THE BOOK CLUB, Shoe Queen Quagmire: chapter one

1
HARLEM BOOK FAIR 2004
The hardest part about writing about this whole situation is that I met so many good people and I really feel inclined to name them. But I can’t name them. Nor can I sit back and think up hundreds of cute names to protect the innocent and the guilty in this book.
Some of the people in this book were by my side while I was waist deep within the Shoe Queen quagmire. Most exist during and after this interestingly bizarre relationship’s ending.
As I type this it is officially over at least where I stand and well, like her mother said, she doesn’t think her daughter is smart enough to deal with this situation she got herself in. Well I don’t think her daughter is smart enough either. But nevertheless I met the Shoe Queen during the Harlem Book Fair of 2004 but I hardly said a thing to her that day and didn’t even remember I met her till almost 9 months later.
It was gonna rain all day and I woke up thinking, damn my big day is gonna be ruined. It was close to the end of July and the Harlem Book Fair is without a doubt the biggest urban/street fiction event in the country. Every author who has written a book in our genre whether published, non-published, or self published was gonna be at the fair. This day was the first day I would see my book. It had just been printed up and had just been delivered to my publisher specifically to be debuted at the Harlem Book Fair. I was ecstatic.
A friend of mine who was really into street fiction books assured me that mine would be welcomed but he also cautioned me. He told me my book was a bit different because it was a bit more intellectually grimy and more about hip-hop and he wasn’t sure about what the readers would think. Even deeper than that the cover wasn’t black-exploited and most of the books were very black-exploited with big booty bitches and fake looking thugs with guns on the covers and cars with horrible looking rims. I really didn’t give a fuck. I chastised him for calling me as early as he did and after I hung up the phone I rolled a blunt and smoked, enjoying the silence.
My publisher had called me a couple of days in advance, telling me about the book fair and what to expect. It was supposed to rain all day but he didn’t think that that would lessen the crowd. Over 10,000 people were expected to be at the fair and he told me that he would get to the fair around 10 o’clock a.m. I got to the fair at 8:30.
I was excited. But above all of that I wanted to arrive before anyone else did to see who was just as focused as me because the early bird most often enough catches the worm. I drove to Harlem where normally I would have taken the train. I live in Brooklyn and its hard finding parking in Manhattan especially on the weekends, especially when there is a fair and the fair was right next to a hospital. Shit you know I had to pay for parking and I just barely got the car in that parking lot.
The Harlem Book Fair is always outside, and covers two long Harlem blocks. The first thing I noticed at 8:30 in the morning at the Harlem Book Fair was that so many early birds were out. So I walked down one block and then another while these authors and vendors began opening up shop, putting up tents and displaying their books. I said nothing to nobody at first and no one spoke to me, everyone was trying to be ahead of the game, and even as early as it was a few people who weren’t vendors or publishers or authors were walking around, just as curious as I was.
I had nothing to show that I was an author or anything besides a manuscript of a book I had half completed tucked under my arm and a few promotional postcards. Time had lingered on and by 10:00 the place began to get crowded. My publisher was no where to be seen. So I called him and he told me he was running a bit late because they were partying last night. All I was thinking was, why wasn’t I invited to the party, and why aren’t you here. Already I saw a dozen or so authors getting people to purchase their books. I was thinking this shit seems quite lucrative. I was wrong.
It is only lucrative for some, I got a bit of the hustler in me but I aint no punk and I knew just as soon as I saw the way a lot of the authors were scrambling for customers that this was a fucking kangaroo court and it was an industry for punks and scroungers.
I walked over to one author, a female with really nice light brown eyes who wasn’t scrounging and didn’t seem like a punk. I looked at her table and saw the titles of the books upon it, various different authors but from the same publishing house. She had some of the more popular books on her table and her own books, which were quite popular also. She was selling quite a few books, more so than most of the authors in the area her table was at. Later on I would know why, why those books were so popular and why this particular author/business lady was able to make a killing on a rainy day because just after me and this author lady got acquainted, it started to drizzle. And it would keep on drizzling till my publisher came, at around 12:30; he was two and a half hours late. That must have been some party.
My publisher didn’t put up our tent and table till around 1:30 and by then quite frankly most of the people who were purchasing books had already done so. But I wasn’t complaining because it wasn’t like I was gonna see the money that day anyway and besides that I had just gotten my hands upon my first published book. I opened it up and well, I was immediately disappointed. I wont get into why, but that day was a huge learning experience for me, such a learning experience because I realized that day that this urban and street fiction genre isn’t like the traditional or major book publishing circuit. I hadn’t a clue of how different it was and well I have a friend who wrote a couple of books and they are in Barnes n Nobles and Borders. He told me how the literary industry functioned but he was in a different genre and he’s white. Things were so much different in what I call the chicken n gravy circuit, and I don’t call it chitins n gravy because I don’t eat pork or lower intestines.
I found a few interesting typos and errors in my first published book that day and I stood in the drizzling rain, wondering because I figured these things would be corrected before the book was printed. Later on that day, I would be introduced to another street fiction author. She explained our whole genre in a nutshell by giving me a copy of her first published book. She said, “Join the club.” I kid you not and another author during the same conversation told me something along the lines of, “Every book has a few errors, nothing is perfect on this earth except me.” I believed her.
I thought she was perfect. Both of these ladies calmed me a great deal. A month after the Harlem Book Fair, I read a couple of the nearly hundred books I collected during the Harlem Book Fair, all for free since I was an author and no one tried to charged me for a book except for one dude. That author tried to sell me his. I read a couple of these books and saw that most if not all of the books I read had hundreds of typos and grammatical errors in them. Now I had little to no grammatical errors thanks to my own smarts and my brilliant editor, but I knew that I really had to keep my eyes open and really handle my second book with more care. Once you give a manuscript up anything is possible…
…Back to the book fair.
I managed to sign a few books, and got a handful of sales. Like I said about time my publisher got everything percolating shit was slowing down, and the turn out wasn’t as big as it was last year because of the early rain. But that didn’t hinder me in the least. I had so much promotional material and I was walking around with a buddy of mine and more than a handful of my peoples, family and hoodlums from my hood came to the book fair to support me. So I was very busy. There was so much eye candy out in the rain lovely ladies out to support the authors, avid readers and the like.
I stopped for a moment to watch and listened to a female author of some hip-hop fiction book that was getting heavily promoted. As she spoke her words up on one of the stages I was admiring her facial features. She was wearing a long coat or some shit, that or she was dressed very conservative but other women were wearing less and I soon lost interest in her. But as things began to wind down I was back at my publisher’s tent and table, discussing the future and chatting about royalties and the next installment of my hip-hop fiction series. I was introduced to another author at that point and I was being accompanied by three lovely author ladies I met while wandering around the fair. I was having a great day.
I then met two hot looking author dames. One of them I can’t seem to recall. The other woman I do recall. I wound up fucking her in her hotel room 4 or 5 hours later but before then I listened to a male author’s ‘we are gonna take over the world’ speech. After that speech I left the Harlem Book Fair with three lovely author ladies. We were going to a Harlem Book Fair after party.
I would wind up seeing a couple of the authors I met that day in the near future. I love more than most of them. And some of them I am still in contact with now. But a lot of the authors I encountered during the fair seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. The fact that I’m still around is a mystery because I’ve had a horrible time with the first couple of books published. I got into this urban/street fiction circuit at the right and wrong time. I was within the midst of change in more ways than one.
One of the authors I met that day is now a great friend of mine. We didn’t talk much that day but later on that year we bonded. We began hanging out and smoking blunts at the end of that year. I met up with that dude while I was on a little book signing tour in Philly. He has definitely held me down throughout a lot of my sour publishing and book groupie situations because he saw me getting into some bullshit early and warned me. I was attracting a lot of groupies. He told me a lot of bullshit comes along with writing a fucking book. And he told me to leave them book groupies alone, but sadly enough I didn’t. I never considered the Shoe Queen a book groupie once we got to know each other till other began describing her as such. By then I was already waist deep in and defending her swearing that she was one of the best things god made. She was just in a bad situation and I guess I felt I could help her get out of it.
I met another author who would wind up being a good friend of mine during the Harlem Book Fair of 2004 also. She had slipped me her card and told me to give her a call later that day. Her waist was slim, her ass was fat, she dressed well and she had a good looking face. I called her and she invited me over to her hotel room right after the book fair but I went to the after party first.
I didn’t even remember her name when I woke up that following morning. I had to glance over at the table next to the bed where a stack of her books were to remind myself. All I remember of the night is that we drank a lot of alcohol and she swallowed a lot of semen. She explained a lot of things to me over breakfast. I do remember most of that. She told me all the gossip the street fiction book genre had to offer directly before she let me dick her down one last time before I left her hotel room and went home. I would see a lot of her in the near future. I was warned again about book groupies. I was also warned about frolicking with any woman associated with the business but I didn’t heed this woman’s words because she was associated with the business and had just swallowed a load of my semen.
But let me bring you back to directly after I left the book fair. I was with three female authors. I had just met a male author who would eventually become a great success and good friend; the one who gave me the world concurring speech and those other two authors, the female I cannot recall and the other who slipped me her card.
She told me she was from out of town and that her hotel room was somewhere in the Times Square area. She said she was feeling a bit under the weather and wouldn’t be attending this after party everyone was going to. I talk about her more than briefly so let’s give her a name. Let’s call her the Desperate Book Diva. You will understand why I call her that shortly. And you already know that she swallowed my semen.
But before I went to her hotel room that day after the fair I met the Shoe Queen. Yes she was at this after party I attended with the three lovely lady authors.
Shoe Queen’s book club was hosting the after party for some author. I thought nothing of it that day but now that I reflect and have more information, it was definitely a book groupie thing. I’ve been around many book clubs and well; they all function a bit differently from one another but only a handful of the book clubs are actually handled in true cooperate fashion. I also know the mind of street fiction authors. The Shoe Queen’s book club was getting used; pimped, they were getting treated like groupies. I saw this clearly that day, but my mind was clouded by a few things.
First off Shoe Queen would tell me a year later that she asked me for a copy of my book that day and I told her that I only had one copy and I just showed her the cover and wouldn’t even let her touch it. I can believe that. I didn’t really know the book circuit at that point in time and when I left the Harlem Book Fair the car I drove to the event in left with a few cases of my new book. I went with the lovely lady authors to this after party. I was with strangers but it was good company. But I was naïve. Didn’t know the industry the way I know it now.
One of the female authors was driving and took all of us to this after party that wouldn’t even serve us food. It was crazy. I guess we arrived a bit too early or they were just stingy with the Buffalo wings, whatever the case maybe we didn’t stay long. I hardly noticed the Shoe Queen that day. Think about it. I end up falling in love with this women and I guess in some ways she ends up breaking my heart. But when I first encountered her I just brushed her off as a woman pimped by some author, a groupie. See, that day was my official day in the book circuit. I was as sharp as I could be but in this industry you gotta be sharper. I walked right inside that after party and as I left with the other authors I made a joke saying, “I’m gonna get me a book club and pimp them just like that author.” Everyone laughed. Who would have known that I would wind up getting pimped myself?
Now I’m all fucked up in the game. I should have kept my game on the pimp level but I got emotionally involved, attached to the Shoe Queen.
I would get myself tangled up in different three book club webs eventually. Two out of the three wound up becoming disasters. All these book clubs were filled with nothing but dysfunctional women who wanted to fuck around with men who write books because they read, or they simply enjoyed gossiping about the industry and ogling over books and talking about books. That is all they do and they really make is serious business for people who don’t even write themselves. And it gets worse if they like your work. But this is the street fiction circuit and a lot of these women don’t know a good book from a great book from a terrible book. It’s a different world in this genre I write for, and since I write in other genres I see how tainted this place is and it sickens me at times.
But beyond all of the nauseating shit that takes place within this genre nothing has gotten me in more quagmires than these book clubs. For some reason the same sort of women seem to gather within them and they all will swear to god that they aint groupies. But check it; Trekkers know that they are groupies. The guy who dresses up like Darth Vader to go see a Star Wars movie knows he’s a groupie. And every female who followed a rapper backstage and sucked his dick after a concert and got kicked out the dressing room directly afterwards knows she’s a groupie. What makes these book club women so oblivious to what they are? That and why do I struggle to place the Shoe Queen outside the pocket even though I met her that day and brushed her off, deeming her a groupie.
She looked just like one. Her book club was hosting some authors, Harlem Book Fair after party and they didn’t get paid, and even if they did get paid, yo what are catering services for? Why would you wanna be a servant for some author, I mean the nigga wasn’t Stephen King. I found that odd. And what I found odder was a conversation that I just recently had with a member of the Shoe Queen’s book club but the whole thing is so crazy that I gotta write it in sequence or its gonna spoil things. A matter of fact quite a few people have been coming out of their shells telling me about how the Shoe Queen and her book club thought about me while I was with her. I was shocked when I heard what they thought and what they said about me.
I thought book clubs were basically about reading books, no; some of the smaller and less professional clubs wanna really get to know the authors and wanna do what me and the Shoe Queen did, which was get involved.
I know of one book club located in Philly where the founder will kick you the fuck out of the club if you are caught frolicking or getting involved with an author. And yo the Shoe Queen should have really been certain about dealing with me when she got involved with me. I told her that it might get messy if we ever separated on fucked up terms. I was told that these women will get you a bad review once the relationship has gone sour. And since her club was filled with nothing but family members and friends and a whole lot of people who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Shit I couldn’t keep my mouth shut either. I was madly in love with the Shoe Queen and wanted the world to know. And I will get into how deceptive the club was initially. Even if the Shoe Queen was an honest woman she hadn’t the intelligence to show her innocence because she seemed quite guilty of a number of nasty things. But even still, I trusted her as much as I could under the circumstances.
Think about this. I once told the Shoe Queen after we had already became sexually involved that it baffled me that they treated that author at the after party so kingly and promoted him with such vigor. And here I was slipping up in her on the often, ejaculating in her and her book club didn’t promote me nearly as much. A few days later I would get a phone call from her baby’s father the Genius. He told me that the Shoe Queen was fucking this same author they catered the party for. Guess what, I wasn’t supposed to believe him. I guess I shouldn’t have slept with her and I would have gotten the red carpet treatment as well right? Wrong. I was jealous of this nigga that was all. I write this admitting every fault I mustered up also. But I had every right to be jealous. Later on I would find out that the Shoe Queen and her book club used to talk about this other author just as vigorously as they talked about me. So was I very special and more importantly was the Shoe Queen fucking that author also, or had she fucked him. She said she didn’t but Shoe Queen has said a lot of things. But when you deal with the Shoe Queen you gotta concentrate on the things she didn’t say and how she said the things she did say.
This book club would wind up promoting me a great deal eventually but not nearly as much promotion as I needed. But by the same token I had introduced them to so many other authors and I have never spoken a bad word about them because they were all good women at the beginning.
One super huge street fiction author warned me about book clubs. He told me that they are really horrible women because if you get involved with one and things don’t work out, not only will they stop promoting you but they will try to make things bad for you, slander and throw salt in the game. He told me that he doesn’t do book clubs, no on line chats or book club readings or meetings. As I type this I truly understand why and I should have heeded his words, but by then I was already knee deep in. I had already got more than overly involved with the Shoe Queen and I was already intimate with the club socially.
The Shoe Queens book club composed of quite a few different characters. Before I get into them I should get into the Desperate Book Diva. She is gonna divert us from the Shoe Queen but the time I spent with the Desperate Book Diva is interesting story. Directly after Miss Desperate I was introduced to another book club and another female who shall remain nameless that I got involved with but before I get involved with her I get an overload of groupie action. I’m talking at least 20 women in half a year, and half of them were from various book clubs and most of them only wanted me to read to them, and dick them down, what an odd combination.