TWENTY YEARS in the BUSINESS: WHAT AN AMAZING ADVENTURE! We start with gifts. Merit comes from what we make of them. Jean Toomer, Novelist   I am celebrating twenty incredible years as a professional freelance writer and author! While I savor this awesome milestone, I am also spe

GOIN’ to SEE the MOVIE? READ the NOVEL FIRST…   For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness. Sonny’s Blues [1948

  THE SEARCH for PASSION: A SOLITARY JOURNEY of INTENTION If you don’t know what your passion is, realize that one reason for your existence on earth is to find it. What I Know for Sure [September 2001] Oprah Winfrey Another New Year has debuted reemphasizing the inevitability of

  GOD BLESS AMERICA? The INTERSECTION of IMMIGRATION, RACE, and REALITY   God bless America Land that I love Stand beside her And guide her Through the night with the light from above From the mountains To the prairies To the oceans White with foam God bless America My home

  MORSELS, TASTES, and TIDBITS (Featuring Excerpts from Unfinished Business…) Tell me, finally, what is a man. What is a woman. Aren’t we lovers first, spirits sharing an uncharted space, a space our stories tell, a space chanted, written upon again and again, yet one story never

BIRTH of a NARRATIVE I continue to create because writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. Alice Childress Margo, the hypersensitive, obtuse, and decidedly obnoxious antagonist of Unfinished Business: A Celebration of Black Life,

COMMITMENT: CHANCE, CHOICE, or the ROAD not TAKEN You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt   I’m in a committed relationship! I’ve

MY THIRD ACT  I need to keep thinking and analyzing, and have that transformed onto a piece of paper. Besides, if we as African American women don’t write our own books, then other folks will continue to define us. Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole January 2nd, 2017  Greetings:  Happy New Yea

AND STILL I WRITE!  You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt This edition of my quarterly electronic newsletter holds the distinction of bein