Dahlia DeWinters - Author

Quirky Heroines, Happy Endings

Tip Tuesday: Be Yourself

Hey there! Glad you could join me again on the blog.  You know how much I love my song titles, and Be Yourself by Patti really embodies what I’m feeling right now.

Writing is a solitary experience, for the most part, which is why many of us turn to Facebook and other social media outlets to give us a little pick-me-up between the stretches of hard work we are putting in on our writing.

And don’t be fooled by our whiny complaints and over-indulgence in coffee, wine, and journals. We love what we do, or else we wouldn’t do it.

But, as with any industry, there are those who treat it simply as a business and not as personal expression.  These are the authors who use ghostwriters and manage to churn out a new release every other week (or so it seems!). Meanwhile, I’m sitting here tip tapping away on a story that will probably take me more than a month to finish.

I could look upon these authors with jealousy, disparage their methods, and make fun of their stories. I could be envious of the thousands of dollars they pull down every month and salivate at the screenshots of their earnings. It would be so easy for me to do.

But I won’t.

Patti’s song says “everybody’s got a heart that knows the truth“.  No matter what you do, you’ve got to know your heart.  Now….I’m not going to lie and act like I don’t want that payout…who couldn’t use a little extra scratch? However, what would be the point? Why do I need to imbue myself with poisonous, negative thoughts, good for nothing more than souring my heart, raining on my parade and harshing my mellow?

No and nope. I’ve got a heart that knows the truth, and the truth is, I love what I do and how I do it.  I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m running my own race and working my own plan. And having a lot of fun doing so.

Could I be running my author life more like a business?  Sure!  Could I write more “to market” stories that readers will snatch off virtual shelves? Of course! But…to do so would turn me away from my vision of writing story for my soft black girls, my geeky gals and my quirky heroines.  And that’s the reason why I got into writing: to write the stories I wanted to read.

Be yourself, like Patti says, you can’t be no one else.

Til next time!

Books

Women’s History Month: A Black Feminist Threat

Ida B. Wells-Barnett totally bit a train conductor and then turned around and sued the railroad.

This month marks the marked the 105th anniversary of the March, 1913 suffrage parade in Washington staged to coincide with Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. To mark the 100th occasion of this occurrence, many woman’s groups gathered in Washington (in 2013) to recreate this parade and celebrate how far women have come since the original march. Nice, right? Did you know the original organizers of the march wanted the Black women to march in the back?

Let’s take a closer look, without the rose-colored glasses. Woman’s suffrage was not for all women. The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, in order to play nice with southern women, requested the black women march in the back of the parade rather than with their state delegations. Remember now, the very point of the march was to promote EQUALITY. Hmmmm. Anyone else see a problem here?
Mary Church Terrell, another leader of the Black woman’s suffrage movement, agreed to “make nice”. She was willing to sacrifice the mission of the Black women fighting the battle on two fronts: sexism, and racism in order to pacify the “big names” in the woman’s movement. Certainly her reasoning was sound in some ways. I’m sure she thought if the feminist battle was won, then the white women would fight against racism. However, given that the very feminists she wanted to fight for black women later, refused to fight for them now makes me think her reasoning was a little off.

There was another woman who disagreed with Mary Church Terrell’s stance: Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She once bit a train conductor who tried to forcibly remove her from a train car after she refused to leave the ladies’ car for a smoker car. This was a woman who had written several pamphlets condemning the practice of lynching and lived with death threats from whites. Of all women, she was not going to pander to the wishes of a racist South.

Refusing to conform to the designated black ranks, she “hid out” until her delegation had passed, then surged into the group of white women — some hostile, some not — and took her rightful place in the Illinois group. According to the timeline on the site http://idabwells.org, her actions began the integration of the movement. She also had to be protected from the other women in the delegation who were, ah, slightly peeved that an (uppity) Negro woman dared march among their ranks, after she had been explicitly told not to.

Now that’s bravery.

It is unfortunate that Mrs. Wells-Barnett isn’t a more prominent figure in history, especially in the context of women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement. Mind you, many of the websites that give biographies of Mrs. Wells-Barnett either gloss over the march, or don’t mention it at all. However, a bit of research can reveal how forward thinking and courageous this woman really was, to take on men (black and white) AND white women.

Check out the little story I wrote about the suffrage parade here.

Further Reading:
Ida B. Wells: Civil Rights Activist
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
Ida B. Wells: Crusade for Justice
Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation

Horror Movie Review – The Open House

Title:   The Open House

Genre:   Thriller/Horror

Synopsis:   (from imdb) A teenager (Dylan Minnette) and his mother (Piercey Dalton) find themselves besieged by threatening forces when they move into a new house.

If you’re a fan of horror movies where “the black guy dies first”, this movie is for you.  To begin, let me tell you I watch a LOT of garbage.  As a person who watched horror movies, I have accepted and even embraced the fact that not every movie I screen will be good or even palatable.  Still, even in the worst of horror movies so far, I’ve been able to not be disgusted by them.  Sure, they’ve been dumb, silly and downright terrible, but there was always a little spark of originality or the fact the movie didn’t take itself too seriously which mitigated its terribleness. This is not the case with The Open House.

If, after my dire warning, you still insist on watching this film in a serious way, read no more.  I will be spoiling everything I can.  All the spoilers.  EVERY ONE!

not necessarily in order, either

 From both the poster and the movie trailer, the film promises a mysterious movie in which a weekly Open House may or may not be inviting in a killer.  The film poster, done in bluish-gray “horror movie tones” showed a shadowy figure standing menacingly in a driveway.  Both advertisement mediums indicated a good, scary time lorded over by this scary figure.

When I logged on to Netflix to chill out and watch some reruns of The Office, it popped right up on my feed.  So, I said, what the heck?  Oh, foolish Dahlia. Foolish, foolish, Dahlia. 

 

I should have known something was up when the movie began with a cliche:

Main character suffers a devastating tragedy.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again:  I’ve seen a LOT of movies (not just horror) and I’m pretty good at recognizing foreshadowing when I see it.  As I writer, I have also been known to use the technique a bit. That being said, foreshadowing is supposed to be subtle, but when Dad dropped an egg and the movie showed it cracking open, spilling out the yolk and white all over the floor, I knew Dad was a goner.  Then, poor old Dad suggests they go get more eggs.  I knew right away, old Dad was gonna be cracked open sooner rather than later.  Sure enough, Dad was gone in the first 15 minutes of the movie.  Bonus cliche points:  the main character sees this happen,

Main character has to relocate because of…whatever issues.

Turns out Dad was a deadbeat and didn’t leave any insurance.  So Mom and son have to go to live in her sister’s house, which she just so happens to have up for sale.  Which brings us to the next cliche.

New location is located in a remote place with spotty cell service.

On their way to the town, the mother is talking on the cell phone in the car. Sounds like she’s trying to straighten out something with the husband’s estate.  Why are you chatting on the phone, driving to a strange place IN THE DARK? Either way she’s driving, in the dark and chatting on the phone.  Then she gets mad because the phone 

cuts out (cue spotty cell service) Suddenly, a mysterious figure appears at the side of the road, causing mom to slam the brakes and holler, “Did I hit him?”

:::::Mouth open::::::  Heffa, did you hear a thump? I’m sorry, but I’ve got to really ding the movie for this.  I can’t with this one.  There was no thump….why the heck did you think you hit him? I began to think this movie wasn’t going to have any legs. But it did have cliches!  Check out the next one.

Explore a creepy basement/attic with a flashlight.

They get to the house.  Bring in their stuff.  Then the mother disappears somewhere and the boy is in the kitchen by himself.  Oh, look there’s a door!  It leads to a basement, WHICH HAS NO LIGHT SWITCH.  No worries, just pick up this handy flashlight and go right on down!  Also, what was up with the maze in the basement?  Stone walls?  Is this Wolfenstein? No rhyme or reason, just wander around down there until your mother calls for you.  The weird thing was, they never discuss how weird the basement was, not even a throw off line.  I tell you what, if I lived in a house like that with a creepy basement, I sure would be on the lookout for, well, creepiness.

Weird/creepy neighbors and/or townsfolk

The characters go into a store or something and an older woman comes up to them.  “You must be Logan….and you are Naomi”.  Ooooo, spooky.  They are on alert.  How does this woman know their names.  “Oh, your sister emailed me with your pictures.”  Okay, why didn’t the sister TELL THEM that?  Cheap scary moment.  Random crazy woman not so crazy…or is she?  You’re back and forth with that, movie. And I despise you for it.

Random scares with chords.

Oh, the tangled web we weave when we try to scare.  Sigh.  The silly jump scares abound. Unfortunately, no cat scares…that at least would have been mildly entertaining.

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Saying “hello” when there’s a weird sound/event.

There’s a scene where Logan, the teenager, is awakened by a honking horn.  He gets up, goes to the window and peeks out.  There is a car sitting in their driveway, with its lights on bright so he really can’t see anything.  He stands there for a while until the car honks its horn.  Logan then GOES OUTSIDE (no coat, no shoes) and tries to see who is in the car.  What the heck?  Then, he goes back to bed and DOES NOT TELL HIS MOTHER. Whaaaa? I dig that they’re kind of estranged because of the father’s death and their poorness, but…..c’mon man!

Not noticing things are out of place/not telling people when weird things happen

You live in a house, an apartment whatever.  You know when doors are open and closed, right?  Well, these two don’t.  The mother goes somewhere in the house, walks past a door.  As we watch, the door opens.  When she comes back, and walks right past the door, she doesn’t close it, nor does she even seem to register that it’s open in the first place.  I just shook my head.  By that time in the movie, I was just watching to see what happened.

Kid has a cereal bowl in his room.  He goes to do something, and finds his cereal bowl in the living room.  Says nothing.

Black guy dies first

So something scary happens, furniture is rearranged when they leave the house.  They come back, are shocked, and FINALLY call the police.  After trying to keep his mother from even talking to this dude earlier in the movie, Kid invites the only other black guy in the movie besides the cop, Chris, over to, I guess, protect them against the creepy stuff. And also to be the first victim of mysterious killer. Yeah.  Bite it, movie, with your oldest cliche in the damn horror movie book.

Note:  There are two black men in this movie.  One is a red herring and dies first, the other is a police officer and has THREE WORDS to say. This is 2018, right?  I thought we were done with the stereotypes and cliches, but I guess not. Bugger off, movie.

As if you didn’t know this already, this movie is not recommended, even for fun.  It’s a dud of a movie, and I truly felt I wasted my time watching it. If you want to see the trailer, I’m sure it’s on YouTube.  I’ve wasted enough of my life on this movie as it is. 

 

Grade:  F-.  You are not approved for a mortgage.

 

Note:  There are a few times where I think I say I’m sorry?  Well, I’m NOT!!

 

Writers: Increase Productivity with these 3 Tools

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As a writer and a lover of technology, I find I like to try a lot of different things I think will increase my productivity. Sometimes I find a tool helpful, sometimes it simply pulls hours of frustration from my life with no real return. Right now, I want to share some of my best apps and tools which assist me in make a life as an author and as a mom a little easier.

Writing often includes research, lots of it. From recipes to the right way to give CPR to trying to find out if a .357 Magnum would really blow your head “clean off” as Dirty Harry once told us, “writing” isn’t all about getting words on the page. In fact, it’s the research that helps us find our flow and get words on the page in the first place. I always feel twenty minutes of thorough research can influence at least 5,000 words on the page.

The question is, where do you store all this research? Printing it out is ridiculous. Who needs all those reams of paper floating around their space? I have enough clutter as it is. While I love the printed page, I make the effort to go paperless when I can.

Enter Evernote.
Yes, an elephant never forgets, unlike my spotty memory. Evernote floats along with you on your web searches. Any little thing you want to save, it’s there for you. You can even enter your own voice and written notes.