**Writer Cairo Styles

My passion for writing began in the 1970’s. I must have been eight or nine years old when I started. Writing and drawing pictures was what I liked to do, so I made comic books. I loved making comic books with superheroes and villains I created. Producing the books was easy, really. My mother worked as a secretary for many years, hopping from one temp job to another. She bought her own supplies so everything I needed was always somewhere in reach. There were #2 pencils and plenty of ball point pens, good erasers, and stacks of typing paper. There were staplers to secure the sheets of paper together to make a book. Not to mention toys, for example my older brother’s “Hot Wheel” tracks were perfect for drawing straight lines with when I couldn’t get my hands on a ruler. And while I was doing my thing at the dinner table my family was in the den watching television. Now understand this was the 70’s so nothing but good stuff came on T.V. back then. Oftentimes I was interrupted by the theme music introduction of “Sanford and Son” or by the Wednesday night church revival sound of “The Jeffersons” coming on. Then there were other shows like the “Six Million Dollar Man,” “The Love Boat,” and “Good Times.” All eyes in the household watched our thirteen inch color television with more snow on its screen than a blizzard. But whenever I knew those shows were coming on, I took a break from my work for a good minute to tune in with the rest of the family. I always came back to the dinner table though, to continue doing what I always enjoyed which was draw superheroes and tell their adventures...

Around the age of thirteen I was hanging out a lot at the Crest Theater and for seventy five cents my Saturday afternoons were spent watching movies like “The Mack,” “Coffy,” “Black Shampoo,” and “Superfly.” I watched a lot of “Kung-Fu” movies too. At that time, I believed like so many of my peers that Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali were the two baddest dudes to ever stand on two feet while Pam Grier was the finest thing God had ever placed on His good green earth. I still made comic books but their production slowed down to a turtle’s crawl. The cinema had my nose wide open and I was hooked. I was fascinated by the way Bruce Lee could kick a man ten times while in mid-air. Pam Grier on the other hand was just gorgeous. She was a different kind of fascination, ya dig. Did I happen to mention her?

After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Texas I joined the navy. Making comic books and writing for entertainment had pretty much ceased at this point. However, I read extensively. Aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt there was nothing to do at sea for six months but read something, write home, watch CNN, and get into arguments about nothing. I’ll bet I read every magazine, every autobiography, and every novel in that ship’s library. I did five years in the military and I was out on an honorable in the summer of 89.

I returned home to South Oak Cliff and attended Cedar Valley Community College. Things weren’t the same. Everything had changed. The whole world had changed. The streets of Oak Cliff like so many urban streets in America had become infested with crack cocaine, crack heads, and crime galore. Drugs did a number on families, churches, and local businesses in my community. Just like a nuclear explosion, crack hit powerfully in the streets, changing folks in its aftermath. People I had known all my life turned from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde over night and it was difficult knowing who to trust. Suddenly, the harsh realities that Ice Berg Slim and Donald Goines depicted in their novels were not just something I used to read about. Oak Cliff had lost its innocence or else I had lost mine and I witnessed firsthand a lot of the African American struggle I had once paid to see on the big screen at the Crest Theater. The mid 80’s to 90’s was no doubt the Dark Ages for Oak Cliff. It was an era of beautiful and intelligent women gone strung out on drugs or else strung out on the men who were affiliated with drugs. It was an era of disrupted harmony. Everybody regardless of sex, age, reputation or standing in the community was forced to choose a side when the sun dropped. They were forced to choose between staying in doors or else being damned to the streets. Life in Oak Cliff was certainly different. It was a time of “Charlene,” a young woman with a loving heart who struggled to survive in a cruel and unforgiving world. “When Angry Shadows are Heard” was brewing in my thoughts and I wanted to start writing again. No comic book this time, but a novel instead.

I transferred my college credit hours from Community College to the University of Texas at Arlington and in 1996 received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English. Immediately I went to work on my first book. I bought a used computer from a pawn shop and on the night that I brought it home there were cop cars and burning flares all along my street. A police raid had gone down one house over. I set up my computer and prayed not only that it worked, but that it was “user friendly.” I don’t get along with computers. I never have. But the computer worked just fine. Then I hammered away at the keys despite the mess outside my door and finished the first page. “When Angry Shadows are Heard” was getting a pulse. I could feel it.