Urban Reviews: Tell us about Burn.   
Black Artemis: Burn is my third hip hop novel, and it follows a female bail bond agent in the Bronx on the search for a missing graffiti artist.  It’s a novel about the risks and consequences of pursuing alternatives to mainstream conventions.  All the characters in Burn choose alternatives to what society says are appropriate means for expression and even survival. I address many issues in this book like health care and immigration reform to name just two so Burn is my most ambitious novel to date.    
 
Urban Reviews: Where did you come up with the idea for this novel?   
Black Artemis: The initial idea for Burn came to me over a dozen years ago when I was working for the Vera Institute of Justice as the deputy director for two alternative-to-incarceration programs, one of which was a nonprofit bail bond agency in the South Bronx. It was a very innovative even radical enterprise.  I also once worked for a multi-service AIDS organization where I learned many things reflected in the novel. So of all the novels I have written to date, Burn is the one that is most informed by the work experiences I had before I became a novelist.  Now a Black Artemis novel wouldn’t be a Black Artemis novel without a hip hop element, however, and graffiti is a critical part of the storyline in Burn.    
 
Urban Reviews: How did you come up with your pen name Black Artemis?   
Black Artemis: For several reasons, I wanted to write my hip hop novels under a pen name, and the mythology of the Greek goddess Artemis always appealed to me.  She was the goddess of the hunt and a defender of women. Now I searched for a comparative goddess to Artemis among Third World mythologies but never found one that resonated with me as much as hers did. But it was important to me to identify myself as a Black woman, hence, Black Artemis.    
 
Urban Reviews: How did you get into the business?   
Black Artemis: I was actually inspired by a short-lived imprint launched that was the brainchild of Marc Gerald who’s 50 Cent’s literary agent. Back in 2000, he had attempted to launch an imprint called 'Affiliated' to publish novellas that would appeal to hip hop heads. I saw the names of the writers he initially published and asked myself, “Where are the female authors?” After all, women drive the fiction-buying market.  I contacted Marc and posed the same question. He asked me to pitch him a few ideas one of which was my first novel Explicit Content.  'Affiliated' didn’t last, but I became enamored with the idea of writing edgy stories that would appeal to women who followed hip hop and decided that I would develop all the stories I had pitched to Marc into novels. Interestingly, I immediately thought that I would either have to sign with a small press or self-publish.  This was before the explosion of street lit (which I actually distinguish from what I write as Black Artemis), and I didn’t see major houses publishing this kind of fiction.  When I met my agent several years later, she was primarily interested in my chick lit novel (Divas Don’t Yield which was published under my real name this past March.)  I gave her the synopsis and first few chapters of Explicit Content and said, “I doubt this is the kind of material you’re looking to represent, but I wanted you to know that I’m developing a series of novels under a pen name and in a completely different genre. I might propose this to a few independent presses or self-publish it.” You know, I felt that the left hand should know what the right hand was doing so that I wouldn’t inadvertently step into her terrain and sabotage her efforts on my behalf.  She read the sample chapters and immediately called me to say, “You have to let me represent this.”  Before I knew it, I had a handful of offers from several major houses and eventually went with New American Library at Penguin.    
 
Urban Reviews: You have a multimedia company called Sister/Outsider Entertainment. Can you tell us a little more about this?   
Black Artemis: I recently co-founded Sister/Outsider with my dear friend Elisha Miranda (who publishes the young adult series The Sista Hood under the pen name E-Fierce.) Now that our nonprofit Chica Luna Productions is established, we wanted to start a company to make quality urban entertainment including adapting our novels into films. We named the company Sister/Outsider after a collection of essays by Audre Lorde who once wrote, “Poetry is not a luxury.”  In our society, there’s this prevailing myth that entertainment is apolitical when the opposite is true. It’s never just a book or movie or a song.  At Sister/Outsider, we want to create entertainment that is at once commercially viable and politically meaningful.  No Soul Planes will be developed at our shop.    
 
Urban Reviews: Do you have any upcoming projects through this company?  
Black Artemis: We have several projects in development.  One is a television series called "Sangria Street" which follows five young Latinas as they navigate the world upon graduating college.  We’re also developing the novels Picture Me Rollin’ and The Sista Hood into feature-length films.  To learn more about what we’re working on at Sister/Outsider, folks can visit our website at www.sisteroutsider.biz.

 
Urban Reviews: Tell us about your non-profit organization Chica Luna.    
Black Artemis: We co-founded Chica Luna Productions to identify, develop and support other women of color who want to create socially conscious entertainment. One of Chica Luna’s signature projects is the F-Word, a holistic program that develops young women of color filmmakers. Not only do they acquire filmmaking skills, they also receive political education, build their media literacy skills, build sisterhood among themselves and learn self-healing techniques. Our vision is to become the Sundance for women of color.    
 
Urban Reviews: What is the biggest lesson you have learned about the book industry? Did you think it would be this competitive?   
Black Artemis: For better or worse, the publishing industry is becoming more like the film and recording industries. Books must compete with movies, CDs, video games and other media for people’s entertainment dollar, and publishing houses are at a major disadvantage because reading is an active exercise. You just can’t read a book passively. Therefore, if street lit and erotica flies off the shelves, of course, publishing houses are going to invest much more money in finding, publishing, and marketing authors of those genres. I don’t have an issue with that as much as I worry that this is resulting in a drastic reduction in the variety of literature available to readers of color. People argue that there’s a place for all kinds of Black authors, and that should be true. What’s happening, however, is that decision makers in the publishing industry who rarely are Black are becoming the arbiters of what is authentic Blackness and publishing less and less diverse themes and styles. That should alarm all of us regardless of what we prefer to read or write, not just those who are negatively impacted.  And while I do believe it’s imperative to strike a balance between supporting our authors and holding them accountable for the images they present ¡V and this should apply to all genres ¡V I think our biggest critique has to be levied at the publishing industry for telling us either/or instead of and/with.     
 
Urban Reviews: Can you give us a glimpse of your next novel?   
Black Artemis: My next novel tentatively titled Oshun’s Arrangement will be published under my real name next year.  It tells the story of a young woman and the three men in which she enters into an “arrangement.”  It explores the question, “Is there truly such a thing as casual sex?”  As Black Artemis, I’m developing a few stories including one that I hope to publish as a series of graphic novels.  To remain updated on my projects (especially to glimpse sample chapters of future novels) folks should subscribe to my e-letter at subscribe@blackartemis.com or make regular visits to my website.    
 
Urban Reviews: What do you want people to know most about you?   
Black Artemis: Wow, that’s the toughest question yet.  There are so many things that I would like people to know and understand even if they may not agree.  So I’m going to say that I welcome them to get to know me better not only through reading my novels, but also by visiting my blog at www.blackartemis.com or via MySpace at www.myspace.com/sofiaquintero.