Vixen Chronicles

UPS dropped a box on my doorstep this morning and I screamed when I opened it. Happy screams, it was a box of Galleys (advance reader editions) of No Girl Needs a Husband Seven days a Week. I react the same way to every book. That initial box opening is always like the first time. Don't we wish more things could be that way? One things for sure, things are getting back to normal. I have galleys in my hand and new proposal in. The kids are back in school so peace is restored in my daytime household. And the critters are haunting me again. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I have my issues with nature. Natural water. Wild animals. Pestilence. I thought I'd appeased the earth goddess and we'd made amends, but the more things change the more they stay the same. I'd dropped my kids at school and headed back to the office. I'd decided it was a mail day, so I stopped at the bottom of the hill to retrieve the mail. My mail box is long as opposed...

My good friend's son has left the nest and she has been taking car of her "grand-cat" ever since. Recently she had to send the cat to be with his daddy in his new home in another state. She sent me the following email and I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. We recently shipped our grandcat "Trips" to New York. A couple of days before his trip we sent him to the vet to get groomed, get his shots, and his nails done (blue vinyl tips). Needless to say, he was traumatized. Two days later we packed him in his FAA approved case for his trip airplane trip to New York City. The vet gave us some anxiety medication for Trips to take before he got on the plane. Unfortunately, we did not have these thorough instructions on how to give him the medication. Here they are for you, just in case you need to give your Cat or Dog medicine. CATS 1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on ei...

'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate "Don't" The latest issue of Glamour advises readers use Kimble leave-in conditioner followed by a flat iron followed by a curling iron followed by spritzer and augmented with hair extensions to achieve "Mary J. Blige's loose beautiful curls." Um, how about time better spent solving the mortgage crisis? Well, a recent slide show by an unidentified Glamour editor on the "Dos and Don'ts of Corporate Fashion" at a New York law firm shed some light on the topic, according to this month's American Lawyer magazine. First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the 'Glamour' editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was 'shocking' that some people still think it 'appropriate' to wear those hairstyles at the office. 'No offense,'...

Me with Daaimah Poole, Nikki Turner, Stephanie Perry Moore and Tracie Howard, Trisha Thomas, Terri Woods, Lori Bryant Woolridge and Selina Montgomery

Me and the girls with Billy dee Williams in Country club Hills, Illinois

6:30am

4:30pm There was a long drive between Ft Wayne and South Bend, so they bus wrangler popped in a movie. There wasnt enough testosterone on the bus to get us to agree to watch 300, so we settled on Dreamgirls. As the movie unfolded, several truths revealed themselves. First, Beyonce ain't got a thing on our bus mom, and second Earl Sewell'e performance got him voted the biggest Dream Girl on the bus. Nina Sent from my iPhone

Walmart country. Somewhere on Indiana

With the Ft wayne store manager. Se real fans greeted us with screams and shouts. They were excited to see us not scared.

10:00a Two hour bus ride to Ft Wayne. A bus driver ran in to meet us. She literally pulled her bus off the route to come and see what all the fuss was about.

6pm. We finally made Indianapolis. The crowd had grown to a mob!

With Grace Aollo, author of Girl Soldier

There was a crowd waiting for us in Fisher, Indiana, too.

Our tour bus. Me, Reshonda Tate Billingsley @ Lori Bryant Woolridge

10:00am There was a crowd waiting at the first Walmart in Lawrence, Indiana.

Eighteen women and One man. Okay, two men if you count Billy Dee. This is going to be interesting. The authors arrived through the afternoon and we were all really cordial at first. many of us knew each other at first, but I don't think there was any author who knew everyone. We ranged from new authors, to those like Beverly Jenkins, that had been around the writing world awhile. Everyone was in awe of someone. At 6, w were summoned for orientation. They showed us a movie of the last tour, but one thing for sure, our tour was unprecedented. This had never been done with African American Authors before. It looks like we are going to have a blast. We have a "bus mom" and a bunch of other people that are supposed to help us get where we need to be and a bus wrangler whose job it is to make sure that we are all on the bus on time and no one gets left in the middle of Podunk. That should be interesting. And hard. Did I say there are eighteen women? I'll let you k...

Eighteen women and One man. Okay, two men if you count Billy Dee. Thi is going to be interesting. The authors arrived throught the afternnon and we were all really cordial at first. many of us knew each other at first, but I don't think there was any author who knew everyone. We ranged from new authors, to those like Beverly Jenkins, that had been around the writing world awhile. Everyone was in awe of someone. At 6, w were summoned for orientation. They showwed us a movie of the last tour, but one thing for sure, our tour was unprecedented. This had never been done with African American Authors before. It looks like we are going to have a blast. We have a "bus mom" and a bunch of other people that are supposed to help us get where we need to be and a bus wrangler whose job it is to make sure that we are all on the bus on time and no one gets left in the middle of Podunk. That should be interesting. And hard. Did I say there are eighteen women? I'll let you ...

Every time I go home, my younger sister has to take me out, show me how grown she is. She even found a place last night on a Monday night, and you should have seen her face when I agreed to go. She got all dolled up, put on her short shorts and her cute top, then yanked her hair up into a pony tail so that it wouldn't look like she exerted too much effort. It was Monday night after all. We ended up at the Red Maple in downtown Baltimore. At first the place looked deserted. Truth be told, I was a little worried, but I soon discovered that you had to walk in, go all t he way back and down a few stairs to find the folks. She stopped at the bar to buy me a drink (more display of her her grown-ness), and it immediately struck me that there were about fifty women in the place and three men. And if you left out the two of us, the three men had more hair than all of the rest of the women combined. Most of the women were on the floor dancing, and when they put on "Walk ...