In the end, the risk is always worth it.
Tag: blogger
The Stella Spring Giveaway Starts Today!
Today’s The Day! The Stella Spring Giveaway is Under Way!
But quickly, let’s review:
The Stella Spring Giveaway includes paperback signed copies of all 3 books in The Stella Trilogy PLUS matching Bookmarks. The Stella Trilogy is a 3 Part Standalone Series about one woman and her family’s struggle for identity and freedom. By standalone, I mean it was written to be read in any order as a standalone novella. Short, sweet, and to the point, start at Book Three and work your way down to Book One. Or, read in chronological order, you decide! Already have this series? Win it for someone else! Have teens? This Historical, Young Adult Series is perfect for getting their summer reading list off to a great start.
So now that we know what The Stella Trilogy Spring Giveaway is, I have a surprise. I told you we were starting this exciting Spring Giveaway and that there will be 3 winners. What I didn’t tell you is that I have thrown in another prize!
2nd and 3rd Place winners will receive The Stella Trilogy with matching bookmarks, as promised. BUT the first place winner will receive an extra gift!
$25 Amazon Gift Card
- Gift Card is nested inside a specialty gift box!
- Gift Card has no expiration date!
- Gift Card is redeemable towards millions of items store-wide at Amazon.com!
Spread The Word
Don’t be shy! Share This Link on your blog or across your social media pages. Let your friends know of this unique opportunity to win. All that is required is their email address! Each contestant can only enter once. BUT extra entries can be unlocked!
(If you have eBook versions, this is the perfect opportunity to get this series in paperback, signed and with my special seal!)
You can enter the contest HERE.
The contest begins Today! April 12, 2016 and ends Tuesday, April 26, 2016 so there’s plenty of time to enter: ENTER HERE
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*See What The Readers Are Saying!*
Kathryn Reed on Between Slavery and Freedom (Stella, Book 1)
“Yecheilyah Ysrayl takes us on a colorful and thought provoking journey through the eyes of a mulatto slave woman Stella. Generations later, Stella’s descendant Cynthia May has no idea of Stella’s life as a slave, nor the true identity of their bloodline. Since Cynthia is a racist she is in for a rude awakening. Stella is reminiscent of a wonderfully written slave narrative, a story of history and pain, it is a brilliant opener of the Stella series.”
Colleen Chesebro on Beyond The Colored Line (Stella, Book 2)
“By the time the Great Depression eases, Stella and her family move to segregated Chicago, where life is not much better. Aunt Sara, a school teacher, struggles to wait for the school district to pay her. Sara has made the step into white society by dating an affluent doctor and encourages Stella to do the same. After a discussion with Aunt Sara, Stella decides to pass for white. Sidney McNair is born and enters a white society where she had the freedom to go where she chooses and to buy whatever she likes. Stella has crossed the colored line.
”Christa Wojo. on The Road to Freedom (Stella, Book 3)
“The Road to Freedom – Joseph’s Story is something of a prequel to Beyond the Colored Line, and Stella’s son tells us about his own journey through turbulent times when South fights hard and dirty to stay segregated. Joseph and a group of his young, impassioned friends want to do something about it but don’t know exactly what. Like the first book, Ysrayl works her magic of putting the reader into her characters’ minds to witness history through their emotions and perspectives. At one point in the story, the friends are trapped in their vehicle as it’s mobbed by a pack of violent racists. My heart was literally pounding at this point. I was horrified that anyone had to experience such ugly cruelty.”
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Consequence of a Lonely Heart
The thought arose midnight
somewhere between
the witching hours of deception
and the sparkling thighs
that rubbed away
what was left
of her common sense.
Ignoring the blanket stretch of solitude
reaching for the sweat
dripping from the threads of her hands
the thirst of her shadow
descending from the heavens like an angel
waiting for her to open herself up
so that the incarceration of her heart
can be weighed against the gold of her patience
she could not have been less wise
than to let deception
play its numbers on her skin
like melting pearls
sliding down the creases of a well-worn backbone
that she traded in for a brief moment
of Black Orchard or Issey Miyake cologne
though neither could wash away the shame
to which lust had gifted her thoughts
and the rose petals aligning the secret bath
to which she has mixed in her cup of distorted priorities
only smelled of death
in becoming another
she failed
to become herself
Throwback Thursday Jam – Love, by Musiq Soul Child
He better sing this song yall……..lol
#WQWWC: Writers Quote Wednesday– James Baldwin
Welcome back to another episode of Writer’s Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge. As you may notice, I have decided to go back to the traditional WQW for now. You can imagine my excitement when Colleen stated this was OK. If you can’t imagine it, below is my happy dance:
OK, to the point.
My inspiration today comes from James Baldwin:
“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.”
― James Baldwin
I love Baldwin’s last line “Vomit the anguish Up”. At first I thought about struggle literally but then I thought about writing and combining the two. This got me thinking about the struggle of writing and struggles incorporated into writing. This lead me to Baldwin’s quote. It still has me pondering, but what I got out of it for now is how each artist, writer in this sense, have a responsibility to tell the truth and in so doing have the courage to speak whatever struggle that truth reveals. This struggle can be historical, personal, or emotional but at some point a writer has to dig deep. I think this is because good writing is about the struggle and how said struggle has been survived. It could be the villain’s survival, the heroes survival, or the writer him / herself. Why? Well, that’s real life. Struggle makes people strong. Where is the overcoming if not for the struggle?
About the Author (Click Here For Source)
“James Baldwin — the grandson of a slave — was born in Harlem in 1924. The oldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious stepfather. As a child, he cast about for a way to escape his circumstances. As he recalls, “I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.” By the time he was fourteen, Baldwin was spending much of his time in libraries and had found his passion for writing.
During this early part of his life, he followed in his stepfather’s footsteps and became a preacher. Of those teen years, Baldwin recalled, “Those three years in the pulpit – I didn’t realize it then – that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.” Many have noted the strong influence of the language of the church, the language of the Bible, on Baldwin’s style: its cadences and tone. Eager to move on, Baldwin knew that if he left the pulpit he must also leave home, so at eighteen he took a job working for the New Jersey railroad.
After working for a short while with the railroad, Baldwin moved to Greenwich Village, where he worked for a number of years as a freelance writer, working primarily on book reviews. He caught the attention of the well-known novelist, Richard Wright – and though Baldwin had not yet finished a novel, Wright helped him secure a grant with which he could support himself as a writer. In 1948, at age 24, Baldwin left for Paris, where he hoped to find enough distance from the American society he grew up in to write about it.
After writing a number of pieces for various magazines, Baldwin went to a small village in Switzerland to finish his first novel. Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. The passion and depth with which he described the struggles of black Americans were unlike anything that had been written. Though not instantly recognized as such, Go Tell It on the Mountain has long been considered an American classic.”
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That’s it for me. I hope you enjoyed this weeks Writer’s Quote Wednesday Segment. Until next week, yall be great.
Writing Addiction: Part 2
Are YOU addicted to writing?
• Symptom #2: Writers Block Frightens you
As it happens, you’re actually thinking about writing. Your tummy feels nervous with excitement and your thoughts scatter ideas across your mind like Webster’s online dictionary. Now, everything is scatter brains and racing blood and completely unorganized but you do know that something’s there. Or at least you think you know. And then it happens. A title. A headline. A poem. A short story. A blog post. Wait? Which is it? You don’t know! Nonetheless, a theme, a topic, a spark of interest squeezes through the ziggly lines in your mind and makes it to the front. Your heart is beating loudly as you scramble for pieces of paper and an ink pen before throwing open the laptop. Yes, home sweet home! There they are: the letters you’ve been looking for! Here you are. You pick up that pen and notepad, that cell phone, that tablet, you wait patiently at the keyboard of the laptop. This is all so exciting! And then it happens. Silence. Nothing comes.
Not a word. You wait. And you continue to wait for an explanation. You stare angrily at the page and beat your fingers against the keys. You search for those ideas over and over again to try to convince yourself you have something. You close your eyes tight praying for a line, just a line! But nothing comes. And then alas, you close the program, shut down the computer, or simply throw the notebook at the wall. Yes, the whole thing. You crumble the paper into a ball, you throw that too before wiping away the tears. No, you’re not crying, you’ve just been at the computer too long and your eyes are all watery and tired as if you’ve done some work. That angers you. You got nothing done and you go to bed angry. This is when writers block has truly set in. Your husband / wife comes in, “Bae, what’s wrong?” You throw them a scowl. “What?” You snap back with attitude. “How dare he / she ask me what’s wrong!” You are out of control. Frightened. Scared. You need air. A relief. A pill. Do they have prescriptions for this?
The Message
Social Media has become a glossed-over, cloudy place. It is filled with fake personas and instant celebrities. People post pictures of their cash and checks on Instagram, for instance, and weigh their worth against the backdrop of numbers and likes. Instead of focusing on the message, we have focused instead on the screen and have invested not in the voice but in the marketing and promotional schemes of so-called professionals who get rich off the backs of those of us who are too lazy to be ourselves.
Research is all fine and good, but what it boils down to is a balance between research, advice, and your overall message, and the people who care about what you have to say. If you rely too much on research and professional input, you may just miss the message.
People hear the word “message” and think religion or politics. This is not always so. If you have a voice, which we all do, then you have a message. We can define a message as:
“A communication containing some information, news, advice, request, or the like, sent by messenger, telephone, email, or other means.”
When someone writes a book, they are sending a message out into the world. It doesn’t really matter what the book is about; every book has a message because every book has a voice. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the online aspect of writing that we forget how important the message is. It is not the marketing plans that will bring readers to you. At least not in the beginning. In the beginning, it’s not a strategy, it’s truth. It’s your message. It’s your voice. Do you have one?
“Focus on what makes you different, what makes you unique. Being true to yourself is a cliche for a reason — it works. People don’t want to connect with something fake. They want to feel understood and heard, and the only way you do that is honestly and authentically. The last thing you want is to showcase to the world a shadow of your true self.” – Curiouser Editor
What do you want to say to the world? Why does it matter? Why is it different than what the previous person has already said? The sky is blue. Why is the sky blue? Why is it important for us to know that the sky is blue? Is the sky blue?
People who agree with you will flock to you because you sing in a key similar to their own. They are the people who actually want to read your books and who will, in turn, support your work. The only way to do this, as Curiouser Editing has stated, is to showcase your real self in your writing, but not just in your writing, in your overall social media presence in general.
The PBS Blog 