My grandmother wasn't the warm and fuzzy type. The older I get the more I understand her journey. She was an excellent baker and one of her specialities was her applesauce raisin cookies. She's been gone a while now and she stopped baking a few years before her death. The recipe was lost with her. But I still like cookies. I don't eat nearly as much as I would like and yet more than I should. My grandmother's cookies were probably the first I enjoyed--they whetted by taste, but the enjoyment didn't stop with her.
My point?
If you enjoy reading, even if you have a favorite author, you will probably buy many books that aren't written by that author. WE ARE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH EACH OTHER.
More than once I've seen and heard one author begrudge another author's success. It's happened to me. A would-be-bestseller has decided somehow that my published novels are stopping the start of his/her career.
Nothing pleases me more than to learn another AA professional in one of my fields has done well. If an African American agent makes a big sell, it makes my next sell more possible--not less. I became friends with an agent when I wrote her a congratulatroy note about one of her auctions. If every kid in this country had to purchase Evelyn Coleman's (or Christopher Paul Curtis, etc.)latest juvenile novel, the loud cheering you would hear coming from California would be me. If just a tenth of those readers were to become hooked on reading, their next purchase could be one of my novels. It would certainly make an editor more receptive to my next submission. I would imagine that week, years ago, when 3 AA women were on the NYT bestsellers list was a good week for a sistah to be marketing a novel.
I really believe you block your blessings with envy.
Let's support each other
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June 21, 1992, three African-American women simultaneously appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Terry Mc Millan, Waiting to Exhale (6); Toni Morrison, Jazz (9); and Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Great Joy (14). Morrison’s Playing in the Dark, held a spot on the nonfiction list as well.
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