Jan 17

I THOUGHT I KNEW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I thought I knew what happens when we die. After all, I was familiar with death, since I’d experienced it at a young age. I was around eleven years old when my grandmother died at seventy-nine. The medical examiner’s records said she died of a heart attack, cardiac arrest. The report didn’t say that my grandmother was the main speaker at a church sisters’ meeting. The topic was Africa. As she was speaking at the front of the church, she felt funny. The sisters told my mother how my grandmother grabbed her chest and told the closest sister she needed to rest because she felt so tired. She managed to sit down in one of the front pews, never to rise again. So yes, I thought I knew death. When I was twelve, I bought a puppy from the local dog pound with five dollars I’d found fluttering the breeze, finally landing on a dirt should of a main road. My kid brother, big sister, and I were walking home from the library. It was the best five-dollar gift I’d ever spent on me. I called the puppy Lady, named after the female dog in Disney’s movie Lady & The […]
Dec 24

WHY I WROTE THE BOOKSTORE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
In this day and age of social media, short-term relationships and instant gratification, I wondered what a long-term, lesbian relationship looked like. What would the parties 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 they sneak and peek, having a side woman or a back-pocket woman on the down-low. You know the type of woman I mean. The two-faced women who walks the walk of a loyal, honorable, love-only-one woman for the public. Behind the scenes, it’s oh so very different. The same supposedly honorable women are busy creeping in and out of every woman’s bedroom but their own mate’s bed. Then there’s the reformed players, who used to be two-faced scoundrels but found true love. Now, they who ignore their own passionate urges and temptations to adhere to their vows. I wondered how difficult each role was to play. I decided to examine various types of women who had long-term relationships and see what I came up with. I tried to answer all of those questions and more when I wrote The Bookstore, 15 years […]
Dec 17

PLAYGROUND GAMES

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, if anybody asked me what my favorite elementary school class was, I’d always answer how much I loved recess. My mother would interrupt the conversation to correct me. She’d say recess wasn’t a class, but I remained steadfast. I’d mumble under my breath, “If recess isn’t a class, it oughta be.” The reason I loved recess in the wintertime so much was that I had the freedom to release the tomboy I felt screaming to be outside. That part of me wasn’t allowed be out any other time. I should explain. I came from a family and a time when young girls were expected to wear dresses to school, at home, at church, and even at play. Girls wore dresses everywhere. Of course, since girls dressed like miniature ladies, they were supposed to act like them as well. That meant no ball playing, including foot races, baseball, football, or basketball. In my elementary school, nobody knew what soccer was, so I didn’t play that game either. Girls could play dodgeball, red rover, jump rope, tag, hide ‘n’ seek, and jacks, but no marbles, a game in which I excelled, and other games that didn’t involve the running […]
Dec 10

IT’S UPSIDE DOWN DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
“We better unite because this is how we stand,” Dan Rather said on AM Joy on November 11, 2017. He was speaking about Americans and how tribal and divisive they have become about major issues such as racism, sexism, the presidency, the economy, and healthcare. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant until I thought about it. Or maybe it was after Hurricane Harvey pounded the news media that brought Rather’s words to my mind again. I’m not speaking about the horrendous storm that damaged Florida and Texas and avoided Puerto Rico, which got hammered and then steamrolled by another type of malignant neglect. But that’s a story for another day. The hurricane I meant was Harvey Weinstein the accused alleged sexual predator haunting young women with dreams of would-be stardom. That hurricane led the other hurricanes: Alabama senatorial candidate Judge Roy Moore, who I’ll focus on. There are also accusers for actor Kevin Spacey, Senator Franken, media talking-heads Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin, Congressman John Conyers, and New York Times journalist Glen Thrush. Let’s not forget the man in the big house, who wasn’t punished for his role in assaulting women like Bill Cosby was, but rather he was […]
Dec 03

The Bookstore, 15 years of love and counting

by B.L. in Latest Novels, Other 0 comments
Ever wonder how the longest relationship in the Forever Woman Series happened? Read about Vivian Johnson and Pat Davis in the 6th volume of the series. The Bookstore, fifteen years of love and counting tells the tale of somewhat wild and raunchy playgirl Vivian Johnson, who is also Leah Williams’ (Forever Woman and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez) editor and good friend. Fifteen years ago, while working on one of her client’s book tours, she meets an interesting younger woman. Patricia Davis has just opened a women’s bookstore on a shoestring budget. Vivian is impressed that such a young woman from Generation X would bet her entire future on opening a woman’s bookstore and community center in the heart of a low-income neighborhood. They bump heads at first. Vivian’s client, Melba Farris (Mr. Jefferson’s Piano and Other Central Harlem Stories), asks her to set up a book signing in the bookstore, but Pat’s womanizing partner, Etta, wants more than a book signing from Vivian. The two partners argue about Vivian, causing Pat to say things to Vivian that she has to apologize for later. The book signing is exceptionally successful, but the two women decide not to see each other again. As […]
Nov 26

WHY I WROTE FERRELLI’S RESTAURANT

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
When my characters speak to me, I do try to listen. During the writing of my second and third books in a series, Two Moons Bakery and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez, I’d created secondary characters that spoke to me. I felt they deserved stories of their own. For years, actually since 1999, I felt these secondary characters deserved their own storylines, but I just never sat down and wrote backstories for them. At the time, I felt writing their stories would be going backwards in my writing. I always wanted to go forward with other newer, what I deemed more interesting, stories, so I cast these storylines aside. This fall and winter, I spent a great of time in my old home state of Ohio. It was time away from my adopted home in the Big Apple that I hadn’t anticipated spending. My mother had a medical emergency that scared the crap out of me and my three siblings and their respective partners. Since I was no longer working and I could stay with my mother through her medical crisis, that’s what I did. For the next three and half months from October of last year until January of this year, […]
Nov 19

THREE CARD MONTY

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
When I first arrived in New York during the summer of 1968, my mother was afraid for me. She worried that her wild child, meaning me, would go crazy in the Big Apple. We had this agreement. When I turned 18, I wanted to join the Peace Corps or the domestic peace corps called VISTA. Before that, at 16 or 17, I wanted to join the Freedom Rides going on in the Deep South. My parents said no, citing either my need for higher education or my lack of temper control. I tried to make an end run around all of their negativity by asking if I could go the University of California’s Berkley campus. That way, I’d meet their higher education rules, but I’d also be able to join all kinds of anti-war and civil rights demonstrations on the campus. Of course, my parents knew that too. At 18, I thought I knew more than they did about current events. I was wrong. My parents said no, then we argued. They finally said, Try college at our alma mater, Ohio State University, for two years. If after two years you want to do something else, we’ll support you. Fast […]
Nov 12

STOP CALLING ME OUT MY NAME!

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, my mother would take me and my siblings shopping for clothes in local department stores. Anything my mother, a home economist and a bit of a tailor, couldn’t make for us, she’d buy when we had the money. I remember how excited my mother was when women were allowed to have store charge cards linked to their husband’s money. My mother’s first store charge card resembled an army dog tag. It was rectangular, made of metal, and smaller than the plastic encrypted credit cards of today. Hers had an assigned number. Her card also contained her first and last names along with her address, stamped into the metal face of the card. Whenever my mother used the card to pay for something, a salesclerk stuck it into a small manual charge machine face up. Then the clerk placed a small, rectangular, handwritten paper invoice with triple carbon layers on top of the charge card. She slid a roller-like attachment over the invoice and the card so my mother’s information would appear on the invoice. The salesclerks were always white women (back then, the sales staff wasn’t integrated) and usually a great deal younger than my mother. When […]
Oct 31

WHAT IT MEANS TO KNEEL

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Sports have been the place to make the biggest statements about the myth of group supremacy and the hope for social equality, writes Sims [Take a Knee, by John Sims/Wilson Palacio, 2017] Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) were the forefathers of the recent protest movement of taking a knee during the national anthem. (Mike McCarn/AP). Originally published September 22, 2016 at 8:57 pm in The Seattle Times. This is short essay is not about celebrating the national anthem not is it about whether kneeling is patriotic or not. Taking a knee is about no longer standing for violating Black folks’ right to life in these United States. In addition to not being killed for your beliefs or your race or gender, these rights include: The right to free speech which means the right to protest. The right to protest includes the freedom to “take a knee” during the national anthem or at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier without penalty such as job loss or loss of life. As Carol Hanisch said in an 1969 essay she wrote and was published in 1970, “The Personal Is Political.” The essay and others that followed, made the connection between everyday […]
Oct 23

WHY I WROTE BED 4 SALE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
You are in a deep funk. You are so depressed you nearly quit your living. You convince yourself that you have good reason for your depression. Your family is gone. Both of your boys, twin sons, died in a bus accident nearly a year ago. You took family leave after the funeral. Now it’s time for you to return to work. You decide to remove all reminders of your children by selling their furniture and personal items through the want ads and internet. A charming woman, a stranger, offers to buy the beds and desks. She comes to your house to see the youth beds for sale. She senses something is wrong with you, but she doesn’t pry. She seems decent. She makes you laugh for the first time in a long, dark time. She takes pity on you and cooks the first hot meal you’ve had in months. One thing leads to another the two of you end up in bed together. The sex is extraordinary, but you know it’s a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. You’ll never see her again no matter how much you want it. Ha! Fate kicks you in the butt. Come Monday morning, guess who your new […]
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