interracial romance – Page 2 – Dahlia DeWinters

Banned Books Week – My Favorites

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Ah, Banned Books Week always makes me rub my hands together in delight and dust off my old, decrepit paperback books. Taped covers, “bookworm” holes and dog eared pages – nothing beats a great book….. Unless it’s been banned. Just like bad boys, if a book is deemed “bad”, well, hell’s bells, I can’t wait to read it, or at least see what all the fuss is about. Many of the books I’ve read, I didn’t even realize were banned. Let me share the list of my top five banned books that I read over and over again. You knew there was going to be a list!! 1. 1984 by George Orwell – “Do it to Julia!” I can’t say that I “enjoyed” this book as a matter of entertainment, but it sure did make one think. As a romance writer, I notice… Continued

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Music Monday – Rock Plaza Central

New (to me) music that doesn’t have a host of different mediocre pop stars collaborating on the same tired old riff. A song that doesn’t have a rap as a bridge. A song that uses real instruments – folks aren’t singing to a track. A song that can sound different every time it’s performed. In other words, a breath of fresh musical air. Rock Central Plaza is the name of the group and they’re classified as “indie rock”, whatever that means in this musical age. I suppose it means they didn’t win a television talent show and/or aren’t manufactured acts pushes on an unsuspecting public as “music.” Where did I find this gem? It’s on the soundtrack of an independent (of course) post apocalyptic film called “The Battery”: From IMDB: Two former baseball players, Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim), cut an aimless path across a desolate New England.

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Music Monday – Inspiration for Loving Among the Dead

As most authors do, I have a playlist of songs I work with when I’m writing. It’s the playlist I think embodies the story, the characters and the mood of a certain scene. I have all that set out before me, at my fingertips so I can access it at the press of a button. However, there are those songs that occurs to you after the story’s done, edited and published. That song which pops up out of almost nowhere and declares itself an official sponsor of your story. It continues to amaze me how much music can not only soothe the savage beast but also bare one’s soul. Judith Graham holds her own in her zombie-proofed fortress that was once her childhood home. Through the foresight of her survivalist parents, she’s set for at least a year, but overwhelming loneliness and crushing boredom drives her out into the deserted, yet

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What's your Favorite Bond Theme? Free For All Fridays

I was going over my Google Playlists and I found one that I created a long time ago with the James Bond themes. Back in the day, I would never miss Bond movies on the television. Being a woman of a certain age, my favorite Bond was Sean Connery, next George Lazenby (even though he only appeared in one Bond film) and I tolerated Roger Moore. By the time the franchise worked its way around to Timothy Dalton (yuk!) and Pierce Brosnan, I had lost interest. Thought my interest was somewhat revived with the new Bond, Daniel Craig, my heart still belonged to Sean. Never mind the movies, though, what about the songs? The iconic songs that told you that a cool movie was about to start? Many of these songs were sung by the hot artists at the time and were almost always chart worthy. For this blog post,

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Loving Blog Hop – Historic Interracial Couples

Although the Loving case was a historic civil rights decision as it struck down laws banning interracial marriage, there have been many, varied interracial marriages throughout history. Joseph Laroche, 26, a Haitian-born, French-educated engineer who was moving back to Haiti because he could not find work in his profession in France because of racial prejudice. The family was meant to travel via first-class on the French ocean liner France. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Laroches discovered that the ship wouldn’t allow them to dine with their children. They traded their first class tickets for second class tickets about the Titanic. Due to the protocol of “women and children first” Mr. Laroche separated from his family and went down with the ship. Pearl Bailey, a Black American actress and singer known for vaudeville and for the title role in the all-Black production of “Hello, Dolly!”

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Sad Songs Say So Much

It’s Monday, right? I’m not the type to sing the Monday blues, because that’s just not my style. Every day when I can wake up and do what I love is a blessing to me. Now that my “positive thinking” public service announcement is out of the way, let’s move on to the meat of the matter. The blues. Everybody gets them at one time or another for all types of reasons, but today I’m going to focus on the love blues. “The blues are the roots, everything else is the fruits.” – Willie Dixon What is the blues? The blues have their origin in slave songs, field hollers and spirituals. For my purposes here, the blues is what you sing and/or feel when you are feeling sad. You lost a lover. You never had a lover. Your lover loves someone else. So you sing the blues. Somehow knowing that