Writing…“Death in the City” day 35

Writing…“Death in the City”

day 35

As I work on this novel, I'm falling in love with the story more and more with each drop of ink I spill. (That's a really good sign because my readers and I often feel the same way.) A recent post from a friend on Facebook reminded me how much I enjoyed and revered Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” I went to my bookshelf and picked up the worn copy that had miraculously survived the decades since I last sat in a college classroom. I remembered how reading that book, along with Zora Neal Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” had inspired me to write my first novel, a book in which I could realistically tell the stories of the people that were from where I’m from. No superhero, pulp fiction-ish, over-the-top tales of magnificent, fantastical drug dealer adventures that would never, and have never taken place in any of the streets that I know of. No literature draped in absurdity to mimic reality TV. Just stories about real folks caught up in real situations trying to survive in the city that I will always be in love with, that we were all trapped in under the shadows of skyscrapers. That’s how “Water Flows Under Doors” was born.

There is a place and an audience for all kinds of literature. There is validity in every genre as long as the stories are well-written by authors who respect the craft and put the work in. I believe that every book written is a temple where readers will gather to read your words and see the world through your eyes for a short time. If done correctly, you can alter the prism through which they see things and even change their perspective. So, as I write “Death in the City,” I’m mindful of all those things. It has evolved into something much more than what I first envisioned it would be when I wrote the first sentence. As I bounce between the lives of the characters on these pages, it has become somewhat of an anthology with these lives, and sometimes deaths are all connected as they intersect. I find myself fueled by the same enthusiasm I had way back when I wrote my first book and THAT is a beautiful thing. I wish that the professor who encouraged me to become a novelist was still alive to read it but I’m sure that somewhere, Professor Leo Hamalian is smiling. My grandmother, Cynthia Brown is smiling too. She passed away long before I even published my first book but, when I decided to finish the book I started writing in college, I was filled with self-doubt. She came to me in a dream only once, and in that dream I was sitting in front of my old computer wondering if I was a good enough writer to make a career of it. She touched me on my shoulder, pointed at the computer screen, smiled and nodded her head before she left me again. That reassurance is why I’ve never lost faith in myself or my talent, no matter how hard it may have been to sell books in the past. The success that I’m after is about way more than my own personal ego and desire to win. It’s much deeper than material wealth, although it’s nice to keep the bills paid.