Troy

"An equal chance?" What do you mean?

I dunno @Delano your question referencing pregnancy and cats was rather obtuse to me as well. Maybe we just can "see" each other on this issue.

@Pioneer1 I missed your reply. The website is not based upon what you understand as "race." It is based upon culture, what you call "afro-american" culture. However in recent years the site's scope has expanded beyond Afro-american culture, but lets leave that aside for a moment. As a result, the site includes books written by white people because they have written books important to the culture. Again the so called "race" of the bride is irrelevant to me -- mostly because the royal wedding means less than nothing to me. But more generally who people choose to love is up to them why should I be concerned? @Chevdove, my initial reaction may have been a bit harsh, but the fact is I could not help but hear about this wedding it short of becoming a hermit, it was impossible to avoid. I hate being force fed this type of information.

@CDBurns, I'm still migrating pages from HTML to php after almost two years. It will probably take forever LOL! @Damani, If there are any active author webrings I'm not aware of any. I've really been racking my brain trying to find a suitable alternative to a webrings. I've been working with different groups looking at alternative mode of collaboration promotion. Unfortunately, on the web, the locus of power on the web has shifted from many indie sites to a handful a massive corporate site. As a result we are pretty much at their mercy in terms of discoverability. This condition would probably render webring ineffective unless we take back so level of control -- something I spend as much time trying to do as I do selling books.

Kimberla was one of the first authors I photographed back in 1999 at the African American Cultural Expo, which used to be held in Philadelphia. Here she is holding a copy of her first novel Here and Now, which was published just a few months earlier, in 1998, by Kensington Publishing. I've watched Kimberla "blow up" into one of America's most popular authors. She is the #6 all-time bestselling author on AALBC.com. She also made that other bestsellers list, the New York Times -- I don't even know how many times. Her Reverend Curtis Black series, which started in 2000, will come to and end this summer. The series included 15 novels -- almost half of the 27 novel novels she was published in the past 20 years. Kimberla's publishing career started the same year AALBC's. KImberla has always patronized AALBC during this time. She runs ads for all the books she publishes. In a way, I consider her success my success I'm also selling Better Late Than Never (the last book in the series) directly. I'm also working on selling all 15 books in the series, but there is one title, that I can find in distribution (The Best Kept Secret). Maybe having Kimberla sign them all for as a collectors item would be a good idea (what do y'all think of that idea? Here KImberla shares her thoughts on ending her series, exclusively with AALBC.

Pioneer, I'm no more zealous than you are. Look, I know science has been perverted to do all kinds of ill things two black folks justify slavery, before scientific experiments on us, and more. But believe in in the evidence presented about a single race of humans or man's contribution to climate change is completely different. Okay, maybe I misunderstood what you wrote here, are you saying that this only applies to 20 year olds?

In addition to starting our own leagues. We could have simply boycotted the NFL. But obviously we don't care enough about what Colin was protesting. Kind of reminds me of my survey exploring the idea of boycotting Amazon's bookstore -- not the whole site just the bookstore--in an effort to prevent them from dominating the sale of black books. The strongest push back was from authors themselves -- the ones who actually are being hurt the most. People are not prepared to do the work, make the sacrifices, spend the money to start their own League any more than they would engage in the much easier activity of boycotting the NFL. As a result we just get used and abused. Collins looking for a job and nothing changes.

That seems like a stupid rule. Wherever they draw the line would seem to be purely arbitrary designed to just eliminate this particular Runner. Besides don't testosterone levels fluctuate? That's like saying if you're too tall or you have a natural higher level of oxygen uptake or are naturally stronger, you have a competitive advantage. It's not just hard work it's all about God given Talent as well. Do you think Michael Jordan will be as good a player if he was 5 feet tall? Let's not let any basketball players on the court taller than 6-feet cuz they have a competitive advantage... stupid. Maybe they should just get rid of the gender categories and have everybody compete in all sports regardless of gender sexual orientation whatever. We are all equal, right?

Yeah, sometimes people simply have an agenda and are not interested in the debate. Sometime I delete guest posts when this is obviously the intention and there is a link to some website and they appear to just be trying to build back links. I don't mind people posting link -- indeed I encourage it, but at least create an account. My question is why do people read posts and create accounts but never post. I used to think people were concerned about privacy, but most people don;t seemed to be really concerned about this given the numbers of people on social media... Below is a graph of newly created accounts that were never used. This does not include the accounts I rejected for any number of reasons. The other thing is that new account creation is way down too. I dunno maybe participating on indie forums is going the way of reading books.. (don't shoot that was a joke)

Again, @Pioneer1 it is not my concept of race. It is the culmination of a long period of scientific research including sequencing the human genome, whose conclusions I've read and and choose to believe and that is the point. You and @Delano put a lot more weight on your personal experiences and gut feelings. I'm not about to dismissed the entire scientific community's research simply because I can't wrap my brain around it. The same goes for climate change, the correction of newtonian law of gravity with general relativity, etc. Pioneer I'm not trying to belabor the point with you and your disbelief of a single race. But it is just the simplest and clearest example to illustrate your way of thinking that others reading this, without the benefit of our years of exchange, can readily understand (whether they agree with me or not). But to use your line of reasoning; the reason I disagree with your assertion that men only view women as potential sex partners is because I'm a man and I don't view women that way.

This also reinforces the fact that despite the large wages these athletes men serve at the largess of their owners, "million dollar slaves." Colin may never play football again simply because he took a knee -- a symbolic act resulting in an football death sentence.

Hey @Damani congrats on your progress thus far. I did not know that free Black people, living in VA for more than a year ran the legal risk of becoming enslaved again.

Hi Akilah. Are you from Oakland? If so consider going to the Sacramento Black Book Fair. It is being held next weekend. I'll be giving a presentation on #readingblack. The issue of reviews our are books can be discussed. You are not too late for sharing information about your book. Ideally most publishers of reviewer prefer to review books prior to publications. I no longer pay a reviewer to write a review for books which has been out for more than 6 months (I need to add that condition to the criteria). A commissioned review, of course, is an an exception.

Hi @Damani, thanks for taking the time to share the good news. You can always mention AALBC's Edit 1st, when it comes to manuscript editors. Sounds like a fascinating story.

Yes! You get it now Del, because I'm not putting Pioneer down. If one disagrees with someone, the expression of why they disagree is not a "put down." Putting someone down is an ineffective way to make a point. Kalexander2 thanks. Though you may be right, I don't know about "most people" being in that category. I do know most people i regularly converse with are not.

Hey Harry from time to time I make updates to the discussion forum's software. When the upgrade process is running the discussion forums will be down. In an ideal world I'd do this when people are less likely to be trying to login, but usually do this when it is convenient for me. I apologize for any inconvenience and thanks for the warning. No site is immune to hacking, but hackers general go after big corporate sites not smaller indie one. My problem is trolls

Dude I have thought about what you wrote. Many of the ideas in mind head are not based upon my experience. These ideas, often the most profound ones, come from reading. For example, my belief in a single human race is derived completely from information outside my own experience. If I used my own experience, like Pioneer and perhaps yourself, I would still believe in multiple races. If your only source of information is your personal experience can not assimilate new information, not an you grow. This is not to say that I don't have my own ideas, based upon experiences, like my stance on Google and social media. Now I know my perspective is in the minority so when the journalist at 60 Minutes substantiated my ideas I feel justified in running with them. If the broadcast refuted everything I wrote. I would be forced to reconsider. I'm perfectly open to doing this, when the preponderance of evidence is against me.

Del, experiences are one thing, ideas are quite another. One's experiences and the interpretation of them are subjective; some people find getting spanked erotic others find it humiliating. With regard to Pioneer I'm talking about ideas. For example the idea that 20 year olds access women solely on whether they are a desirable sex partner. That, I'm sure, the way he viewed women at that age; and he takes that perspective and assumes it must be true for every 20 year old. Of course there probably a lot of 20 year olds who think that way. But I doubt it's the majority (did you think about women that way when you were 20 Del?)

Then I suspect Del that 45 must be going insane. Very few people have ever had this level of insults constantly hurled at them. 45 has to live in his own bubble of fox news, sycophants and disillustion racists. The real world is much too hostile. If he were not POTUS I would probably feel a but sorry for him.

When I say Pioneer is "projecting" I mean to say that he is taking is world view and assuming it is the same shared by others. Does that answer your question Del? Pioneer I suspect not even YOU want sex from the women you meet. Surely, you must have female friends that you not contemplating screwing, right?

If 45 sicced Cohen on the The Onion, the man must be incredibly thin skinned. But imagine being the constant butt of jokes and harsh criticism. Imagine what it must be like for a 45's kid to see his dad (and family) ridiculed on most media outlets.

Yes, because you are saying that you, "45," and the boys you hang out with in the club are typical Black men.

Oh, hell-to-the-no! I doubt there are very many heterosexual Black men on Earth -- even --- the British ones, who could give a flying f*ck about this wedding. Assuming Mel is serious, I suspect that there is a strong correlation between the genders (assuming two for simplicity sake) regarding interesting in the "royal" wedding. If there are any men Black heterosexual men who watched the wedding, I'd like to hear from you. What motivated you to do it and what did you get out of it? As far as the so called "race" of the bride, who cares?

@Delano, I get it; 45 is a crook and the justice system knows this. However getting him to leave office in 7 months seems unlikely. Comparisons to Watergate are flawed Tricky Dick and 45 are two very different people, despite the common propensity to abuse the office.

60 Minutes did a segment on Google power on Sunday. The segment is shown below. They literally addressed every single point i raised in my Blog post. Honestly, it was almost as if they read my article an did their segment. I tell you white folks are at least discussing these issues and we, in the Black community, are still going around praising these monopolies as if they will be our salvation. If was sad to hear that the Obama administration took so much money from Google. I mean we know that Google controls our government, but our utter lack of coverage of this issue is why we (Black folk) get f*cked everytime. Goolge I assert is in fact of the reasons WHY there are fewer Black journalist covering issues that matter to the business community.