The French Quarter
New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah. My friend, Nichelle, and I headed South for inspiration, good food, and exploration. There was no shortage of any of those three things. Loved all three places, and on the road between Charleston and Savannah, I fell in like with Beaufort and St. Helena Island.
My parents moved to California from Mississippi after World War 2. On my one and only visit to that state (and the South), I was twelve and to my teenage mind, Mississippi, and all the southern states we traveled through, was different from California. My memories were tainted by a fear of everything crawling and a teenager’s predisposition to opposition.
My great aunts lived in a small city, in a small house, and looking back on it, I’m sure so much company was an imposition to them. I remember the heat and humidity, the constancy of chirping and flying insects, the lightning bugs my aunt tried to get me to catch and stick on my finger (no way!!). I remember my father pointing in the direction of an overgrown field and telling me that was where he grew up. I didn’t like it.
Now, I think I love the South.
But, I have a West Coast “mindset” where the South is concerned. I’m positive our trip was jaded. We didn’t go “deep” into the countryside. We stayed at mainstream hotels. Yet, I wondered what lay beyond the cloak of tourism. Especially in New Orleans, where five years after Hurricane Katrina many people still haven’t recovered from the effects of that devastation. Racial turbulence? Jim Crow? At times I felt just like I was in California or New York or Chicago—where some of that racial BS still exists, too—but then, I was a tourist, right?!
In Charleston, we met a State Senator, a State representative and a Black Republican running for the U.S. Congress. That’s a change for sure.
What moved me about each of these cities was the Black history—good and not so good. History. The kind that teaches that the patterns and weaving techniques of a South Carolina sweetgrass basket have been passed down from slavery and West Africa. The kind that shows the still undecipherable signs for the Underground Railroad etched in the sides of pews at Savannah’s First African Baptist church. The kind that points to Savannah’s riverfront brick caves where slaves huddled naked, branded on both sides of their necks and the lacy, delicate bridges above where buyers observed and purchased slaves.
The Mississippi River, wide and deceptively calm in the late afternoon.
The mighty Mississippi
Plantations large and small, white buildings with spiral staircases, slave cabins, acres of land filled with 300 year old oak trees, lands tended to by slaves who planted those oaks, served those masters, and worked those fields—trees remain, slave names long gone in the wind that still stirs those leaves. 
(sanitized and prettified)
Slave Price list
Perhaps the greenery lent a special quality to each of these cities. Each square in the historic district of Savannah is anchored by a church and trees (a cumulative 67,000) dripping with Spanish moss 
and filled with cicadas that sing all day and night long. (Do they ever fall from the trees? Yikes! Do they ever stop?). The trees, the gardens, the brick façades of the townhouses all make you want to stop what you’re doing and just take it all in.
Block after block of the South of Broad Street area in Charleston filled with stately two and three story homes, wrought iron gates, verandahs labeled “shy” because they offer the owners privacy from passersby and nosy neighbors.
New Orleans took my breath away the first time I saw it over fourteen years ago. Northern California is beautiful, but its landscape doesn’t approach lush. New Orleans is lush; Louisiana is lush. The St. Charles streetcar, the slow sometimes barely noticeable, yet highly contagious drawls. The Garden District. Uptown. The same thing happened on this trip to the Big Easy. It called to me.
Makes me think about change or at least testing the possibilities.
PS: last night I watched “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” and got a dose of reality. Spike Lee’s stark reveal of post-Katrina New Orleans and the BP oil disaster in the Gulf.
We liked these places and tours:
New Orleans
Camellia Grill
Willie Mae’s Scotch House was closed, but I hear the fried chicken has been voted the best!!
Joey K’s the best lima beans ever!
Charleston
Gallery Chuma prints, originals, and lithos of my favorite Jonathan Green and other local artists.
Alluette’s Café healthy, organic Gullah Cuisine and, there’s a Jazz Club, too. Featured in O Magazine, but they forgot to give the address.
“>Gullah Tours
Sites and Insights Tours
St. Helena Island
Gullah Grub
Even Martha Stewart and Anthony Bourdain found the food irresistibly de-lish!
Red Piano Too Art Gallery
Lovely Gullah art
Savannah
Black History Tours
Tags: Charleston, good food, New Orleans, Savannah, the South, tour suggestions
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Working. And that’s the truth.
Writing.
Researching.
Revising.
Writing some more.
Thinking.
Re-revising.
Listening.
Re-re-vising . . .
Such is the life of a writer—this writer. When friends, non-writer friends, call me some mornings and ask, “What’re doin’?” I tell them, “I’m working!” It’s not hard to hear their skepticism.
So, mine is not a 9 to 5 gig. So, I don’t commute. So, I set my hours (which means that there are many late nights that I’m still working). So I don the wardrobe of my choosing (sweats are my preference), and determine the direction of my day. So I can spend all day in my own head.
While I may be eating my mom’s peanut brittle or her chocolate chip cookies (ahh!), almond butter sandwiches, avocados, rice crackers, apples, and sipping lattes (I find the best ways to procrastinate, don’t I?), it doesn’t mean I’m not working, because, baby, I am. And I’m loving every minute of it and wondering why people don’t see what I do as working.
My work is different even, for me. 
Both my parents worked. Government jobs. Punch a time clock. Overtime. Race-home-from-work-to-feed-the-family, clean-the-house, run-errands, live-and-love jobs. Mom worked in an office and Dad at the Oakland Army base carpool. Through them the war in Vietnam hit home—my mother worked above the Army recruitment office where young men lined up after their draft numbers were called and protesters blocked the entrance. At one point, my father drove a transport truck between Oakland Army base and Travis Air Force base where the remains of soldiers arrived in the US. He once told me that often he heard “things” jiggling in the sometimes weightless coffins as he loaded them onto his truck.
My parents brought their paychecks home before depositing. They stood in long bank lines and waited for tellers to divide their deposits between their checkbook registers and hand-sized savings books.
When I started working after college, I loved getting my paycheck, standing in line at the bank just as my parents had done. My checks were small—I earned $90 a week at my first job! I loved seeing the numbers in my accounts going up (yes, they went down, too—unh huh!). I loved the business of banking. The properness of it all. Feeling like a bona fide grown-up.
It’s been a long time since my days of reporting to managers, waiting for performance reviews, cold calls, commuting on BART, clockwatching (oh, wait! I still do that), and sales calls. Most people relate to work days spent in office buildings, salons, markets, on bridges, in gardens, department stores, boutiques, and bookstores. They get the kind of work where people sweat, get promoted, win a case, pave a road, save a life, issue a traffic ticket, calculate, pick up the recycling, make money or get angry with a coworker.
Or just enjoy every day. Isn’t that what I do? Isn’t that what we all strive to do?
Duh, yeh. And after hours at my laptop, I can tell you, it’s work all the same.
Posted in Just thinking | 1 Comment »
Was it only a little over thirty-nine days ago that I raved that Searching for Tina Turner finally hit the streets, opened box upon box of my books, visited bookstores and photographed shelves with Searching for Tina Turner next to books by Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler and Barbara Kingsolver?
You bet your bippy it was.
Travel has been the name of my game since then, and I’m loving it. Maybe I was a gypsy, a vagabond, a road entertainer in days gone by. I don’t feel bad hopping from taxi to plane to hotel to book readings. I’m learning to take it all in stride . . . but then it’s only been thirty-something days.
In winter, the Yellow Brick road is not yellow. Heading east, it’s white. (Please, please let my next book be released in spring!) February weekends in Atlanta, New York, Washington DC, and Chicago. Snow is beautiful when it piles thick on a slender tree limb. 
It’s delightful when it sits in parts of Central Park where New Yorkers have yet to trample. It’s mystical and metaphorical when it’s piled in front of the White House and you think of the Black man surrounding by loving (and fabulous) wife and children inside. 
Snow is ugly, too! Yep. Piled curbside, its dirty, black and hard as ice cubes. Like romance gone bad. The Bay Area doesn’t see much snow—if it falls on the peaks of nearby Mt. Diablo or Mt. Tamalpais, it stays only for a couple of hours. Don’t know how well I’d do living in it. Might try to find out—who knows.
Either way, snow made me feel silly.
Snippets of my self-promoted tour (Yes, aspiring, first time, unproven authors, not only do you have to write the book, you’ve got to sell it.)
. . . Started in Hotlanta . . . We gathered at my friend Hortense’s charming home while she revealed just enough of Lena’s story to work the attendees into a buying frenzy (Thank you, H.S.) and spoiled us with chocolate … What a thrill to hear people laugh, sigh or harrumph at Lena’s predicament (in all the right places, too). Atlanta folks are warm and wonderful.
. . . New York. Harlem by night . . . snow falling on a brownstone. Songstress Sarah Dash and actresses Marva Hicks, Alyson Williams, and Barbara Montgomery read Lena’s story like the pros they are (Thank you!)
Ran into a woman I hadn’t seen since 1969 . . . Columbus Circle—Searching for Tina Turner on the New Releases table, in full view. FP pal Deborah helped me celebrate what she helped to birth. Loved NYC, but must remember to bring something to keep my ears warm next time around.
. . . LA is . . . well LA. I always get confused when I’m there. I don’t know the cool places to visit or shop or eat. But the night Angela, Cynthia and their friends hosted my reading, I was not confused at all. Fabulous. Once again, four gifted women read from the novel. Ella Joyce, Mara, Charlayne Woodard, and Hattie Winston read like they were auditioning for the movie! Ooooo whee! They set my words on fire.
. . . Washington DC . . . missed the storm . . . Priscilla, Lisa, Beverly and friends . . . a classy event, complete with monogrammed napkins
. Thank you, Julia Nixon, songstress extraordinaire, for lending your sultry voice to Lena’s story.
. . . .Yes, on my first visit to Chicago, I had to take a picture for my dream board (if you build it they will come).
Ate grits at Wishbone (melt in your mouth biscuits). Thanks to friend Eve’s (Bite by Eve—Chicagoans check out her homemade rolls, bitebyeve@gmail.com) quick tour, I saw snow piled high around a very gray Lake Michigan. New friend, Jerome, filled his place to capacity . . . the charming Cynda Williams 
read the visit to the psychic (starting on p. 74) and brought that old man Vernon Withers to life. I’ve always loved her final scene in “Mo’ Better Blues,” when Cynda’s character sings “Harlem Blues.” She’s delightful.
March is already moving at a different pace, but will be just as interesting. This time the Yellow Brick road will put me face-to-face with Bay Area readers. I’m ready, are you?
Tags: Atlanta, Bay Area, Chicago, LA, reading, snow, Travel, Washington DC
Posted in Travel, readings | 1 Comment »
Hooray! Hooray! Today is my day.
Searching for Tina Turner officially hits bookstores today. Kind of anti-climatic? Not! I’ve already been in one store and seen the poster and my book, my book, on the shelf next to authors more famous (hope that rubs off!) than me. But today is the official day. Today is the day my publicist sent out a press release. Today is the day I say, I did it, all day long.
Most, in our society, gauge success by money. This journey of writing has taught me that success is measured, often with “green,” but also in the joy of small moments where our big and little dreams come true.
I never thought that way before. Well, not that I didn’t, more that I didn’t focus on them—those minute successes. How many times do we ignore little successes and victories? A lot. Sometimes we celebrate them for others, but most of us forget to celebrate them for ourselves. I’m not talking birthdays, anniversaries and the like. I’m talking moments.
When my son was about 7 or 8, he was on a T-ball team. He couldn’t hit the ball, or if he did, it dribbled off the T and onto the ground in front of him. When, for some crazy reason we moved him over to regular softball, it was even tougher for him to hit a pitch. Every time he came to bat, my stomach knotted. I crossed my fingers; I prayed. I see him now, in my mind’s eye, dressed in his uniform, the bulky helmet on his head, the resigned look on his face as he walked up to the plate. He struck out every time. But I remember, too, the look on his face that day his bat connected to ball. He was so startled, that he stood at home plate and had to be told to run to first base! That was success for him. That dream come true.
We have successes every day of our lives: snagging a parking space right in front of the place we’re headed to, the smile from a stranger because s/he thinks we look good, getting to the bank just as it closes and the security guard lets you in, making it home before a big storm, eating without spilling food on our clothes, paying monthly bills and having money left over in the bank. Yep! That’s success.
The process, the whole journey of publishing has taught me that success exists in each step along the way: pulling myself together to follow my passion, writing the novel, finding a supportive writing group, pushing through even when it hurt, finishing the novel, submitting the novel, getting an agent, getting a publisher, my editor’s stamp of approval, finishing my edits in time, holding an Advanced Reading Copy in my hands, being Essence’s January 2010 book pic, Black Expressions Book Club choosing me as their “Star on the Rise,” my eight-seven-year-old mother reading my book–the first I’ve seen her read in my life, her telling me that my father would have been proud. Each one of those minutes is a success.
But the day I walked into a local bookstore and saw MY book on the shelf—ahhh, that was a personal success beyond words. So, just like I predicted, I cried in the store.
Today is the official “drop” date for Searching for Tina Turner. Today is the day when you or I will walk into a store and find my book on the shelf. We will thumb through the pages, read the first paragraph, and (hopefully) buy it. If you only knew; if you only knew. The Universe works in strange ways, but I am a writer and there are many stories in me.
The Universe has already decided on SFTT’s fate. I’m hoping she points me toward success, all kinds of success. Like my son stepping up to the plate, I’m a bit hesitant, but very resigned. I misinterpreted my son’s actions when he made his first hit. I thought that he was standing at home plate, because he was shocked and didn’t know what to do. I think now, looking back on that day, that he was taking the time to revel and enjoy his success, and I’m going to follow the example he gave me all those years ago.
I did it!
I said I was going to write a book . . .
Get it published . . .
Hold it in my hands . . .
See it on a bookstore’s shelf.
I am standing still, reveling in my moment. Thankful. Blessed. Whatever comes after, I can’t control. But this sweet moment, this January 27, 2010 . . . . I am filled with joy.
Tags: musings, success
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(sanitized and prettified) 
and filled with cicadas that sing all day and night long. (Do they ever fall from the trees? Yikes! Do they ever stop?). The trees, the gardens, the brick façades of the townhouses all make you want to stop what you’re doing and just take it all in. 
Thanks for joining in on this fantastic ride!
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