A novel about the recession generation and a young couple who turn to drug trafficking to make it through.

Time to correct the theory that Vlad Temps was Bram Stokers model for Dracula. Stokers vampire count was not even from Earth. Black Sorcerers like him visit us through the Middlegrounds Gateways, portals that transport them throughout humankinds history. Some Midlanders come to Earth for sanctuary. Edoviov Alucard left the Middleground because Black Sorcerers would not tolerate vampires, even from a High family. When Sorcerys Grand Wizard banished them, Edoviov took his sister Catherine and fled to Earth. He turned their High Sorcerer Name backward to become Stokers fiction, setting himself up as Lord of Vampires. For Catherine, he had other plans. With two outlaw White Sorcerers, they entered into a pact to produce a Sorcerer strong enough (and Powerful enough) to take the Dark Throne. Since one of those Whites was the Middlegrounds only Time Wizard, it was now on their side. With Draculas gypsies and his damned magician, they made Catherine bare living children by the gifted outlaws. In the distant past, Dracula stashed Catherines family in a small barony. They tried to prepare them, casting strange and hideous protections. But the best laid plans Other Sorcerers have an eye on that Dark Throne. Their plan requires they rip off the children. Can the boys escape the destinies that others have planned for them? Follow across time and space to America where they battle to live free and escape the minions of the Blacks. While Rip collects a vicious black stallion and pearl-handled 44s, Andrs chief assets remain his quick wit and his hidden curse. Catherines boys cut a path through the Old South to Texas in the 1880s, hoping to elude pursuit while they try to discover their abilities and stay alive long enough to learn what they are and where they belong.

Way over yonder in the minor key There ain't nobody that can sing like me --Woody Guthrie Originally published as issue #35 of Sugar Mule: A Literary Magazine (www.sugarmule.com), this groundbreaking anthology includes 188 selections of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and visual art by 78 writers and 2 visual artists who currently live in Oklahoma. A powerful gathering of voices, singing hymns, telling stories, making truth from a powerful place. --Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah and Harpsong

When the four-year war ended, the former slaves had no gardens to harvest food and they had no live stock animals to eat. They also had no shelter, no clothing, no reparations, no land, or money. They, in every sense of the word, were penniless. So it was not "What should they do tomorrow?" For if they could not live each day, to many their tomorrows may never come. The urgency of their immediate day-to-day self survival left little room for considering the well-being of others. In their prior world of slavery, they were fed but considered less than human. During those years of enslavement, they were considered the same as other beasts of the field. However, in this new world of freedom, their tasks as beast of the-field were no longer needed. So they had to find new sources of food and shelter. They had to find new ways to survive or die like the other worthless beasts of the field. The fictional characters in my stories dealt with their new crises. They also witnessed sickness and death in their shacks and in the fields. Their attempts to be invisible and move around quietly, seeking food at night, caused for many in the white populations to call them Coons. Each of my former slave characters crisscrossed each other with their new insecurities. Some experienced unexpected tragedy. Their release from bondage even caused pain, fear, resentment, and anger. Some of my fictional characters are named Master Hind Turpin, Old Gus, Charley Boy, Sallie Mae, Indian Ike, Boogeyman, and Mo. The roles they portray and the emotional reactions of the characters are unpredicted, as they crisscrossed each other's paths. Their crisscrossing led them to new paths of unfamiliar worlds and surprising adventures. As the former slaves crisscrossed each other's paths, they discovered hidden relationships that were never talked about. They also had some unexpected predicaments that created anxieties, some that will sadden them and some that will also brighten their days to give rise and hope for adventurous tomorrows. I invite you to read, join, and share the emotions of my characters who crisscrossed each other's paths, as they sought ways to deal with the new challenges that each day presented.

Just Call Me Lopez is a recipient of the QED Seal, which stands for Quality, Excellence, Design for ebooks and applications and a PIA (Publishing Innovation Awards) finalist. What do we have in common with a man from the sixteenth century—or even more so, a saint from the sixteenth century? Probably a lot more than you think. St. Ignatius of Loyola wasn’t always the heroic and holy figure that you hear about today; he was a flawed, fallible, and relatable man named Íñigo Lopez. In Just Call Me Lopez, a twenty-first-century woman, Rachel, meets the man who becomes the saint, and both are transformed by their unlikely friendship and series of thought-provoking conversations. Their worlds literally collide when Rachel is struck by a hit-and-run driver, and Lopez is there to help her. They realize that this chance accident is actually an act of God that allows Rachel and Lopez, through the medium of their friendship, to come to terms with their personal struggles. Lopez shares his life with Rachel, describing the obstacles he faces during his unbelievable conversion from a womanizing soldier to a man of God. While Rachel keeps mostly silent about her personal struggles, she observes and is astounded by Lopez’s metamorphosis from mess to mystic. Rachel finally faces her troubling situation, and Lopez gently guides her through the process of discernment to make a difficult, but inspired, life choice. Just Call Me Lopez helps us realize that our very human faults and imperfect behavior do not prevent us from receiving God’s grace; rather, knowing our weaknesses and giving ourselves over to the Holy Spirit can create a new way for us to live.

This book examines the ways in which race and gender have shaped and continue to inform African American literature. African American texts create a black literary and cultural identity interpreting and recording the survival of their cultures shattered by years of slavery. Black women writers, who have to deal with both racism and sexism, use additional strategies to undo this double reduction. They strive to invent a new language to talk about their experience and their lives as black and as women. After a typology of the African American text, the book proposes a reading of major African American writers including Phyllis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Charles Chesnutt, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.