This notification gives me hives.
This is the one Facebook notification that makes me feel all twitchy and ill. When I see it, my palms starting sweating and I move my mouse slowly, rolling my eyes toward the ceiling and saying a quick prayer before I click and see what hell awaits me.
This is what it means to have Facebook Photo Phobia©.
I’m having a kick-ass year.
There. I said it out loud. My first book was published. Have I mentioned that it was on the NYT Bestseller’s list for two weeks straight!? I wrote cover stories like this one that I’m very proud of. I was profoundly moved and affected by experiences like this one–stories that become a part of the fabric of my life forever.
I’ve been working my butt off. And it’s paying off for me in both small and large ways.
And writing the above paragraph just made me sick to my stomach.
Sigh. Look at this spot. Just look at it!
This is where crime writer Patricia Cornwell writes her novels. Look at those gleaming hardwood floors! The built in bookshelves! The daylight streaming through the spacious room. Can you even imagine getting up in the morning, making yourself a cup of coffee and then padding into that room to start working?
Virgina Woolf famously said that women who wanted to write fiction needed money and a room of one’s own. I’ve never had the former. And I have always lusted after the latter.
I’ve always been fascinated by what I call the celebrity-bubble.
Famous folks walk the streets, eat dinner, record music, slap the paparazzi, have babies, fall in love and buy stuff, just like us. (Except maybe the slap-the-paparazzi stuff). And they do it all in a bubble of sorts. They are surrounded by layers of security. Not just bodyguards. But publicists and other record label executives, personal assistants, managers and various hangers-on.
When I’m assigned a story on a celebrity, the journey from my living room sofa to the celebrity’s orbit is always strange and spooky.
A random person can’t wake up one morning and say “I think I’ll go see what Mary J. Blige is up to.” Even if you know she’s in New York, shooting a television show or performing, it’s close to impossible to end the day sitting next to her.
But occasionally, I do have these days. Where a normal morning becomes something else.
Rebecca, Laura and me at the infamous Michael's...
I started working at The Source in ’99, when it was the white-hot center of the hip-hop universe. I told my then-boyfriend that I got the job and he shrugged and said, “eh, anyone can work at The Source now. You’re not part of the A-team. You’re just a C-teamer.” He meant that because I hadn’t worked there under Reginald Dennis and James Bernard and Chris Wilder and the whole original crew, then I wasn’t legitimate. I couldn’t really claim to belong like the old-school cats.
Got his point. Didn’t care. Okay, maybe I cared a little bit. But not really.
 | Anonymous on The Guilty Admission: I Hate M… |
| Anonymous on A Conversation with…Mike… |
| Anonymous on A Conversation with…Mike… |
 | CRICT on The Critique: Tyler Perry As… |
 | Bernard Crosby on Regrets: Malcolm Shabazz |
Aliya S. King 
