Urban-Reviews.com - Inside Out with Teresa Rae Butler - Author of 'Don't Even Trip' and 'God I Respect Ya Gangsta'

Urban Reviews: Tell us about Don't Even Trip.
Teresa Rae Butler: What I would like to tell you about Don't Even Trip is this: It's a trip! What I did was try to write a book about the single, Black mother from an angle that is less talked about since the movie CLAUDINE. Particularly the one who has more than one father to her children and is the opposite of the usual stereotyping she usually gets. What I mean by this is, a woman with a different father to all of her children is usually referred to as a tramp. Some people automatically say she is a trouble starter, a loser and a hater by way of Drama Queen. Everyone can agree a woman like that is usually considered to have very little self-respect to just give her reproductive eggs away so freely. But I am challenging the readers to recognize the flip-side to that kind of woman. Among the Black family in urban areas, many women are single with children and are really strong and smart. Here we have Coraz Sade Singleton, single with three kids at the age of 32. A woman with three kids, different dads and yet she is an educated woman, her credit is shaping up, she's a phenomenal teacher for at-risk students and she is being sought by a millionaire White man who is determined to have her as his life partner, regardless of her faults. And since she has struck out with all of the Black men that she dealt with, she felt like she should give up on trying to have a Black man. Coraz felt they were all pretty much taken if they were any good, or shot by the magnitude because of society, jail, drugs rap, gangsters and pimps in her town. What ends up happening is that she is smitten by a younger, incredibly attractive, self-sufficient, college brother with a very-old soul and from a very good, financially sound Black family from the suburbs. His name is Milton Worthy Jr., he's in his twenties, and he's persistent because he seems to know that THEY can make it work if she would just give him a moment of her precious time. She does, they click and eventually they get intimate- and THE SEX IS FIRE! But Coraz is not going fall for good sex, even if it is the best she's ever had. So she tries her best to rid of him. Repeatedly. He doesn't budge. Her teenage daughter is running wild, and Coraz has to figure out how to maintain and do what's best for her kids. As Mill pursues her, Coraz is fired from her job over the summer vacation because it's discovered that she has helped TOO many Black kids to graduate. And with grants being the funding for the operation- it was a strike into the numbers game. Devastated, Coraz lets herself fall in love with Mill even further, but with a raised brow towards certain things like his tattoos. She suspects that he just may be the same dude she's been trying to avoid in disguise, but in the end you think he wants to kill her for having the nerve to point out his past-ghetto dirt when she's obviously done her ghetto dirt too. However, they are inseparable, because they are soul mates, and it seems as if God himself has blessed them for fighting to keep the Black family together in this case. Coraz and her guy, Mill, write a play called, Honey, You Showed Me What To Look For and they hit it big-time. Coraz swallows her pride and anger and ends up going back to the school that fired her to shoot the play/film on location in Milwaukee, to help the locals get some shine. On the set, Mill asks her to marry him with a ring, and a new tattoo 'CORAZ 4LIFE' over his heart therefore setting the stage for part two.

Urban Reviews: Where did you come up with the idea for this novel?

Teresa Rae Butler: I used a lot of my real life as a map for this book. I was always an honor student, even through college and yet I made some mistakes in men. The people who knew me would shake their heads in shame and doubt because of the things that they would hear about me. Most of it was true, but I wanted to tell a true to life account in a fictional way of how a woman like me can come about, and watch out because she just may be the one to out perform everyone in her community. I used to be the girl, who wallowed in confusion and self-pity, wondering, WHY ME? and WHY ME CONSTANTLY? Not anymore because truth is stranger than fiction, and my real life is much worse than Coraz's, but who wants to hear a ridiculous biography and not feel like, 'COME ON! You have got to be making some of this up?' So what I did was construct a three part novel- my trilogy instead using my real life as a map, omitting a lot of events and making up the rest because I didn't want to write the CHRONICLES of CORAZ. I used my pain and turned it into paper, hoping that through it, I can help a few people who read my work in some way. I heard T.D. Jakes say once, HAD I NOT SUFFERED, I WOULDN'T KNOW THE GLORY OF GOD. In my case, it's the glory of Him that has redirected my attitude towards my life. I believe now that my gift is story telling through books. My first novel was DON'T EVEN TRIP but it was called, DON'T EEM TRIP and it was crazy! It was the size of a coloring book, because somehow the sizing got mixed up when I went to print it through LULU. My fault? Maybe. But I wanted to start all over, re-title it through my own company and here I am with my first Real novel.

Urban Reviews: Now there is a sequel to Don't Even Trip called God I Respect Ya Gangsta. Can you tell us about that?

Teresa Rae Butler: Well in part two, Coraz decides to tell her true story through her own novel, letting her fiancé Mill finish the movie HONEY YOU SHOWED ME WHAT TO LOOK FOR on his own. The reason is because Mill's baby's mother is the typical negative baby momma. You know the kind. Always wanting to connive, fight, smile in your face afterwards and blame everyone else as of why she isn't worth you know what. Women like that are always stuck in that mode because they have no idea how wonderful they really are and what great things they have yet to do once they learn how to forgive and let God. What the baby's mother in Coraz's novel and in their relationship, Keisha Wellington has done, is threatened to kill them both, so Coraz tells her story in the novel as the character, RAINIA DAE HARRIS. Rainy is a woman who has made up a lottery for the poor and is pregnant with Keisha Wellington's baby's daddy's baby. Keisha is insane. She attempts to assassinate Rainy at the Lotto Gala. Rainy's spirit ends up going on a soul journey to her past with all of the dead she once knew to uncover her purpose. As Rainy relives the horror and sadness of her life, she also sees the strength, and eventually, the change of a broken girl to an outstanding woman by way of GOD. She starts to understand more that ever, that God is real, and was always right in her face. She sees that even though she has treaded a difficult path, it was by God's grace that she was selected to testify the will of GOD that concerns poverty, broken families and forgiveness. Once you as a reader comes out of the story, you realize that Coraz had fell into a coma and was coming out to face the world as a winner of the NOBILITY PRIZE OF PEACE for her incredible novel, GOD, I RESPECT YA GANGSTA. So that whole book is about Coraz's book and therefore is a story within a story. I know it sounds difficult, but it is really quite easy once you as a reader realize that you are reading the characters novel and that there will be a part three to the main characters lives because of that novel she wrote.

Urban Reviews: Are you working on any upcoming projects?

Teresa Rae Butler: I am wrapping up part three, ENTREPRENUBIAN ROYALTY. I am also working on GHOST TALK, a few children's books, GYM SHOE SALAD and DUDDISH and also a teenager series called, TEMPORARY HIGH and that first volume of it will be called, I LIKE YOUR HAIR.

Urban Reviews: What made you want to be a writer?

Teresa Rae Butler: Well I was always a story teller. I was the kid at the sleepover who would tell a scary story. I was the girl who wrote great essays and short stories. I was once a fabulous rapper in a group called, B.C.U. (Brother Coming Up), and yet I was the only sistah. Go Figure. But it traces the history that I always loved to paint a mental picture through words. I have to say that it was not until I was in Springfield College that I learned my love of writing very lengthy papers. I turned that into a challenge of writing my first novel and getting it published.

Urban Reviews: Have you experienced any challenges being a new author?
Teresa Rae Butler: The only challenge is probably what every self published writer faces, and that's recognition through media with very little money and no PR, and no idea where to even start. But God has fixed that too for me. I have done quite a bit on my own, but now I have a great guy in my corner to take care of the PR. My Publicist is Torrian Ferguson of the FERGUSON LITERARY GROUP.

Urban Reviews: What are your goals as an author?

Teresa Rae Butler: My main goal is to have a real lottery started for the poor one day soon, but the next best one has already materialized. And that was to bring a book so different to your bookstore that it is talked about world-wide. When you put all three books of the trilogy together, you get one big title. DON'T EVEN TRIP GOD; I RESPECT YA GANGSTA & ENTREPRENUBIAN ROYALTY. Another thing that was different with the hard cover versions is that there are colored pictures to match the chapters. And even though all of the books have a different illustration as a visual aide per chapter, I felt like the inside flap of the dust jacket is space I can use to display the illustrations in color. I figured that the industry says that traditionally, you have to use that inside flap for the synopsis or the author's bio, but I figured differently. I felt like I can tell you who I am and what my book is about on the back cover. I don't need to tell you that 2 and 3 times on the same space that I can use for something like artwork in color that helps bring the black and white illustrations inside the novel to vivid, eye-popping life. I hope that TEXT 4M's trademarked style sets a new standard, and that others will follow accordingly by my ideas.

Urban Reviews: Who are some of your favorite authors and books?

Teresa Rae Butler: I like Maya Angelou, Joyce Meyers, Nikki Turner, John W. Fountain, J.K. Rowling, Judy Blume, Earl Sewell, Eric Jerome Dickey, Vincent Alexander, George Ralph Salter, Tyler Perry, Takesha D. Powell, Wahida Clark, Marcia King-Gamble, Sistah Soulja, Shannon B. Holmes, Gary Ford- my gosh! There are so many because I'm an avid reader, but my favorite author is T.D. Jakes by far. He helps me to understand my favorite book, the Bible.

Urban Reviews: Name one thing the world does not know about Teresa Rae Butler - the person.

Teresa Rae Butler: It would be that even though I try to learn more about God and my spiritual journey, that I believe that anything is possible. Yes I believe that if God wants to have aliens or living creatures in a galaxy far away and ghosts walking around, and people being reincarnated, or miracles happening and have Jesus and Buddha and the Dahli Lama and the Koran and hermaphrodites here for a reason, then who's to say that that is not possible? Do we really think that God can do anything and that all belongs to him? Do we really think that there is only one race, the Human Race, for a reason, because God's image is way more complicated to understand by way of melanin, eye color, hair texture, language, beliefs and ideas? If we trust that that is true, then we abolish a lot of ignorant thinking such as racism and rights over religion. I trust and believe that God and everything around me is true and possible for a reason beyond my current understanding of HIM and that is why I respect His Gangster. As I always say, "Blessings in Life!"