ROBERT FLEMING

Interested in psychology and sociology, I came to writing as a fluke in the early 1970s when a friend, Willard Jenkins, allowed me to sub for him as a music writer at a local magazine in Cleveland. Reading had always been a favorite pastime for me, but writing was something I never imagined myself doing. While studying full-time for a degree in psychology at night at a local college, I worked fulltime during the day as a welfare case worker, squeezing time in doing interviews with people like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Minnie Riperton, Ray Charles, Bob Marley, and a host of other jazz and pop greats. Like many writers, my first love was poetry and I published two books of poems, Melons (1974) and Stars (1975).

It wasn’t until I came to New York as a young writer that a whole realm of possibilities opened for me in that area. I landed my first real writing job at Encore Magazine, a pioneering black newsmagazine in 1977, working as an associate editor. Despite hassles with pay, the experience at the publication was extremely beneficial, giving me a chance to work with such talents as Nikki Giovanni, Ivan Webster, Paula Giddins, and Henry Jackson. I worked on hard news stories, such as the involuntary sterilization of young black women in several southern states, political corruption on a national level, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, medical experiments conducted on black patients at several East Coast medical sites, and the spate of police brutality cases nationwide. In 1979, I did one story which would change my life: a car tour of the Deep South, where I interviewed poor black families in rural Alabama and Mississippi, spoke with plantation owners in Georgia and Louisiana about their abuse of their black tenant farmers, and conducted a late night talk with a group of hooded Klansmen outside of Anniston, Alabama. This series got me some notice and earned me a scholarship to Columbia University’s noted School of Journalism.

After my tour of duty at the “J School,” I worked for a time with former CBS News president, Fred Friendly, former boss of the legendary Edward R. Morrow, as a staff writer for the PBS TV show, Media and Society. A chance meeting at one of the show’s taping got me a job as a reporter at The New York Daily News, where I worked throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. While there, I learned the world of hard New York news from the street up, earning a New York Press Club, a Revson Fellowship and several other honors. I retired at the end of 1991 to write and teach. Since that time, I’ve published work in Essence, Black Enterprise, The Source, U.S. News and World Report, Omni, Black Issues Book Review, Bookpage, Quarterly Black Review, The New York Times and Publishers Weekly.

Currently, I teach a course at The New School, “Media And The Black Experience,” with another course, “Hard and Soft News: Journalism for A New World,” to start in the Spring of 2001. In the early 1990s, I wrote two young adult books, Rescuing A Neighborhood: The Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps. and The Success of Caroline Jones, Inc.: The Story of an Advertising Agency. Two other books, The Wisdom of the Elders (1996) and The African American Writer’s Handbook (2000) followed, both of which were selected by The Black Expression Book Club.

My poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in such books as UpSouth, Brotherman: The Odyssey of The Black Man in America, Sacred Fire, In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry, Dark Matter, Beyond The Frontier and the groundbreaking collection of black erotica, Brown Sugar. I’m especially proud of being a contributor in Dark Matter, recently chosen as a New York Times notable book, because of its emphasis on science fiction and fantasy writing. At present, I’m working feverishly on a sequel to After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing By Black Men, which was named “Best Erotic Collection of 2002” by Black Issues Book Review. That anthology will highlight love, lust and marriage. I have three other projects in the works A collection of short stories will be forthcoming next year as well and A Woman’s Man, a political novel, of which the first chapter was printed in the anthology, Gumbo. I’m deep into the research for a non-fiction book on the art and politics of the 1960s for publication in the following year.

Recently, I came upon a quote from the Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall that sums up my goals as a writer: “The African writer cannot and must not take pen in hand merely to offer pretty expressions and phrases. As the product of a society that has its problems, he must create work so that each person becomes completely aware of them, so that people think of them, and look for their solutions, Ft that is what it means to be a committed writer, then that is what I am. Our literature must raise issues that summon me to devise solutions to problems that are specifically ours, problems which, although existing in other places, take on a special dimension in our country.”

This is what I’ve tried from the moment I first started submitting my work to publishers and will continue to do until I no longer write. Which I hope is never.
 

Fever in the Blood
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ISBN: 0758212399
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 320pp
Pub. Date: May 2006
Kensington Publishing Corporation

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…and he’s burning mad at the world. He’s mad at the family he lost—his parents and sisters viciously killed by a gang in their own home; and he’s mad at the foster family that “rescued” him—headed up by a powerful Harlem congressman who sees Eddie as a campaign ploy. Mainly, Eddie is mad at himself, for getting caught by the cops with blood on his hands. Blood he should have washed off right away. He was sloppy this time. It won’t happen again. Because Eddie knows the fever that ignites his rage is wasted—unless it’s put to use. And he intends to put it to use again and again…

Havoc after Dark: Tales of Terror
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ISBN: 0758205759
Format: Paperback, 241pp
Pub. Date: March 2004
Kensington Publishing Corporation

…the world is cloaked in shadow and hearts pound in deafening dread. Every step is suspect, every moment counted, every sound feared. This is the hour when panic takes hold. Terror does not distinguish among class or race or place. See it stalk its prey in a murky basement in Spanish Harlem…under a haunted voodoo moon on a Caribbean isle…by ghoulish candlelight in a Mardi Gras backroom. These are the minutes when reality fades, defenses crumble, and only the unknown triumphs. No one is spared. Not parish priest, shape shifter, or fortuneteller. Not homicidal boy or cunning woman. Within seconds, paid killers roam city streets and murderers reborn emerge from fearful chambers of the undead. Within minutes, life slips away to ungodly applause, amulets work black magic, and satanic traditions throw blood at the stars. Now is the instant when...

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"After Hours hits the ground running and maintains its level of excellence from cover to cover. It includes Charles Johnson's Cultural Relativity, which had a surprising and humorous ending; Odell by John A. Williams, one of my favorite authors of all time; Arthur Flowers' (Another Good Loving Blues) Once Upon A Time, a tale that unfolds like a whispered melody sung with the rhythm of a beating heart; Alexs D. Pate's The Rumor, a haunting and poignant tale which placed me in the middle of an organized chaotic mind; and Jervey Tervalon (Dead Above Ground) sent me over-the-top with Twisted." —Thumper, AALBC.com

The African American Writer's Handbook: How to Get in Print and Stay in Print
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The Wisdom of the Elders 
(Edited by Fleming)
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Format: Paperback, 343pp.
ISBN: 0345409752
Publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc.
Pub. Date: January 1997
Edition Desc: 1ST TRADE

In these troubled times, wisdom often seems in short supply. But as this magnificent volume reminds us, African Americans have been blessed with a precious legacy of wisdom, gained through long, hard years of struggle by those who have gone before. Wisdom is the most hallowed gift born of experience and endurance. The life-affirming guidance in The Wisdom of the Elders has been gleaned from this bountiful harvest and includes some of the most electrifying and deeply moving writings and speeches ever produced. Here are the unedited works of such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Lorraine Hansberry, Thurgood Marshall, Zora Neale Hurston, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, Marcus Garvey, Barbara Jordan, Paul Robeson, Jean Toomer, and many others.

Proverbs For The People: Contemporary African-American Stories
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