Sharon Smith reaches deep down and recaptures the torturous times of her childhood growing up in Harlem, New York. From kindergarten through high school, her experiences accelerated her awareness of life's unyielding challenges. She met the hard and bitter reality of becoming an outcast. Concurrently, her family was shattered by alcoholism, poverty, and physical abuse. As her mother traveled the country, Sharon became the substitute mother for her sister and three brothers. She endured adversity and hostility in 1960s Harlem public housing projects.
Entering her teenage years, Sharon met with even more abysmal poverty and despair. Her health compromised, compounded with family issues, Sharon longed and prayed for acceptance and a better life. Despite all of the challenges, she decides to return to the religion of her youth. She began to seek God's guidance and the meaning of love in her life. With prayer and reading of the Scriptures, Sharon found salvation and contentment.

As she tells her tumultuous early childhood story, filled with years of ridicule and contempt from her peers, which tore at her self-esteem and self-worth, we begin to see her life unfold, the little girl guarded behind the protection of God's screen door.

January 2014

Still Strapped takes a much more intimate look at stud-on-stud, or S4S, relationships in the Black GLBT community. In addition to a fast-paced storyline that picks up from the first novel, Still Strapped includes an interview with an S4S lesbian who spoke very candidly about her experiences and the challenges she has faced simply by being herself and living in truth. Strapped, which is told from the perspective of one of the main characters, Taz, discusses S4S relationships from a "newbie's" perspective. Still Strapped, on the other hand, is told from Silk's point of view. Silk, who is Taz's boifriend, has been entrenched in the world of S4S relationships for many years and continues to find herself caught up in lesbian drama as things from her past are rekindled.

Love is a very powerful entity. She can take control of your entire being and in an instant, completely change you. Love can make you do some crazy things, while showing you how powerful she can really be. This book is about the joys, challenges, and lessons that Love teaches us. It is about the realization that we are helpless when it comes to Love and that it takes something inside us to overcome the challenges that Love bring in order to really be happy.