Rashawnda Ungerer's Blog, page 4

Cecelia & Hale

Three more days…

Hale yeah!

Four more days…

Feeling Frugal?

It’s ‪Free for Five Friday‬!!!

That’s right! ‪The Hardest of Ways‬ ebook is FREE for five whole days now through Release Day Tuesday‬ only, so that ‪#Kindle‬ and ‪#KindleApp‬ users can jump on the ‪Cecelia Clark Series‬ bandwagon before the next installment, ‪Bird Of Prey‬, is released this upcoming Tuesday, September 8, 2015.

 

Tuesday Teaser: Raptor

The Cecelia Clark Series begins with The Hardest of Ways depicting the genesis of an assassin. Bird of Prey takes Cecelia’s story a bit further as she grows more confident in her abilities and turns the tables on her enemies. If you thought she was a #FemaleBadass in THOW, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Release date: September 8, 2015 

Cover Reveal

Bird of Prey is the second installment in the Cecelia Clark Series and is set for release on September 8, 2015.

I had a fabulous time writing this book. Plotting Cecelia’s adventures in Bird of Prey was truly a joy. The action scenes are more intense. The plot is more suspenseful. Hale is even more heroic. And Cecelia is way more badass. I can’t wait until September 8th, for you all to read it, so I added an excerpt to my website to give you a little preview. Enjoy!

Book Cover Makeover

The first installment in the Cecelia Clark Series has just gotten a brand new makeover and she’s never looked better!

The new title, The Hardest of Ways, will be available for purchase on Amazon.com (Kindle and paperback) on August 11, 2015.

Sign up for my newsletter to get the details about the upcoming cover reveal and release dates for my new book, Bird of Prey.

The Forgotten Sons

So…I woke up this morning with a dull ache in my heart. The kind that’s been there for so long you can’t remember when it began. Tears projected from my eyes. Sobs yelped from some deep place inside my body. I trembled like a jackhammer thinking about the injustices in my country. In my state. In my city. On my block.

When I was a kid I witnessed little boys no older than my son being physically and verbally abused by men in law enforcement. The police presence in my neighborhood felt more like military occupation than protection.

I have since moved away from my block and my city to a town that I have embraced as the home for my children but not yet for me. Because despite the fact that things are better here—police don’t curse us here, sheriffs don’t beat us here—things have not changed for my block; for my city; for my state; for this country.

My son is not safe here. And I am one siren, one traffic stop, one bullet away from the grief of LaToya Howell, Wanda Johnson, Sybrina Fulton and the many faceless, nameless mothers who have lost their sons to injustice.

My heart aches for the many sons who have died due to the senseless fear of black men. And my heart breaks for the remorseful and the unrepentant who have pulled the trigger out of manufactured trepidation and false teachings.

Many of the mothers in this country do not have to wake up every morning wondering if this will be the day that their son’s future is erased. But those of us that do must roar together like the pride of lionesses that we are.

Let us not allow our sons to be an afterthought. Let our sons not be forgotten.

Is Cecelia Clark a Modern Day Female Superhero?

As a little girl, I worshipped comic book superheroes like Wonder Woman, Vixen, Lady Jaye and Storm. They represented to me the possibilities that lied in the achievement of womanhood. In the comic books I’d borrowed from my young male friends, these characters epitomized my fantasies of fearlessness, power and strength—attributes that I did not possess at a young age.

When I was about six or seven I was dealing with a lot of changes. My parents were divorced and my father had completely disappeared from my life. Without his financial support I was uprooted from my home and school and my mother and I were forced to move to a lower income neighborhood. Like most children, I was remarkably resilient. I managed to adapt to my surroundings and overcome the obstacles in my new environment.

 

One of those obstacles was the fact that there were no other little girls in my neighborhood. As a result I had to alter myself to fit in with the boys. Instead of playing with Barbies and dollhouses I was playing baseball and basketball or crateball.  For those of you lucky enough to have had a decent court close by or a hoop in your driveway, let me explain what I mean by “crateball.” The playground in our area was so severely dilapidated that the basketball court, which was covered with glass from broken bottles, consisted of two poles sticking out of the cement with no backboards, rims or nets. So we cut out the bottoms of discarded milk crates and nailed them to a wooden lamppost in the alleyway to create a makeshift half-court. Adapt and overcome.

Anyway…not only was I the lone girl in my crew, but I was also the smallest of all the kids on my block, including the younger boys. I endeavored through the dozens and many a fistfight to earn the respect of the boys. During those struggles I often felt inadequate and weak. I didn’t win every fight and sometimes I wasn’t clever enough to outsmart my opponents in the dozens. But reading the stories of these iconic superheroes motivated me to persevere.

I was completely oblivious to the sexism in the comic books I read and cartoons and other television shows I watched when I was a kid. As a quintessential tomboy it was my everyday norm. It was not until I started middle school and began to participate in organized sports on all-girl teams that I became aware of the double standards. It was then that for the first time I was treated as an equal despite my size, color or gender. And it wasn’t until then that I realized that brilliance and toughness were not qualities that girls had to fight to acquire, but that they were blessings which had been granted to everyone in some shape or form. No longer did I throw like a girl, punch like a girl or run like a girl. I threw, ran, defended, scored, and won like a champion, because that is what I was encouraged to be.

It is these two contrasting childhood experiences, I think, that lead to the creation of my protagonist and fictional #FemaleBadass, Cecelia Clark. She also went through a difficult change at a tender age. And she had to adapt and overcome the circumstances that had been thrust upon her. Cecelia’s story embodies the storms that many of us have had to weather.

We’ve all been through experiences in which to some degree we’ve felt restrained, trapped, violated and unable to express our true feelings for fear of exclusion or rejection. Some of us have experienced the betrayal and violence of the opposite sex and the jealousy and vindictiveness within our own gender just as Cecelia has. The truth is that we have, all of us, been targets. And we have all had to defend and protect ourselves and our families in one way or another. So in a manner of speaking we are all facets of Cecelia Clark. And she is a part of us all.

 

Best,

Rashawnda

King and Kyle at the Movies

So, I spent this past weekend with my family at the cinema watching two incredibly emotional and violent films (my favorite kind) about two very different sorts of American heroes. The first was Selma, which told a very personal version of the epic movement lead by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to acquire equal voting rights by marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. The second was the highly anticipated American Sniper, the extraordinary autobiographical story of US Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle, who served valiantly in the second Gulf War.

These two men couldn’t be more different, and yet I felt myself drawing all sorts of comparisons between them. King—a highly educated Baptist minister, a revered humanitarian, and conceivably the most prominent civil rights leader in American history—was a humble man who used nonviolent disobedience to change the world. Kyle was arguably the most modest of the pair and quite apparently the deadliest. And although he didn’t finish college, he gained one hell of an education in the toughest, most arduous special operations forces training known to man. He used his training not only to become the most successful sniper in American military history…ever, but also to give back to combat veterans suffering from the relentless effects of war.

It was truly an honor to watch both of these films and to be reminded of the greatness and humanity that resides beneath the surface of a man. The way one is able to move a people to action with the conviction in his voice. Or the way another is able to give his brothers in arms the confidence to do their duty, knowing that he is vigilently watching over them. Despite the critics, both King and Kyle are patriots who deserve the utmost respect for their courage and the sacrifices they have made for the good of this country.

My grandmother once told me that there are only two things a man is good for—love and protection. And this past weekend, I felt the love of a king and the protection of a warrior.

 

Rashawnda

 

 

Rashawnda’s Guide to Understanding

So, I realized something interesting about myself this morning…

Contrary to what Loving Husband and the Monsters may think, I do not enjoy arguing. But…(Hey! Stop laughing, Middle Monster!)…my obsession with seeing and understanding the whole picture tends to perpetuate an argument past its period of relevance, essentially turning it into a cross-examination rather than the exchange of ideas and opinions that was intended. I can only imagine how irritating that must be for my family and friends. (My bad, guys!)

Understanding has always been important to me because of the bridges of clarity it builds between us. It is the building block of trust and the gateway to respect, compassion and tolerance. It is the faculty of intellect and insight. And it is the connective tissue of any meaningful interrelationship.

The frustration of loneliness and isolation that often comes from the disregard and disinterest of others is so easily cured when one takes the time and energy to comprehend what you’ve experienced from your perspective. To be understood and to be able to understand others takes the effort of patience, the courage of self-expression and the faith to let it go when understanding is beyond reach.

May we all seek out a little understanding today.

 

Rashawnda