Urban Book Source posted Part I of my two-part interview with the prolific Erick S. Gray. To see what he’s contributed to the literary world check out my previous post.

We actually talked for almost two hours! He had a lot of good information to give. I wish I had the space to give it to you. I mean, this guy lives his profession.

It was an honor to have spoken with him, and I hope to build a friendship with him. In Part I, he really goes deep into where his latest offering Crave All Lose All got its energy from.

I hope you like it. Let me know what you think.

I had the pleasure of interviewing three great authors who have written three very different urban fiction books.

Erick S Gary has been on the scene since the early 2000s with Money Power Respect, Ghetto Heaven, Flexin & Sexin: Sexy Street Tales Volume 1 (Sexy Street Tales) (Sexy Street Tales), Nasty Girls: An Urban Novel, Booty Call: Who Would You Call?, Booty Call *69 and It’s Like Candy: An Urban Novel. His latest offering Crave All Lose All follows the hard hitting trend that his fans have come to enjoy.

Relative newcomer Gary Ford took Milwaukee by storm with his debut novel Give Me Mine. We get to speak about his recently released autobiography Touched and the impact Give Me Mine still has two years after being released.

Many know Conrad Glover for his work in the movie industry with straight to video releases Bottom Out, Woods of Evil, Maya’s Soul and Street Revenge. I get to speak with him about his urban fiction debut King of Stowevillage as well as future projects in film and literature.

I’m in the process of transcribing the interviews. You’ll be the first to know when the interviews are posted on UrbanBookSource.com.

Stay tuned.

I knew it had to happen eventually. I mean, the realness I write is just too much for the mainstream to digest. Just kidding…

Well, I usually post the my reviews on Amazon.com within 48 hours of submitting them to the websites I review for. So I sat for a couple of days after I posted the review on Amazon.com and noticed that my review for Crave All Lose All never showed up.

So I emailed Amazon.com’s customer service like, “What’s up?!”

Actually, I wrote this:

I submitted a review for Crave All Lose All by Erick S
Gray that has yet to post. What do I need to do to make sure my review is posted?

Here’s what they told me:

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.

Your review of “Crave All Lose All” was removed because your comments in large part focused on authors and their intentions, rather than reviewing the item itself.

Our guidelines do not allow discussions that criticize authors or their intentions. We encourage all voices to respond openly in our store, both positive and negative. However, we do exert some editorial control over our customer reviews.

As such, your review cannot be posted on Amazon.com in its current format. What I can suggest is that you resubmit your review, restricting your comments to critically analyzing the content of the item.

After that was a bunch of blah, blah, blah about reading guidelines, forum discussions and something about if I got an attitude then I could delete my reviews and take them elsewhere. Okay…it didn’t go that far, but I felt slighted.

The nerve!

Oh yeah, I changed some stuff around with the original review, condensed it and resubmitted it. Hopefully it will go through this time. I’ll keep you posted.

(While I’m on the subject, could just one person find one of my reviews on Amazon.com and click yes or no where it asks if the review was helpful or not? I mean, Crave All Lose All will be my 14th review on Amazon.com without anyone giving me any kind of flavor!)

UPDATE 05-14-08

I checked this morning just to be looking and the review I put together by reconfiguring the Crave All Lose All review I did for UrbanBookSource.com. That’s the original that got banned for talking more about the author’s intentions that the book itself. What?!