Book Talk: What Comes to Mind When You Think of Urban Drama

URBAN DRAMA

Are you an avid reader who enjoys combing through a variety of fiction book genres?  If so, what comes to your mind when you hear the words urban drama?  Perhaps you get an image of families arguing, fussing, fighting and putting their business in the street.  Maybe you envision street thugs having beef over drugs and territory.  Or maybe you picture some of the hot steamy romance books that I’ve found a lot of under the book category of “urban” fiction.  In fact, I can’t help but notice how a large number of novels in Amazon’s urban category (both in the books and the Kindle Store section) focus on black romances usually gone bad.

I hope this doesn’t sound like a generalization on my part because I’m not saying this as a complaint or as a negative in any way, just a personal observation.  I think the reason I’ve been able to make this particular observation is because I was purposely looking for books that don’t focus on this particular aspect of urban drama.  While I know that romance stories sell big time, even the gritty ones, I also know that urban drama can center around other issues besides romantic entanglements and the rough gangland street life.

My new title Skipping Childhood:  A Novel is an urban novel and falls into the African American fiction category, among other things.  Some Amazon category listings make it hard to pinpoint where exactly to place your book title.  For instance, Skipping Childhood is a coming of age story that has some suspense elements, as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts.  But because of the story line, my form of suspense is not as dramatic as a scene that you might find in one of the more typical urban books.  My romance and sex related scenes are not the highlights of the book.    

This is by no way to suggest that my new novel:  Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer) doesn’t have a romantic angle because it does.  In fact, my main character and her “Romeo” have a very strong bond that spans throughout the book, but their romance is not the driving element of the story.  I guess urban drama is no different from any other drama, regardless of a person’s background, because the reality is:  Drama is life, and life is drama, urban or otherwise.

Check out a copy of:

Skipping Childhood Novel – A Focus on Urban Drama and Child Abuse

 URBAN DRAMA

African American novels are on the rise these days, both in Kindle and print formats.  As a black female author trying to break into this particular market (among others), I’m happy to see so many talented writers.  But with growing numbers of authors writing about urban drama, the competition is that much steeper to gain visibility for your book’s title.  That is one reason why I chose to reclassify the category of my book and drill down to a better subcategory for the title: 

Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to 

Adolescent Serial Killer)

This is truly a novel that is thrilling and has moments of suspense.  It is also clearly African American fiction that depicts urban family life.  But rather than concentrate on just those elements, when categorizing this book, I’ve made sure to highlight the child abuse and dysfunctional family relationship element.  It was only after I actually read the book myself from beginning to end that I was able to realize an important fact.  The focus of the book is not on the serial killer aspect dealing with the multiple murders, the focus is on the main character’s struggle in dealing with abuse, neglect and abandonment in her life.

With that being said, there was no way to get around not finding a “family” related category to list “Skipping Childhood” in.  Since I’ve modified the book description on Amazon, I decided to post the new description below.  In addition to Fiction > Thriller > Suspense, the book will also be listed as shown here.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Young South side Chicago mother Diane Baxter will never win any good parenting awards.  Her mother-daughter relationship with her only child Deandra is as dysfunctional as a family can get. 

Diane is an addict and alcoholic, and verbally and physically abusive to Deandra.  In this dark urban drama, Deandra will not stay victim to the sexual predator who befriended her mother.  She takes matters into her own hands, and the result is murder. 

The suspense begins to mount as one killing leads to another and Deandra tries desperately to survive life in foster care.

How will she cope with Diane’s abandonment and not knowing if her mother is dead or alive?  Can a borderline sociopath ever have true happiness?  Or will one final killing mean the death of her only chance for true love?

This is more than just a dark tale of murder for revenge.  This bad seed is the product of child abuse and her story is one of survival.

Not All Urban Families

Of course, Skipping Childhood:  A Novel wasn’t written to try and imply that all urban families are screwed up and dysfunctional.  But while I wouldn’t exactly go that far, I’d be lying if I said I knew of one family that wasn’t screwed up.  I grew up around a lot of families who were equally as dysfunctional as mine.  But somehow, in the midst of chaos, you manage to find a little bit of calm.  Urban families are no different from other families in this regard.  When it comes to child neglect and abuse, no family is immune to the devastation it can cause.  I happen to write about this issue as it relates to urban families because that’s the kind of family life that I personally know.

To learn more about Diane and Deandra Baxter and their rocky mother-daughter relationship, pick up a copy of “Skipping Childhood:  A Novel”

How Do You Deal with Your Flaws? (ACCEPTANCE)

ACCEPTANCE

For the last few days since I started this blog, I wake up and think about which words in my 2017 list of topics that I want to talk about.  Sometimes I also end up adding a new word or two (or three) to my growing list.  Just like today, I opted for the word ACCEPTANCE because I had a thought on one aspect of the word, then I started thinking of ways that it pertains to “Skipping Childhood:  A Novel.”  After all, that’s the whole point of this blog anyway – to provide discussions that center around this contemporary African American novel that I’ve written. 

Acceptance Can Be Good

The first thing I want to say on the subject is when I said I wake up and think about what topic I want to discuss, that doesn’t mean that I believe this will be a daily blog.  As far as acceptance goes, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m not good sticking to the kind of commitment it takes to justify labeling this as a “daily blog”. 

WOW!  I actually said that and it felt good to admit!  It’s hard to accept that I don’t have the discipline or stick-to-it-ness, or whatever it takes to commit to making even a brief post every day.  That’s not to say that I haven’t tried in the past, or even done pretty good for a while, but ultimately that kind of pressure bums me out.  After stressing and freaking out for failing to meet too many daily deadlines, I usually just give up on trying to blog daily. 

So I finally accepted the truth and admitted to myself (out loud even) that I probably won’t post to this blog every day.  The strange thing about that is, now that the pressure is off, maybe I will post every day, who knows.  I’m no longer under any obligation, not even to myself, and for some reason that seems to be a motivator to write.  Ain’t it funny how that works? 

So this is just a quick example of how accepting certain truths about your self can actually help you, even when it means acknowledging a flaw.  Sometimes, by acknowledging and accepting that flaw (until you can possibly change it), it helps you to move on.  Once you’re unstuck, you’re in a better position to concentrate on your strengths, instead of beating yourself up over your weaknesses.

Don’t Accept Everything!

While clearly, acceptance can be a good thing, we can’t allow ourselves to fall into the trap of accepting everything.  For one thing, notice something about my above example.  When I said that “I’m no longer under any obligation, not even to myself”, I implied that besides myself, I’ve been worried about my obligation to others.  Being classified as a “daily” blog means that visitors have certain expectations.  My eventual acceptance of myself required me to eliminate that particular factor in the equation.  So by removing or changing other people’s expectations of me, I could honestly evaluate, acknowledge and accept my shortcomings on this issue.

Although it’s good to figure out how to stop worrying about what others expect from us; that still doesn’t let us off the hook about improving ourselves.  There are some very popular words of wisdom known as the Serenity Prayer.  While those words ask for serenity to accept the things we cannot change, they also talk about having courage to change the things we can change.  So you can see right there, that acceptance doesn’t mean accepting defeat and leaving it at that.  Acceptance is needed to acknowledge what is not in your power to do.  But another all important aspect of those famous words is the part that says:  “…the wisdom to know the difference.”  When you know what you truly can’t change, you can focus on an alternative.  

Character Analysis (Deandra Baxter)

Since it’s about that time to make a book reference to our discussion, I think it’s interesting how even a young child like Deandra could grasp the above concept about acceptance.  This point can be seen in one of my recent posts titled:  The Little Girl Who Kills - Deandra Baxter (Character Insight).  Under the subheading:  “How Predators Prevail,” a quote is taken from the book. 

The excerpt is a passage that helps us see how Deandra is accepting the fact that she will probably not tell anyone about her predator’s behavior.  This is typical of abuse victims.  She realizes the expectations that predators have of their selected victims; like how they fully expect victims to stay silent.  While Deandra accepted and acknowledged her own weakness in this regard, it didn’t prevent her from taking another course of action (even though it was rather extreme).  Here’s how the book pointed this out:

“…she probably would never tell, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make him sorry for what he was trying to do.”

Give “Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer)” a read and add your thoughts to the discussion.