The Write Journey

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson

What better tribute to the man than his own poignant and meaningful words? If one wants to know the heart of an artist and feel what he stood for, then turn to the lyrics of his greatest songs. So read the beautiful lyrics to “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson, from the album History: Past, Present and Future, Book 1, and take them to heart.

Earth Song

What about sunrise
What about rain
What about all the things
That you said we were to gain.. .
What about killing fields
Is there a time
What about all the things
That you said was yours and mine...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we've shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores?

Aaaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaaah

What have we done to the world
Look what we've done
What about all the peace
That you pledge your only son...
What about flowering fields
Is there a time
What about all the dreams
That you said was yours and mine...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores

Aaaaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaaaah

I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don't know where we are
Although I know we've drifted far

Aaaaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaaaaah

Hey, what about yesterday
(What about us)
What about the seas
(What about us)
The heavens are falling down
(What about us)
I can't even breathe
(What about us)
What about the bleeding Earth
(What about us)
Can't we feel its wounds
(What about us)
What about nature's worth
(ooo,ooo)
It's our planet's womb
(What about us)
What about animals
(What about it)
We've turned kingdoms to dust
(What about us)
What about elephants
(What about us)
Have we lost their trust
(What about us)
What about crying whales
(What about us)
We're ravaging the seas
(What about us)
What about forest trails
(ooo, ooo)
Burnt despite our pleas
(What about us)
What about the holy land
(What about it)
Torn apart by creed
(What about us)
What about the common man
(What about us)
Can't we set him free
(What about us)
What about children dying
(What about us)
Can't you hear them cry
(What about us)
Where did we go wrong
(ooo, ooo)
Someone tell me why
(What about us)
What about babies
(What about it)
What about the days
(What about us)
What about all their joy
(What about us)
What about the man
(What about us)
What about the crying man
(What about us)
What about Abraham
(What was us)
What about death again
(ooo, ooo)
Do we give a damn

The Harsh Realities of the Nonfictional World

Although I haven't seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire yet, I've heard much about what a great and inspiring film it is. But today I ran across the below article, which shows yet another example of how, no matter how harsh or scary or sad a story we writers spin from the depths of our own imagination, it's never as incredibly moving or horrible or disturbing as what real life holds.

'Slumdog Millionaire' kid stars face uphill battle
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEWAjBZS2Oz0DaQiNTvjDums9enQD96DGV280

We’re Sorry

Yesterday, the US House of Representatives finally issued a formal apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors due to slavery and Jim Crow laws. Congress has formally apologized in the past to Japanese-Americans for their World War II internment, to native Hawaiians for overthrowing the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, and the Senate apologized in 2005 for failing to pass anti-lynching laws. While five states have issued apologizes for slavery before, Congress had failed to do so previously, in part due to fears that such an apology would lead to demands for reparations from the black community. Congressman Steve Cohen, a white Senator from a Memphis, TN district with a 60 percent black constituency, introduced this resolution in early 2007.

While I suppose such apologies are nice gestures, and in themselves there is nothing wrong with such things, I frankly just don't understand the point. We're all aware of this country's tumultuous past and the race-based strife that have run like earthquake fault lines through the heart of this country. But it's also a painful truth that we are still suffering from the effects of that past, and that as much as things have changed for the better, in far too many ways things have failed to change. CNN's recent series of specials entitled Black in America explored the many hardships that continue to haunt black Americans, and with Senator Barack Obama being the first African American with a very real chance at becoming President of the United States, issues of race have been brought to the forefront and have once again exposed the ugly vein of racism still running just beneath the surface of our society.

What I fail to understand is how an apology for a past wrong, all the perpetrators of which are long dead and gone on to whatever awaited them "on the other side," in any way makes up for, resolves, or moves us forward on a problem that is very much still a problem to this day. Yes, our laws are no longer blatantly biased to exclude people of color from full citizenship in this country, but the underlying attitudes that led to such laws in the first place are still there, like a smoldering and persistent flame within the aftermath of a house fire. We are fooling ourselves if we cannot see how much better things are for black people today, but we are also in a state of denial if we don't see that things are still bad in a number of ways.

How does this apology from Congress address social, economic, and financial issues that hit the black community much harder than they do whites? Does it in anyway explain why it took so long to get help to the predominantly black communities in New Orleans after the devastation of hurricane Katrina, or get employers to finally look at black applicants for open position as equal contenders to their white counterparts? There are times when the old adage "Actions speak louder than words" ring particularly loud and true, and I feel that this is one of those times. I wonder if it was ever considered whether taxpayer dollars might be better spent actually confronting and combating the racial issues still plaguing this country today rather than apologizing for the origins of these problems of the past. Because to me at least, apologizing for making me sit in the back of the bus in the past means little when in many ways I am still being ostracized for the petty minutia that is the color of my skin. While I have no doubts that Sen. Cohen had good intentions, I can't help but believe that the House only passed this resolution in an attempt to apply the "Band Aid over a gunshot wound" approach to the problem as I like to call it, meaning that if we use superficial means to cover up the problem, maybe we'll all forget about it and it'll magically go away.

As nice as it would be to live in this magical land where we could merely wish our problems away, the truth is that until we truly stand up and confront these problems head on without fear of getting our hands dirty in the process, then these problems will continue to fester until once again they blow up and tear this country apart. But hey, at least we now have it on record that one half of Congress is sorry (Which means what, that the Senate is still cool with the whole slavery thing?). And that's at least worth the value of the US dollar today, and that is equal to just over 10 pesos. Cool...

I feel so much better now. Don't you?

- GBB

Oh, It's Time for Some Campaignin'!

Unlike the misfire cover of The New Yorker Magazine in which which attempted satire was more "sad and tired" than anything else, the below video I think is an example of political satire done at its best, with tongue clearly planted firmly in cheek.

According to the Skin I’m In

The color of a person's skin, when thought of from a purely objective and logical viewpoint, is the most superficial aspects of humanity. While some things can be guessed about a person's heritage based upon skin color, such as whether or not someone has African, Native American, or Middle Eastern blood flowing through their veins, it tells nothing about one's upbringing, one's intelligence, one's education, one's social or economic standing, one's occupation, or moral code. And yet people have been enslaved, judged, and murdered merely based on the fact that they were unfortunate enough to be blessed with more melanin than their paler counterparts.

The subject of race has been, for whatever reason, a recurring theme swirling around me this week, as if begging me to dive into it head on. On one mailing list I belong to, we've been discussing how race affects the Science Fiction and Fantasy areas of the publishing industry. It is an uphill battle for Black authors to get SF books published with predominantly Black characters, and if they do, they are unilaterally relegated to the African American section of bookstores, as if the stories an author of color tells would only be interesting to people of the same flesh tone.

Also, the ongoing stream of garbage being flung at Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is getting to a point where it's so offensive that it borders on absurd. From the recent cover of The New Yorker depicting Senator Obama as a Muslim giving his militaristic-clad wife a fist bump, to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, of all people, making the ridiculous accusation during a commercial break of a Fox Network interview that Obama was "talking down" to Black people and his wanting to "cut his nuts off" for it, it's evident that even within the community of those with never-fading tans, that skin color is a barrier to acceptance and understanding among us all.

I could go on ad nauseum about my theories on where this comes from. I do believe that the ideals of self worth, or the need to lift up one's own feeling of self worth by finding ways to devalue others, is a major part of it. But I'm sure that is far too simplistic to be the sole cause for such a mutual and widespread societal plague. And although we can so dispassionately judge each other for such superficial reasons, the topic itself is so personal that even the attempt to discuss it evokes controversy and ire.

Although I in my fiction I don't write to deliver messages or forward particular agendas, I do deal with "life-issues" such as race and racism. For example, in my short story collection Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death & Life, there is a story entitled "A Tale of Black and White" in which two old men return to the scene of a horrible incident that took place 60 years ago, in which Jesse Black (a White man), took part in the lynching of the son of his companion, Amos White (who happens to be a Black man) after his relationship with Black's daughter results in her death. The irony of the story, and I think the heart of it as well, is that these two men have a deeply rooted hatred toward one another that neither has, nor will ever, get beyond. And yet because of their mutual tragedy they share a bond so strong that it soon becomes obvious that all they have left to cling to in this life is each other.

I don't understand how one human being can look at another and so easily distance themselves from that person that they literally dehumanize them in their minds. How can the cries of a person being chained, whipped, or hung from a tree not resonate in the soul of the one responsible and remind him of his own family and the horrific devastation such an act to their own loved ones would inflict upon them? Why is it that it merely takes the different color of a human's flesh to cause one human being to view another as something both alien and of lesser worth? Just the very thought that we humans have the capacity to do such things saddens and frightens me, and at the end of the day, there is no horror I could write that is more terrifying than those that people inflict upon one another on a daily basis, and it's probably why human nature is usually at the core of all of my stories in some shape or form. To paraphrase the question asked by Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View this morning when discussing the revelation that Reverend Jesse Jackson used the word "nigger" during the same interview mentioned above:

When are we going to get past this racial divide and move on to more important things that affect all of us?

I think the below words from the song "Skin I'm In" by the group Cameo best describe how I feel (Lyrics taken from sing365.com):

It's the world who's out to see
Basic respect humanity
I'm just trying to be for real in a world with less appeal
I'm so frustrated and flustered
At what has been reduced to justice
It is immoral or a sin
If it is according to the skin I'm in
Skin I'm in

- GBB

For those old school readers out there.

With the advent of the hotly selling e-reader the Kindle, it looks like ebooks may finally become a widespread reading format. So for all you "old school" readers out there, the below video is for you!

Just Another Colored Man?

As many people have said, this is an exciting time. We have, for the first time in our history, both a black candidate and a woman candidate who have a very real chance of ascending to one of the, if not the most, powerful leadership roles in the entire world. Given that blacks were brought into this country as slaves and in many ways still suffer the lingering aftereffects of that tragic past, and that women of all colors have been treated as subordinates to their male counterparts since the beginnings of humankind, it's almost hard to believe that our country has progressed to the point where Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton can sit atop the Democratic Party and do battle to be the favored candidate to win the White House in November of this year.

To this point, the level of campaigning, which as politics are wont to do, can turn quite nasty, has remained relatively civil between the two. It's also been observed that those in opposition to the Democratic Party have been, in general, far more critical of Senator Clinton than of Senator Obama, some citing that perhaps many are afraid of being accused of racism when attacking Obama, but are not so much concerned that they may be labeled sexist if they attack Senator Clinton.

Is this a sign that indeed, sexism is more tolerable in today's society than is racism? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. As I've said above, sexism has in one way, shape, or form, been a part of human culture since the beginnings of human society. But that in no way diminishes the ongoing undercurrent of racism still rampant in this country, and just because it is no longer kosher to be upfront about such feelings, particularly in a pseudo-sanitized society where political correctness hangs over every public comment made like an ever-present guillotine ready to pass sentence on anyone who dares disturb the tense quietness of things thought but not dare said. Hatred is something that, logical or not, can have levels. Yes I hate group A, but if I hate group B worse, I'll gladly align myself with group A as the "lesser of two evils". And it seems that there are those would rather have a black man in the White House than to ever allow a woman to sit upon that vaulted throne.

But the racism is still there, and Barack Obama is still a black man. Yes, his mother was white, but anyone who happens to be blessed with the extra bit of melanin in their skin and can trace their ancestral background to the continent of Africa knows that "one drop will do it." Some deny it, while others assert that having even a few non-black genes in your blood stream makes you anything but black. But if you've grown up black, and know the history of blacks in this country, you know that at the end of the day the "amount of black" in you is inconsequential. When push comes to shove, and the issue of race becomes the 50 million pound elephant in the room, he will be considered just another black man, regardless of how greatly he rises above such a simplistic definition. And that's what worries me most.

Senator Obama is receiving unprecedented support, having raised a record 55 million campaign dollars in this past February alone. The mudslinging has been minimal, though comments by people such as radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who says a Presidential ticket of Obama and Clinton "doesn't have a prayer" is a direct spitting in the face of the progress that has been made in this country, and seems to indicate his utter dismissal of the blacks and women who would likely throw their support into such a "dream ticket" as many have dubbed it. And Representative Steve King's recent comments that Senator Obama's middle name, "Hussein," will have Al-Qaeda terrorists "dancing in the streets" is one of the most racially and religiously offensive comments I've ever heard uttered during a political campaign.

I'm afraid that at some point, perhaps when the once distant dream of a "colored man" in the White House comes true, the bubble will burst and the fantasy will lose its luster. This country and this world are facing some of the greatest political, social, and economic challenges ever to threaten society, and it'll take far more than Obama's bright new ideas and the promises that accompany them to solve them all. What happens when the war in Iraq doesn't magically come to an end, or when taxes aren't eradicated, or people still suffer from a flawed healthcare system that won't transform overnight into one in which everyone is cared for to the fullest extent of medical science? Barack Obama is a great hope and promise, and a true symbol of how far this country has come in overcoming the racist foundation upon which it was built. Obama is a man, a brilliant man, a charming man, a man who wears the mantle of leadership with a welcoming and knowing smile. But still, he's just a man. He, along with Senator Hillary Clinton, are the cracks in the old, outdated armor, the weakening of the status quo and the ignition of a new era in U.S. history. When the world doesn't transform overnight, and the problems that most concern us in our everyday lives persist, what then?

Will we give Obama a fair chance to do what he can within the time that he's given? Or will the latent racism that many have managed to put in check resurface? Will the magical chariot turn back into a pumpkin and the miraculous leader Obama suddenly become just another colored man?

I hope that we have grown beyond such treachery, such false support in which the knife is ever poised behind our backs waiting to strike as soon as the sun shines a little less bright than we expected. But having seen how society has reveled in the tribulations of Hollywood celebrities, and have almost gleefully denounced athletes who have fallen from the lofty hero status that they never asked to be placed in the first place, I'm afraid that, should Barack Obama become the next President of these United States, it's then that the true war really begins.

- GBB

The Speculative Literature Foundation announces the 2008 Older Writers Grant

SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES THE 2008 OLDER WRITERS GRANT

SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION
PO Box 1693, Dubuque, IA 52004-1693

info@speculativeliterature.org - http://www.speculativeliterature.org/

For Immediate Release February 20, 2008


SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES OLDER WRITERS GRANT

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for the 2008 Older Writers Grant. The grant of $750 is available to any writer of speculative literature of 50 years or older at the time of application just beginning to work professionally in the field. There are no restrictions on the use of the grant money.

The grant will be awarded by a committee of SLF staff members on the basis of interest and merit. Applicants are asked to submit a brief autobiographical statement, a writing sample, and a bibliography. For full details on how to apply for the grant, please see the SLF web site: http://www.speculativeliterature.org/Grants/SLFOlderWriters.php, or email olderwriters@speclit.org. Applications must be received by March 31st 2008. The successful applicant will be announced on June 1st 2008.


-----------------------------------------
PR Contact: Ashley Gronek press@speculativeliterature.org

The Speculative Literature Foundation is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the interests of readers, writers, editors and publishers in the speculative literature community.

"Speculative literature" is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard and soft science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern mythmaking -- any literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.

More information about the Speculative Literature Foundation is available from its website (http://www.speculativeliterature.org/) or by writing to info@speculativeliterature.org.

To be removed from the Speculative Literature Foundation press release mailing list please write to press@speculativeliterature.org.

Mistakes First-Time Authors Make (25): How to Avoid Them

Article by Barbara Joe-Williams.
Taken from BackList. You'll have to subscribe here for free to read the entire article.

As a first time self-published author, you want to avoid making as many costly mistakes as possible. Based on research and several years of publishing experience, I’d like to share some of the mistakes that I’ve made and show you how to avoid making them. Please proceed with caution.

1. Publishing books with unattractive covers and spending too much money on them. Hire someone to design an attractive front book cover. Or you can save money by developing the book cover drafts yourself. Simply download royalty-free pictures and add your own text.

2. Printing books in large quantities because it’s the most economical value. With print-on-demand (POD) printers, you no longer have to print large quantities of books to receive a good return on your investment. You can print as few or as many as you need at one time.

3. Paying large amounts for website development and maintenance. Find a web hosting company, download a template, upload your book information, and maintain the site yourself for a low monthly or yearly fee. Most of these companies provide 24/7 customer support.

4. Working without an action plan or any means of accountability. Writing may be your passion, but publishing is a business. Therefore, you have to develop a business plan to follow and show accountability for your funds.

Black History Month Recommended Reading List

The Carl Brandon Society, who is dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy and horror, has put out a recommended reading list of books for Black History Month. The list is below:

• "So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy" edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan

• "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler          

• "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany            

• "My Soul to Keep" by Tananarive Due

• "The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad" by Minister Faust                     

• "Mindscape" by Andrea Hairston   

• "Wind Follower" by Carole McDonnell

• "Futureland" by Walter Mosley         

• "The Shadow Speaker" by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 

• "Zahrah the Windseeker" by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

And the 2005 CARL BRANDON SOCIETY AWARD Winners:

• PARALLAX AWARD given to works of speculative fiction created by a
person of color:

"47" by Walter Mosley

• KINDRED AWARD given to any work of speculative fiction dealing with
issues of race and ethnicity; nominees may be of any racial or ethnic
group:

"Stormwitch" by Susan Vaught