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Comedian and Actor Cedric "The Entertainer" (or Cedric Kyles) has written a fiction book titled "Flipping Boxcars." The project originally started as a television script about his Babe, a nickname for his grandfather, but the script was eventually turned into a book project. Cedric work on the book project along with co-author Alan Eisenstock. The book will be released on Tuesday, September 12th.
Here is the goodreads synopsis of Flipping Boxcars:
The first novel from one of the original Kings of Comedy, Cedric “The Entertainer,” an engaging and entertaining crime caper that is a valentine to close-knit black families and tightly woven communities struggling to get by during the Depression and World War II. Babe is a charismatic and widely loved man, a gambler with a gift for gab that often gets him out of tricky situations. He’s also a dreamer, something he shares with his patient and loving wife, Rosie. They both yearn for financial stability and see the land they own as insurance for future generations. But when Babe and a few comrades enlist in a scheme that improbably falls apart, he endangers the little security the family has. On the verge of losing everything, what’s a family man to do? If you’re a gambler like Babe, you double down and risk it all for one big score—this time, a plan involving railroad boxcars. Will Babe succeed? Will Rosie continue to support her husband? Are the Feds on to his make-or-break scheme? Flipping Boxcars is Cedric “The Entertainer” at his most engaging best—a charming, fast-paced novel that pays homage to his beloved grandfather and a generation past, anchored by rich, multi-dimensional characters and oozing with irresistible charm.
Here are some interview question by People.com that Cedric answered:
Tell me more about Babe. Did you grow up hearing stories about your grandfather?
Yeah, my mother was the youngest of her siblings, and I use her as a muse in the book. She would tell me stories about him. He passed before I was born, so as I started to grow up, I would just have these [ideas about] him and things he would say and do based on these little stories that my mother and my uncles would talk about him. I really love the Walter Mosley kind of writing — those stories of characters in the 1940s and men trying to figure out and find their way through all these little hustles, that they can just figure out how to be an entrepreneur. That's how much mother described Babe to me. He had a restaurant and he was a gambler and he was also a businessman. He had a liquor store with the sheriff. They also moved black market liquor at times. He was a de facto mayor for the Black side of the town. He would get things done for people.
Where was he from?
Caruthersville, Missouri. Their family all kind of grew up in Arkansas and Tennessee, but I only knew him from Caruthersville.
And then he fought in World War II.
Yeah. So the only image that I have [of him] is in his military uniform. We used to have another image of him in a suit, but the house that we all grew up in, where my grandmother used to live, that house caught on fire a few years back and so a lot of things got lost. My mother knew very little about him as a young man. My uncle, her older brother, knew a little bit more about his military life, so we did some research and then figured out the time that he served and then told that story.
You mentioned Walter Mosley. Who are some other authors that you like?
James McBride is another one who has that same energy that I love. John Grisham, the early stuff, I used to love all those books. Crime stories. You go on a journey inside the story. I love those. I read a lot of biographies, too. I'm reading one on Barry White right now.
Source: People.com