NATHASHA BROOKS-HARRIS

 

NATHASHA BROOKS-HARRIS lives and works in New York City where she successfully juggles a government service and magazine journalism career with the demands of being a romance author. Her latest book is Can I Get An Amen Again the sequel to the Emma Award nominated contemporary romance anthology (with co-authors Kim Louise, Janice Sims, and Natalie Dunbar), Can I Get An Amen proved to be more successful than she thought possible. Before its official March 2005 release date, it landed a spot on two bestseller lists: Amazon's Best-Selling Multicultural Novels and Amazon's Best-Selling Arabesque Novels. Not long after that, it landed on two more bestseller lists. In addition, it was chosen as a featured title for the 2005 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. This anthology was also picked up by Black Expressions book club, exposing it to another audience of avid readers. Most recently, she has contributed a short story, "The Mile High Club", to an erotica anthology titled Erogenous Zone and an essay about literacy discussing a part of her experience teaching in inner city schools to an anthology titled Gumbo For The Soul.

Her debut romance novel, Panache, was released to her worldwide fans by Domhan Books in August 2001, earning her the prestigious Emma Award for Best New Author.

Before a company reorganization, she was the Editor-in-Chief of Black Romance, Bronze Thrills, and True Confessions magazine. In addition, she continues as a Contributing Editor at Today's Black Woman magazine. Brooks-Harris writes the popular monthly departments called "Career and Money News," "Career Savvy" and a women's general information column called "FYI." She has written relationship, travel, and entertainment articles for Today's Black Woman and Black Man magazines for the past nine years. She has written similar articles for Black Elegance and Belle magazines. Formerly, her confession stories and novellas for True Confessions Magazine received enthusiastic response from the publications' loyal readers.

Beside her fiction and journalism work, she is a book reviewer for QBR magazine, SORMag, Romance In Color, and The Romer Review websites. She also writes articles about romance writing and the publishing industry for SORMag. Recently, she has become a contributor for the Gumbo For The Soul website, where she writes about breaking into writing and getting successfully published. She is the co-founder of the romance writing website devoted to women romance authors of color, The Wonderful Women of Romance”a part of The Belles & Beaux of Romance, where she was formerly a reviewer. 

Brooks-Harris has recently returned to the world of teaching. She teaches the craft of writing the romance novel or writing the memoir, or creative writing for New York's prestigious Frederick Douglas Center For Creative Arts. She is particularly proud to return there to teach aspiring writers because that is where she studied extensively during the 1980's. Believing that to whom much is given, much is required, she is honored to have been asked to share her knowledge with people who will follow her advice and get their works published.

Her love of books and writing has been an innate part of her life as far back as she can remember. She vividly remembers her mother telling her bedtime stories where she'd add more than the author intended to the plot when the story was finished. She also recalls frequent trips with her father to the Brooklyn Public Library, where she was encouraged to choose books and sit and read them as long as she wanted.

 By her pre-teen years, she formed a girls' group at school and members wrote short stories based on the titles of the latest hit songs, love letters, and original songs. She began writing articles for the school paper, and she soon found another interest: boys, and a full teenage social life. However, writing has always remained her passion, which is evidenced by the many awards she won throughout her school years.

 Meanwhile, her home was full of many types of books in the library and an extended family who told an array of stories proved to be a fertile training ground for the future journalist/author. She was further inspired growing up in the midst of New York City, the publishing capital of the world where she met real writers and authors and she had the chance to study with them and learn her craft.

 It was inevitable that she became the maverick in her family of educators and stable professionals and decided to follow her heart and study journalism. She enrolled in Hunter College and made her mark there as a feisty student journalist and news editor of the Hunter Envoy. She didn't have a clue that a brilliant literary career path was in her future.

 She didn't veer too far off that path because in 1987, she began her professional journalism career as the Editor-In-Chief of Black Romance, Black Confessions, Jive, and Bronze Thrills magazines. She also completed long stints as Music Editor of Metro Exchange newspaper, Senior Editor of New York Trend and Sunday Morning newspapers, Gossip Columnist at Chocolate Singles magazine, and Editor-In-Chief of Black Hair Digest, Word Up Special and FLY Magazines. Throughout her career, Brooks-Harris has been a freelance journalist for numerous publications in the United States and abroad.

 Eventually, she formed her own music publicity and promotions company, Class Act Productions. As its CEO, she promoted and provided publicity campaigns for new recording artists and went on to extend the company's services into the area of concert production. One of the largest shows produced by Class Act Productions was a Jazz Explosion Concert, which featured the renowned musicians: Billy Taylor, Branford Marsalis, and Sherry Winston.

 Acting upon her desire to give something back to those less fortunate, she created a writing program at a South Bronx elementary school. She taught writing through journalism and Star reading process to a number of gifted students who were chosen to participate in her program.

 Her writing career has taken her all over the world and she has met heads of state, celebrities, and many movers and shakers whom her peers have only dreamed of meeting. However, she is most proud of her platinum record she earned from promoting Brandy's self-titled platinum album, and her Ophelia Devore Award for Excellence in Business and Communication. She is also extremely proud of instituting the writing program at the inner city school for underprivileged children. Eleven of the 51 bilingual students in her program won the Bronx Boroughwide Writing Award, and one of those students also won the Citywide Writing Award from then-Mayor David I. Dinkins.

 In November 2004, Brooks-Harris was invited to read and make a presentation about romance writing at the prestigious Miami Book Fair. That honor was especially meaningful to her because she was the first romance author to ever appear in that capacity. Brooks-Harris made her contribution with great pride and hoped that her appearance would forge the path for future romance authors to be an integral part of that event.

Nathasha Brooks-Harris is thrilled to have made a difference in so many people's lives because of her writing and/or teaching of it. She is revising her latest novels-in-progress, In Perfect Harmony and A Love So Right.

 She can be contacted at nabrooks@aol.com.

Sins of the Past
By Nathasha Brooks-Harris

ISBN-10: 0-9779398-5-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-9779398-5-5
Publication Date: February 12, 2009
Trade Paperback
Trim: 5.5 x 8.5
Qty/Case: 56
Retail: $13.95





Description:

It's 1964 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and the Robinson sisters—Ernestine, Annie Mae, and Viola—are making a way out of no way. Times are hard for the three maids who accept their plight, thinking they can do no better. But not Ernestine. She's a beauty; and says hell no, she wants more. She sets out to get it.

Every Thursday is maids' day off, so the three come back to their brownstone apartment to eat some good country cooking and party the night away at Teensey's Sugar Shack. But for some reason, Ernestine refuses to join them in the revelry. She gets dolled up and goes out alone. The feisty Viola accuses of her trying to "pass" and sneaking around to see a secret lover she has stashed in parts unknown. However, there is a reason for Ernestine's disappearing acts, and she sets out to make her dreams come true.

 Meanwhile, the sisters get a call to go home to Alabama because their mother is gravely ill. Mama Rob begins to make a deathbed confession to them, but dies before she finishes. Fights between them ensue, and the only thing they agree on is that whatever Mama Rob was trying to tell them has to be in her beloved old steamer trunk. They sift through it and find a letter she wrote to them revealing a secret sin of the past. From then on, the sisters are at war, and refuse to accept what they've learned.

Will the secret tear the estranged sisters apart, or bring them closer together? Will they learn how to forgive everyone involved and lean on their love for each other to get them past the drama and the pain? Read Sins Of The Past, a tale of secrets, lies, and redemption.   

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