February 2021

When a country with less than five percent of the world’s population has nearly half of the world’s privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings, it’s time to stop saying guns make us safer.
― DaShanne Stokes

What if the American people had enough of the NRA?

The duality of the NRA/gun control.

I cannot tell you how much I dislike the NRA. Why? It’s not for the reasons you think. It’s not because I don’t like guns. I mean…I don’t like them although I am capable of using them being trained by my uncle. No no. I don’t like the NRA because they can’t seem to keep themselves out of grown-up’s conversation. My country has the highest number of mass shootings in the world by a colossal margin and the NRA has the arrogance to still spout out their nonsense while intervening in the path of progression towards America’s safety.  They are doing more harm than good and I wanted to convey that message through Enough Is Enough because, seriously, enough is enough.

We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.
― Ira Glass

What if you could actually give a sociopath/psychopath empathy?

That”s what I began to ask myself after watching an episode of Charmed. More specifically, the sixth episode of the third season of the original series entitled “Primrose Empath” (click here). The episode, and the series as a whole, got me interested in the whole aspect of the mind. At the time, I didn’t know about psychology but it still intrigued me. Fast forward to 2019, when I started working on the outlines for the forty-five short stories, I decided to revisit that episode and do a deeper dive while reading up on the core aspects of empathy. And that was only the beginning of my research.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
― Wayne W. Dyer

The duality of karma

This is going to be the funniest BTP (“Behind The Pen”) segment that I have ever written. I had so much fun creating the backstory for the main character of this story and, in a beautiful twist, I didn’t even use him that much. And yet, The Jamaican was still managed to pull all my test readers in within the few pages he was introduced in. I count that as a win in my book and for good reasons since I will be using him, again. But, of course, I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to explain how The True Colors of Karma came about.

we were like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would continue to pull back into the barrel the one crab that would make the effort to climb out.”
― Marcus Garvey, Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

Have you ever been ostracized from your community? Was it because of something that was out of your control? Or, better yet, was it because of your harmless ambition for something precious or greater? This is why Crabs In A Barrel is so important to me. I have been a victim of such ridiculous notions. And it’s not too much of a stretch to say that it has been happening all my life.