Meet My Special Guest, Michele Cameron

Contest for Michele's Book, Moments of Clarity - Comment & follow instructions at the bottom of this post to get a chance to win.

I'm excited to present my next guest, Michele Cameron, who speaks from the heart and very eloquently. You don't have to be black to appreciate what her novels are all about. I'll let Michele explain. She does a much better job than I could.

Why Black Women Read Romance Novels

Black women read romance novels because we have to. It is a way for us to escape from the daily pressures of being a strong black woman and sometimes a strong black man and woman. Romance novels are a way for us to connect with sisters that are going through the struggles that we are. Running a household, raising children, often working more than a nine to five, keeping up our physical appearances, and trying to get, or maintain that all elusive everlasting love is a lot of wear and tear on our nerves. But we deal with it. Why? The history of black women is having that ability to juggle and cope with it all. But that gets old… sometimes we need the fantasy. The hope that one day, everything we want, we will have and everything that we need will someday be provided for us.

As we flip through the pages of books that features African American women, it is a way for us to commiserate with our own and feel in the sometimes cruel world that there is a rainbow at the end of the yellow bricked road that we travel. Reading romance that features the sisters is a great thing. It certainly beats channel surfing for a television program that is sprinkled with a sister or brother here or there. Or trying to identify with a television show that supposedly models our families and their lives are only a minor semblance of the world we live in.

I’m the author of two published novels and there are two more on the way. In every book that I write, I have one main goal and that is to make my readers feel a kinship with the heroine as she goes through her trials and tribulations. All of my heroines have great sex. They have the kind of sex that once you have it, you never forget it, and after each and every time you have some not so good sex, you remember the good old days with nostalgia. In every novel that I write, my main characters have flaws and they grow from the inside out. I would love one day for some good looking millionaire with high standards to save me, but in the meantime, I’ll make my own way and live vicariously through books about people that like me do the best they can with what they have.

In Never Say Never, the heroine, Desiree Diamond is tired of being taken for granted by her man. Who isn’t? She had a set image of what her future husband would look like and how their life would be. Who doesn’t? But then she got her heart broken. Who hasn’t? She’s totally taken off guard when she realizes that she is deeply in love with … A White Man! Who wouldn’t be? But the novel deals with other issues because one of the characters in the novels was sexually harassed. Who hasn’t been?

My second novel , Moments of Clarity…is about Sasha Diamond, Desiree’s sister who readers met in Never Say Never. Sasha is totally disillusioned by men when she finds out her long time relationship is a complete sham and she doesn’t even really know the man she’s been sleeping with. Then she meets real true love, but her best friend is jealous and tries to mess it up for her. Has that ever happened to any of you? Even though I can’t see your raised hands I know they’re out there. But this novel has a lot more than that. It deals with foster care and the adoption system in America and having faith in yourself and your man when it appears that you have no choice but to let him go.

My third novel is titled When Lightning Strike! will be released August 2009. Grace Foxfire is in love with two men and they are both deeply in love with her. Now if that’s not lightning striking, I don’t know what is. The social issues in this novel give background to the civil rights movement in a small town, Lake City South Carolina. It also deals with forgiving your parents when they weren’t the best because if you truly do that, you can move on and ultimately be the winner as you make better choices than they did.

My fourth novel titled Unclear and Present Danger will be released February 2010. The main character, Solange Montgomery has a stalker. Have you ever had a stalker? Loosely translated, that’s an ex that shows up where you are and at first you think that it’s a coincidence. How about the hanging up phone calls that you get in the middle of the night or the animosity you encounter when you bump into your ex because you left when he obliquely insinuated while you were dating that, ‘you are not the one.’ This novel also deals with racism in America. The heroine is black and the male lead is an Arab-American and even before the war in Iraq, there was an undercurrent of fear or suspicion when people were forced to interface with those people.

As an author, my goal is to give lovers of romance some enjoyable hours of pleasure and once you turn the last page of one of my books, you feel crestfallen because you’ve finished the novel. If I can accomplish that, then I’ll feel a personal satisfaction that no one or nothing can take away from me.

Michele Cameron
http://michelecameron.blog.com/

BIO

Michele Cameron, a native of Bridgeport Connecticut is a graduate of the Danbury High School Connecticut school system.
She is a graduate of North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro with a B.S. degree in professional writing and English Education.
Michele Cameron’s first novel, given a 4 star rating, Never Say Never, was published in January, 2008 and earned her the prestigious title of New Face among African-American writers for the month of January by Romanceincolor.
Her second novel titled Moments of Clarity, received a 5 star rating from Affaire de Coeur and was released October 7, 2008 through Genesis-Press, Inc.
Ms. Cameron’s third novel When Lightning Strikes! will be released August, 2009.
Her fourth novel titled, Unclear and Present Danger will be released February 2010.
Cameron currently teaches Language Arts in Central Florida.
http://www.michelecameronblog.com/

CONTEST: For a chance to win a copy of Michele Cameron's Moments of Clarity, post a comment and also send an e-mail to Morgan Mandel at blogcontests@morganmandel.com

The winner will be notified by e-mail and then asked to provide a snail mail.

Good Luck to all of you, but only one can win.