Vocal Expressions

On Saturday, August 29, 2015, I went on a road trip with a fellow author to the Johnstown Book Festival at Lorain Burough Park in Johnstown, PA. This wasn't the typical book festival chock full of authors selling their books. Instead, it was an intimate group of authors (many of them I already knew) who ventured to Johnstown for a literary event created by Sharon Lucas, President of the Reading Divas Book Club. She thought it would be a great idea to add this component to the Johnstown 50 & Over Reunion. And it was a fantastic idea. When we arrived, the warm welcome we received made us feel right at home. Throughout the day, the activities were nonstop: the DJ was bumping old school music, folks were singing karaoke, line dancing, playing bingo, etc. All the authors (from left in the photo below: Dionne Peart, Me, Dr. Hattie Washington, Renee Daniel Flagler, Nanette Buchanan) had a great time singing along with the music, dancing and drinking our coolers (Jamaica Me Happy) ...

Gotham Diaries is a story about three friends living the New York City Black elite life and how their friendships crash and burn amidst lies, deceit, scandal and betrayal.  At the root of it all is the almighty dollar: folks needing more of it, folks not knowing what to do with it and folks losing it all. The characters are well developed and the descriptions are spot on.  However, the pacing was a bit slow but picked up momentum in the middle and towards the end. Also, there were times when the characters should have reacted to a situation immediately but didn’t and that left me wondering “what the heck.” Overall, it wasn’t a bad read once you get through it.   Here are a few of my favorite lines: Tandy was fed up with this child playing Speed Racer at the amusement park. “ALL RIGHT! YOU STUPID LITTLE BITCH! Life is tough. Get over it. If you want to kill yourself, go ahead, but you let me out. Your money is better served in my hands. You don’t know how to l...

I recently read an article in the Muse (an online magazine that provides free career advice) by Jim Schleckser of Inc. In this article, Schleckser tells readers why the successful Warren Buffett doesn't worry that much. Despite all the billions of money Buffett has made and the number of investments he's made over the years, he remains "cool as a cucumber." You may ask yourself how the heck is that possible. Well, Schleckser tells us that Buffett has adopted secrets from Dale Carnegie's book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.  Here are the 6 secrets: 1. Isolate the Problem . The key to isolating the problem is to departmentalize your life. This means keeping your business, relationships and finances separate so they don't spill into each other. For the most part, I agree. I typically keep work where it belongs...at work. But sometimes, when I've had a very hard day, it does spill over. However, the trick is knowing when to turn off that faucet beca...

On Sunday, August 2, 2015, a friend invited me to go see the Keith Hamilton Cobb's one man play, "American Moor" at the Anacostia Playhouse in Washington, DC.  As an avid theatergoer, I was excited to see an unconventional play especially that one that touches on the realities of being a black man in America. So, I knew I was in for a treat. We sat second row, dead center, up close and very personal. As the rest of the audience (diverse) began to trickle in, I could feel the excitement building to see Keith Hamilton Cobb, all 6 foot 4 inches ("on a good day," as he mentioned) of a black man take center stage ready to spill some knowledge. Throughout the play, Cobb engaged the audience as he belted out his range of emotions from anger to frustration to incredulous to WTF. We hung on to each word as he switched between quoting lines from Shakespeare's Othello to modern day slang to show how white America stereotypes him as a black man. There were many poig...

Carl Weber and Eric Pete have hit a home run with To Paris With Love , a Family Business novel. Paris truly lives up to her namesake: fashionable, daring, unpredictable, and lovable. Never one to take orders from the Duncan Family even for her own good, Paris sets out to find herself some trouble and his name is Niles. Together  they are the perfect match for danger. But when you put another woman, Nadja, Niles' boss and one time lover into the mix, this love triangle becomes explosive. This novel is action packed from start to finish, the characters are flawed - I love that, the dialogue is spot on and the locations...well, are breathtaking. At the end of the day, all is fair in love and war, but the Duncans will win ALL the time. Great backstory to the rest of the series. A must read! Here are some of my favorite lines: "Her name is Nadja and she's the one who made Paris Duncan into the cold-hearted bitch that I am today." I seethed as I watched her head into ...

When I wrote my first novel, Gotta Let It Go , a romantic-suspense novel set in Baltimore, I had no intention of writing a sequel  much less a series. But after my family, fellow writer friends and fans started clamoring for more, I thought, hmmm…why not?  So, I set off on generating ideas where my protagonist, a former burnt out prosecutor would dive in head first against the warning of her detective lover to solve the murder of a judge, someone very close to her. This sparked the genesis of the sequel titled, Gotta Get It Back . Well, life got in the way and the story stayed dormant for a while… a very long while. The longer I stayed away from the novel, the more I got pestered by folks, via phone calls, text messages, emails, and social media asking, “When’s the new book coming out?” “Aren’t you done yet?” “What’s your excuse this time?” and the list goes on. Of course, I knew it was all done lovingly so that I could get back into the creative writing seat and get it d...

This past Thursday, I met up with fellow diva, B. Swangin Webster, for a long overdue lunch and girl chat in Downtown Silver Spring, MD. As we stood near the water fountain where kids were splashing around and playing, we began scanning the restaurants before deciding to give A.G. Kitchen a try. This restaurant is the brain child of chef Alex Garcia and offers a fusion of Cuban-Latin dishes and cocktail. Since it was such a beautiful day, we settled on eating outside. When we sat down, there was a red View-Master sitting on the table. We thought how fun as it actually contained a reel of the desserts that were offered. So before we even ordered our drinks or our meal, our mouths were already salivating about which desserts we were going to try.  Anyway, when the waiter appeared (he was the best), we ordered the calamari for the appetizer and a Malibu cocktail and a frozen drink called "Her Name Was Lola" (this was for me). When I took one sip, I was like wow, there wa...