I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but I finally have clearance to share this: the cover of my middle grade detective novel, The Usual Suspects.
Coming in May 2019!
(From Katerine Tegan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins)
So I was recently asked about the work that I’ve produced over the last couple months. I rarely stop to think about what I’ve done. I more just turn it in and move onto the next thing. But I think this person was worried that I do so much work in the community (thus the community report) that I’m not getting any actual writing done. So here’s a quick peek at that:
-I completed the final line edits on The Usual Suspects
-I turned in a novella (for a project for a movie studio … that I can’t talk about yet)
-I turned in work for a Serial Box project (for a project … that I can’t talk about yet)
-I turned in the outline and first three chapters for a new Afrofuturist novel project (I pitched it as “Black Panther meets Game of Thrones…in space)
-I started revisions on two novels (one of which is Pimp My Airship – A Novel. Apex Books recently purchased the novel and it is due out in May 2019. Those who have been subscribing at the $10 level will get a copy of it. The other book project is an urban fantasy called The Lost Griot. I’ll post the opening chapter of this next month for subscribers at the $10 level).
[Also pictured are my other current projects: a biography of a local hip hop artist and the sequel to The Usual Suspects (Blackhats). I get my work in, too.]
There are projects that have been announced as coming out, most of it from my collaborative period:
“The Rebel” (written with Sarah Hans) in Mechanical Animals
“Wolf at the Door” (written with Anthony Cardno) in Chiral Mad 4
“What the Mountain Wants” (written with Nayad Monroe) in Do Not Go Quietly (coming soon)
So in tribute to this spirit of collaboration, for those subscribing at the Awesome Pimping ($10) level and above, I’ll be posting the first chapters of Wrath (written with Wrath James White) and Serpent (written with Jason Sizemore) this month.
At the Awesome Pics level, well there’s Ferb. And me. A couple behind the scenes photos of a Broaddus family tradition (we make home movies for our Christmas party. We start filming the day after Thanksgiving. This was from two years ago when Ferb had a starring role).
On other Patreon updates, that Bella the intern post has already come back to haunt me. I am now mentoring at the Kheprw Institute and through SFWA. I even adjusted a level on Patreon for folks looking for some quasi face-to-face mentoring time. I’ll post about the responsibilities of being a mentor/mentee and posts answering questions from them from time to time.
In the Community Report, updates on an author event and the planning of Spirit & Place and Mo*Con.
As always, thank you so much for the support. You allow me to get so much work done in the community.
LIVE Tobias Buckell and Maurice Broaddus talking about #Afrofuturism in Action at KI part of Spirit & Place Festival! Thanks also to Indiana Humanities and Central Indiana Community Foundation for your support!
Posted by Kheprw Institute on Friday, 9 November 2018
[From the Spirit & Place event page]
When and Where:
Friday, November 9, 2018 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
at Kheprw Institute/Renaissance Center
3549 Boulevard Pl., Indianapolis, IN 46208
Special Venue Instructions: Parking lot and street parking available.
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Presenter(s):
Tobias Buckell
Cost:
Free
Event Description:
AWESOMENESS NOMINEE!
At the intersection of race, social justice, and the future, join best-selling science fiction author Tobias Buckell in this provocative conversation.
Black Panther. Parliament-Funkadelic. Octavia E. Butler. Janelle Monae. Afrofuturism is the reimagining of a future filled with arts, science, and technology seen through a black cultural lens. It’s an all-encompassing arts movement, including literary, film, music, visual arts, and fashion that allows us to discuss matters of race, gender, and social justice. It critiques the present as well as model possibilities for the future. Hear from Caribbean-born, US-based writer Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain, Arctic Rising, and Halo: The Cole Protocol, and join in a community conversation where we use art, science, and faith to imagine a future together.
Parking lot and street parking available.
Walk-ins welcome. RSVPs encouraged by Nov. 8.
Presented by Maurice Broaddus and Kheprw Institute.
IndyGo: 38
Award of Awesomeness
Afrofuturism in Action is one of five events nominated for an Award of Awesomeness! These events use the arts, humanities, and/or religion in unique ways to explore the INTERSECTION theme and have the potential to be true standouts. The winner will receive a $1,000 prize that will be announced at the conclusion of the Public Conversation on Sunday, November 11 at the Indiana State Museum.
[see also African Americans in Speculative Fiction – A Primer]
Mark Dery essay “Black to the Future” (1994) – coined the term “Afrofuturism”
BOOKS
Fiction
Tomi Adeyemi – Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1) (2018)
Steven Barnes – Lion’s Blood (2002), Zulu Heart (2003)
Jennifer Marie Brissett – Elysium (2014)
Tobias Buckell – Crystal Rain (2006)
Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower (1993)
Bill Campbell – Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013)
Samuel Delany – Aye and Gomorrah (1967), Dhalgren (1975)
Nicky Drayden – Prey of Gods (2017)
Tananarive Due – My Soul to Keep (1988)
Nalo Hopkinson – The Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000)
N.K. Jemisin – The Fifth Season (2015)
Walter Mosley – Futureland: Nine stories of an imminent future (2001)
Nnedi Okorafor – Who Fears Death (2010), Binti (2015), Binti: Home (2017), Binti: The Night Masquerade (2018)
Deji Bryce Olukotun – Nigerians in Space (2014)
Rasheedah Phillips – Recurrence Plot (2014)
Sun Ra – This Planet is Doomed (2011)
Nisi Shawl – Everfair (2016)
Rivers Solomon – An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017)
Sheree Renee Thomas – Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000)
Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad (2016)
MUSIC
Sun Ra – “Space is the Place” (1973)
Parliament – “Mothership Connection” (1975)
Outkast – “Aquemeni” (1998)
Janelle Monae – “The ArchAndroid” (2010), “The Electric Lady” (2013), “Dirty Computer” (2018)
Drexciya – The Quest (1997)
Erykah Badu – Baduizm (1997)
Flying Lotus – 1983 (2006)
FILMS
The Brother from Another Planet (1984) – John Sayles
District 9 (2009) – Neill Blomkamp
PUMZI – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWMtgD9O6PU
INTERVIEW with Wanuri Kahiu – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlR7l_B86Fc
Wanuri Kahiu Ted Talk on Afrofuturism – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvxOLVaV2YY
Janelle Monae Dirty Computer Emotion Picture – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdH2Sy-BlNE
VISUAL ART
Jean-Michel Basquiat – Molasses
Antonio Lopez – fashion illustrations
Tim Fielder – graphic artist, “Black Metropolis” exhibit
Niama Safia Sandy – curated “Black Magic: Afro Pasts/Afrofutures” exhibit
King Britt – curated “Moondance: A Night in the Afrofuture” exhibit (2014)
Joshua Mays – Tells Stories in Murals
Lina Iris Viktor – A Rising Star
Rachel Stewart – jewelry maker
Comic Books
Black (Kwanza Osajyefo)
Black Panther (Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin, Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Destroyer (Victor LaValle)
Milestone Comics (Icon, Static, Hardware, Blood Syndicate)
Non-Fiction
Afrofuturism: the World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy Culture (2013) – Ytasha L. Womack
Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro Blackness (2015) – Alondra Nelson and Reynaldo Anderson
Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (2015) – Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha
More Brilliant Than the Sun – Kodwo Eshun
The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics – Louis Chude-Sokei
Emergent Strategy – adrienne maree brown
Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction – André M. Carrington
Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice Vol. 1 – ed. Rasheedah Phillips
Misc Resources
Afrofuturism: 3 Women you need to Know
Tech and Afrofuturism on Robin Thede’s late night show The Rundown:
Pt. 1: https://youtu.be/BltqLsYnOgw
Pt. 2: https://youtu.be/jk0OV_ZIxvw
Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto: http://martinesyms.com/the-mundane-afrofuturist-manifesto/
Aker: Futuristically Ancient – https://futuristicallyancient.com/
This American Life – We are the Future
[I originally sent this to them privately, but I wanted to publicly thank them also]
First off, thank you so much for your time, your presence, your generosity, and your awesomeness. You have always been a role-model for me and I wanted to once again say how much I appreciate you. Things couldn’t have gone any better.
Second, the folks you were talking to were a mix of writers, fans, and community organizers. Your words continued to resonate that night. After Afrofuturism Friday, I led another workshop right now called “the Superhero workshop.” Basically me and a lady who was in attendance for your talk, lead a group of women in using story to work through issues of trauma (with the idea that most superheroes origin story are rooted in trauma). Your words kept coming back to her and we all ended up working until midnight exploring your methods of approaching stories by asking questions. And. We. Had. Such. Breakthroughs.
Thirdly, I meet with the founder of the Kheprw Institute every Saturday morning for coffee and our “sacred dialogue” (basically, we’re off the clock and talk about things other than the community organizing work). As a part of the work we’ve been doing, we’ve been dealing with gentrification issues and equity land use. As a part of the worldbuilding for the novel I’m working on, I asked him about what real equity could look like. He went on a rant about how we’ll never achieve equity, not with the systems we have in place, how we can only leaven its worse aspects, and so on. I looked at my elder and told him I was about to put on my Afrofuturist hat: if we were starting a colony on the moon, what could equity look like? He got this look in his eye, I recognize that look of a dreamer, and then he started to give me some scenarios. I say all this to remind us of how Afrofuturism creates a space of us to dream about possibilities. Even visionary leaders sometimes needs that permission to dream, if only to see where we could be.
So thank you again. Know that you have touched a lot of doers and movers in our city.
Peace and love,
Maurice
Dear Patreon supporters,
Thank you so much for your patience. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t get the September stuff up due to preparing and being gone for the Writing Excuses Cruise (and I realize the weeping going on for me as I offer up teaching on a cruise as an excuse for non-production).
The month off has also allowed me to think through some changes I want to make to the Patreon. First off, in an attempt to make up for things, I’m declaring October “EXTRAS MONTH!”
-for those at the $1 level, it means extra pics of Ferb (and maybe me…on a beach…or something else equally productive).
-for those at the $5 level, there will be three blog posts this month (and at least two a month going forward)
-for those at the $5 and up levels, due to a special Afrofuturism Friday that I am doing in December, there will be a chapbook of several of my stories and a novelette produced that will be sent to you as a thank you.
-for those at the $10 level more chapters of the novel in progress. There may be a publishing date attached (assuming I get all the revisions done). So around next June, you will receive a copy of the finished product.
-for those at the $20 level, I’ve made the previous reports public on my blog:
Patreon Report: A Month in the Life
-speaking, community work, writing update
Patreon Report: Afrofuturism Fridays
-I was overdoing it, even for me
Patreon Report: Community Innovation Lab, Afrofuture Fridays, and More!
Patreon Report: 18-04-25
-more updates on the community innovation lab and Afrofuturism Fridays
More importantly, I’m adding a profile piece to the report. Each month I will include a write up of someone I work alongside with in the community development work. Plus updates on Afrofuturism Fridays, a Superhero Workshop, a Spirit & Place event, and a profile on Imhotep Adisa, founder of the Kheprw Institute.
And there may be other sneak peeks and previews this month. YOU. JUST. DON’T. KNOW.
As always, thank you for the support.
Maurice
I’m going to be an instructor at the Clarion workshop in 2019. I’m still pinching myself to make sure that I am not dreaming I’m a part of an amazing lineup including Carmen Machado, Karen Lord, Andy Duncan, and Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. I’m of two minds: 1) it’s sorta surreal to be mentioned in the same sentence as so many writers I admire; and 2) SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Dear students wanting to know where Mr. Broaddus was all week (not that you’d check Facebook because it’s for old people),
Just know that I was hard at work on a new book and preparing to teach about writing. Because I suffer for my art.
Our first stop was at NASA. Chilling with the Saturn V rocket. 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. You can’t appreciate the scale unless you can picture parking your car into one of the FIVE thrusters in the back.
Then I found myself in Roatan, going over my lesson/workshop plans when suddenly I was struck with writers block that I found a way to push through…#beachmassagesrule
Then came Belize where I was, uh, researching. #writerslife
I did meet up with a few folks: one codenamed B15
and the other group codenamed Bravo Bravo Bravo.
This exchange probably best sums up how I lived on the Writing Excuses Cruise:
Me: Let me get this straight, I can order anything off this menu and you’ll give it to me for NO extra charge.
Waiter: Yes sir. So what would you like for dessert?
Me: The roasted duck.
I want to than the entire Writing Excuses crew for inviting me out and giving me the opportunity to teach some folks who will be taking the literary world by storm before too long.
I. CALL TO ORDER: DUST: Missy Elliott Descends from Planet Rock
Little Simz, Missy Elliott & The Genius Of Afrofuturism | @littlesimz @missyelliott
Listening/viewing Salon: videos by Missy Elliot
Music Lab – Missy Elliott Playlist
-The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
-She’s a Bitch
-Beep Me 911
-Sock It 2 Me
I’m Better
Sock It 2 Me
II. N.K. Jemisin
We celebrated N.K. Jemisin’s unprecedented Hugo Award for Best Novel three-peat by watching her acceptance speech for The Stone Sky, the final volume in the Broken Earth series. The series began with The Fifth Season (2015) and is followed by The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky. The Fifth Season takes place on a planet with a single supercontinent called the Stillness. Every few centuries, its inhabitants endure what they call a “Fifth Season” of catastrophic climate change.
The society of the Stillness is broken up into many “comms”, “use-castes”, races and species. Such as orogenes, people with the ability to control energy, particularly that of the ground (directly) and temperature (indirectly). In a prologue, an extraordinarily powerful orogene discusses the sad state of the world and laments the oppression of his race. He then uses his enormous power to fracture the entire continent along its length, threatening to cause the worst Fifth Season in recorded history. The story then follows three female orogenes across the Stillness from different time periods.
In August 2017 it was announced that The Fifth Season is being adapted for television by TNT
N.K. Jemisin’s speech – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFybhRxoVM&feature=youtu.be
Shockingly, there was a lot of backlash to her speech which was a whole lot of racist nonsense. However, of note, was N.K. Jemisin’s recent twitter rant answering the question “why do we have to mention her race?”
Good evening, Twitter. It's time for a post-dinner coffee rant. Today I want to tackle the topic of "Why do you always have to mention Jemisin's race? Isn't that racist? Why can't you just talk about the work?"
— N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) September 13, 2018
III. Binti: Home
In probably our most intense and personal discussion, we covered a lot of ground:
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Also, we’ve been compiling a list of materials and resources for our Afrofuturism library. Feel free to post any of your suggestions.
I. READING SALON
*Black
*Miles
*Kindred
*Cyborg
*Strange Fruit
*Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
*Victor LaValle’s Destroyer
II. LISTENING SALON
Music Lab – Flying Lotus
[from Wikipedia] Flying Lotus was born Steven Ellison, the grand-nephew of the late jazz pianist Alice Coltrane, whose husband was saxophonist John Coltrane. His third studio album, Cosmogramma, was released in 2010. It was a hard-hitting afrofuturistic shrine to soul, hip-hop, and jazz, and featured Stephen Bruner, aka Thundercat.
[The album was accompanied by live instrumentation (Thundercat on bass, Miguel Atwood Ferguson on strings, Rebekah Raff on harp) and live vocalists (Thom Yorke, Laura Darlington) – all picked to help communicate the spiritual musical lineage of Ellison’s family (Ravi Coltrane, himself, played tenor sax)]
His fifth studio album, You’re Dead! was released in 2014. It features guest appearances by Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and Herbie Hancock. Flying Lotus then appeared alongside Thundercat on Kendrick Lamar’s album To Pimp a Butterfly and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year for his credits as producer.
III. CALL TO ORDER: An intro to the history of black comics
All-Negro Comics: published in June 1947. It was the first independent comic and was also the first comic to feature black characters by black creators. Superheroes, detectives, kid characters.
Milestone Media/Milestone Comics (from Wikipedia)
Milestone Media was a company best known for creating Milestone Comics, which were published and distributed by DC Comics, and the Static Shock cartoon series. It was founded in 1993 by a coalition of African-American artists and writers, consisting of Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle. (Christopher J. Priest participated in the early planning stages of Milestone Media, and was originally slated to become the editor-in-chief of the new company, but bowed out for personal reasons before any of Milestone’s titles were published).
Although Milestone comics were published through DC Comics, they did not fall under DC Comics’ editorial control; DC retained only the right not to publish any material they objected to. Milestone Media retained the copyright of their properties and had the final say on all merchandising and licensing deals pertaining to them. In essence, DC licensed the characters, editorial services, and creative content of the Milestone books for an annual fee and a share of the profits. Dwayne McDuffie said that DC held up this agreement even though some of Milestone’s storylines made them “very uncomfortable” as they were from perspectives that DC weren’t used to.
All Milestone Media titles were set in a continuity dubbed the “Dakotaverse”, referring to the fictional midwestern city of Dakota in which most of the early Milestone stories were set. The first batch of titles included: Hardware, Icon, Blood Syndicate and Static.
UNFORTUNATELY: The comics market was experiencing a glut of “new universes” as several other publishers launched superhero lines around the same time (a slump would start in 1993 and a market crash in 1994), a significant number of retailers and readers perceived the Milestone books to be “comics for blacks” and assumed they would not interest non-African-American readers.
By 1997, the line folded (only the Static Shock cartoon remained). In 2008, the characters were merged into the regular DC universe. In 2016, DC Comics announced the creation of “Earth-M” within their multiverse. 2018 saw the release of five titles, including Milestone (featuring Icon and Rocket), a new Static series, Duo (based on the character Xombi), and two other new titles: Earth-M and Love Army.
[Literally, Milestone began with two brothers in a basement talking comics and possibilities]
IV. CHOPPING IT UP WITH LOCAL CREATIVES
Introductions: Nick Perry, Arric Thomas, Jamahl Crouch
-What got you into comics books/art?
-How would you describe your art?
-What is the guiding philosophy behind your art?
-What is the relationship between your art and community work?
-What would you like to do moving forward?
RESOURCES OF INTEREST:
The Unacknowledged History of Black Creators and Black Characters in Comic Books
All-Negro Comics
https://www.digitalcomicmuseum.com/?dlid=22625
The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/the-real-reasons-for-marvel-comics-woes/527127/
Why Milestone Comics’ Revival Matters
https://medium.com/@nerdypoc/why-milestone-comics-revival-matters-2a9ff59e05dd