The Bucket List I Never Knew I Had

 

I didn’t even know I had a bucket list, at least not until a few weeks ago. I had absolutely no idea I was about to cross a nearly impossible item off my unknown list.

 Don’t get me wrong. I’ve made several list-worthy achievements. I’m the first on both sides of my family to graduate college. I am a veteran eclipse chaser, travelled to the United Kingdom (I loved Scotland) South America, the Mediterranean, and even Russia (twice). And now I am comfortably retired. Not bad for someone who never even bothered to compile a bucket list.

I am the author of several books for young adult and middle grade youth. Some have won awards, including one I received only two months ago from the International Literacy Association for my debut non-fiction book, Unlawful Orders published by Scholastic Focus in 2022. They designated me one of their "authors to watch" in children's nonfiction. 

 
But now I have made the big leagues. As of August,2023, I am also a PBS pundit. That item is worth more to me than everything else on my phantom list.

 

This began in July, 2023, when I received an inquiry from Christian Valle, the TV production manager at KRWG public radio, on the campus of New Mexico State University (NMSU). He planned on creating a documentary on Clara Belle Drisdale Williams, a distinguished NMSU alumna. Mr. Valle wanted to interview me. Because of the research I did on her and her sons for Unlawful Orders, he considered me an “expert.”

 
Be still my beating heart! My recorded interview took one hour, and the minute it ended, I thought of a dozen things I had forgotten to say. I felt like anything but an expert. In my heart, I feared he thought he had wasted his time with me. Then I got an email saying the documentary, titled Clara Belle Williams: New Mexico Pioneer in Education, was about to air.

 
That was two weeks ago. I watched the documentary using the PBS app, and there I was. Several points from my interview were included. I feel honored to be identified with Clara Belle Williams, who taught crowded classrooms filled with students, including her own three sons, in a one room schoolhouse. If you are a teacher or a parent, or both, take a moment to magine the fortitude that required. Those three boys grew up to defend America during World War II, and then went on to become renowned Chicago physicians who saved countless lives. Meanwhile, Clara Belle continued educating hundreds. In 1980, NMSU, her alma mater, awarded her an honorary doctorate for her years of service to humanity. She believed in the power of education to mold lives.

Everything I learned about her impressed me. I was happy to be able to share my knowledge with others. Now and forever more, I am available on PBS. True, its not like being a star. There was no pay for this, just a “Special Thanks to” note in the credits that included my name. But this bucket list item will live on long after I have "kicked it."

The direct link to view the documentary Clara Belle Williams: New Mexico Pioneer in Education on PBS is - https://www.pbs.org/video/clara-belle-williams-new-mexico-pioneer-in-education-hgk3qr/ You can also see it on YouTube by clicking here:

 

Things That Go Bump In The Night - And The Day

I don't like horror books, horror movies, horror anything. I'm one of those people who don't need horror fiction because we know there are actual things to fear, and some of those are all too human.

Some years ago, January, February, I'm not sure which, I just remember the blizzard. I was slogging home and, while it was daytime, it might as well have been night because I could see practically nothing.  Barely made out my hand in front of my face.  The snow that had been a bare trickle when I left home had accumulated and was now up to my knees and still falling. The temperature was so cold no coat, hat or gloves could have kept it out.  The occasional car inched its way down the road beside me. Fortunately, I knew the route well, and I was only a few blocks from home, but I was in pain.

Then, one of those cars slowed from a crawl to a complete stop beside me. The window rolled down, and the white driver behind the wheel offered me a ride. Now, I know what happens to women who let themselves be picked up by strange men. I've seen and read true crime stories, and I can't tell you how many times I have warned my daughter against hitchhiking.   But I wasn't hitchhiking, I was miserable and I climbed inside that car.  I didn't care about stranger danger, or serial killers, if this man ends up slicing and dicing me and they don't find my body until summer, it beats freezing.

Obviously, he did not leave my body in a ditch. He was just a nice guy who took me safely to my door. But there was no real way to tell.  Fast forward to summer, and I am walking down that same street, happy, under the sun, with that old life is good feeling. Another car comes by and slows, and another white driver leans out the window. This one yells,  calling me a black - expletive before laughing and driving off. I know, this is mild, but it shows my dilemma. I live among monsters disguised as human beings, and I have no way to tell the difference between them and real human beings.

The 2016 K-horror zombie film, Train to Busan, is a classic for a reason. (Why is it no surprise that my favorite horror film was not made in Hollywood?) The Korean film industry was willing to show us a few truths about human nature and the reality of evil. With all the horrific looking zombies swarming the last survivors, the real villain turns out to be  an ordinary looking businessman who is psychopathic enough to believe his survival is more important than anything or anyone else. It show us how one human monster with a loud voice can feed on fear turn otherwise rational people into villains too. 

Over the years, the news has shown ordinary looking people, some looking like businessmen or even wearing badges, acting like brutal monsters.  That is something many black men and women know, both from first-hand experience, and from the experience of others on our family trees. We don't need to be fascinated by things that go bump in the night.  Some of us meet monsters inside human skin every day. That makes the world today its own special kind of horror reality. It's one reason why I take my dose of horror in the form of true crime stories. At least the monsters on those pages have been caught, and punished.

My work in progress begins with the true story of a seven year old hiding in the darkness under his bed, praying that his baby sister will not wake up and cry out, alerting the men outside that the place is not empty.  They have come to kill his father for the sin of defending himself against the unprovoked attack of a white co-worker. The kid lived into his sixties, but never forgot that night.

Unlawful Orders (available October 18 in hardcover, ebook and audio book from Scholastic) begins with a black doctor also hiding in the dark so  the mob outside torturing and killing another black man will not decide to enter his office and grab him too.  

"Huddled behind the locked doors of his nearby medical office, Dr. Aaron Nixon could only listen in horror as Johnson cried while being tortured. Meanwhile, white spectators pulled out chairs and sat on the balconies of surrounding buildings to watch their victim being led across the courtyard to a large oak tree and lynched. The newspapers deemed the crowd 'orderly.'"  

Seymour Tribune Article on Unlawful Orders

Unlawful Orders, the true story of black physician and activist James Buchanan Williams and the life he endured from his childhood in a small town in New Mexico, to earning the title of chief of surgery at a major Chicago hospital, is filled with stories like that, including the Freeman Field mutiny in Seymour Indiana. These horrific events are 100% truth even though they rarely appear in history books. 

Why I Prefer The Traditional Publishing Route

I have listened to several authors wondering about traditional vs self-publication. I have done both, and for me, there is no question. I prefer traditional. Not just because of the advance, which is admittedly a nice deal. If you self publish, the writing in only step one. Either you perform every additional detail yourself, or you project manage people you hire, and pay, yourself to do those details. Or you can engage with someone calling themselves a publisher and pay them the big bucks to get things done.  Doing things yourself is the only low cost option, but it does require the kind of person who loves managing a bunch of tasks.  

I have never been a controlling person (unless you talk to my daughter). I hate the tiny details, so to me, taking the slow but steady option of having a publisher take control from me once the writing is done is basically a godsend.  

Some observations on how fiction and non-fiction is treated by publishers.

Editing is very different. In both fiction and non-fiction, the editor choses to buy the rights to publish your book largely based on your writing voice and your knowledge of the subject. But in fiction, my editors were always ready to suggest changes, sometimes down to individual paragraphs or even sentences. Lots of changes, all the while telling me my work only needed a “light edit”. I’d really hate to see a heavy edit. 

Some writers worry that a traditional publisher might want them to change their work into something they don't want.  In my experience the editor's only make suggestions, and when I look, they make sense and end up making the story better.  With Courage, for example, the editor suggested I change the last few chapters. Mind you, she did not tell me what to change things too, just stating that she found the ending confusing.

Frankly, she was right. My ending kind of confused me too. Fortunately, months had passed since I first wrote the manuscript, and I was able to look at it through new eyes and see an alternative. If you have ever read Courage, well, just trust me, the published ending beats the original one hands down. There was a chase through an abandoned warehouse while being pursued by a group of thieves and a SWAT team lead by Mr. Cho who had only pretended to be a parole officer, the better to conduct a sting on the criminals and handle his confidential informant, the heroes’ older brother. Like I said, confusing. I really bless the editor for suggesting that be changed.

ALSO - if you are, or know of a teacher, let them know ASAP that WNDB (We Need Diverse Books) is currently doing a back-to-school giveaway. Winning classrooms and organizations will receive one set of books, and Courage is one of the books in the Elementary School / Middle Grade / YA Bundle. They can find more information, and enter to win, at http://ow.ly/tmOG50KcFW4, The giveaway deadline is only a few days away.  

This year, my first non-fiction middle grade book, Unlawful Orders, has been traveling the long and winding road toward traditional publication, a journey that will end when it hits bookshelves in October.  With non-fiction, I think my editor assumed I really was subject matter expert, or an all-knowing wizard. She suggested so few changes I was amazed, mostly only grammar and misspellings. In fact, she let stand something I expected her to change. I used it as much for shock value as anything else and was so confused when she let it slide that I wrote to ask if she was really going to leave that in. I couldn’t believe they were willing leave something so inflammatory on the pages. Since I never really expected that to hit the final version, I ended up editing it out myself. (And no, I won’t tell you what it was.) The fact-checkers did come after me on a few things. Fortunately, most of the time I was a able to tell them, “I know things are different here in the twenty-first century, but back in the 1940’s…” and then point them to references they had missed. That always felt good. Maybe I deserve those wizard robes!

That is an area where traditional publishing makes me happier than self-publishing. Yes, the traditional route takes longer, but they also add value extras like fact-checkers that act like goalkeepers to ensure the information on the pages is accurate. They also handled the book illustrations. In addition to finding the right cover artists, I discovered that my publisher employs people whose job descriptions involve getting permissions to use the dozens of photographs included in the book. No wondering if I can or cannot include the great pictures we chose together.  Plus, the publisher hired someone to format the chapter notes and bibliography once I demonstrated my utter helplessness in that area. They made a good book so much better.

People talk about how little the publishers do for marketing, but that’s not always true. My publisher interviewed me for a group of librarians, the interview is on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hlLlI3Y4PA  

In April they had me on an online School Library Journal panel to discuss the book with librarians. They also arranged to send me to the National Council of Teacher’s of English Homecoming conference in July, the first in-person event the organization has held since Covid descended on us. There was no stipend or honorarium, but the company did pay my transportation and lodging.  I had an audience of educators that I hope I thrilled with my talk. They did line up for me to autograph their ARCs, and many stayed to chat with me, a true ego boost.

As an unanticipated plus to the visit, the NCTE Homecoming event was held in Louisville, Kentucky, close enough to my home in Chicago, Illinois for me to drive instead of fly. After everything I have been seeing about airports and flying these days, it was not a difficult decision, although the hours long drive down highway 65 was no picnic. But as I headed south of Indianapolis, I found the name of a town that somehow seemed familiar. Seymour. I wracked my brain trying to figure out why that word kept rolling around inside my head, then suddenly it hit me. Seymour, Indiana was the location of Freeman Field air base during World War II. That is where the unlawful and illegal orders were given to the characters in my newest book.

 

I literally felt like a fangirl. Even though the airfield itself is long gone, I had to leave the highway and enter the town. It was almost a pilgrimage to a place I had not even known existed only a few years earlier. The location where a hundred Tuskegee Airmen took a stand against discrimination in the military and said no to an illegal order. They were willing to risk their lives by that act of mutiny a decade before Rosa Parks refused the order to give up her seat on a bus.

PS, Seymour also happens to be John Cougar Mellencamp's hometown, so I got one extra treat during that detour.

 

Being An Author - A Natural High

 

Yesterday my computer decided to die, taking a number of files I had not backed up with it. I really should be in tears.

 
Plus, I recently purchased a new set of eyeglasses. Now I hear that I probably need a cataract removed, which will probably change my prescription and lead to the need for different glasses, aka a need to spend more money.

And yet, I can’t get too upset about thosethings or anyhing else. I have an ear-to-ear smile is painted on my face. (Don't tell me that's a cliche'd saying, i happens to be 100% true today,)

Why? Because my ARCs have arrived!! I have copies of my new book, Unlawful Orders, in my hands. And they look wonderful!!

This is it, I feel it every time one of my books is published. It's an old fashioned, natural high.

 

Being an author means going through a gamut of emotions, at least it does for me.  Someone once said writing a book and getting it published was like running a marathon. I agee, as long as you include all the time spent training and preparing for those 26 plus miles.   There's getting the idea, and then spending time and energy getting to know the characters. There's writing the first word, and the next; a paragraph and then a chapter. I alternate between thinking I'm doing a good job, and then I hit "the wall." That point in the marathon where I wonder if I have lost my mind. 

Then I turn the manuscript in to my editor, who has to be the nicest person in publishing, because she tells me she loves it. She publishes it. And now she has sent me copies, and I can see  this thing that began as an idea in the back of my head, right in my hand.

Things might be aweful tomorrow. Reality does have a way of doing the unexpeced just to show me whose boss.  But for now, I'm flying, just like the characters in this biography!

Fiction Vs NonFiction

 

At the end of this month, I will be participating on a panel of authors from Scholastic discussing the value of non-fiction, titled: Three Reasons Kids Need to Read More Non-Fiction. During this discussion, I will talk about my debut historical biography, Unlawful Orders.  Preparing for this has set me thinking about my most recent books, some of their differences and similarities, and why both fiction and non fiction are valuable.  I'm putting down some of the things I have come up with for both genres.   

Fiction helps young readers learn empathy for others. Empathy enables building social connections that can prevent bullying, help children make friends, and ready them to receive help from others. Non-fiction helps nurture a young person’s “insatiable curiosity,” a term that had to be invented to describe the way the very young ask a thousand questions a day. Okay, maybe the number is really closer to a hundred, but you get the picture. They wake up each day with a desire to know more, and good non-fiction can be a fertilizer to keep their blossoming curiosity to from withering as they grow older. In the words of Albert Einstein: 

“I have no special talent – I am only passionately curious.”

I have entered both worlds in my writing career. A few years ago I penned Courage, middle grade fiction written to encourage empathy by immersing them in the lives of kids coping with a variety of issues. Among them are a child dealing with the recent death of a parent from cancer, and one who is just trying to live a normal life despite having sickle cell anemia, a chronic and sometimes debilitating illness. One child is homeless and friendless, another is feels he has to be an overachiever to meet the expectations of his adopted parents. Yet another kid is best friends with the daughter of the Chicago policeman who sent her father to prison. All these young people come together in a story about finding the strength to forgive and grant others second chances. I wrote Courage as a modern day version of the prodigal son story, in hopes it would entertain young people, and at the same time encourage readers to forgive others who have hurt them.

Unlawful Orders, my upcoming nonfiction book (Oct 2022), shares the true story of a family that deserves to be everyone’s role model. I love superhero stories, and tales of wonder-kids who save their dystopian world. But there is something extra in a stories about real human beings in real locations handling real events. And the Williams family saved lives and changed all our futures in more ways than one.

The book centers around one member of the family, James Buchanan WIlliams, “JB” who grew up in a small town attending a one-room schoolhouse - taught by his mother. She was the first African American to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico. How the school’s English department building eventually came to be named after her is a story all its own.

From there the story takes readers on a journey through the history of the twentieth century, with bits of engineering, aerodynamics, psychology, and medical science thrown in. After growing up on the family farm, JB went off to fight for his country during World War II. He and a hundred other Tuskegee Airmen staged what came to be known as the Freeman Field mutiny, an act of disobedience against a superior officer’s order that could have cost him his life, but that preserved his dignity.

After the war, JB headed back to college to obtain both an MD degree and a Master of Science in surgery, before moving to Chicago. The book tells how he became the chief of surgery in a major hospital while working to expand healthcare for the poor across the United States. His efforts included a trip to Washington DC and to lobby President John F. Kennedy for an end of discrimination in medical schools and hospitals.
He also lived long enough to accept a special invitation to attend President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Dr. Williams and his two brothers not only worked to advance the field of medicine, they raised families whose members continue to excel in the fields of healthcare and of education to this day.

If you are interested, the webinar panel discussion will take place on Wednesday, April 27th at 2:00pm EST. I do not have access information yet, but I should have that soon and will update this post. I will also update my website with the information once I have it. 

Strong Black Women In History - my muses

 

Strong women in history. This post should be a slam dunk for Women’s history month. Yet somehow, the subject was a hard one for me. Then my thoughts went to two women I had already written about. 

 

The first was a strong woman named Clara Belle Williams. She raised three strong sons who not only fought America’s enemies in World War II, they each became prominent physicians who helped change the world of medicine by fighting against segregated medical schools and hospitals that employed discriminatory practices with Black patients.

 
Clara Belle Williams has been honored with a spot in the teacher’s hall of fame (yes, she not only raised three sons, she was also their elementary school teacher in a one room schoolhouse in New Mexico). She was the first Black student to receive a BA from the University of New Mexico were she majored in English. Decades later, the University handed her an honorary doctorate because of  her contributions to humanity, and named their English building after her.

 

She actually deserves her own book, to be more than just the parent of the hero of my upcoming book, Unlawful Orders.  She was the real inspiration for the book, learning about Clara Belle during Woman's History Month five years ago led me to er sons. She lived to be 108,  with more than enough accomplisments to fill four lives.

PS, patients at the Chicago clinic her doctor sons founded all called her “Grandma.”

Bessie Coleman was another strong woman, one that is the central figure of my new work-in-progress, tentatively titled Fill The Air With Black Wings. Bessie never had the chance to become a mother, shew died in a plane crash at the age of thirty four.  But she was a beloved aunt to the children of her many siblings. She wanted to make sure they had the kind of family life she never had as a child.

From penniless southern girl to Chicago South Side celebrity. America’s future Queen Bess started out with two strikes against her. She was a woman, and she had both Black and Native American heritage - Choctaw and Cherokee. Bessie was black, with Native American heritage, and female—all of which placed her in the lowest rung of perceived social classes of the day.

But Bessie was the little girl who always knew she would become someone special. As an adult she decided to achieve that goal by doing the near impossible and becoming a pilot.  In the days before Amelia Earhardt, Bessie Coleman became the first Black American and Native American woman to obtain a pilot's license, although she had to travel to France to find a flight school that would agree to teach her.  

This was in the 1920's, and planes were made out of cardboard, cloth, wires and pressed wood.  Pilots flew war surplus planes and made money by barnstorming, entertaining crowds with tricks like barrel rolls or wing walking.  The life was only for the very brave.  Bessie grew into one of the top pilots of the day, in constant demand to appear in air shows across the US. And she had the power to insist her audiences be integrated.

Back in America, she was sought after by wealthy American businessmen and an African prince. She enjoyed being romanced and welcomed their company, but apparently had no intention of settling down as a wife. Perhaps that decision was related to watching her parents seperate when she was nine.  Besides, she had a goal. She planed to use her lecturing to interest youth in aviation, and to make enough money to fund an American flight school that would accept Black students. 

Unfortunately, she died in a plane crash just when she was on the verge of accomplishing that goal. But she did become someone who inspired generations of future flyers, including her nephew who grew up to fly combat missions in World War II.

Keeping Life's Backpack Light

I am taking this month's focus, Peace, on a small tangent. I have written a short, creative non-fiction piece about a woman I have grown to know well. In fact, my research on Unlawful Orders began with a study of the main character's mother, Clara Bell Drisdale Williams. She was a wife, elementary school teacher and the mother of three rambunctious sons.  There's no way she lived to be 108 without knowing how to find peace inside herself. This story is based on an anecdote her grandson related to me. Although the book is about her son and this story is not included, I wanted to share this tidbit here. 

 

Family members considered Clara Belle Williams a very young hundred years old. Her neighbors in Lake Meadows, a lakefront community on Chicago’s south side, considered the elderly Black woman a treasure. Everyone who lived and worked in the area, from the butcher who slipped her a little extra when she shopped to the garbage collector with the laughing eyes, always greeted her and called her Grandma. Patients at the clinic where she had once worked as a receptionist sometimes used the word angel. She considered herself an ordinary, down-to-earth woman who fully enjoyed the privileges that came from reaching the milestone century mark.

 
Like, the privilege of not finding herself bound and gagged while men in ski-masks roamed through her house.

 
Her friend and housemate, a woman more than twenty years her junior, whimpered occasionally. Anyone who knew her could have told the invaders that she lived frugally. She considered her intelligence and common sense her most prized possessions. No one could take those away, she told her students. Unlike her meager physical belongings.

 
At least the marauders were not after Clara Belle or her friend, after tying them up the two women were ignored. They also ignored the bedroom and most of the living room. Maybe they did know her. At least well enough to know there was no money or non-existent jewelry to be found there.

 
Her companion hung her head and sobbed. Clara Belle remained calm as she watched the men. Habit, honed from years working as a schoolteacher in a one-room school while raising three sons, kept Clara Belle calm, although her heart pounded. One of the men stepped beside her and leaned close. Something about the way he moved seemed familiar. Did she know them? She certainly knew and understood the desperation that had them clearing out her kitchen and pantry.

He placed the end of a rope in her bound hands. “Pull this after we leave, it will release the knots holding you,” he said. “Wait twenty minutes, first. We’ll be watching, and we’ll be back if you don’t obey.”

He started to walk away. After two steps and a heavy sigh, he returned to say, “This place is too easy to break into. You need better locks.”

She could breathe easily again. No need to tempt fate. After they left, she followed the order to wait before pulling the rope.

Clara Belle continued to live in her house over the protests of her sons and grandchildren. Members of her family urged her to move so she could get over her trauma. But Clara Belle was not about to let men hiding behind ski masks make her afraid. She had lived in the wilds of a New Mexico homestead in the early years of the twentieth century. She’d faced down white students who did not want to share a college classroom with a woman of color. She survived on prayer when her sons were drafted to fight in World War II. After all that, she was not going to let anyone, not even her boys, talk her into giving up her independence out of fear.

 
Instead of making plans to leave her home, she talked. She shared her story over and over, describing her ordeal to everyone who would listen. Her grandson learned to be patient. Sometimes when he visited, she would spend an entire time telling him about the break-in. Slowly he realized she was not doing this from fear. Repeatedly talking and sharing was her way of conquering her fear and reclaiming the home she loved.

 
One day, when she told him the story, she added, “I know who broke in that night.” It had not been hard to figure out that it was the man who no longer greeted her or smiled when she passed him on the street; the man with the laughing eyes couldn’t look her in the eye or even lift his head.

“No, I’m not going to tell the police who he is,” she explained to her grandson. “Those poor men. They must have been so desperate. They could have done anything to me, but only took food and supplies.

“Besides,” she added, and this time her eyes twinkled. “He’s never coming back again.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, because I took his advice and got those new locks.”

He had to laugh with her. His grandmother had always been that way, even as a young girl. She worked through her trauma her own way and didn’t carry anger around afterward.

Maybe that’s why Clara Belle Williams lived to be 108. She kept her backpack of life light by keeping only nuggets of good inside. She was quick to toss aside grudges, anger and other heavy rocks she encountered in her life.

Unlawful Orders, the true story of one of Clara Belle's sons, Dr. James B Williams, will be published in 2022 from Scholastic.

Before the Tulsa Race Massacre, Black Americans Fought to Survive the Red Summer of 1919

During my posts this year, I’ve written about my current manuscript, Unlawful Orders, scheduled to be published in 2022. This book started as a tribute to one man, Chicago surgeon James B. Williams, his family, his work as a Tuskegee Airman during WWII, and his many contributions to medicine and history. Along the path of researching Dr. Williams, the project grew. At my editor’s suggestion, I expanded the scope to cover more about the contributions of Black soldiers fighting for America in Europe during both World Wars.

 
And that led me to write about what happened to these heroes after they returned home from battle.  Many found the home front fare more dangerous than anything they faced on the battlefield, especially those returning from WWI. Evan as brave Black soldiers with medals on their chests returned home following the 1918 Armistice, a newspaper published an editorial, titled Nip It In the Bud. According to that editorial, there was a problem. “The conditions of active warfare and the regulations of army life have probably given these [Black] men more exalted ideas of their station in life than really exists …” While the services of Black soldiers in the defense of democracy were appreciated, the writer insisted they needed to be schooled in what would and what would not be permitted upon their return to real life.  

Last week was a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, where hundreds of Black Americans, many of them former soldiers who served their country admirably in Europe, were hunted and slaughtered on the streets of what had been known as Black Wall Street. 

 

Library of Congress picture showing a group
 of traumatized Black survivors outside a refugee
 camp set up on the Tulsa fairgrounds

For many people, last week's commemorative news specials were their first time hearing about the event that left survivors interned in refugee camps and the dead dumped in mass graves while rioters confiscated their money and possessions. I first learned about the massacre almost a decade ago. More recently, The Watchmen (2019) and Lovecraft Country (2020) brought the event back to the front of my consciousness. (I don't usually go for horror stories, but I sat through the monsters in Lovecraft Country to reach the Greenwood episode that included an elderly woman burned alive inside her home during the massacre.)   

I chose to add a tribute to the brave veterans of WWI on the pages of Unlawful Orders by adding stories of some of the horrors they endured on the home front. That did not include a recap of the Tulsa Race Massacre. While many of the people killed were veterans, so many race massacres occurred across the United States that I had a problem figuring out how to limit myself to only writing about a few.

(If you are interested in learning more about the Tulsa Massacre, let me offer up an eyewitness account written a survivor, Mary E. Jones Parrish. In Events of the Tulsa Disaster, a book she self-published in 1922,  Mary Parrish details her struggles to keep herself and her child alive during that terrifying event. One of her great granddaughters recently republished the memoir under a new title,  The Nation Must Awake.)  

In the end, I picked three uprisings that occurred in 1919, only months after the Armistice that officially ended WWI was signed and soldiers returned home.  (And, not entirely coincidently, it's the year the subject of Unlawful Orders, Dr. James B Williams, was born.) 

 

Washington Bee, DC, 9/6/1919
(Source: University of Georgia Libraries via
Visualizing the Red Summer digital archive)

The three events I chose to highlight in the early chapters of Unlawful Orders were selected because they  illustrated different responses from the Black American veterans who, only months before, had been fighting for their country and democracy. Because so many Black Americans were slaughtered in 1919, the NAACP used the term Red Summer to describe the period. It's another time  American textbooks seem eager to forget. 

Instead of an enclave of wealthy Black citizens like those in Tulsa's Greenwood district, Elaine, Arkansas was home to a large number of poor Black sharecroppers who wanted to unionize. When white landowners fired into a church where the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) was holding a meeting, some veterans inside pulled out their guns and fired back.  That began the Elaine Massacre. By the end, white vigilantes had killed hundreds of Black men, women and children. Officials proudly proclaimed the dead insurrectionists and charged that not a single one of the slaughtered was an innocent.   

I also picked Chicago because of the home-town connection. Even though I lived here all my life, I had never heard of the events of the summer of 1919. Like many people, I had at least heard about the exploits of the Harlem Hellfighters. I had no idea that an all-black Illinois National Guard regiment  also fought America's enemies during the war. That regiment earned respect on the battlefield and the nickname, Schwarze Teufel or Black Devils. When white mobs invaded their neighborhoods, those veterans grabbed their guns and formed militias to fight back. over almost a week of fighting, black men successfully fought back  the attack. Chicago escaped the massive loss of life that occurred in other areas of the United States. 

I chose to include Washington DC as the final Red Summer attack because of the strength of the resistance there.  White mobs began attacking Black citizens shortly after Independence Day celebrations. The police ordered gun dealers to refuse to sell weapons to Blacks. Black veterans grabbed the weapons they had brought back from their battles in France and formed organized militias for defense. Many of those defenders had served as members of the Red Hand during WWI, so named because they were the "bloody hand that took the Boche [German soldiers] by the throat and made them cry for mercy."  Those men were ready, willing and able to do the same to protect their homes and families. They set up blockages to defend Howard University, others took to the rooftops to protect their neighborhoods from marauding bands.  

 So much has been hushed up and buried like the dead of the Tulsa Massacre. It "never happened", a silence that allowed white men and women to prosper from their actions while Blacks remained silent from fear that speaking of these incidents might incite a repeat. I hope Unlawful Orders joins other books attempting to shed a light on the long-buried history. It really is true that those who do not learn history's lessons are doomed to repeat it's failures.  Here's hoping that cycle comes to an end.

Thoughts on revision, and history, and life

I happen to be  at a low point right now.  Probably lower than I was this time last year, when the pandemic grew stronger almost every day with no apparent end in sight. On the plus side, I have almost no appetite. That is a really big plus. I have managed to lose ten pounds without even trying. (Just imagine what I could lose if I did try.)

 
Maybe it’s because of all the revisions I have had to work on over the last few weeks. Revision is a different animal from editing. (I did a post on the differences a little while ago.) Editing is tedious, but I can do it easily. Revision simply sucks.

 
I sent my editor at Scholastic a draft of my Non-Fiction manuscript, Unlawful Orders earlier in 2021. I say draft, even though, for some foolish reason, I considered my words nearly perfect. Seriously,  I have been writing novels - and having to revise them - for over a decade, but somehow I still foolishly believed I had crafted a revision proof draft. 

Then I received the editorial  letter.

 
The editor assured me she loved the story. Absolutely, it was awesome! There were just had one or two tiny areas she suggested I rethink. Yes, the dreaded revision letter I received for Unlawful Orders read a lot like that. I hate tiny areas. Like, even though the main character is a doctor, she thought there was too much about medicine on the pages. Oh, and there were minor characters she wanted me to make more prominent. Most of these were people who literally entered and then quickly exited the life of my protagonist. She wanted more aout World War II as well. My character lived to be in his nineties and only four years were spent in the army. Still, I needed more about the war. 

No wonder I have no appetite these days.

 
Every change to the manuscript is taking me longer than I estimated. Except deleting an entire chapter she found unnesessary. That was painful, but at least it was quick, surgical. On the positive side, my story is a historical, tracing Chicago surgeon Dr. James Williams and his family though the twentieth century. I'm back to doing research to give her the additions she wants. Sometimes going through the past is as difficult as worldbuilding a story set in some far distant planet. It also makes me think. At least the story is non-fiction. That means I know how things end.

At the same time as I hear news that San Francisco is considered a national model in Covid vaccinations, my research tells me it was a major mask denier during the Spanish Flu, making it one of America's hardest hit big cities.  The long, unending list of anti-Black riots that hit America in the twentieth century helps me understand the main chracter's father. He literally suffered a stroke when his sons were drafted in World War II and sent to Europe to fight, and possibly die, for a country that had never even passed a federal anti-lynching law. (PS, to this day, the US still has not passed one.) The more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

 
But my return to research for the revision effort did hand me one diamond. A poem called Outwitted by Dr. Roman Edwin Markham.

He drew a circle that shut me out 

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. 

But love and I had the wit to win 

We drew a circle that took him in.

I will keep that idea in my life (and in my story). I shall draw a bigger circle to become more accepting to the world.

Unlawful Orders - To Market, To Market

 

A year ago this month, my then agent divorced me. As if the opening surge of Covid sweeping the nation wasn't enough, she decided that was a good time to let me know that in spite of her earlier enthusiasm about my work, she was just not that interested in what I was writing anymore.

First, you need to know that I had changed agents in 2018. At the time it seemed the right thing to do. The relationship with my original agent had gone stale.   Like a marriage suffering from the “seven year itch” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/202002/is-the-7-year-itch-myth-or-reality) we no longer communicated.  The problem was as much my fault as hers, I’m not a natural communicator. But I still felt ignored.

I attended a conference in March 2018 and met an agent who seemed wildly enthusiastic about my work. I was in the mood for enthusiasm, so I said goodbye to my old agent and signed with a new one.

Turns out, all that enthusiasm was only on the surface. By the time I began work on Unlawful Orders, she had already asked for changes on, and then ultimately shot down three other stories I sent her. Unlawful Orders was a child of my heart and almost wrote itself. By the time I felt ready to tell her about the manuscript,  Covid struck. She and her family chose to move from New Jersey last March. She did give me a chance to talk, using that time to admit she had not yet bothered to look at an earlier manuscript I had sent her at the end of 2019.

Then she divorced me.

Reading the email ending our relationship felt like going through a divorce. Possibly what my prior agent felt when I sent her my goodbye email. 

Last month my post described how I got the idea for my next release, Unlawful Orders (https://romancingthegenres.blogspot.com/2021/02/unlawful-orders-black-history-month.html). I was still developing the manuscript in March 2020.  It was still a WIP, but I already knew the manuscript was one of the best things I had ever written. I wanted to get the message it contained out in young readers' hands. I was preparing to remain agentless and self-publish just to it available.

My former agent would at least have read the story, even if she ended up saying no. That thought kept growing in my head.  I ended up swallowing my pride and sending her an email with a quick pitch over the summer.  

As soon as she got the email, my former agent asked to see what I had so far. The next thing I knew, we were together again. The thrill of fixing our relationship and working with her was H-U-G-E!

My agent instructed me on putting together a non-fiction submission package. It was a little different from the fiction submissions I had done until then. Non-fiction does not require a completed manuscript. Instead, I put together: 

• a cover letter about myself and why I was the right person to tell this story
• the prologue and first four chapters (sometimes a prologue fits, and one felt right in telling this story)
• a table of contents with details on what each chapter would cover

She immediately sent that package out. Within days I had a slew of rejections … and offers from two publishers. Next came negotiations and the decision of which offer to accept. It’s a heady feeling to know that publishing professionals feel the same way about my work as I did. My agent and I evaluated the proposals. Over the next month she negotiated with both publishers. In the end the choice was mine. I selected my dream publisher and Unlawful Orders found a home with Scholastic. 

With the terms agreed to, I was surprised to discover that writing the actual publishing contract took over a month. The path of publishing does not run fast. In the meantime I was doing some final editing on the manuscript and growing eager to send them the whole thing. The contract was not finished and signed until December, 2020. As soon as the signing was accomplished, I sent my completed manuscript to my new Scholastic editor. 

The real work of working with the editor to sharpen up the manuscript and getting it ready for publication begins now for a release in 2022. I have received a set of revision instructions from the editor, so I'm about to put nose to the grindstone and begin making the updates that will improve the story. And, in spite of a Covid inspired depression period, I have just finished writing another fiction novel that I will happily be sending to my agent. I now understand why sometimes people remarry a partner they divorced. Sometimes a relationship deserves  a second chance.

Unlawful Orders - Black History Month edition

 April 10, 1945

The date doesn't mean much to most people. That's because most people have never heard of the Freeman Field Mutiny.  101 US Army Air Force officers faced a possible death penalty when they refused  a direct order from a superior officer while World War II raged. This exposed each man to a possible death sentence. 

 Years later, the men also earned Congressional Gold Medals in 2006 from former president George Bush.

This is a nonfiction book I wrote last year and that will be published by Scholastic in 2022 titled Unlawful Orders. 

The book is a biography of one of those young mutineers, following his journey from farm boy who enjoyed shooting rattlesnakes and not having to bathe every day, to renowned Chicago surgeon with a patient list that included Dr. Martin Luther King and jazz great Muddy Waters.  

This is the first of a set of posts that will follow this manuscript from idea  to sale to eventual publication.  Today I will show you how the idea came to me, a question I hear about almost everything I write.

Two years ago I had never heard of the Freeman Field Mutiny or Dr. James Buchanan Williams. I had been asked to write a series of short essays on mother's with black sons for a group called Mother's of Black Boys United, a support and lobbying organization.  They wanted things to post for Woman's History Month, and I found several captivating women to highlight. That included Clara Belle Drisdale Williams, granddaughter of slaves, daughter of sharecroppers, scholarship recipient, valedictorian, and mother of three doctors.  (The picture shows her at graduation from Prairie View College) 

I began by writing about her post graduate career as an award winning teacher  who single-handedly integrated New Mexico State University to earn a second degree, and ended up becoming fascinated by her middle son, James Buchanan, the mutineer.

In the height of World War II, James was a Lieutenant, training to become a Tuskegee Airman. At the end of March, 1945, he was transferred to Freeman Field in Indiana. There, he and the other black officers on the base were confronted by segregation. The commanding officer ordered them to sign a document agreeing they were unequal and accepting segregation.  

James and 100 other officers were arrested after they refused to sign their humanity away and obey their commanders order to admit their black lives did not matter when compared to the white officers on the

base. I think I fell a little in love with James Buchanan, and came to envy his future wife, Willeen Williams. (Pictured are James and Willeen in front of the New Mexico State University English department building named after his mother) I enjoyed reliving the day he graduated from medical school and asked her to marry him because he could not travel to Chicago to begin his internship without her. He became a first at many things in his life, and learned that even after studying in both the US and Canada, earning a masters degree in surgery and becoming chief of surgery at a major Chicago hospital, he still had to face people who thought he couldn't be a good doctor simply because he was black.

He went through life quietly, working for change to help tear down racial discrimination in  the military, in medical schools, and in hospitals at a time when Separate But Equal was a way of life. Like Forrest Gump, he was present at many of the turning points in American history. Unlike Forrest,  he served as an active participant in many of those changes. 

I wanted to write about him. I had no choice, especially since I had learned to love that man who spent many years in Chicago, not far from me.  As a woman who grew up with zero interest in history, the path to Unlawful Orders included months of in depth research to really see the man below the surface, and details of the time he grew up and practiced medicine.

In future months I will return to the subject of Unlawful Orders to discuss how the story helped me get my agent back, taught me some important differences between writing fiction and non-fiction, how the acquiring editor and author work together, the cover process, marketing,  and other steps until the final publication.