Black Girl Dreaming

2024 - It's Giving Stress, It's Giving Anxiety, It's Giving Ceasefire, It's Giving, It's Giving

Yerrr it’s been a minute. How y’all doing? I can’t believe it’s 2024, so much has happened since my last newsletter, gulp, years ago! I had a baby girl, edited another anthology (more on this below), experienced more grief, more love, and I’d be remiss not to mention more stress and anxiety. But you know, I’m claiming 2024 as my “sloth” year. Slow and steady. Taking it day by day. It’s the only way I will survive.

Welcome Back to Black Girl Dreaming.

A newsletter where I share notes on life, lessons learned, my big ol’ Black girl dreams, and my quest to conquer all of the things. I am excited to have you all here with me on this journey. If there’s anything you’d like me to discuss, feel free to drop me a line, or hit me up in the comments section. And as always, thanks for reading!

The last three years have been tough on all of us. Everyone I talk to is just trying to dig themselves out of the hole of grief, depression, burnout, or some other emotional and/or physical trap. The US is bankrolling a war they have no business funding, and innocent children are dying. We need a ceasefire now. I don’t know about y’all, but I can barely stomach coverage, the news, or social media as whole. I do what I can, when I can. I have to take care of myself before I can advocate for anyone else. I say that as a reminder to you reading this newsletter. Do what you can, when you can. Even if it’s just one small thing. But please, please, please take care of yourself.

I’ve done just that these most recent years. And let me tell you, sometimes the care I gave myself was just to hang up on social media, and the hustle culture. To just be present in my family life. SO yeah, that’s why this newsletter was shelved for some time. It’s because something needed to give, so I gave, so that I could be where I was needed most, with my family. 2023 was a very trying year, there was death, after death, and medical scare after medical scare for members of my family. Somehow, things are much better, and I’m finally, slowly, coming up for air. It’s great timing to, because I’m feeling optimistic about 2024, crossing my fingers that this year is better than my last.

BEFORE I GET INTO BOOK NEWS…

I wanted to share that I've decided to put myself out there by sharing my fiction writing with the internet. I have a two short stories out this year included in anthologies, and I’m really excited for folks to read them. I hope you like it, and even if you don’t, I at least hope it makes you laugh :) When it comes to my fiction writing, I always try to weave in humor (even if it’s corny LOL). I’m still waiting to publish my debut YA novel one day, but I’ve decided I don’t want to wait anymore for the gatekeepers of the literary world to tell me if my story is worthy of publication. Instead, I want to try something with the community I’m building here on Substack. I’m going to release chapters of my work-in-progress (WIP) and have the community tell me what they love or hate about it LOL. This will definitely be an experiment, and one that I will need to offer to only paid subscribers.

But first, things first! Next month I’m going to release an excerpt from a YA contemporary WIP, and my YA fantasy WIP (that’s been working on for nearly 10 freaking years UGH), and allow subscribers to vote on which one I should release to the community for feedback. I’m excited :) free subscribers will be able to read each excerpt and vote, and then I’ll offer up the next chapter in the selected manuscript as thank you for voting. After that, the rest of the chapters will be for paid subscribers to roast me:::: I mean, offer up creative critique in the hopes to help me continue to hone my skills as a writer. I hope some of you will join, but totally understand if you want to pass on this, no hard feelings!

THE BLACK GIRL SURVIVES IN THIS ONE

That’s the title of my forthcoming horror anthology that I edited with Desiree S. Evans. I know what you’re thinking…Badass title, am I right? I know, we love it too! I’ve loved horror since I was a kid. If I’m being honest, some of my childhood was a straight up horror story, from living in two haunted houses to seeing the ghost of my deceased father in a parked car while riding my bike in the street. There’s something about the eerie and strange, jumpscares and gore, that I just love. I’m also really big into horror that weaves in humor, and my super jam is horror, humor, and romance (like when I was in high school Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 were on rotation in my VCR (if you know you know, haha.) I LOVED the Blackening, and Goosebumps (yes the throwback, and the new new lol). I just love it all. Even though I devoured books and movies in this genre growing up and as an adult, I was always hard pressed to see someone like me in the books or on screen —a Black Final girl (like can we be the main, and survive please?!). Some of my favs to do it were Karla played by Brandy in “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” Sanaa Lathan in “Alien vs. Predator,” Halle Berry in “Gothika,” and to see someone like Rah Digga in “Thirteen Ghosts” as a hip-hop fan was everything (I wish she had a larger role in that movie too). Damn, when I think about it, the 90s was really fantastic for Black film and TV, and horror. I mean one of my all time favorite movies is “Vampire in Brooklyn,” being born in Brooklyn and a major fan of Angela Bassett, that movie was everything to me—plus it had horror, humor, and romance— like if you haven’t seen any of these movies, please go watch it and then hit me up so we can discuss! But, back to this beautiful Black anthology - check out the gorgeous cover below illustrated and designed by Monet Alyssa, whose artwork is simply stunning (like I’m obsessed with this art!). You’ll find stories from so many fantastic Black writers from Bronx native Vincent Tirado to The Other Black Girl author, Zakiya Dalila Harris, not to mention Justina Ireland, Eden Royce and so many others!

Alright, I’m done blabbing about promo stuff…

HERE’S WHAT I’M UP TO THESE DAYS

Listening

This is going to sound so cheesy, but I’ve been listening to my son rock out on the guitar and on the piano. This is such a HUGE win, considering when he first started music lessons two years ago, he was excited, and then hated it (because it was too hard), but now he’s thriving and even has hopes to start a band! Love it when he shines, it makes me so happy.

Watching

Over the last couple of years I’ve binged some really dope shows. I know I already mentioned From, but it’s such a good show. I’ve binged a bunch and currently just finished Ginny & Georgia - which I thought I wasn’t going to like, but loved it and also cried my eyes out so many times. Another show I just finished and HIGHLY recommend watching is The Brothers Sun on Netflix, it’s so freaking good!

Reading

There’s so many books on my TBR pile. But I’m currently re-reading FRUIT PUNCH: A MEMOIR by Kendra Allen. I love the voice so much, and it’s a slim book, but the content is a gut punch!

As always, thank you so much for reading my newsletter! Hope to be in your inboxes real soon with more updates :) That’s all for now folks, follow me on social media for updates, even though I’m mostly on hiatus, I pop online every now and again.