Novelist Hopes Rap Audience Will Be Rapt

The do-it-yourself mentality, commonplace among rappers, has spread to other artists addressing the hip-hop community, those whose work may be too harsh for corporate backing. Such was the case with Los Angeles author Clifton E. Tiddle, whose gritty first novel about life in South-Central L.A. was rejected by several major publishing houses.

“They felt it was too graphic,” Tiddle says of “Animal Cruelty,” which he recently self-published on his No Comparison Entertainment imprint.

Tiddle says the book, which chronicles the life of a 20-something gang member who kills the police officer who raped his sister, is aimed at hip-hop fans. And indeed, the book’s presentation invites comparison to rap music. Like rap, the novel contains profanity, as evidenced by the parental advisory on the cover and in the warning on its opening page: “This book contains sex, violence and f----d up situations.” Its jacket is even designed in the collage-like Pen & Pixel style that characterizes many hip-hop record sleeves.

Tiddle, a 28-year-old Hollywood native who works as a mortgage analyst, grew up reading the chilling urban tales of author Donald Goines. Moved by the movie-like imagery of Goines’ writing, Tiddle wanted to create his own hip-hop-flavored work because he felt important community issues were glossed over in other books by urban authors.

“I wanted people to see this environment for what it is,” he says. “Everything that’s cliche, that’s not three-dimensional, I wanted it stripped away. I want . . . people to see that this is the way it is.”

“Animal Cruelty” is available at Barnes & Noble bookstores andonline at Tiddle’s Web site, https://www.nakedurbanworld.com.