My Writing Life: A Review To Remember!

I just got a really amazing review from a GoodReads reader, and I thought I would share.  Wow, and thank you, Vivian!

     

Jul 19, 2012

Vivian rated it

Shelves: first-reads, women-s-fiction, summer-2012-read

A first reads winner.

Wealthy Loi Cramer recalls the life she began with her late husband, Alex Cramer. It is your typical poor, down on her luck girl meets wealthy man who sweeps her off her feet story but with a twist. She meets him while she's employed at his house while caring for his ailing wife. An affair begins. Gossip spreads. Loi begins to wonder if the mistress ever becomes the wife.

Then the story really begins. Cannot possibly add more details without spoiling the book. You are just g...more A first reads winner.

Wealthy Loi Cramer recalls the life she began with her late husband, Alex Cramer. It is your typical poor, down on her luck girl meets wealthy man who sweeps her off her feet story but with a twist. She meets him while she's employed at his house while caring for his ailing wife. An affair begins. Gossip spreads. Loi begins to wonder if the mistress ever becomes the wife.

Then the story really begins. Cannot possibly add more details without spoiling the book. You are just going to have to trust me. It gets better with each turn of the page. I completed this novel in the matter of hours. A really great read. 

  

My Writing Life: Glad to see "Us" making a connection

This just in, thanks to author Ava Bleu's Romance Noire group post ... 

Troy Johnson, founder of the  African American Literature Book Club (AALBC) has created a search site featuring books by authors from within the black community.  This is especially important because our books are often lost and disconnected from the authors in the larger search engines that focus on books produced by larger traditional publishers. 

You can check out the site today at http://huria.org.   If you'd like to know more about the motivation behind the site, take a moment to visit Troy's blog at AALBC.com.  The entry is listed on the Founder's Blog, under Book Info.

Happy Reading!!

  

 

Notes From My Writing Life: Book Coaching

Believing that literacy is an amazing gift, knowing that people have shed blood and tears for it, I take reading seriously.   I also take writing very seriously.  So you have to know that when a friend approached me about acting as his book coach, I was enthused and took the request seriously.    What I should have done was to take a paraphrased cue from Forest Gump:  “Mama says, ‘reading is what writers do.’”  Suffice it to say, my friend is not a reader.

Hindsight being what it is, I suppose that I should have gone into the project realizing that someone who does not read fiction simply won’t have an automatic “feel” for it.  I probably should have asked to see an outline or proposal, but I love my friends , so I jumped in with both feet, from word one. 

On the surface, the job of a book coach is pretty straightforward:

·         Walk the author through the step-by-step process of writing, publishing, and promoting their book

·         Explain the structure of a book and how the parts fit together

·         Help organize ideas, research, main points, and written material

·         Help create a writing plan, set realistic deadlines, and create a schedule for meeting them

·         Work with the author to find their own unique voice

·         Help develop the book from the original idea through the outline, rough drafts, and revisions to polished manuscript

·         Provide feedback and advice on flow, grammar, substance, and writing style

·         Point out inconsistencies, word repetition, weak vocabulary, and lack of clarity

Knowing what the job entailed, I knew that I could handle it.  To his credit, my friend is not lazy and didn’t expect me to write the book for him.  What I didn’t plan on was that I would have to begin by tutoring him in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling.  What I wasn’t prepared for was that he would grow more than a little angry with me for doing EXACTLY what he asked me to do.  That left me with some questions like:

·         How do you become annoyed with someone who mentors you on the use of YOUR native language?

·         How can you stay irritated by someone who insists that you use quotation marks in a novel?

·         How does anyone fume over the need for paragraphs?

·         What kind of novel has only one endless chapter?

Okay, so you probably already know how this ends…  My friend is convinced that he has developed a new 400-page art form, and that book coaching and traditional novel forms are over-rated.  He also now thinks that I am an anal-retentive book Nazi and I am not going to tell him any different.  For my part, I am hoping that he will figure out another way to tell his story.

Probably as a video.

All I've Ever Wanted to Do. . .

When something is for you, there’s a feeling that is deep down inside of you that will not allow you to let it go. – Tyler Perry

That’s what writing is, was, and will forever and always be for me. Something that speaks directly to my soul. A vehicle that allows me to have a voice like no other. My love affair. My therapy. My peace.

Recently, I celebrated my 11^th year in the literary industry. I started my journey and the realization of a dream, November 2001. Times does fly, does it? Here I am, nine books later. As I’ve said from book one, The Ties That Bind, up until now, all I’ve ever wanted to do was write. Just write. Simply write.

I don’t know what the future holds. . . To quote Oprah Winfrey, “What I know for sure. No matter where I am on my journey, that’s exactly where I need to be. The next road is always ahead.” My destiny remains to be seen.

To my readers, who I affectionately refer to as family, many of you have been on this journey with me from the very beginning. And others joined the journey many miles and mile markers down the road. Others have just recently joined the trip. The road traveled hasn’t always been smooth, but paved with bumps and valleys along the way, but through it all, you’ve been my loyal passengers. For that I will be eternally grateful.

To you, to all of you, I say THANK YOU! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping this black girl to live out her dream. I have so appreciated the show of support, encouragement, kind words of praise, spirit of sisterhood and the sense of bonding experienced through the written word. You’ve been the magic in my life.

Electa Rome Parks

6-21-2012, 10:36 p.m.