This week I celebrate my blog’s third birthday. Everything was so new back then in 2013. I was a newly minted Golden Heart nominee who had to have a landing page for potential publishing offers. I still had my mother then, and I was determined to make my place in the industry, and had lots of hope that I would succeed.
Three years later, my mother is not here and the realities of the publishing world have recently presented themselves with the closing of Samhain, leaving the continuation of my “Migrations of the Heart” series in limbo.
So I begin my third year of the blog at a bit of a crossroads. It’s the crossroads that I believe, in this current climate, all historical authors find themselves. Should I write in a different time period? Write new characters of different ethnicities? Call my inspirational writing a failure and write sweet instead? Write contemporary? My conundrum is not unusual or singular, but what will be different is how I plan to resolve it.
I will have to make some decisions about my 2016 that I didn’t realize I would have to make. I may not make all of the appearances I thought I would, which is one reason why I don’t have that as a page as part of this blog. That’s ok. But the one thing I’ll stick with, and that is the mission of this blog: to keep telling the stories of history that people have not known before. In whatever work I do, I’m going showcase the humanity, spirit and resilience of African American people. Yes, that means as one New York Times bestseller author once told me, “Some audiences are smaller than others.” However, with the selection of The Preacher’s Promise as the reading book club selection at Spelman College, I have hopes that other Historically Black Colleges and Universities and institutions will be more receptive to what I do in the future. I have hope that my historical approach will not whither away, but will continue to spread and grow.
So, at this Easter holiday and blog birthday, I’m renewing my promise. My faith and hope in my task remain strong. The approaches may change and be different, but the end goal with always be the same. After all, a large purpose of story is to see the humanity in one another. My promise is to make that purpose hold firm, strong and true.