The 2020 Lit Mag Literary Magazine for Poets is on its way out! We are proud to feature last year’s Grand Prize Winner Chanelle Barnes on the cover. Volume 2, Edition 2, is scheduled to print Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
This year’s magazine features the winners of “Yecheilyah’s Annual Poetry Contest 2019”: Chanelle Barnes, BuddahDesmond, Jahkazia (Jah-kay-asia) Richardson (our 2018 Champion), Kiyana Blount, and Dondi A Springer. The mag also features the poems of select poets who participated last year.
How can you be featured in the Lit Mag Magazine? Be sure to participate in my annual poetry contests! Rules and guidelines for the 2020 competition to be announced.
Be sure to support this contest by picking up your copy of LitMag 2019 by clicking on the link below. Your contribution helps us to keep this contest going by keeping the entry fee-free or low-cost for participants, allows us to print the magazine featuring the winners, and of course, offers some dope prizes to contestants! Link below:
These books may still show up but they will be completely removed (out of print) soon. They will be relaunched with new edits and covers.
The Stella Trilogy put me on in more ways than one. It was the first time I got reviews on amazon for my books (I knew nothing about amazon when I started) and the Stella Trilogy book signing made me enough money to pay my bills and then some. It was the first time I saw real money from my writing and it was all from selling paperbacks (I always sell more paperbacks than ebooks. Unconventional for some, but this is how it has been for me). I also won my first award, an appreciation award given to me by my readers.
The Stella Trilogy changed lives.
The Stella Trilogy changed minds.
The Stella Trilogy is how I widened my readership.
The Stella Trilogy helped me to level up and step outside of the box.
The Stella Trilogy was groundbreaking for me and it is precisely for this reason that I am pulling her from Amazon and my website… for further editing.
The books are undergoing makeovers, a fresh edit, and new covers. For those of you who’ve read it, you know the books are short and as my #1 priority outside of the coming poetry book and Lit Mag Magazine; I hope to have them back up by the end of this year. I am not slacking on this. Stella made a big impact, and she needs to be back up soon.
The year is 1864 in Louisiana and the story slips back in time introducing Grandma Stella’s Great grandmother, Stella Mae, age nineteen years. Stella Mae begins her story with a memory of how as a child she was forced to use the facilities designated for “niggras only.” Young Stella Mae tries to reason out why her Mama can’t walk into the front door of the general store and why they can’t use the restroom everyone else uses. Even at a young age, Stella Mae could sense the inequality in her existence. – Colleen Chesebro
I have come a long way since 2015 when the first Stella book released. As a historical series it’s important to me that the book is as superior as I can afford to make it. Now that I have my foot into the schools, I hope to one day have the series taught as part of the curriculum. I have so much hope for these books and so many visions for what they can become.
The sky is not the limit. There are no limits.
I was different. It might give you a slow start but being different is gonna carry you a long way.” – Master P
I am not a fan of most rap music and never was. I like a few old school tracks from Talib Kweli and Common, but I’ve never really been into rap marketed to my age group (although I danced to it in my teens at parties lol). I was always an R&B type of person. I still remember the days my sisters and cousins used to record music videos on VHS and fall asleep watching them. We also recorded songs from the radio on cassette tapes so we can listen to it repeatedly. Despite not being a fan of the music, I admire Percy Miller aka Master P more than any other rapper. I admire him because I think people underestimate him which is precisely why I think he does so well in his business endeavors. I admire him for his commitment to being Independent and using his faith as a catalyst to propel him forward.
Indie Authors, Don’t Be Afraid to Revise Your Backlist
With great authority comes greater responsibility. As we grow and mature in our understanding of this publishing thing, more will be required of us. I know that a poorly edited book could damage my reputation not only as a writer with influence for excellence but also as a teacher and as a lecturer.
I published the first book I ever sold in 2010 and I knew nothing. The book was not edited and had never been available on Amazon. This taught me two lessons:
Begin where you are. Take the first step “even if you can’t see the whole staircase” (MLK).
After you have taken the first step and put yourself out there, make changes as you see them. If your first book was poorly edited, take it down and get it edited. You didn’t know better at first and that’s okay. But then, once you know better, do better. Do the best you can, until you know better, to quote Maya Angelou. “Then when you know better, do better.”
Do not think for a second that we are not responsible for the knowledge we have. Do not think we are not responsible for changing our behavior as we learn and grow. The quality of the books we put out shows readers what we think of ourselves and also what we think of them. Quality must always supersede quantity. I temporarily removed these books because the quality of the work I put out is more important to me than feeding my own ego of having “published x amount of books.”
It was exciting at first to publish book after book. Like anything we do for the first time it was fresh. As I have grown and as I grow, I value more where these books are going and how they are influencing the world much more than how many of them there are.
Now, for my Stella fans:
I am not changing the core of the story. I am editing the books for better readability and understanding. I am also changing the covers so all the books in the series look the same.
About.
Stella is a work of Historical Fiction and is distinctive in its focus on one woman’s road to self-discovery, against the backdrop of the African American fight for justice, racial equality, and freedom.
The 3-Part series focuses on the history of one family in their struggle for racial identity. Discover in this Trilogy how three individuals living in separate time periods strive to overcome the same struggle, carefully knit together by one blood.
Between Slavery and Freedom (1)
We deal with enslavement and freedom both physically and psychologically.
Beyond the Colored Line (2)
We deal with passing, self-love, and racial identity. If you were a Black woman living in the Jim Crow era and light enough to pass for white, would you?
The Road to Freedom (3)
We deal with the Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Rides, and the impact our choices make on the next generation.
Popular Complaint: “My family don’t support my writing.”🤷🏾♀️
Umm. How can I put this, your family and friends will be the least supportive of your writing (as is the case for most businesses). That’s not a bad thing entirely because they are not really your targeted audience.
New Writer: *Smacks lips, rolls eyes.* “Okay, so what that mean?” 🙄
It means you have to find those people who are most likely to read the kinds of books you write and often, they are not family members. This specific group of people is called a targeted audience. You are not targeting everyone but focusing on one specific kind of reader. Here’s an example from words from Tyler Perry:
“I clearly believe that I’m ignored in Hollywood for sure and that’s fine. I get it. My audience and the stories that I tell are African American stories specific to a certain audience, specific to a certain group of people that I know that I grew up with and we speak a language.” – Tyler Perry
Say what you want about Perry but he has a keen understanding of his Target Audience. That’s what he is speaking of here. A specific group of people who his films/movies/TV shows are specifically for. That’s why his movies are all along the same lines in the theme. We can see that Tyler Perry makes the same movies because he is targeting a specific audience.
Personally, I am not much of a Tyler Perry fan. There are only a few of his movies I like but that’s not the point.
We can agree or disagree with his movies, but he is an excellent example of someone with knowledge of his Target Market.
When you are targeting a specific group, you are not trying to reach everyone or garner everyone’s support. Your purpose is to appeal to that specific group.
(Feel like I’m saying “specific” a lot but that’s kinda important).
How many people at Michelle Obama’s book signing were related to her?
New Writer: “What? But those was her fans tho.” 🧐
And you have fans too if you look beyond the praise of family members who will probably never buy.
New Writer: “So you saying my mama can’t buy my book?” 💁🏾♀️
Your mom will probably buy your book first, but she’s not the seventeen-year-old black boy with peer pressure issues you wrote it for is she?
New Writer: “I mean naw but…”🤨
…and she’s probably not gonna leave a book review on Amazon, follow you on Goodreads, Twitter, Instagram, or subscribe to your email list and if she does, she probably won’t remember to read it.
New Writer: *smacks lips* “Dang why you gotta be all negative for?” 😒
Because the truth will set a lot of writers free from unrealistic expectations about what it means to be an author.
Loyal family/relatives may buy a book or two and they may be there to cheer you on, lift you, and support you in various ways. Families are good at heaping praises.
They love to like your posts, root you on and tell you repeatedly how they intend to buy your book and how proud they are of you. This is helpful from an encouraging point of view and it feeds the ego, but praise doesn’t sell books. How many of these people follow up? Every year the same family member asks, “where can I buy yo book?” But they never buy.
It is those non-relative readers who your book is specifically written for who will buy with consistency and read your every release, becoming avid readers and fans.
(…and I hate to use the word “fan,” by the way. *Shudders* Be a fanatic for no one.)
👉🏾How many of your genetic relatives have bought your book?
New Writer: “Lemme see, my mama got one, my cousin, boo boo nem, lil Chris…”
So what, all five of them..?
New Writer: “Oh, so you being funny?”🤔
No. I’m being real. Put it this way, would a company whose buyers don’t watch TV, make a commercial to push their product?
New Writer: “Naw that’s stupid.”🙄
🤷🏾♀️ So why would authors focus the bulk of their efforts on trying to sell to people who don’t read the books they write?
New Writer: “I guess I see what you saying.”😩
Now, take out some paper. You’re gonna have to write this down.
…wait, what are you doing? Put your phone down this is important. 🤦🏾♀️
New Writer: “Imma type it in my notepad.”
Okay but don’t be on Instagram this is important.
New Writer: I’m not dang. 🤳Go. I’m ready.”
Okay, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you find your readers.
Who are my current readers/Who am I trying to reach? How old are they? What do they like? Where do they hang out?
What’s the #1 thing my readers love/need the most?
What problem does my book solve? What are my readers’ pains/issues/struggles/challenges?
What do readers gain from reading my book? What do I have to offer?
Who would benefit most from reading my book?
What makes my book unique?
My Responses to Common Complaints from New Writers is something new I am adding to this blog based on common writing and publishing questions from new Indie Writers. I thought it would be fun to answer them here in the form of dialogue. You will know the posts by the quotation marks around the complaint to differentiate it from other posts.
Did you like this first post? Do you have a common complaint I should address?
I am stopping through to remind you I am looking for writers interested in submitting articles to this blog for my Black History Fun Fact Friday series. Below is a reminder of the qualifications for submission. Also, notice I have added a deadline to articles for Black History Month. There are four Fridays in February this year and so far we have one article submitted. This means there are only THREE slots left for those of you who want to get in for Black History Month. (This is not a Feb only opportunity, but a weekly one so don’t fret if a Friday in Feb is not open when you submit).
Because of the nature of this series interested writers must be Black/African American (this includes so-called Afro Cuban, Jamaican, Haitian, Cuban, Afro Brazilian, Dominican, etc.).
Must be original work. Do not copy and paste the article from other blogs unless that blog is your own. If you have a Black History article to share that you published to your site you are welcomed to submit it for Black History Fun Facts. I have no problem with that as long as it is your work.
Topics must be relatable to the history of Blacks/African Americans.
Articles must be emailed to me for approval at least one week before publishing. If you email your article on 1/31 for example, I will publish it on 2/7 if there are no needed changes. This series is not exclusive to Black History Month but if you want your articles published in time for February, please have them submitted no later than Monday, January 27, 2020. Writers looking for more exposure will be wise to try for a Feb slot. A Black History Article during Black History Month will naturally attract more readers.
Please send articles in a Word Document, 12p Font, Times New Roman text.
Please do your best to self-edit your work for basic typos/spelling/grammatical errors before submission. Grammarly andProWritingAid are good free self-edit software programs to use.
The BHFFF badge will be included in every post but you are welcomed to create your own image to add as well. Canva is a good program to use to make your own images. Unsplash is good for free images.
This is Black History Fun Fact Friday not Black History Opinions so do your best to submit articles covering accurate historical information. I will vet the submissions to make sure they do. If you have links to sources, please include them.
Please include a photo of yourself, social media handles, websites, or links to books you’ve written on the topic. This will be added to the end of the post as your call to action. This is where you give readers the chance to follow/learn more about you.
Benefits of Guest Blogging:
Increase traffic to your own website/blog
Build Relationships/Online Influence
Build Domain and Search Engine Authority
Capture Wider Audience
Develop Your Authority on a topic
Improve Your Writing
Opens the doors for paid business opportunities
The series is Black Historical so submissions should be articles detailing the history of Blacks in some way. You can talk about The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Enslavement, Civil Rights, Police Brutality, Medical/Educational discrimination, Black Power Movement, Inventors, Black Biblical History, and much more. Tell us about a little Known Black Historical Fact or introduce us to a little-known Black Historical person or place. (For example, I once published a post on Sundown Towns, all-white communities where Blacks were restricted from after Sundown).
Topics can vary as long as they cover Black History (this includes Jamaican, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Caribbean, and Dominican.) Specifically, I am looking to feature full-length articles that inform and educate on some part of Black History at 300+ words or more. (Do not send a book, but make sure your article is at least 300 words. We want it long enough to inform but short enough to keep the reader’s attention.)
Email articles to yecheilyah(at)yecheilyahysrayl(dot)com
Questions? Comment below, use the contact form on the contact page or send me an email.
Martin Luther King Jr. recovers from surgery in bed at New York’s Harlem Hospital on following an operation to remove steel letter opener from his chest after being stabbed by a mentally disturbed woman as he signed books in Harlem. (John Lent/AP)
I am reposting this because February is approaching and we will see a lot of false information attached to Black History memes, same as always.
According to a famous Facebook post, King was not killed during an April 4, 1968, assassination attempt, but survived that shooting and was later “smothered by someone in the hospital.”
Is this true?
Let’s see.
Updated 1/28/2021
It’s Throwback Thursday so let’s go back in time a lil bit.
September 20, 1958
The year is 1958 and we are in Harlem, baby. Dr. King is signing copies of his first book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” at the Blumstein’s Department Store, on 230 West 125th Street.
It’s a nice afternoon and young King is just twenty-nine years old, releasing his first book and feeling good. And we are feeling good too because we are ready to get our copy. The line is long but before we get bored a voice makes us all stop and look in their direction.
“Is this Martin Luther King?” shouts a well-dressed black woman wearing rhinestone glasses and a matching necklace and earrings but carried an ugly brown bag and an even uglier scowl. The woman stepped out of line, causing groans from the people in front of her.
We don’t know this yet, but she is forty-two-year-old Izola Ware Curry, the black daughter of sharecroppers.
King nodded, “Yes, it is.”
“I’ve been looking for you for five years,” says Curry while pulling a letter opener with an ivory handle from her purse, which we don’t really know is a letter opener because we don’t use those anymore.
“Ooh, snap!” We gasp, placing our hands over our mouths. “Why she come so dressed up for if she was trying to kill somebody?”
“What is she doing?” says another one of us.
“Yea, man. Doesn’t she know this is Martin Luther King?”
“He not all that popular yet,” says a young black boy wearing chino pants and a white polo shirt. He put his hand in his pocket when he said it, smiled and then tilted his head like he was better than us. “Ya’ll not from here, are ya?”
Before we could answer, the sound of screams forces our attention back to the direction of the strange woman. She swings the letter opener at King, and sliced his finger then plunges the seven-inch blade into the left side of his chest.
“Oh, my God!” someone screams and just like that, the store is in an uproar. We are all screaming and running as someone apprehends the woman.
We look at King secretly hoping she didn’t get him because we still kinda want our book.
But when we see somebody who looks like our Grandma rush to his side, we know that’s not going to happen.
Dr. King is sitting in this chair all calm and cool like he ain’t just been stabbed. Meanwhile the letter opener’s ivory handle is still protruding just below his collar.
The police arrive. “Don’t sneeze, don’t even speak,” says Officer Al Howard, fearful of the blade’s proximity to King’s heart. Because of how the letter opener hit him, if King had sneezed, he would have died.
So, they move King slowly and carefully and take him to Harlem Hospital, and he undergoes emergency surgery.
Then, we jump in our time machine and head back to 2021 because it’s wild out here in the 50s.
Oct. 3, 1958 King leaves the hospital almost two weeks after the stabbing
The photo at the start of this post is not of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after being shot in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968.
That is a picture of Dr. King ten whole years earlier in 1958 at a New York Hospital after being stabbed at his book signing. He spent almost two weeks in the hospital recovering.
“If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.” – Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” April 3, 1968
I hope this creative backdrop added some perspective. Although I wrote it like a short story, everything I said here is the truth. Izola Curry, really did attack Dr. King at his book signing in Harlem.
Now to the original post…
There are tons of Black History memes circulating on the internet and this number has increased even more due to it being Black History Month. However, many of these memes are not historically accurate. Please be sure to double check your facts before sharing. Otherwise, you are guilty of spreading disinformation.
Black people have contributed to the world so that we don’t have to make stuff up. If you see a meme with a fun fact on it, just open the internet on your phone and type the name or fact into the search bar. You can tell from there if the material is accurate or not. Sometimes it will even come up that the information is an opinion or cannot be verified by any trusted source.
Use not only your phone to log into Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use it to research these things and educate the people right.
Look for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on .gov, .edu, or .org sites and trustworthy blogs. Peer-reviewed means information from a reputable source, information that shows that other professionals have reviewed and deemed it worthy of publication.
Wikipedia is not a credible source alone. Other trusted sources should support anything gained from Wiki.
And on the Monday of MLK day when everyone takes off and celebrates his legacy, remember that he was born on January 15, 1929, not whatever Monday you take off.
Title: Birth Days: Stories of Women Who Turned Difficult Beginnings into Glorious Lives
Author: Carol Massey
Print Length: 157 pages
Publisher: Pure Heart Publishing
Publication Date: November 2019
Language: English
Birth Days is exactly what its subtitle implies; it tells the tales of women who overcame adversity to lead illustrious lives. The author presents us to a number of fictional ladies who go through agonizing birth and parenting problems. Dr. Francine Young gave her child up for adoption, Lulu discovered she was expecting only two months before giving birth, Margaret had an affair with Jackson Jones (who was not her husband), and in 2027 Lulu’s grandson was elected president of Howard University.
These women’s struggles, the men they loved, and the people who supported them on their journeys are all things we have witnessed. (Like Aunt Sis, who served as Mary and Connie’s midwife and caregiver). As each lady faces her beast, readers will be interested to see what happens next. Because so many of the stories take place in the 1930s and 1940s, we can consider them historical. I particularly liked the historical tidbits that discussed how African Americans’ lives differed in the North and South.
The first story, “Two Sisters,” with Connie and Mary, Aunt Sis, and Aunt Ailene, is my favorite. I could see the mother’s sorrow over her difficult pregnancy, the family’s terror following the loss of a previous child, and their worry over Mary’s prognosis. I could understand the father’s agony as he constructed the baby’s coffin out of concern that she would pass away like the others. The home had a Color Purple vibe to it when the father returned home with Clara after renovating it later in the story.
This is not a long book, and the stories of the women and their struggles with maternity fit well within today’s society, where women, their efforts, and their lives are at the forefront. I could easily see upgrading this book to five stars with some adjustments to a few errors that impede the reading flow.
Ratings:
Plot Movement / Strength: 3/5
Entertainment Factor: 3/5
Characterization: 3/5
Authenticity / Believable: 4/5
Thought Provoking: 4/5
Overall: 3.5/5
After retiring from a 30+ year career in health and educational administration, Carol Massey had time to reflect on the people, places and events that influenced and inspired her. She wanted to pay homage to some of the women who guided, nurtured and supported her journey from childhood through college, career and life as a single mother of an African American male child. Carol, a California native, now lives in suburban Atlanta with her rescue pup, Ms. Frances.
You don’t have to wait until January 1st to get started on your 2020 goals. If you want to release/write a book in 2020, you should be planning...now. Actually, you are already behind. Even if you are Self-Publishing, it helps to start early. Notable mainstream authors releasing books in 2020 already have their preorder up. “Planning out your book marketing in advance and adequately preparing for your book’s release is crucial to a successful book launch.” (Sansevieri, 2019) Don’t wait two weeks before release to prepare your audience for your book. Here are some tips:
Put some money aside for your book. Your biggest expense will be editing, then cover design. You will also need the book formatted for e-readers. Don’t wait until the last minute to put something to the side. Invest in your book. Invest in yourself. Save some coins. (Prioritize your expenses! Don’t spend money on the tools you don’t need right now. Business cards and fancy thank you cards can wait. Save your money.)
If you want to start a blog, do it 3-6months before your book releases. Post content relatable to the book and who you are as a person (don’t make your blog all about your book. Talk about other stuff you like.)
Set up your Author Social Media pages and get to work. Talk about the upcoming book, educate, inform, uplift, go live. Use SM for something other than memes and gossip. Social Media is a FREE platform to use to spread the word about your book/business. Don’t sleep on it.
Make sure your website is ready to go. Here’s something the “gurus” won’t tell you: Selling through Amazon is nice, but selling through your own website is better because you get the entire dollar instead of just a percentage. Print on Demand Companies like Amazon’s KDP, Lulu, and Ingram Spark makes it easy to order copies of your book in bulk that you can sell individually through your website. (You can also sell your books in bulk! I’m trying to tell you something…level it up)
Create a landing page with a great giveaway offer or freebie to collect emails for your author email list. A sample of the first few chapters of the new book is a good start. The email list isn’t for everyone, but it’s good to have in case Social Media (blogs included) is no more. You will still have a connection with your audience. Find what works best for you. For instance, the giveaway/freebie thing is a good idea and many people use it, but this strategy didn’t work for me. I get more email sign-ups by having the pop up on this blog than giving away a free chapter of a book. People say pop-ups don’t work but they do for me so don’t let people tell you what will or won’t work for you. I wrote a post on how to set up an email list with Mailchimp here. Also check out 7 Common Sense Reasons You Should Build an Email List.
If your book is up for pre-order on Amazon, make sure you set up your Amazon Author Central Page. Add an author photo, bio, and link your blog. You can also list your events. (Listing events is no longer an option). This is a good time to set up your Author Goodreads account too. I wrote a tutorial on how to set up the Amazon Author Central page here.
If you want to host author events in bookstores, start pitching them about 3-4months out. If they’re local, walk-in and introduce yourself. (I book most of my events by walking in and talking to people in person.) Always travel with a copy of your book and some business cards.
The point of starting early:
You want to build your readership ahead of time so when you release the book you have people who want to buy it.
CLICK HERE for more Indie Author Basics and happy writing! I’m rooting for you.
The PBS Blog 