Constance Burris's Blog

A Love Letter To Hippolyta (Lovecraft Country)

The enthusiasm around the HBO show Lovecraft Country has come and gone, but I have some time, so I’m trying to clear out my drafts folder. So here some thoughts I had after being blown away from Episode 7 I AM.

The show was uneven and there are things I liked and didn’t like about it (Why did they kill Yahima?). Overall, seeing Black characters with agency fighting monsters and witches outweighed most of the negative.

Most of all I loved Hippolyta played by the beautiful Aunjanue Ellis. Hippolyta is a dark-skinned wife and mother in her forties, yearning for adventure and the opportunity to leave her mark on the world. Since I’m also a mother in my forties, how could I not fall in love with her? I saw myself in her and she became my favorite character.

When the show began, I slept on her character because at first glance she seemed to be a passive housewife who stayed home while her husband went on adventures, scouting out locations for his guide book.

I should’ve known by her name Hippolyta that she would not be a passive character for long.

First, let’s talk about her age.

Hippolyta is an extremely smart and beautiful woman in her 40’s.

In Hollywood, it’s not often that women in their forties get to be sexy. If they do, they are cast as the oversexed sidekicks.

In Episode 7 of Lovecraft Country, Hippolyta got to be both a warrior and sexual. In one scene she is fighting among other female African warriors. And in the next, she’s half-dressed and dancing with Josephine Baker.

I also need to point out that she is not only seen as sexy and beautiful in Ep 7, but Hippolyta & her husband George get their freak on in earlier episodes.

I love this because we need to normalize Black love. We need to normalize middle-aged Black women being loved on.

The second thing that stuck out to me was Body Diversity.

Hippolyta is not A toothpick. Not even close.

She is curvy and full-figured. Her thighs are wide, her stomach isn’t flat, and her breasts are not perky. And she is just as beautiful as the other women dancing on stage with Josephine Baker.

The last thing I loved about this episode and Hippolyta’s journey was the Afrofuturism.

We need media with more Black women in their forties having adventures and just as importantly we need images of Black people in the future thriving. So I give you these images from the episode with no further comment.

Five Things I learned in 2020

For 2021, I’m gonna try to write more blogposts, so here we go. (1)

Here Are The Five (Writerly) Things I Learned in 2020.

1. Track My Word Count

I didn’t write at all in October, November, and only a little bit in December. Because my long-term memory sucks, I thought the whole year was a wash. Looking back at my extremely complicated excel word tracker that I spent way too much time tweeking over the past year, I actually wrote over 140,000 words and completed 3 novels! If it wasn’t for the tracker, I would have forgotten this accomplishment.

2. Writing full-time is not for me.

In 2020, I started working part-time, partly by choice, partly because of the pandemic. Thus, I had much more time to write. By the end of the year, I was burned out.

I don’t think I like writing more than a few hours a day. Also, I had to admit that I love engineering. Well, I love the emissions calculations and playing spreadsheets. The other parts can go kick rocks.

Since I could barely write part-time, I know I couldn’t write full-time.

3. Don’t Skip Books

I knew this already, but I let that nugget of knowledge slip in 2020. Yes, I finished three books in 2020, but they were all the first books in three different series. I’m trying to do a rapid release for my next series, so… skipping book series was a really, really bad idea.

I’d be ready to publish if I hadn’t skipped books whenever I got bored.

Next time I get bored or stuck with a book, I’ll skip ahead to the next book in the series, instead of changing the series completely.

4. Storyboarding and outlining on Trello is the bomb dot com.

I am horrible at keeping track of timelines and how my minor characters look. Trello has solved that problem for me.

For anyone curious. Here is a romance layout from romance author and editor @tashaharrison and Jael R. Bakari has a Youtube video here of her writing process using Trello.

5. It’s Okay To Be Inconsistent.

The most important thing I learned is that It’s okay to be inconsistent. If its important, I’ll come back to it. I’m over 40 years old. I’ve done all of the things ever set out to do. My Bucket List is Empty; I am happy and content. (2) Everything else I achieve is pure gravy.

Empty bucket List or not, I’m looking forward to 2021.

(1) It took over 3 hours to edit, write, and post this. This is why blogging is hard.

(2) I’m not very ambitious (shrug)

There Can Be Only One

For a long time I had it in my head that I could only work on one project a time. Working on two was just an excuse to procastinate. But the talented Ines Johnson keeps posting her productivity pictures on Facebook and she works on atleast two projects at a time and she’s super productive.

So for the past month, I decided to do something different. I’m working on three projects:

Editing Worlds Apart, my speculative fiction novel that’s a cross between Boyz N Da Hood and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Editing Black Beauty‘s screenplay

Outlining/Day Dreaming about the direct sequel to Black Beauty, Shadow Magic. Yeah, I know i was supposed to have finished this book two years ago. Nobody asked you.

So far, I’m much happier, I feel less stressed, and I’m getting more done. See look, I’m writing a blogpost with all this stress free time that I have.

There are rules of course… after watching How To Plan Your 2019 Writing Schedule by Youtuber and author Sarra Cannon, I had to be honest about how fast I really write and how many days I really write. (Hat tip to Ines Johnson for turning me on to her. I kinda stalk Ines on Facebook can you tell?)

Being honest about how fast I really write, made me feel like was being attacked! I started the year trying to write 12 book in 12 months, when I had previsouly only written two books in a year. Maybe I can eventually write 12 books in 12 months, but how about we start with 3 books, shit two and half books in 12 months.

Anyway, back to the rules…. Before I can touch the other projects, I have to edit one page of Worlds Apart a day. One whole page! Most days I can do two… but the minimum is one. Okay… really, I obsessively edit the same five pages, but everyday I have to edit one new page to make sure I move forward. I’ll stay on one page for an entire week if I had my way.

Why am I being so easy on my self? Well, Worlds Apart is the most important book I’ve ever written. It won’t be better written than Giant Risk and it won’t be more fun than Chalcedony and Jade or Black Beauty. but Worlds Apart is a book I’ve been trying to write for more than 15 years. Because I’ve written and rewritten it so many times, storylines have been dropped and added and dropped again.

Some shit in the novel makes no sense.

But that’s okay. Editing shit is better than giving up and not editing at all.

There can actually be more than one.

I’m on Oprah’s Blog

I have the great honor of being features on Oprah Zip Bradford’s blog today.

http://oprahzipbradford.com/2019/01/21/how-new-york-times-bestselling-author-constance-burris-creates-fantasy-diversity-through-books/

One day I’ll get professional pictures taken, but until then click the link and don’t laugh at my crazy pics, especially the one with the shiny forehead.

2018 Travels

So, in my last post I mentioned I spent most of 2018 traveling. . . Want to see pictures? Well, here they go.

Stop 1: Washington DC

Then took a 9 hour flight across the Atlantic to Morocco!

In August, the kids and I drove to Austin, TX For Armadillocon.

That writers workshop was everything.

In September, I returned to Texas for a writers retreat in Blanco, Texas. It was beautiful country. Oh and I also got to visit the infamous Austin Central Library.

In October, i found myself in Beaver Creek,Colorado for Sirens, which is currently my fav sci-fi and fantasy convention. Ooh and I did my first cosplay this year as Domino (I forgot the my face paint at home)

Then finally in December, the hubs and I went to visit his parents in near Durham, North Carolina. But I only took food pictures.

New Year, New Goals

When I look back at 2018 in regards to writing, I did not do much. I did publish Giant Risk and I think in terms of growth, its better than anything I’ve written before.

But I didn’t write much. I’m not sure what the problem was. I think I’ve lost my motivation since Coal or maybe I just need a better writing process.

It’s probably a little bit of both.

Either way, writing is still something I love to do, and its something I want to excel at.

So fuck motivation.

Motivation follows action and persistence.

In 2019, I will work on improving my processes and cementing my writing habits to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.

Happy New Year.

Let’s see how it goes.

Slow Down and Outline

My Work in Progress for National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) is sucking!

For my last two novels, I used solid outline templates based on the Fool Proof Outline by Christopher Downing. The questions and spreadsheets he provided gave me a clear trail of where I wanted to go in each scene.

My latest novel, Worlds Apart, I drafted around years ago. I wrote it before I learned a good process for drafting.

And Lawd, writing this sucker is getting hard.

This is a reminder for me to slow down so that I can get deeper into the story and the mindset of the characters by answering the questions in Fool Proof Outline.

My future self will thank me, and the story will be so much richer.

Book Review: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

I’ve officially shelved Lovecraft county next to Handmaids Tale for the scariest books I’ve ever read. At least for that first story. Whoa!

Random Thoughts, things the book referenced and things I learned:

Black Wallstreet is referenced. I’m from Oklahoma, and it still angers me that this was never taught to me in elementary, junior high, or high school.
The story relies heavily on the African American Safe Travel guide, which my hubby calls the green book.
Prince hall free masons are also mentioned. Prince hall was an actual person
Jim Crow
Sundown towns
Realtors/realists. Realists were black realtors. black people weren’t allowed to be realtors back in the day.
The story mentions an exslave with a vivid memory and how she would write things down to help her get them out of her head and get resolved. I’ve only seen white peoples who could do this.It was cool to see a black character with that ability.


Lovecraft Country is not own voices, but I couldn’t tell. It felt authentic.
The author obviously did a lot of research, but it felt natural. I loved how I was learning while completely engrossed in the stories.
Some of the best characters I’ve read in a long time. Atticus, Leticia, George and montrus. Great Characters.
I cried like a baby when it got the story centered around the Tulsa riots. The pain in the story was as visceral as Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Reminded me of my own Urban Horror Black Beauty. I’m still waiting for Jordan Peele to get at me about making Black Beauty into a movie.

 

Random Book Review: Homo Deus by Yuvu Noah Harari

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future. – From Amazon

In my old age, I have started listening to way too much fucking news. And now to my utter amazement, I am reading/listening to nonfiction books. I am mad about this because I should be writing.

Anyway, so I was randomly listening Yuval’s TED talk on Nationalism vs. Globalism.

First, his accent is awesome.

Second, he talks about the three biggest past issues for human kind were: famine, disease, and war.

If you have not noticed, for most first world countries, we have conquered these three things. And he says that more people nowadays (I’m paraphrasing) die from sugar and suicide than war. More people die from suicide than war!

Let that sink in.

I didn’t read Yuval’s first book Sapiens, but I did get Homo Deus. I felt like I was reading Susan Quinn’s science fiction novel  The Legacy Human. According to Yuval, the future of mankind is algorithms and data. I know about algorithms from Chris Fox’s Six Figure Author: Using Data to Sell Books: Write Faster, Write Smarter. It’s every author’s dream to learn about Amazon’s algorithms to get their books in front of the right audience.

Back to the subject, eventually, algorithms will do more than show us our favorite books on Amazon. It will help us find a mate (eHarmony maybe), tell us who to vote for, etc, etc.

Eventually just as we replaced God with individualistm, algorithms will replace us leading to Homo Deus (or the bad guys in the Legacy Human).

Another idea he throws around is that there is no free will. We are nothing but a complex algorithm.

Anyway, I told my nineteen-year-old daughter about this, and with her obsessive personality, she found the personality algorithms that uses your likes and favorites on Facebook and Twitter. You can find it here: https://applymagicsauce.com

I’ve prided myself on never taking a personality test, but I took this one. The fact that I all I had to do was link my Facebook and twitter accounts made it easy.  Anyways, according to Twitter and my Facebook posts, I’m 27 and male. I like this.  I’ve always wanted to be a boy. Although, I am a forty-year-old woman.

What we need to ask ourselves is do we want this. I love Siri and Alexa. I love the concept of electric cars and algorithms telling me what they believe I should do. I say bring on Home Deus.

Editing Black Hole

I am stuck in editing hell. This isn’t unusual. Editing is always hard for me. But the pain of editing Giant Change has been unusually stubborn and deep and strong. I should have moved on to the next story by now.  I’m going to miss the pre-order release date, which really saddens me. I had such high hopes for my productivity in 2017. I was just beginning to make a profit, not publishing regularly will really hurt my pocket.

But alas, plans change.

I’m writing this blog post just so I can feel like I’ve done something creative. Just so I can poke my head out of the editing black hole that I’m in.

Something has to change in regards to editing this book. . .

Maybe I’ll make myself post sections/chapters to the blog or Wattpad so that I can’t stay on a paragraph or a sentence or page for weeks on end because it doesn’t sound right.

Hmmm . . .