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First Day of School!
I was so tempted to walk up and down my street last night with a bell, ringing it and shouting "FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL TOMORROW, YA LITTLE BASTARDS!!!!"
hee hee hee
I got up at 6am as I wanted to so I would have enough time to do everything I needed to do before school. I am lovin' the Russ Parr Morning Show. That's one of my favorite parts of the school year.
Anyway, here are some announcements:
Did you know I have a yahoo group? It's located here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RashidDarden/. Just click on it and follow the directions if you want to join. It will give you the latest info about Lazarus, Covenant, and my appearances.
The Rawsistaz gave me a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Not too bad.
But I got a great review at HitDatSPOT! I am so happy.
One of these days we're going to talk about "audience" at length. I know two gay black authors who got negative reviews from a straight black reviewer -- this same reviewer also told me that she doesn't read my "type" of novel. Yeah, I'm implying that she's a homophobe. So now when and where I can, I will discourage other gay writers from submitting to her. Why send your book to someone you know will give a bad review to gay authors?
Also, there may be other reviewers who are not homophobic, but just won't "get" it and therefore give you a lukewarm review. Me and another author got average ratings from a reviewer, but when we compared our scores to other authors, we found that inspirational books and straight black relationship novels got top honors. Will I submit to them again? Probably so, because it's more publicity, but I won't expect an A+ rating because I know they'd rather read straight fiction or inspiration.
I've gotten some really fair reviews from time to time, though. They point out some flaws that I knew about, but appreciated that they didn't gloss over. Getting GREAT reviews all the time will give you the big head.
But we can talk more about that later.
I am really excited for Atlanta! Scared to fly, but happy for the trip!
And now, I leave you with a quote from Rev. Barry Hargrove, my frat brother and friend: "That's the way life goes. Sometimes it sucks to be you, sometimes it sucks to be the other person."
AMEN!
Posted by Rashid on August 29, 2005 6:33 AM