pulitzer prize winner

All posts tagged pulitzer prize winner

Come Hither

Published July 4, 2013 by Sandee

I don’t flirt usually unless I already know you.  If I flirt with a man I don’t know, it means I’m overpowered by chemistry.  I saw a man near Park Avenue once, and had an animal reaction.  I locked into him and shuddered a little.  He wasn’t conventionally handsome.  There was just something alpha about him.  He looked at me, and appeared to be nodding subtly to communicate that he understood my reaction — this is part of the reason I think he had alpha chemistry.  He might have been used to this reaction?

I probably flirt with girls more.  I used to be fearful of boys.  They fucked with me when I was sick in junior high school.  They were mean and teased me mercilessly because I was emaciated and flat-chested.  When I got out of the hospital after a month, and got meat on my bones, things changed.  They asked if I had been at the farm — haha!

I’m not a lesbian, but I used to like girls better.  I didn’t gush around boys, I tensed up.   I remember playing in the pool with some boys and girls.  The boys dunked the girls, and they giggled — squealed.  I was horrified.  They’d come at me and my eyes widened, and there would be no giggling — I scratched the shit out of them.  I was frightened of the water and the boys were so overpowering.

I was curious — and suspicious — about girlfriends who had ‘friendships’ with boys.  Although I had boyfriends, I didn’t care to just be hanging around dudes.  I cared about impressing them, but from a distance.

In my thirties, I relaxed, and allowed myself to be “friends” with a couple of guys.  But I knew it’d probably be bullshit.  I had a girlfriend who said she preferred male friends to women friends.  I asked if she was fucking those male “friends.”  “Well, yeah,” she said — hahahahaha!

I believed there would always be an underlying agenda with mixed sex friendships.  In most cases, both would probably need their sexuality validated in some way and that would negate the platonic part.  I wrote a brilliant novel with this premise, but it has yet to be recognized as such — ha!

So, I tried the platonic ‘thing’ with a guy.  We spent most of the time almost fucking, and actually did twice.  Finally I had to let him go.  He turned out to be dishonest.  It just confirmed my theory.  While I do call a few men ‘friends’, I still have difficulty with the concept.  But nowadays, I’m trying to understand men as fleshed out people, and I do like them, not that I ever did really dislike them.

Today I practiced flirting and it worked!  The guy just hung around, asking questions, blushing — ha — so cute!  I think I might be experimenting with this kind of thing more.  Too bad I’m all old and shit trying to do this now.  I’ll keep you posted.

Kirkus Indie Reviews My Book, “Mean-Spirited Tales”

Published June 1, 2012 by Sandee

But first:

–  A friend said that she thought that some of the stories were brilliantly woven together – I swear she did!  But she said she didn’t like any of the characters – that kinda hurt.

–  An acquaintance looked at the free view of the first three and a half stories on the Amazon site and raved that I was a very good writer.

–  My mom says…well you know what my mom says…

So this is what Kirkus says:

– “Although not blatantly comical, Harris’s stories are sometimes tinged with a macabre sense of humor… and in the three-page-long screenplay-styled “The Best Daaaamn Yogurt,” a “pseudo French Canadian gremlin” uses her magic dust to avoid paying for her favorite yogurt, with hints about the gremlin’s non-gremlin family life… At times, this jagged incompleteness can be stirring, as it captures something of the serendipity of urban, drunken life.”

Kirkus can kiss my ass.  What my mom says is accurate.  I debated on whether to print the Kirkus review because they didn’t say that I was brilliant like my mom says.  So I’m a tad pissed. I think that I’m hard to categorize because I’m a black girl who’s not writing mainstream, political/social black people stories – I don’t fucking know!  (Though, maybe I will one day, maybe I will…)

I asked friends if I should print the review and they said that I should print it so, voila. Anyway, I want to see how well this book does before inflicting you with my novel.  It’s called “The Unavoidable.”  I know you’re looking forward to it!

A stinky ‘ol ghost from Holland

Published May 26, 2012 by Sandee

 

I thought that calling my book ‘Why Did You Try to Fuck Somebody You Hate?  And Other Mean-Spirited Tales, told by a Sword-Chinned Bitch’ was Monty Pythonesque!  But apparently, some people feel like they’re being attacked when they look at the title.  “Ohhh, the world’s harsh as it is, why would I want to read that?  Wah, wah!” This is what pussies say.  The caption says, “For those unafraid to look,” and everybodyknows  pussies are afraid to look.  Other people think that the title is crass and vulgar.  My word! 

So I changed the gd title.  Well, actually only on my Goodreads ad and on my blog site.  The Amazon site will take 48 hours to change over to the ‘family friendly’ title, so you can wait until then to look if you’re too a-scared.  The stories aren’t really mean-spirited any way – skeevy, alcohol-drenched, and a bit macabre perhaps.  Just imagine Charles Bukowski as a black woman – no, no — Edgar Allan Poe as a black woman – no wait — Fyodor Doestoevsky as a black woman… okay, this is probably why people think it’s weird.  Oh, oh — and there’s cake in it, and an implied ménage trois, and cigarettes, and a stinky ‘ol ghost from Holland!  One of the stories, “Night Terrors” has been published in Calliope!  So take that up your crass and vulgar!

My book represents the highest caliber of literature – oh yes indeed it does.  I mention myself in the same vein as Bukowski.  But how do I classify my book really?  I don’t.  To do so would be confining it to a box.  My shit can’t be labeled.  And at the same time I say that it’s ‘literature’ generally, which classifies it in a sense but I’m not ridiculous about the whole thing, after all, we do need some words that we agree upon to represent something so that we can communicate — sillies!

I’ll tell you what other people said about my book later, but in the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, please click the book link on the sidebar to look at the lovely review of WDYTTFSYHAOMSTTBASCB, then go to the bank, take out .99, and buy a copy on Kindle.  I’m planning on getting hard copies at some point as well, so don’t fret non-Kindle users.  My sister suggests also that you send the .99 directly to me and I’ll forward you the Microsoft Word file by email!  No, please don’t do that.