Z- You Never see it when it Ends

So, the A-Z blog challenge is over. I can't believe I did 26 dedicated (minus Sundays) days writing to a letter. Definitely a trial to stick to one thing. True you didn't see all of them because they are on my speaklowericanthearyou.blogspot.com site.

I thought I would share a little more of America's multi-racial history--The Z's have the stage:

1. Author

ZFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neal_Hurston,,ORA NEALE HURSTON (born January 7, 1891) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. 

 2. Artist:

KFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korczak_Ziolkowski Sven,,ORCZAK ZIÓLKOWSKI (born September 6, 1908, in Boston) was an American sculptor of Crazy Horse Memorial. Ziolkowski, a Polish American, was born exactly 34 years after the death of Crazy Horse on September 6, 1908.

3.Scientist

PFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo,,HILIP G. ZIMBARDO (born March 23, 1933) is an American psychologist, best-known for his Stanford prison experiment and bestselling introductions to psychology. he conducted the famed Stanford prison experiment, in which 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards in a mock prison located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford . The students quickly began acting out their roles, with "guards" becoming sadistic and the "prisoners" showing extreme depression and passivity.The experiment led to theories about the importance of the social situation in individual psychology that are still controversial today.

4.Inventor 

FFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zamboni,,RANK JOSEPH ZAMBONI, JR. (January 16, 1901 in Eureka, Utah to Italian immigrants) was a U.S. inventor whose most famous invention was the Zamboni machine for resurfacing ice rinks. In the 1970s, he invented machines to remove water from outdoor artificial turf surfaces, remove paint stripes from the same surfaces, and roll up and lay down artificial turf in domed stadiums. 

5. Activist 

HELEN ZIA,(FLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Zia,,謝漢蘭 pinyin: Xiè Hànlán)  born in 1952  is a second generation Chinese American and an award-winning journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for decades. She was born in New Jersey to first generation immigrants from Shanghai She was also a vocal anti-war activist, voicing her Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and a firm believer in feminism. She has appeared in numerous news programs and films; her work on the 1980s Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award nominated film, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" and she was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary, "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience."

Okay world that concludes our American history lesson for today. 

History Lesson Brought to You by the Letter "Y"

The challenge of A-Z blogging is almost over. I thought I would share somethings and people from our history beginning with the letter ''Y. READ MORE IN THE BOOK

1.Yoyo (Inventor)

PEDRO FLORES, father of the yo-yo (Donald Duncan purchased the company and renamed it Duncan Yo-Yo Co.) Pedro Flores was an immigrant to the United States from Vintarilocos Norte, Philippines.  He came to the United State in 1915. He attended the High School of Commerce in San Francisco 1919-1920 then he took up the study of Law at the University of California Berkeley and the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. He worked as a bellhop at a Santa Monica hotel. Carving and playing with wooden yo-yos was a traditional pastime in the Philippines, but Pedro found that his lunch break yo-yo playing drew a crowd was the first appearance of the name "yo-yo," which means "come-come". Mr. Flores was the singular most important person in introducing the word "yo-yo" to the United States. Although the yo-yo as a toy (known as a bandalore) has been used for centuries, even existing in the United States for years prior to Mr. Flores, as one astute observer noted in the late 1920's "we've all done the yo-yo before but we never had a name for it." Although Pedro Flores was frequently described as the inventor of the yo-yo, Mr. Flores never personally claimed to have invented the yo-yo, and he always mentioned its past history as a centuries old Philippine game.

2. Chemist

YFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Tseh_Lee,,UAN TSEH LEE (Chinese: 李遠哲  pinyin: Li Yuanzhé, Wade-Giles: LiYüan-che; pe?h-oe-ji: Lí Oán-tiat) (born November 19, 1936) is a famous chemist. He was the first Taiwanese-born Nobel Prize laureate, who, along with the German-Canadian John C. Polanyi and American Dudley R. Herschbach won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 "for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." 

3.Educator

 YFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_Ichihashi,,AMATO ICHIHASHI, Ichihashi was born in Nagoya, of the Aichi prefecture of Japan in 1878.Yamato Ichihashi was one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center where he was imprisoned in World War II along with other relocated Japanese Americans.

4.Governmental Leader

JFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo,,OHN YOO, born 1967 is Korean-born American legal scholar and a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and is best known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the United States Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

5. Activist
JFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Yee,,AMES J. YEE (Chinese: 余百康 or 余优素福) is an American former United States Army chaplain with the rank of captain. He is best known for being subject to an intense investigation by the United States, but charges were later dropped. Yee, a Chinese American, was born in New Jersey. All court-martial charges against Yee were quietly dropped on March 19, 2004, and he was released to resume his duties. 

6.Authors

YOLANDA CORNELIA "NIKKI" GIOVANNI (born June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee) is an American poet and author. Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee into a family of mixed African American and Italian ancestry. Giovanni is a breast cancer survivor who contributed an introduction to the book “Breaking the Silence: Inspirational Stories of Black Cancer Survivors.” 

 LFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois-Ann_Yamanaka,,OIS-ANN YAMANAKA (born September 7, 1961 in Ho'olehua, Molokai, Hawaii) is a Japanese American poet and novelist from Hawaii. Many of her critically acclaimed literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confront themes of Asian American families and the local culture of Hawaii.

7.Activist: 

YFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yung_Wing,,UNG WING (Chinese: 容闳 Pinyin: Róng Hóng) was born November 17, 1828 in Zhuhai in Guangdong province. He persuaded the Qing Dynasty government to send young Chinese to the United States to study Western science and engineering.With the U.S. government's eventual approval, he organized what came to be known as the Chinese Educational Mission.

8. Sports:

KFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kristi_,,RISTI TSUYA YAMAGUCHI (born July 12, 1971 in Hayward, California) is an American figure skater. Yamaguchi was the first woman to have won both the U.S. Senior pairs and ladies figure skating titles.

9. Media/Entertainment:

YFLOWTEXTLINK ,WEB,HTTP:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma,,O-YO MA (Chinese: 馬友友; simplified Chinese: 马友友; Ma Youyou) (born October 7, 1955) is a French-born Chinese-American cellist, considered one of the finest in the world.

X -Where to Start to Format

X is for exerting your own effort. I think for a little while I will do a post on the process of self publishing an e-book. The ends and out from a novice prospective.

Formatting the manuscript so that it can be uploaded and converted through Smashwords is not as hard as it seems. In the beginning I was totally afraid because of the stated prices to get a 'professional' to do it for you. I laugh at no one who can afford to pay up to $200 or more to have someone handle everything for them. But what do you learn for yourself?

To tell the truth, the biggest expense is valued in the amount of 'hours' it requires to strip and reformat your manuscript in Microsoft Word. Once you are able to do one successfully it gets easier and easier to do the next. At first I wasted many hours trying to format for the Kindle. That was enough of a horror to make me want to pull my nails with pliers. Not to mention wanting to toss the laptop to the wall.

Smashwords supplies you with a manual explaining what is needed and not needed in your manuscript. What they didn't tell you is that every minor bit needs to be formatted in the 'styles' section from your Word program. This section has things such as title, normal, quotes etc. Each part has to have the correct font, position, and letter size chosen. If not, when your book is converted nothing will look as you expect. Once the format is as clean and perfect as you can make it, then its time to set up your account with Smashwords. 

I find learning and succeeding with new things totally exciting.

Yes, You Can Publish Your Own

        

 Today's post is brought to you by the letters V & W.

View of ourselves. Sometimes we get so wound up in the way others view us that we forget who we are. Really this 'V' was supposed to be yesterday's posting, but I was busy exploring possibilities. In my quest I have conquered the wayward manuscript formation and have now published three books to Smashword. I am Victorious and gladly and proudly wave my pen and pencil (oh, and keyboard) in the air. Since two of my novels were previously (and through no shame of my own) published they were deemed worthless to the publishing world. Following the advice of incompetent agent can do this for your labors. I wrote about that in my Writing Your ego to Hell post. So I won't rehash. Instead I will shine the light on the novels that are now in multiple electronic reading formats. They can be viewed on Smashwords at my Author Profile or on their individual pages. Just click on the covers. The Characters can also be seen interviewed at In the Chair .

Writing, words, and Wade-In Publishing. As we all know a 'writer writes'. Its just what we do. Every breath we take is a breath to a present or past character. Everything we or our family does become fodder in our writing process. The publishing is the hard part. If I only wrote to be a rich woman, I would more than likely die of failure. Though much mockery has been made of the person who believes they have the golden ticket from God to write their prose, who are we to judge. Everything, everybody, every word has a purpose. I have heard their is 'nothing' new under the sun. There is always something new. New things and concepts are developed daily. Their pieces may be plucked from something existing, but their formation is different and so deemed as new.
I believe in change. The history book with it's multimedia format of hyperlinking,audio and visual holds within its cover the biography of people of different races who believed, fought for and invented the impossible. I consider it a new way to view America's history. People can change a world, but it begins with a mere word.

Unseen

In my youth I felt like the white pegs on the board in the picture. Unseen. It was hard enough growing up as an African American, but much harder growing up under the label 'no color'. Which was sometimes what a light skinned Black is called by our people. Being light skinned made it easier to be accepted by the White teachers and White students and challenged (beat down, berated) by the (some)Black teachers and Black students. Sort of reverse racism and backhanded slaps.

 Racism/Prejudices are the hardest thing in the world to change. No matter what color you are you are sometimes Unseen. One of my visitors yesterday had this to say about my "T" post--

 "I generally feel a bit timid about being seen choosing "black" books -- as if black people would think I shouldn't be interested in them, because maybe they'd think I think they're a hobby or special interest or something."

Wow, unbelievable. *hangs head in shame* How awful we are to make a person have this kind of feeling. Makes me think of teenagers  hiding porn mags in a brown bag. Not that I've ever done it. But it seems like 'we' with our prejudices drive the world to feel as if holding a book from someone of the opposite color is something to be ashamed of and to keep under cover.

I must say, I'm not always drawn to all AA books. I haven't lived the 'Black Urban experiences in some of the books and I don't always want to read them. I'm not a Tyler Perry 'die hard' fan, though when nothing else is on I do watch it on TV. I (slap me if you must) don't like Beyonce's music, or clothing or acting and that's more to a representation kind of feeling. It just goes to show we are all individuals with our own tastes.

I just think we should be able to walk to the romance section  or  any section for that matter of the bookstore and see faces of color and not have to slither through the store to the AA section.

What we need to realize is, nothing changes without "U". As an adult I have come to know those invisible uncolored pegs we're not representing me, but surrounding me to show me the real me and saying 'You matter'. I have a rainbow of faces on my shelves. I stand in the book stores and I buy and read in color. No one stands unseen.

More A-Z challengers     
My other blog

Three Troubling Thoughts

Times have changed or so people keep professing. You would think with these changing times acceptance of differences would have grown as a norm. Instead the opposite is true.

Okay, I'm still blogging from A-Z and "T" has caused me to think hard. Over the airwaves, I saw three things yesterday that really bugged me.

1. Racism in publishing and writing. The hardest thing in the world is to have a book published. To make it even harder, throw in skin color. I can speak of other nationalities having the same problems, but think about it....if race is brought up, it's always a Black/White thing. The truth is (and I don't want to venture into why) African Americans are still getting flogged. Sure many things have changed, but discrimination is slapping us in the face in the bookstores and the publishing arena. Why the big separation? No matter what 'we' write it ends up under the label of a color.  The characters on the covers are more often than not white-washed because the belief is no one would want to read books published by one of us. And our beauty does not sale books.

How many people of different races venture down the African American rows? It puts a block on whether or not a writer become a successful author. Truth be said, Americans (Black) authors writing about Black characters whether they are American or not do not get front placement as Americans (White)authors writing about Black characters. One of the best sites I have run across is White Readers Meet Black Authors. Carleen Brice does a wonderful job of highlighting awesome books by Americans of different nationalities and this particular highlighted author hits right on the point.  Desegregation has not made an impact on the publishing world. I write and I read in color. I am not a label.

2. Traditional & Self-Publication. I don't know a writer worth their weight who wouldn't want to have their words traditionally published. The process is hard, nerve wrecking, and totally frustrating. Not to mention the querying process for a coveted agent. You have to have the self-esteem of a brick and the skin of leather. To make it worse, when one gets tired of the routine and decides to self-publish they (and their works) are treated as if they are a preschooler without the ability to string together words and put together a professional package. I think its sad when this ability is rated as the lowest form of writing and disregarded as trash. We may miss out on some great literary works because of another labeling stigma.

3.Homeschooling & Unschooling.This topic can also tie in with the others because its worthiness is garnered from it's label. As a person who home & unschooled three daughters into college, and these girls run their own businesses, I feel irritated when people spout off about children educated in this manner becoming hindrances to fellow citizens. The process of sharing knowledge comes from all aspects of society and I really don't think one is waaaay better than the other. Failures come from public, private as well as the home educated. The method nor the process to educate matter as much as the attention given to the one being educated. In this day and age with the vast amount of abilities to get information failure is not an option it is a choice.

Anyway, as I said times have changed. Its time for the people to change.

Receiving Books

On my other blog speaklowericanthearyou.blogspot.com I have entered the challenge to blog A-Z. We are on  the letter R. I want to share what I Received in the mail yesterday from Michael Hyatt after reading Chris Brogan's blog.

I can't wait to read this book. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a memoir by Donald Miller sharing the idea of living our lives as if it were a story and how we can edit our experiences to be a great read.

I love receiving books. Especially when they are free. Thanks Mr. Hyatt.

Do You Have a Story in Your Life?

 I read Chris Brogan's post The Importance of Story in Your Life  and knew how much I wanted to own the book-A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.


What would life be without a story? In my own life there are many stories. Short paragraphs on accomplishments and joys written along side huge chapters of trials and triumphs. Without the stories I would not have had an anchor to fall back on when the suckie part of life repeated itself. The stories are our source of knowledge, our keys to success, and our wisdom to share.

In the Chair this week at The Interviewed Character is the author Ey Wade.  Our theme this week--

TALKING TO MYSELF.

Ms. Wade is discussing her book Beads on a String-America's Racially Intertwined Biographical History.

Queries, Proposals, and Insanity

If I weren't destined to be a writer...did you hear that almighty gods of publication! Let me repeat... if I weren't 'destined' to be a published writer I would think I was crazy.

Why else would I spend hours trying to perfect letters to people I don't know and beg them to read what I think are a major pieces of literary perfection? Well, anyway stories to be read with drool of incredulity plopping on their laps.

Why else would I refresh my inbox and check my BBerry for messages within more minutes than the Lord allows in a day?

Why else would I accept rejection with a smile and keep on getting up and resubmitting myself to the same torture? Am I trying to be an author or am in love? Crazy. This is where the insanity button kicks in.

Why else would I forgo meals to tap on small keys of a tiny lap top or even tinier BBerry keys just to make sure I get every smidgen of inspiration in writing as soon as it crosses my brain waves? Maybe I'm dizzy from hunger.

Sure I may be 'pitchy' and my writing ability runs from one genre to another, and I don't follow a crowd (or have a crowd following me), and I always watch the end of movies and read the end of books first, and I go off on tandems....

If I weren't destined to be a writer I wouldn't be going back to recheck those queries and proposals.

I've Been Challenged

Through my Voiceover blog I decided to participate in a challenge to blog through the alphabet. The challenge comes from Tossing it Out. Come and join us and a multitude of great writers.