Psyche: I never give up. However… (laugh) one of my Brooklyn homies suggested weeks ago that I’ve got too many projects going on at once, and that maybe I should get around to finishing one of them. True, there’s a lot of plates spinning in the air at chez moi – the book, the comic, the screenplay, etc. – and so maybe some time management is in order; I was already thinking the same thing myself actually. So for all you fellow scribblers out there trying to balance your shit, I feel your pain – this is what I plan to do.

1. The Masters comic book project is on hold. Although this month I did make the decision that The Masters will be a graphic novel (as opposed to a mini- or ongoing series), I also decided that the plot itself will be written as a short story first, for my eyes only. I’m aware of the specially formatted comic-book scripts that help artists figure out how to illustrate the action, but as a short story writer, I came to the conclusion that even before attempting a script like that, it’s gonna help me map it out if it’s an actual short story to work from. And Superman though I am, I don’t have time this minute to pen a short story. Because…
2. … The Noir Album book is my main focus this moment. Got feedback from my agent on my sample chapter this month. All’s well, so well she wants another additional chapter so we can sew up more money for this joint from the eventual publisher when it all goes down this summer. If I get in a zone I may even hammer out the first 100 pages, just to end all possible back n’ forth and get things rolling already. Not that I’m impatient. The Noir Album, as a reminder, is a memoir of my years in Paris, with a thesis running throughout about the lives of French black folk.
   
3. Yes, there’s a screenplay. Amazon delivered my Final Draft software a few weeks back, and I’m (finally) steadily transcribing my 13-year-old unpublished novel into a movie. Writers are some starving-artist motherfuckers generally, and I’m not real into that. Hollywood is where the bucks are if you do this for a living. Joan Didion, James Baldwin and Dave Eggers all have screenplay credits, yeah, but I know like 10 people personally off the top of my dome who’ve sold scripts, folks like Bönz Malone (Brooklyn Babylon), Scott Poulson-Bryant (Murder on the Soul Train), Cheo Hodari Coker (Notorious), my old law school classmate Brian Koppelman (Ocean’s 13) and more. So my first draft will be done by July. Then: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

This has been the weakest week of Furthermucker since the beginning; many sincere apologies. But, I’ve been avidly at work on my next book, and I’ve even got a little of it to share in this space: just click here. What I’m working on is pretty much a creative nonfiction memoir about life in Paris following in the footsteps of James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Chester Himes but (of course) with the prerequisite hiphop generation twist. It’s equally as much about life for people of color in France – the Africans from countries colonized by the French; the Antilles islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti – and how their cultures impact French culture (which, again, ain’t a conversation you can have without discussing French hiphop). The tentative title is The Noir Album, named in a nod to The White Album by Joan Didion (my idol, ha), Prince’s infamous The Black Album, and Jay-Z’s as well, hell. Enjoy this 1,800 words and please, feed back feedback.