Love, race and family tonight with the brilliant Diane Farr and Ken Tanabe

You really don't want to miss this meeting of two truly brilliant minds and open-hearted, amazing people who are working to make the world a better, less racist place. Ken Tanabe is the found of Loving Day and Diane Farr is the author of Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After, which is about both her love story with her Korean husband and follows stories of various interracial couples as they navigate their families old and new. And yes, this will finally inspire me to finish up my interview with Diane and get it online by hook or by crook. She had so many amazing things to say and I want to share them.



Venue: Barnes and Noble Tribeca
Address Line 1: 97 Warren Street
City: New York
State (if you are in the U.S.A): New York
Country: United States

You may know Diane Farr as an actress on "Rescue Me" and "Numb3rs," or as a host on "Loveline." Her new book, "Kissing Outside the Lines," is her "unapologetic - often hilarious - look at the complexities of interracial/ethnic/religious/what-have-you love." She shares her own story of creating a family with someone from a race and culture different from her own, as well as the stories of other multiracial couples from different corners of the U.S.

Join Loving Day for this entertaining and informative event! Diane Farr will be there in person to discuss "Kissing Outside the Lines." There will also be a Q&A session moderated by Loving Day founder Ken Tanabe.

Diane Farr at Barnes & Noble Tribeca
Wednesday, July 6th at 6:30pm
97 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007

Can’t make it to the event? Your purchases from Barnes & Noble online (and at the store) between July 6-10, 2011 can benefit Loving Day. For online orders, check the box labeled “Check this box if this is a Bookfair Order”. Then, in the field labeled “BOOKFAIR ID NUMBER,” enter 10519932. Your purchases in the store or over the phone will also benefit Loving Day if you provide our Bookfair ID number 10519932.

Loving Day fights racial prejudice through education and builds multicultural community. A growing global network of annual Loving Day Celebrations commemorate the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. For more information about Loving Day, please visit http://www.lovingday.org
Hosted By:
Diane Farr and Loving Day
RSVP:
not required
Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=212139408821652

My essay at The Root: "New Interracial-Dating Book Hurts More Than It Helps"

Please check out and pass on/like it on Facebook (if you like it) my first piece for The Root, "New Interracial-Dating Book Hurts More Than It Helps" on JC Davies' book I Got The Fever. "Whitey" was but one word she used that I don't think I've ever heard someone say before.

The very idea that, as white women, we should "broaden our horizons" when it comes to dating assumes that we're only looking for white men to date in the first place. The way Davies positions the groups she profiles, practically pimping them out, suggests that dating outside of our race (or religion) makes us somehow edgy or avant-garde. I'd venture, instead, that if we choose to do so, it makes us human, not in an "I don't see color" kind of way (could there be a more stupid phrase when it comes to race?), but in the sense that we don't limit ourselves to dating one type of person.

Read the whole thing.

"Fight for Passion" - guest post by Angela Caperton

Today's guest post is by Passion: Erotic Romance for Women contributor Angela Caperton.



Fight for Passion

I’ve been fortunate to enjoy the companionship of my partner Drake for over ten years now, and through these years I’ve learned a lot about passion – mine, his, ours. We’ve been careful to nurture our relationship, have faced bad times and good times, dealt with bumps and bruises, and I am ever amazed at this relationship we share, at what I’ve learned about our passions, how we’ve channeled them, and that we’ve both worked to not take the other for granted. With him as inspiration and often instigator, passion is something I come by naturally, and it manifests in all my writing – even those stories that are not erotic in nature.

I’ve learned through experience that passion can often be fleeting and fickle, that it is not always machine-washable, and sadly, relationships – love – and sexual pleasures seem to suffer from passion’s capricious nature more often than not. A relationship can burn like a wildfire, then wink out with little more than a wisp of smoke as evidence, or remain banked, like glowing coals of desire that just need a puff of air and a little fuel to bring a rich flame back to life. I’ve heard it said that the mellowing of passion is to be expected, that it is the natural progression of a relationship when two people become less and less of a mystery to each other, when what was new and exciting becomes common and pre-packaged. That might be true, but it shouldn’t be inevitable.

What does amaze me is how easy it is to fall into the trap of ranking physical passion as sometimes less important than the most mundane chore. Hot sweaty sex with my partner, or clean the bathroom? I’ve been guilty, I’m ashamed to say.

Life is a varsity sport – unfortunately we’re expected to play without knowing all the rules. I know there are legitimate reasons why sex may fall down the list of priorities – been there – but in my opinion, sex and passion should not always be the first casualty of a busy life, that it be the price for our desire to be more, do more, own more. It is doubly sad, because sex can be an antidote against stress and can bridge the widening emotional and physical gap that can manifest in a relationship. People will fight for days over a $50 parking ticket, but won’t fight – or forget that we are allowed to fight – to keep passion alive in a relationship.

My story in Passion: Erotic Romance for Women is called “Dear in the Headlights” and touches on just such a fight. For Cassie, it’s been five months since she and her husband have enjoyed sex. They both have busy, travel-filled jobs, and when their scheduled date night is threatened by minor car trouble, Cassie takes matters into her own hands.

Kick complacency in the butt – fight for passion.

Stay sexy!

**

Award winning author Angela Caperton writes eclectic erotica that challenges genre conventions. Look for her stories published with Black Lace and eBury Publishing, Cleis, Circlet, Coming Together, Drollerie, eXtasy Books, Renaissance, and in the indie magazine Out of the Gutter. Visit her at blog.angelacaperton.com for a full list of her books, and to read her ongoing erotica horror serial "Woman of His Dreams."