Bumpy and Me

I can remember when the name Bumpy Johnson first meant anything to me. I was ten years old, and still upset that my family moved from Harlem to the Bronx the year before. I found it hard to make friends and would often convince my mother to let me to take the number 2 train to Harlem to visit my pals from the old neighborhood. On this particular bright sunny day in July 1968, and I happily trotted up the subway stairs, grasping the two shiny quarters – my weekly allowance which I planned on using to buy a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake at the Rexall Drugstore on the corner of 125^th Street and Lenox Avenue.

            As soon as I walked up the steps from the station I could see something was going on. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, the shoe repair store, which doubled as the neighborhood gambling spot, was closed. There were no shiny –faced Nation of Islam brothers hawking copies of Muhammad Speaks on the corner. Missing too were the winos who usually sprawled on the steps of brownstones, drinking brown-bag wrapped pints of Wild Irish Rose and Swiss Up. Something was up, and it had to be something big. A large group of people was milling through the streets – not a crowd or a mob, like I had seen during the Harlem riots just months before, but something gentler.  It seemed like a stream of swaying black faces, all pointing in one direction – east toward Central Park.

I pulled on the sweaty arm of one woman to ask her what was going on, but she looked down at me haughtily – readjusted her scruffy brown mink stole around her shoulders with one gloved hand, and gave me a slight push away from her with the other. Undaunted, and still curious, I tapped on the shoulder of a tall freckled teenage boy, dressed in his dark blue suit and a darker blue tie – obviously his Sunday best. “What’s everyone standing around for?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”

            On any other occasion I’m sure the teenager would have shoved me away, too, but he was excited, and he seemed to want to share his scandalous knowledge.

“Bumpy’s funeral!” he answered me in a loud whisper, as if we really were in church, and not in the middle of Lenox Avenue. 

What Is A Query Letter . . . And How Do Write One?

A query letter is a short letter (preferably one-page!) a writer sends to a literary agent or a book/magazine publisher. The purpose is to inform the agent/publisher about their manuscript in order to obtain representation (in the case of an agent) or publication of their writing (in case of a publisher.)

The most important thing to remember when sending out a query letter IS THAT IT is THE FIRST SAMPLE OF WRITING THE RECIVER WILL SEE!!! Therefore, it must be perfect. If you send out a one page letter with errors, the receiver will rightfully assume that your manuscript will be riddled with errors. Please believe me, no matter how tantalizing your book might be, no one wants to be bothered reading it knowing you don’t know how to write.

And, yes, if you send out a query letter with errors the assumption will be that you don’t know how to write. Or, that you don’t care enough about your writing to proofread it before sending it out – and that’s just as bad.

You want to immediately hook the reader of your query letter, so make sure you open with a zinger. Many people open with the “My name is ____ and I am writing to request representation for my manuscript . . .” but I suggest you make that sentence the opening of your second or third paragraph, and instead open up by telling what your book is about. AND MAKE IT INTERESTING.

Don’t go off, saying you’ve written the next New York Times Best Seller. Of course you have. And so has every other aspiring author who’s written the agent that day. Just get down to the nitty-gritty of what the book is about. One or two paragraphs should be enough.

Use the next paragraph to introduce yourself. Don’t only give your name, but also let the agent know a little about you. And while witty if fine, cutesy is not. Act like the professional you want yourself perceived to be.

In the next paragraph let the agent know why you decided to write this particular book, and give the manuscript length – use a word count, not the number of pages. Also, compare your manuscript to already published books so the agent can get a feel for how best the book might be marketed.

And in the very last paragraph, give your contact information – including telephone number and email address – and let the agent know you’d like to send them the full manuscript of the first few chapters, if they’d prefer. If you’re sending the query letter out via snail mail, be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope so the agent can get back to you quickly.

Responses to query letter can take anywhere from two weeks to two months, so I would suggest that you send out more than one query letter at a time rather than wait months for one only to find you’ve been rejected.

I will be including a sample query letter in a follow-up post so you can get a clearer idea of what one should look like.

Good luck you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Book Promotion for An Angry Ass Black Woman 2

So, okay . . . I've been giving out postcards like crazy, but what more should I be doing to let people know that my new book, An Angry Ass Black Woman, will be released on October 2nd?

Yes, that's right . . . October 2nd. Some people may think it's too early to get the promotional machine in gear, but I SO beg to differ.

Anyway, I'm now getting together my media list. I'm listing all of the newspapers, magazines, television, and radio media outlets I hope to use for promotion and doing my research on them. Many people think that if they want to get on a particular radio show they should contact the deejay or talk-show host, when actually it's the producer of the show whom you need to contact for bookings. The same with television shows. How do you find out the name of the producer? Easy. You just call up the station and you ask the receptionist, and she'll also likely give you a direct number to reach that producer.

For magazines and newspapers, I have to decide which ones I would hit up for a feature article, and which ones I would hit up for a book review. Ocassionally you can get both, and you should always try, but if you have to choose, know which one ahead of time you'd prefer. And remember, if you're going to be doing a signing in the city of that magazine or newspaper, make sure they put in the story (feature or review) the place and time of the signing.


Montly magazines have a lead time of 3-4 months, so you want to get your material to them as quickly as possible. Make sure you get them a galley -- or advance reading copy -- of your book, and include a press kit if possible, but if not . . . at least a press kit.

It's June 21st, and I already have my media list together. Four months ahead of time. And I've send my galleys out with a press release to the monthly magazines. Cross your finger for me that they'll do a feature or a review!

And I hope they'll also do it for you!

Karen

check out an excerpt from my upcoming book, An Angry-Ass Black Woman at www.anangryassblackwoman.com

An Accidental Affair By Eric Jerome Dickey Dutton. 396 pp. $26.95

Reviewed by Karen E. Quiñones Miller for The Philadelphia Inquirer

James Thicke is rich. James Thicke is a successful screenwriter. James Thicke is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, Hollywood star Regina Baptiste. And she just happens to be in the process of filming Thicke's latest flick to hit the silver screen alongside Johnny Bergs (also known as Johnny Handsome), one of the hottest actors in the business.

Then an anonymous person posts one of the scenes from the movie on YouTube.
A love scene.
A love scene that obviously has nothing to do with acting.
Johnny Handsome is actually — as in flesh-to-flesh — entwined with Regina Baptiste on camera.
The expression on her face, and the moans escaping from her throat, are just as real as the sex, and let the viewer know that she is undeniably loving every shameless moment — no acting required. And the realness of the moment was apparent to anyone. As the scene ends, the film crew can be heard giving a loud round of applause. And when Thicke sees it, he explodes.
Though master of the written word, Thicke is a man of few words when it comes to dealing with his own real-life situations. His response to this very public betrayal is to get into his quarter-of-a-million-dollar car, drive down Sunset Boulevard, practically run Johnny Handsome off the road, then pull him out of his car and beat him in the middle of oncoming traffic until the movie star is nearly unconscious. And handsome no more.
The next thing on Thicke's agenda is to change his marital status from married man to widower. With a .38 on the passenger's side of his Maybach, he takes off to find Regina Baptiste.
An Accidental Affair is the latest novel by New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, a prolific writer whose works include 2008's Pleasure and 2009's Tempted by Trouble.
Originally from Memphis, Dickey moved to Los Angeles after college in order to pursue a career in engineering, and worked in the aerospace industry before catching the showbiz bug and starting a stand-up comedy act. Though his writing career started with his comedy skits, he soon began to branch out, eventually writing short stories and then novels.
Dickey has managed to avoid the pigeonholing that plagues so many authors' careers; his 18 novels include romance, detective stories, erotica, and suspense thrillers, and his graphic novel Storm, based on a Marvel Comics character, even won a 2007 Glyph Comics Award.
Dickey's writing has never been better, and readers will find themselves sucked into his latest book from the very first page — which just happens to be a copy of an MSNBC.com news item detailing information about the Baptiste/Bergs sex tape making its way around the Internet.
Unable to immediately find his wife, Thicke opts to rent an apartment in a seedy section of Los Angles rather than return to his Hollywood mansion, which is surrounded by reporters. He leases the apartment under a fake name, but his problems mount as he hides out.
For one thing, Johnny Bergs' family, which just happens to be involved in organized crime, is now after him. Then there's Regina's ex-husband, who is trying to blackmail him. And the zany characters who live in the apartment complex and complicate his life. There's the married sexpot down the hall, who can't wait to get the newest tenant in bed. The older man shacking up with a youthful woman who, he rightfully suspects, has the hots for Thicke. And another more mature woman to whom Thicke finds himself attracted. In addition there are the self-recriminations about the woman he gave up for Baptiste.
But in the midst of dodging thugs, bullets, women, and regrets, Thicke gets an unexpected visitor. His wife.
If you're looking for a book filled with drama and thrills, An Accidental Affair certainly fits the bill: adultery, beat-downs, extortion, lies, sexcapades, and even murder are all there. And the writing is superb; the characters are well-developed and the dialogue is on-point. I would even go so far as to say this is one of the best written of Dickey's many books.
An Accidental Affair is a book that all Dickey fans should read, but even if you've never heard of Dickey, grab this book. You won't regret being introduced to a prolific writer whose talents evolve with every new volume.

An Accidental Affair on Amazon

Book Promotion for An Angry Ass Black Woman

It's June 22nd . . . time for me to start getting my promotion game in gear for my new book, An Angry Ass Black Woman. I would advise everyone to start really pushing their book as soon as as they get a jpeg for the book cover. And the first thing step should be getting postcards.

I ordered 500 postcards on June 4th, and was out by June 11th. I attended the Go On Girl! Book Club annual conference, stopped by a literary panel -- moderated by Vanessa Irvin Morris, and featured Nakea Murray as one of the panelists -- at the Celebration of Black Writers Conference, and attended the Black Pack Party hosted by Troy Johnson, Linda Duggins, and Ron Kavanaugh. So, I ordered another 500 postcards and went through those in about two weeks. I'm picking up another 1,000 this weekend.

Let me give you all a tip . . . postcards are an author's best friend! I usually order 5,000 at a time, although I'm doing small numbers right now for a reason I'll explain later. Another tip: Don't bother putting your picture on the postcards. No one cares what the author looks like. And it's not likely that your picture will be in the bookstores when people go browsing looking for books.

One side of the postcards should feature your book cover. You can also add a banner announcing the release date of the book if it's not out yet - as is the case of An Angry Ass Black Woman. On the other side of the postcard should be: The book title, the author, ISBN, the publisher, the synopsis, and someplace for the reader to go for more information i.e. your website or Facebook page, and contact info (I use my twitter and facebook page)

I'm showing an example here. My actual postcards have a white background on the back, but I "yellowed" it here so that it would show up. Also, I've lost some of the formatting while attempting to upload it to this blog, but my title is usually centered, bolded, and underlined.

What do I do with the postcards? Well, if I know someone is having a book signing I'll stop by and ask if they'd put one of my postcards in all of the books they sell.

I get to conferences early, and place a postcard in all the empty seats so that in order for someone to sit down they have to pick up my postcard.

When I have to go out to take care of business I make it a point to go to the restrooms, on each floor, and place a card in each stall.

I give them out to the toll booth clerk whenever I go through a toll.

I go up to people reading books and offer them information on a new book about to be released.

I go to bookstores, and give people a card on their way out.

Yep, I do all that and more . . . because I want to be selling some books!

Hope

Book Review - Passing Love by Jacqueline E. Luckett

Passing Love By Jacqueline E. Luckett
Grand Central Publishing. 320 pp. $14.99 paperback
Reviewed by Karen E. Quinones Miller for The Philadelphia Inquirer

 
Going to Paris was a dream Nicole-Marie Handy had cherished all her life — or at least since age 9, when she’d secretly opened the cedar trunk in her parents’ bedroom and discovered an old French dictionary, along with other keepsakes from her father’s stint in World War II. Now, at 56, she’s decided to make the dream come true.
Even though Tamara, the friend whom she’d wanted to accompany her, has died.

Even though the man with whom she’d been in love for years has finally proposed.
Even though she’s scared to death.
One of the last requests that Tamara made as she lay dying of pancreatic cancer was that Nicole go on with their travel plans without her. And while it was true that Clint did finally say he wanted to marry her, he hadn’t said what he planned to do about his present wife. As for her fear of traveling to a foreign country by herself?,?it was nothing compared to her fear of eventually regretting — at the end of her life — that she’d never pursued her dream.
Nicole’s father, Squire, has Alzheimer’s disease, and her mother, Malvina, is old and tired and doesn’t want her only daughter traveling to a foreign country. But Nicole has gotten her courage up, and refuses to change her mind.
And so it is that Nicole finds herself in Paris; as did RubyMae, more than 60 years earlier.
RubyMae was a young girl who hailed from pre-civil rights Mississippi and wanted more than what her little town had to offer. Light enough to pass for white, she bristled more than most at the racism so rampant in many parts of the South. When strangers met her, they treated her well, but when they learned her ethnicity, they treated her horribly. Those first moments before new acquaintances heard about her African ancestry, moments when she knew what it was like to be treated as human, made the subsequent mistreatment all the more hurtful.
Sneaking out of her parents’ home in the middle of the night to go to a juke joint with one of her mother’s boarders, she met Arnett Dupree, a sexy saxophonist, and fell in love with him, his music and his stories of Gay Paris. Though much older than RubyMae, Arnett was also smitten, and the two eventually ran off together, with Paris as their ultimate destination.

Nicole and RubyMae are African American women from two different generations, who have had vastly different existences — but their sojourn in the City of Light changes both lives in ways that neither could ever have imagined, and connects them in a way neither will ever be able to ignore.
Passing Love is the second novel by Jacqueline E. Luckett, a writer from Oakland, Calif. Her first book, Searching for Tina Turner, was published last year. The pacing of the book is leisurely, and you feel as if you’re taking a long, unhurried trip to France. The story moves back and forth in time between modern-day Paris and the Paris of the 1950s, with its abundance of American expatriates and rich jazz scene.

Passing Love on Amazon