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We met at a party. It was not love at first sight. Our similar tastes in music and movie trivia drew us together, and once we began dating, we just kind of grew on each other.

Agreed, whether it is for a business or a family, pooling resources, money, energy, time, and tasks will be key moving forward. It is likely my children's generation will never collect social security; shoot, I'm on the bubble. So, I believe these new family structure will come to pass. It would be nice if the government provided legislation to facilitate or at least ignore these alternative family structures. Right now everything is aligned to facilitate permanent, heterosexual marriage. But few people can achieve this goal, and many don't even want to try. The ideal of the home with the white picket fence is almost anachronistic--but no other alternatives are presented as favorable. Still we make getting married easy, while divorce is hard and often expensive. Married people have a higher tax liability, especially if one spouse makes less than the other. Few talk about the government's hand in discouraging marriage. So while the country is mostly Christian, the influence of the Christianity has continued to wane over time. I think this is also a factor in the increase of out of wedlock births not just in the Black community, but in America in general. A single 18 year old having a baby will likely be embraced, while a single 40 year old woman, who never had kids, is pitied... The number of sperm banks are increasing, with single women being the biggest users, dwarfing even the LGBT community. Also we always talk about the lack of fathers in the home. But many of these homes have men in them, they just don't happen to be the biological father of the children. Many men are indeed raising the children of other men, I just don't recall ever seeing statistics reflecting this reality.

Like you said, a massive cultural shock and economic depression is the type of instability that spawns new values, family structures, and social paradigms....and that's exactly what this society has been getting for the past 10 to 15 years! Since the 60s, people have been shacking up in groups and living together for economic necessity and they weren't giving a damn about religious or family beliefs...they are just looking to survive because doing what society told them was the "right thing" didn't work for them. It's easy for a woman to stay home and rear the children if you have a rich husband who can take care of all of the families necessities. But most families today have to rely on ALL adults in the home working and bringing in money to maintain it or face certain homelessness. As far as group families..... They tried this in the late 60s and early 70s with the hippies living in groups and trying to start group families, but it didn't work because the economic situation for most hippies weren't dire enough. Most hippies were rich kids who rebelled for a minute and then went running back home. Today the young people and street families you see living on the streets and begging aren't playing...they're poor FOR REAL and have no where else to go running to. So they're making it happen already. The next step is to change the thinking of society to recognize that there is more than one way to form a "family" so that the stigma of adults living, having sex, and pooling their money in groups isn't "bad"....it's actually efficient and makes more economic sense.

Thanks Troy: I appreciate the coaching. I must confess that the promotional/marketing phase is a daunting task. I have presented the theme and storyline of Other Side on other AALBC pages but will follow your counsel and repeat my pitch when the opportunity presents itself. I am a novice and have visited numerous sites and read just as many support articles for indie authors. Patience and a conscientious work ethic similar to the determination to write Other Side motivate me to during this promotional process. I am navigating guidelines and posting to various websites including FB, Twitter, Goodreads etc. I intend to give copies of the book to community “influencers”. Hopefully over the holiday break readers will have time to engage and enjoy my tale. I look forward to AALBC’s selection for review in the future. Thanks again for what you do to support and enhance the creative ability within the African-American community. Just posted a preview of my book Other Side at https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1194970

I recently read a NYTimes article Snobs and Me, by Jennifer Weiner, an impressive critique on the literature review hierarchy and its negative critical analysis of particular works. Her specific complaint is the arrogance of literary reviewers and the dismissive attitude she receives in general and from her Ivy League peers (Princeton) regarding her publications of "chick lit." I have just published my first novel "Other Side" and anxiously brace myself for its review. I proudly write in the "second tier", and am not unfamiliar with that classification as an African-American author. I chose not to write the stereotypical commercial urban lit (Empire) that characterizes so much of black storytelling. When deciding my ISBN# I debated selecting AA General--some racial classifications are alive and well in post racial America. I deliberated that classification because I think the book is worthy of a broader appeal. However, it would be naive of me not to consider the fact that even though this is an American story that happens to be told by a black person it will be relegated to niche appeal notwithstanding its universal merits. Like Snobs and Me, if for different reasons, I resent the dismissive nature and arbitrary segmentation that will be accorded a novel by a black male author. The theme of my book Other Side is a riveting psychological tale, set in the New York area circa mid 1980’s. The themes are viewed through the experiences of a young middle class African American attorney. While race is an issue and part of the active consciousness, the majority of themes are universal. The title Other Side is an attempt to explore the duality of personality, character and actions of people. The main character faces his conflicts and value propositions through four relationships that are juxtaposed and contradictory. His pursuit of validation and truth is explored through his mother, wife, mistress and a sex worker. All of the main characters in Other Side are of color (diverse). Racial identity is not as prevalent as gender and socio-economic status. The reader is introduced to an array of other characters and backgrounds. The anecdotes from each encapsulate a broad perspective of political and social issues in a multi cultural American society. Although presented through the prism of a male protagonist the women’s stories of relationship struggle and maturation provides the platform for all the characters development. Other Side is very much a story for our collective times. We'll see. Your thoughts? Available at: https://createspace.com/6178731 (paperback) and https://www.amazon.com/author/rayhollargregory (pre-order Kindle)

Pioneer you come across as somewhat religious calling children born out of wedlock "illegitimate." How long in the annals of history have we been calling children born outside the Christian construct of marriage; disparaging terms like this? Isn't it enough for kids to be cared for and guided by a loving adult? Can children only be raised by a man and woman, who were virgins when married, and committed to never having sex with anyone else for life? Why is this so detrimental? I agree with Welsing, I think we all should wait until we are 30 before having our first child. I was 30, and probably should have waited a bit longer. Many of the people having children younger than 30 are still children themselves; dependent upon their parents, unskilled, uneducated, and unmotivated. Sure many of these people pull it together later, but they would have fared much better without a child, and the child would have too. I'm still astonished that our society condones kids in high school having children--even providing on site day care in some instances. I don't think children should have the freedom to procreate. We make it illegal for a 17 year old to sit up in a bar and have drinks, but they can make babies all day long... I'm sure I did not watch the Maury show enough to dispute what you are saying, but every time I watched it was always some obese white girl trying to figure out who fathered her child...and more often than not there was a physical altercation for kicks.

I've been thinking about the subject of this book. As an octogenarian, when I look back over my existence, and at life in general, I wonder about the assertion that a man with money who can presumably support a woman in the manner to which she has either become accustomed, or would like to be become accustomed is the goal of women looking for a mate. Some women might be enlightened enough to never underestimate the truism about the best things in life being free. In time, materialistic possession lose their sheen and there is something to be said for the simple things in life. Or is there any thing worse than a man who has money but is a tight wad. The Gen-Xers and The Millennials would probably buy into this book's premise because it takes time and experience to glean what makes for a fulfilled life. For the woman who, herself, has something to offer, what takes priority over a big paycheck is someone with combination of great intellect and street smarts who has a great sense of humor that is enhanced by a sharp wit and is of good character; a nice appearance, - and this does not necessarily entail movie star looks, but just strong, symmetrical facial features and a body that has not been neglected. Finding all of these traits in a man who doesn't earn a 6-figure salary or wear Armani or drive a Mercedes is not to be lightly dismissed. He can be looked upon as a partner to work with in the pursuit of a life that may be enriching in other areas besides financial ones, and this includes the one in the bedroom. Of course, the argument can be made that a man who has all of the qualities I list isn't likely to be broke, not to mention being someone who is looking for a woman who is a hottie. Every gal is looking for her financially-secure Mister Right but finding a payday-to-payday soul mate to be your life companion could be a satisfying alternative. Just some thoughts... My late husband was an adequate provider who never bored me. He thought I was cute. We managed to stay married for 50 years. We kinda got it right.

Have you ever shared a link from a page on your website to Facebook, and have you wondered how Facebook chose the image used? You can control the image used when anyone shares a link from your site onto Facebook. You can even use an image specifically designed for Facebook—even one not used on the web page itself. The links I share on Facebook are selected with thought or are crafted in such in a way to increase the likelihood a reader will click the link and visit our web site. In order to help accomplish this I take advantage of Facebook’s Open Graph Debugger Tool. Facebook's debugger allows you to confirm that the web pages your visitors share on Facebook, displays the image and text you choose in advance. The default text and image are defined on the web page. WordPress makes it easy to select the default images and text for social sharing. Custom built websites, like AALBC.com, must ensure meta tags are used properly. Facebook's debugger tool makes it easy to check that your web pages will share your web page's information exactly the way you want. Facebook's debugger interface is easy to use and the information provided is quite detailed. You are also provided with documentation to help make any necessary adjustments. Below is a screen shot of my List of Authors on AALBC.com page. Facebook's social sharing preview allows you to review what the post will look like before anyone shares the page. The screenshot below is actually a snapshot 19 hours after the page was originally shared. As you can see from the preview, this Facebook post was liked, shared, or commented on 2,570 times, in 19 hours. In this case, the image I'm using does not even appear on the web page. I created this image specifically for social sharing, optimizing the dimensions, and even considering the authors used in the preview. If you do not specify an image, Facebook and other social platforms will just pick any image on the page. Why take this chance when it is so easy to control. In Facebook's case, they look for images that are a minimum of 200px by 200px. So even if you do specify a specific image, Facebook may choose not to use it. The optimal image size is 1,200px by 630px. An image with those dimensions will ensure that will be as large as possible on Facebook's feed. Again, you can may use this tool to as an analytical tool to review your Facebook posts over time. Below is a screen from a Facebook post made in February, which links to our Top 100+ Recommended African-American Children’s Books page. This page was liked, shared, or commented on over 35,000 times, since it was originally posted in February 2016. Of course it is nice to get this much engagement on Facebook, but my primary metric for success of a post is how many readers click the link and visit my site as a result. If you'd like to check it out I have published an analysis of the traffic generated as a result of this post. Another benefit of this tool is that it can be used to check the URL's of other websites for comparison purposes. I've observed most indie websites pay little attention to the details revealed by the Facebook debugger tool. This is unfortunate, because this decreases the likelihood readers will click on your link and leave Facebook to visit your web site. It also hurts a web site's search engine rankings, which is even more important than Facebook engagement for content creators, like bloggers. Final Notes: I'm strongly against using Facebook as one's primary platform or the web, or even publishing content there. The only thing I publish on Facebook are links back to this site, with tweet length text and an image to accompany it. This articles describes my process for posting links on Facebook. The social sharing capability of the software running this discussion forum is limited in capability, so one does not have the ability to set a default image for social sharing. Normally I would have created a webpage, or blog post, for an article like this, but I want to collect this type of information in the Bloggers Helping Blogger Forum. I did not go into the specific details of how to actually set the default images and text. But it is pretty simple: in WordPress one simply utilizes the "SEO Settings" at the bottom of the page. For custom sites, one uses the Open Graph meta tags. Here are some Open Graph meta tag examples I use with my Web Design course. I just took a look at the number of visitors from Facebook to the link for the Author List Page. As of 6:30 p.m. June 27th there were 1,675 visitors from Facebook based upon 2,576 comments, shared, and likes. This is a very high ratio of engagement to visitors for my Facebook posts. Facebook changes rapidly. Their debugger tool can change, or even go away tomorrow. However the strategies still hold and should still be used, even without Facebook's debugger. If you are a webmaster proper use of meta tags is crucial for a site's ability to be discovered. As always the mantra remains unchanged; “Use Facebook, Don't Let Facebook Use You.”

Angela, This sounds like a book I not only should review, but study due to the relevance it has in my search for a mate. It speaks to the core issue (finance) in our results oriented, technology based 21st century existence. The title is eye catching and easy to remember, I hope the cover does your subject justice. I wish you success.

New blog post "First Read (In One Sitting!)" http://www.whitemansdisease.com/blog