Lloyd G. Francis's Blog, page 3

Enter to win a free copy of From Rum to Roots!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway







From Rum to Roots



by Lloyd G. Francis

Giveaway ends July 09, 2013.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

A pleasant Afternoon

Sometimes you just have to take a break. Today I spent the afternoon at the Cafe International. San Francisco has been enjoying unseasonably good weather lately. Summertime has finally arrived in San Francisco, for the first time in hundreds of years.

Trying to enjoy myself, I decided to take a trip down to the local cafe, Cafe International, a community meeting place. There, I met Alex Nofte, a friend of mine from the infamous Vapor Room here on Haight Street. I shared my book with him. We enjoyed some conversation and after an hour decided to make our way over to 14th Street and Guerrero to a cafe. So we left Cafe International with it’s sheltered back patio and made our way over to the Mission.

Once we arrived Alex had to run a quick errand and so I went in first, intent on ordering a double espresso, and sitting down with Alex once he returned. I waited in line, watching a few customers get served.

Rich creamy espresso in ceramic cups, created in a shiny stainless steel modern espresso machine. Iced tea poured into clean glasses from what appeared to be stone jugs. All of this in a room decorated in the classic techno-hipster style that is ubiquitous around the city of San Francisco.

Mmmmmmmm…. I can’t wait. So when it was my turn to order, imagine my surprise when she draws out a paper cup and brews my espresso. All the while she is smiling, giving me polite service… Why do I get a paper cup?

Another opportunity to witness the new San Francisco. Increasingly, I am an alien in my own city. While everyone enjoyed their beverages in containers that invited them to relax and stay a while, I got a subtle message with my drink; here you are. Now please move on; go to a park; sit on a street-corner, go anywhere but here…

The hipster culture that has taken root here in San Francisco has little use for diversity, and there is a such a smug attitude here….

My city is changing… slow subtle changes. I remember this city in the 1960′s with the hippies, in the 70′s when Mayor Alioto destroyed the black community with “urban redevelopment” in the Fillmore, and in the late 90′s when the first dot com boom displaced so many of my close friends. What’s happening is radical. But because the change seems incremental, no one seems to notice. Until you get your coffee in a paper cup…

The New Look for the Blog

Thanks to Eileen Young, our resident web-mistress, we have our new look. With the upcoming release of the novel From Rum to Roots, Marway Publishing is trying to spruce up our neighborhood a bit.

Things are happening too. We received our first galleys of the printed book on Thursday, and Leanne and I are proofreading it right now. On Goodreads our scheduled book giveaway is turning out to be a smashing success with over 430 people signing up in a contest that will give away ten books. TEN books! Needless to say we are very excited. And there are plans in the works to stage a possible party to celebrate the book’s release date of August 6, 2013.

Stay tuned for exciting new developments and thoughts right here….

 

From Rum To Roots: Coming Soon.

I’ve been alone for a long time. Two weeks with my birds watching the world pass… Perhaps it is the silence that makes time seem to pass so slowly. It is the tempo of the asphalt streets of San Francisco; a big city still trapped by the constraints of being a small town.

Most of my time has been spent proofreading my novel. With the help of others, folks like John Orr, and my editor Ricky Weisbroth, we have managed to remove almost all the typos  in the 450 pages that make up the book.

I am also trying to consider what to write next. I have some ideas, and a prequel of sorts for my debut novel From Rum to Roots but with little time to spare I am concentrating on launching my first novel.

If you’re interested in reading the first two chapters of the book you can find them here. Also on the right side of this column near the top, there is a link to the two chapter excerpt.

The big event is only weeks away…

The First Two Chapters FREE

The first two chapters of my debut novel From Rum to Roots is available on my tumblr blog at the address below.

http://lgfrancis.tumblr.com/post/5274...

Please feel free to drop by and read a sample. I hope you enjoy it.

My new Author Page

One more step for my debut. I have an authour page on Goodreads. Make sure to check it out and check out the page for the new novel From Rum to Roots.

Stay tuned for more news….

From Rum To Roots

This is my first post on my blog here at Goodreads. I am really excited to introduce my debut novel From Rum to Roots. It's a great story about 2 Jamaicans who immigrate to the United States.
I have been writing this book for seven years. But the idea came to me on the day I returned from Afghanistan in 2002. Since I was still a working photojournalist and war correspondent you can imagine I did not have much time for writing fiction. But I started to write in 2007 and the final result is a 370 page novel that will be available on all e-book formats and as a trade paperback.
I'm looking forward to keeping you abreast of all the events surrounding the novel, as well as engaging my readers on a multitude of topics.
Have a great day

Goodreads

We are now listed on Goodreads. You can find the book listed by it’s ISBN number or by title and even author.

It’s the first time anyone has addresed me as an author and it feels strange.

I am used to being referred to as a lensman or a photographer.

Nevertheless here’s the link:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17847794-from-rum-to-roots

Entrepeneuring my Neighborhood

I never cease to marvel at the number of people in Jamaica that are selling trinkets, water, fruit, and just about anything else you can imagine on the roadside. People in Jamaica are forced to be enterprising. The government is not there with a safety net to catch the poor people. So if you aren’t motivated, you starve. Paul Ryan’s and Mitt Romney’s wet dream.

I admire the people who are resourceful. My father instilled that principle in me, which brings me to the current story, setting up my two boys to sell water and munchies to a hungry, thirsty, smoked-out, 4-20 crowd on April 20, National Marijuana Day.

Of course we waited till the last minute to set this caper up. Marley and my wife went downtown and bought water, and candy and chips. Meanwhile I cleaned up the house and set up my sound system, (very loud) to broadcast music outside to the street.

The day started slowly enough. The streets were deserted. But slowly foot-traffic picked up. Soon, we noticed the buses were filled to capacity, and people began to walk up Haight Street in clotted groups of twenty or thirty.

They were thirsty. They bought bottles of water at a dollar. But no one was buying the chips, M&M’s candy bars or chips. We bagan to worry that we had made a mistake. We dropped the price from a dollar to seventy-five cents. No bids, no offers, no interest, just people buying water.

Four Twenty in the afternoon and the moment passed without incident. There was a pause in the traffic. People seemed to stop where they were to mark the moment. You could smell the ganja in the air.

Then a massive wave of people started moving in the other direction; toward downtown.

Water continued to sell, but then someone walked up, and bought seven bags of M&M’s.

The candy started selling faster than iphones when they were first introduced to a world starved for intelligent phones.

Soon, we were closing shop. Open between 11:00 AM and 5:30 PM and we were simply sold out.

Nothing my sons loved more than counting the money. My youngest mentioned that he thought it was magical how we just made all this money.

Magical indeed.

This Little Piggie Went to Market

Sometimes I don’t know where I get the energy. It takes a certain determined spirit to take on the task of marketing a book. To market a story means someone must persuade people that this particular tale is important enough that they should part with their hard earned bread. In exchange for their cash I must promise an unforgettable literary experience.

That’s a tall order.

I don’t have a name or a reputation. As a matter a fact my reputation is probably why I’m not shooting pictures anymore. But I’m digressing, and that is not good, so let’s steer this post back to it’s original topic.

Indeed. I do not have a “name.” So the way I saw it back in 2007 I was going to have to do what I had never ever considered doing, caring about words, like I cared about pictures. As a photojournalist I was trained by the best in the business. Folks like Bryan Moss, Sue Morrow at the San Jose Mercury News trained me to spot a story. Not just a news story, but the human drama behind the news. The rigorous demands of everyday journalism made me sensitive to the fundamental relationships that make our society what it is today.

I pointed my camera at a military family during the first Gulf War and witnessed first-hand how a strong mother can bring her two children through the harrowing experience of war, with the help of her mother-in-law in Fremont California. I followed a woman as she rebuilt her life after her home was burned and her cat killed in the Oakland Fire. I took pictures for three years, until she had moved into a new house with her cat. These experiences, and many more, have contributed to making me the novelist I am.

The genesis of the idea that became From Rum to Roots, arose one evening in a bar in Brooklyn. Earlier that day I had just returned from Afghanistan. It was 2002, and the adventure from which I was returning had been epic. I left in October 2001 for Iraq. Came down with appendicitis in Baghdad in December of 2001. I still completed my assignment for Newsweek in Baghdad, and went on to Kashmir, where the Pakistani and Indian armies were squaring off over the LOC (Line of Control) in Kashmir. After that, I went to Afghanistan. I was doing all of this while my wife was at home raising my 11 month old child. I spent five months on the trip. It was early March and I was eager to get home, but grateful for a moment with my friend, Donnell Alexander, and my cousin Kirk Prince.

I can still see the bar. We were sitting in a corner booth, and I must say that when folks heard I was fresh off the plane from Afghanistan, I was an immediate celebrity in New York. People buying drinks, slapping you on the back, a real “hero’s” welcome without using the nasty word, hero.

Somewhere between my third or fifth shot of Macallan, Kirk began speaking about this cousin of mine with a roots business. Roots you ask? What are they?

Roots has a long tradition in Jamaica. Using a combination of herbs with names like “All-Man Strength, Chainy Root, Sarsaparilla, Cockish Stick, Stiff Cock, Iron Weed, and Bridal Wiss. These concoctions will put some sparkle in your step, or a sizzle in the sex.

Kirk went on to tell me a rags to riches story that blew my mind.

Days later I gave up on the idea. I had more practical things to worry about. Like where I was going to get the next gig to shoot. Between 2002 and 2006 I occupied myself at trying to make a living. I worked as a photographer for Army Times and spent time in Iraq.

In 2007, I returned and I had the bug to write after seeing the harsh face of war. I found that I was drawn to my parents story of coming to America.

My father was a civil engineer. He was an inspector for the State of California on some major freeways here in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started an engineering businesswhile my mother was a housewife, taking care of me and my sister.

The became wealthy. Well to do. But as they grew older they became very unhappy. I could not understand it. They died unahappy and alone. How could this happen?

I discovered by writing this book that indeed, there something that is quite intangible that is passed from parent to child. It is so great that it overshadows everything else. If life is art, my parents were post modern cubists. What they saw did not resemble at all what I was witnessing.

After a year and a half of writing I thought I was done. But I had only just begin. I was destined to spend the next six years preparing this little piggie for market.

And now it’s time. Time for sleep that is … my energy is really gone.