? Who […]
Dec 08

LOSS

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The picture above is a view of the Hudson River during a stormy day. The fog is partly covering the New Jersey shoreline near the Palisades. The road with the cars on it is the West Side Highway. It’s one of the major highways in Manhattan that runs along a body of water called the Hudson. The other roadway that runs alongside a river is the FDR Drive on the eastside, running along the East River. The bridge located over the West Side Highway is one of the entrances to Riverbank State Park. When I look at this picture, I think that’s how I feel. Sometimes, I’m sunless and kind of foggy, as if my brain is on permanent default. I get lost in the fog. There are no lights to help guide me to the light or a better day. My sister died on December 12, 2017. She was two years older than I. We didn’t speak daily. I’m not much of a caller. I never have been one to call first. If you call me and I’m in the mood, I will talk your ear off. My sister and I would talk on birthdays and winter holidays like […]
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