Former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s memoir, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness is #1 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller List. Romney’s book has dethroned another political tome, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s Game Change is #3 on the list. This comes at a time when no less than nine books on this week’s list concern American politics and/or political figures...
The hunger for political books remains as strong as ever
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
March 7, 2010: The late E. Lynn Harris to deliver posthumous beach read
St, Martin’s Press plans to release In My Father’s House by openly gay author E. Lynn Harris this June. Harris died last year on July 23 from heart disease at the age of 54.
The late E. Lynn Harris to deliver posthumous beach read
The late E. Lynn Harris to deliver posthumous beach read
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
February 2, 2010: DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY: Reframing loyalty
Germantown author Karyn Langhorne Folan strikes pay dirt with Don’t Bring Home a White Boy and Other Notions that Keep Black Women from Dating Out, in stores February 2. The book, exploring the notions steeped in slavery and cultural mythology that keep single black women leery of interracial coupling, is sure to touch a nerve...
DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY: Reframing loyalty
DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY: Reframing loyalty
February 2, 2010: DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY explores why black women just say no to interracial love
Don’t Bring Home a White Boy and Other Notions that Keep Black Women from Dating Out by Germantown author Karyn Langhorne Folan hits stores tomorrow. The provocative tome examines the notions steeped in slavery and cultural mythology that keep single black women leery of interracial coupling, even in the face of overwhelming evidence and statistics that suggest that eschew it at their peril...
DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY explores why black women just say no to interracial love
DON'T BRING HOME A WHITE BOY explores why black women just say no to interracial love
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
January 14, 2010: Relaxing and Affirming a Positive Outcome
My sister Chrissy Love is a radio personality in The Bahamas – and a certified patchouli-wearing hippie. Where I’m tightly wound, she is loose as a goose. Probably comes from living in the land of endless sunshine, pristine beaches, and Bacardi Gold. Whenever I stress about the possibility of something going belly up, she tells me that I must relax and affirm a positive outcome. I’m generally not a relaxer and affirmer; I am more of a planner and a strategizer. Lately, though, I am beginning to think that she has the solution for the author who always seems like that dog that keeps chasing its tail. And we all know what George Clinton said about that.
But back to relaxing and affirming a positive outcome. For almost a year now, I’ve been covering the publishing industry for Examiner.com. I do this in my effort to understand an industry that had stymied me. Almost a year later, rather than having the answers, I only have more questions. Mostly though, while covering the writing careers of others, I speculate about my own in this context and wonder if all of my efforts meant to further said career have any traction somewhere.
I try to use the success of others whose struggles are similar to mine as some kind of a barometer. The rationale for this comes from Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker who says that successful role models are closer than you think. Take my girl Karyn Langhorne Folan. She wrote an editorial for The Washington Post almost three years ago on Loving Day, June 12. That led to her latest joint Don't Bring Home a White Boy and Other Notions that Keep Black Women from Dating Out, which drops February 2nd. She announced on Facebook that she and her book will be featured in April’s Essence magazine. Talk about the Role Model Next Door. She and other authors that I know who have recently sold work help me to keep hope alive.
As I was headed off to The Plantation – aka, work – on the train last month, I was reading The Washington Post Express, the free paper available to commuters. As I usually do, I skipped to the back of the paper and read my horoscope. Usually, horoscopes are very vague and nebulous, like Nostradamus predictions. This one though from December 8 spoke to me:
While someone close to you may be rocketing to the top, don’t let yourself be discouraged because you have a longer curve.
For this reason – at least concerning my writing career – my sister’s earthy-crunchy advice resonates. Because the signs in the heavens and on earth tell me that if I stay the course, relax, and affirm a positive outcome, I might just get it.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
November 29, 2009: I Just Won NaNoWriMo!
I just posted my novel, WWB, finishing with 56, 836 words, to the National Novel Writing Month website. I am a winner!
Now I can finally get some sleep! LOL!
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
November 4, 2009: Fellow Examiner Does Wendy a Helluva Solid!
DC Books Examiner Camille Tuutti-Winkler wrote a piece on me delivering the Keynote this weekend at the Our Story Conference at Minnesota's Gustavus Adolphus College.
Check it out:
Author and D.C. Publishing Industry Examiner to speak on interracial relationships
Check it out:
Author and D.C. Publishing Industry Examiner to speak on interracial relationships
Monday, November 02, 2009
November 2, 2009: America's Next Great Pundit. The Waiting Was the Hardest Part
Hello all:
My hometown paper, The Washington Post, held America's Next Great Pundit, a contest designed to select an opinion columnist. Ten finalists would compete for a thirteen-week editorial gig at The Post, to start next year. Sweet, I thought, as I entered.
I wasn't chosen as one of the finalists. I did, though, want to share my entry with you. It is rather timely and concerns the race for governor here in the state of Virginia. Without fanfare, I present The Endurance of the Wedge Issue:
My hometown paper, The Washington Post, held America's Next Great Pundit, a contest designed to select an opinion columnist. Ten finalists would compete for a thirteen-week editorial gig at The Post, to start next year. Sweet, I thought, as I entered.
I wasn't chosen as one of the finalists. I did, though, want to share my entry with you. It is rather timely and concerns the race for governor here in the state of Virginia. Without fanfare, I present The Endurance of the Wedge Issue:
It recently became more evident that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Democrat Creigh Deeds reads the polls – more specifically that he read the October 8 Washington Post poll that showed that his Republican opponent, Bob McDonnell, widened his lead over Deeds by nine points. Before that time, Deeds’ argument for why he would make a better governor was that he was all for a woman’s right to choose. Deeds trotted out a thesis that McDonnell had written twenty years ago, in which McDonnell went hard at working women, contraception, and many social technologies that are interwoven into the bedrock of feminism. Translation: McDonnell is a misogynist who plans to send women into back alleys with coat hangers if Northern Virginians were to elect him governor. This tack probably would have worked twenty years ago, when a landmark decision by the Supreme Court made the abortion debate a matter of states’ rights. Shockingly, an economy circling the bowl, two wars, and budget cuts and record unemployment seem scarier than some old wedge issue from the past millennium.
McDonnell is just as guilty. Though he has been clear about his platforms – questioning their ability to be operationalized aside – he, too, has fallen back on a wedge issue of his own: the dreaded raising of taxes. His most recent ads have painted Deeds as the typical tax-and-spend Democrat, to McDonnell’s fiscal conservative. Here again, a politician conjures up a tried and true tactic, while seeming blissfully unaware of the context in which he employs said tactic. Again, with Virginia trying to contend with over a billion-dollar deficit, how does McDonnell think the state will be able to pay police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other civil servants other than to raise taxes? While not promising outright that he will not, McDonnell painting Deeds as the candidate who will is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.
November 3 is Election Day in the state of Virginia. Something tells me that this election is less about who is best suited to govern and more about a referendum on the wedge issue. It is certain that, no matter who wins, the wedge issue used by the governor-elect, no matter how anachronistic it may be, will live to fight another day.
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