Kenji and D and Me

What if I told you that the two men pictured above were the same person? Of course we look nothing alike, are from two different towns and have two different birthdays. Of course you may have seen the man that isn't me in his small part in "Remember the Titans" with Denzel Washington, on in the current production of "The Meeting" at the Paul Robeson Theater in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Or if you're in my crew you've seen him on my couch during recent visits. His name is Byron Jeans. But I introduced him to the world as D, the first author I published through my partnership with Akashic Books. The truth is that D's words and my own came from the same hand. That's right. Kenji Jasper is D and D is me. So I guess I owe you an explanation.

This story began nearly three years ago at the end of '05 when I sat down for a beer or two with Johnny Temple, the head of Akashic Books, who I had worked with on the highly-successful Brooklyn Noir and DC Noir anthologies that they had recently published. Johnny had been wanting to do something with me but couldn't afford to pay me what I was getting from the majors at the time and thought that I wouldn't be interested.

At the time I was looking for a way out of the way the business had been treating me. Stuck on a imprint that wasn't able to give me the same support I had gotten when I was under it's mother label and trapped in a power struggle between two editors that resulted in me getting kicked down to a third, I'd felt like I'd spent the last three of my five books constantly getting stomped by the powers that be. I also wanted to see if the problems I was having reaching a wide audience had to with my writing or the machine that I worked for.

I was also concerned that in the eyes of some, namely the exponentially increasing mob of self-publish authors who all but owned the streets, my work was a little too "high-brow" to be endorsed by their circles. So I had an idea of doing a street-lit series with Akashic. They were small, smart and had to stretch every dollar in the same way that folks who self-published did. And because we'd always wanted to work together I agreed to do the first book in the series under a pseudonym. I chose "D" as a double homage to my Dakota Grand moniker and to a brother named Derrick "D" Adams back in my hometown of Washington, an aspiring writer who I'd gone to junior high school with who personified the kinds of men I generally write about.

While Kenji Jasper had garnered this mislabeled rep as being the sensitive black man, the half-thug/half niggerati DC boy trapped in Brooklyn, D's work would be strictly street, reflecting both the violence and misogyny that are a part of the real criminal underworld, one I knew far too much about based upon the choices I didn't make and the ones that some of my very good homeboys did. Add in more than a decade of interviews, research, etc. and I knew what I was talking about. I also knew how to make a D story engaging, how to make the words flow unlike many of the things I found on the vendor tables.

I also aimed to see what the critics would think of this new guy D. I was sure that they would hate him as much as they hated so many of the other street lit titles. I thought that in writing about the ugly my credibility would melt into nothingness. But that was not so. This is what Library Journal, who had been middling about Kenji's work, had to say about D's debut:

"There's a new player stepping into the street-lit spotlight, and he's one to watch. Atlanta native D writes the first title rolled out by Akashic's new street-lit imprint, the Armory, edited by novelist Kenji Jasper. The book is patterned after post-World War II hard-boiled pulp novels, and the story line carries a hint of Mickey Spillane's shadowy world of tough guys and sexy dames. The work's nameless narrator, who tells his story in an odd variation that substitutes you for I, is overwhelmed by out-of-this-world sex with an exotic dancer. The 23 year-old, a longtime collector for Brooklyn's most lethal criminal, Tony Star, soon realizes that he's been played-literally, with his pants down-when the femme fatale and her crew rob him of a quarter million dollars. But the narrator's good standing leads to a 24-hour postponement of his execution, and he rushes against the clock to retrieve the money, dealing out brutal payback in a suspense thriller that's more than a street-lit shocker. Nothing is clear until the final pages, when readers find out who is pulling the strings behind the cold-blooded betrayal. Urban libraries have to get Got."

But as I was still nervous about releasing this new side of me, I thought it would be better if D remained separate. So thinking of the extended family I asked my boy Byron if he would play D at a few public events, including the Got launch party and a gig at the Brooklyn Public Library. It went over really well. As only ten or so people knew the truth, entire rooms of folks bought Byron as D better than I would have ever thought.
Women flocked to him. Dudes laughed at all the right lines. We were actually going to pull this off.

But in the clutter of 2007, between Got and Snow and that Anna Nicole thing that never was, I didn't get to give Got the push it deserved. The only way to remedy this was to write a sequel. And that sequel, Cake, will hit shelves on July 1, 2008. This is what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

Cake
D. Akashic/The Armory, $14.95 paper (140p) ISBN 978-1-933354-54-5

D tells it like it is in this brutal sequel to Got, deploying a second-person point of view to roughly riff on the life of a desperate man trying to stay alive and get control of his life. The nameless narrator is still haunted by the first woman he killed. In Atlanta, the ex-Brooklynite enrolls in college; hooks up with Jennifer, a student and smalltime drug dealer; hangs with cousin Duronté and wants to be “normal, even though you know in your heart that you’ll never be normal again.” D unflinchingly depicts the narrator’s longing “to control all the variables, where you can corner them and make them talk.” The narrator finds a surprising if unwelcome closure and faces some ugly truths in D’s gritty street noir.

So in a month's time, those of you who missed D the last time around will have a second shot. Got is still in shelves nationwide and is easily ordered through Amazon.com or directly at Akashicbooks.com. I hope that as many of you as my readers have born witness to my current career struggles, that the enjoyment you've gotten here is worth the 13 bucks to support me in these hard economic times. As Cake will most likely be my last piece of published fictions for awhile, your support would be the perfect send-off as I move on to fight other wars. I don't think there's been a pair of books like these. But then again I am sort of biased. Enjoy. Be well. I'm off to deal with the sixth-grade hellspawn. Out.

P.S. You can check out D's myspace page at www.myspace.com/gotbyd