Vixen Chronicles

I had the honor of speaking about my latest book at the Texas Book Festival this past weekend. I went down on Saturday support another author presenting on a panel and her room was full. I noticed immediately that my kids and I were about the only African Americans in the room. The capitol was packed with throngs of people and one glance at the list of authors let you know that the organizers of doing something right. The list was a veritable who's who of the book world, studded the names of the Literati. But as I walked through the festival and around the Capitol grounds, it became obvious that something was missing. Regular folk. Now, Texas is what, 60% minority? But the Book Festival was probably 96% white. It looked more like the Austin Book Festival than the Texas book Festival. Very few authors, very few participants (at least those that I could recognize) were Asian, African American or Hispanic. They did have a Hispanic program somewhere off to the side, I'm told. I kn...

I just recovered from the cruise. It took a couple of days for my head to stop swimming. The cruise was great, lots of book friends but it was soooo tiring. Pictures are posted on my website www.ninafoxx.com/schedule, under pictures 2005. The authors on board were great speakers and the book club members were exceptionally warm. I met several ladies from Circle of Friends (again) and Tabahani from LA. I had the honor of swimming with them in the blue, blue waters of Los Cabos and sharing jelly fish stings. It was all good though, and, no, I didn't let anyone pee on me to help the pain. We survived. We took a water taxi back to the ship. Some locals helped us onto the small boats from the beach, felt us up, then wanted a tip for patting our butts. I don't think so. This was a working trip for me, but the best part was meeting new friends. I had the honor of meeting Bernice McFadden (again, but this was the first time we talked) aka Geneva Holliday. She had her lovely...

I am on the African America Summit at Sea on the Carnival Pride now. We set sail yesterday afternoon from Long Beach and it was good to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. Some of the folks here I haven;t heard from since the big Texas Evacuation a few weeks ago. They are much happier now, knowing that their homes did not float away. I haven;t had a chance to blog about evacuation Texas style. When we got work that Rita was on its way, I got a call from a friend. All she said was, "You now, I may me coming your way in a day or so." It didn't even dawn in me to say no, especially when they called back to say they were definitely coming and they were bringing my favorite martini olives. Now, that's a hostess gift. I went to the store and braved the mobs to prepare for the inevitable influx of coastal friends. Well, needless to say, although Houston is no more that a couple hours drive, they finally made it almost twelve hours later and a supermarket shopping f...