Connie Briscoe Presents–
Authors Virginia DeBerry
and Donna Grant

Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant met as plus-size models competing for the same modeling gigs, and now they’re the award-winning authors of six novels–all written together. Here the two tell us how they work so well together and so much more.

Connie Briscoe: When was your first novel published and how many have you written?

DeBerry and Grant: We’ve written six novels all together. Gotta Keep on Tryin’, which is the sequel to Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made, is just out. And right before we left on book tour we finished our sixth book. What Doesn’t Kill You will be out in January ‘09.

The very first novel we wrote together was called Exposures. We wrote it under the name Marie Joyce–a combination of both our names–Donna Marie and Virginia Joyce. It was published as a Warner paperback original in 1990.

The book is somewhat different from our others. It is centered in the fashion business, which is where we met. It is a romance, which is not what we currently write, and the characters are white. The book was an experiment to see if we could write together and get our work published. Despite the obvious differences from our more well-known titles, the themes of friendship, family and dealing with the consequences of our choices were present even back then.

CB: That’s certainly an unusual beginning. Why did you decide to write a novel together in the first place?

DeBerry and Grant: After working on a newsletter and a magazine together, we realized we had a unique ability to work together. Neither of us remember whose idea it was to try writing a novel, but we found it creatively fulfilling and fun too–who can beat that? Somehow the sum of our talents makes for a greater whole. Our backgrounds and perspectives are enough alike to provide common ground but different enough to give us the basis for conflict in our stories. And even after all these years we still have a great time working together.

CB: Who comes up with the story ideas or themes for the novels?

DeBerry and Grant: We both do. We talk all the time about what’s in the news, situations we’ve encountered, pieces of our pasts. When we’re plotting a novel all of that goes in the pot and we spend a lot of time “what if-ing,” until we have cooked up a story.

CB: How do you come up with your characters?

DeBerry and Grant: They are often composites of physical and emotional characteristics we have borrowed from a variety of sources in both of our lives. We do work to make them fully rounded and unique, so that they remind readers of people they know or even themselves. We give our characters complete biographies, often with details that don’t make it into the story, but it’s a way for us to know why they behave the way they do and it allows us to stay true to them.

CB: How do you pull it all together? Do you each take a turn writing chapters or do you each pick your characters and write for those characters?

DeBerry and Grant: It’s really a completely collaborative process. We have spoken to other teams and it seems nobody does it the way we do. We work side by side–literally–in front of the computer. One of us may start a sentence that the other finishes. The keyboard passes back and forth between us. The words are all fair game, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to remember who wrote what by the time we’re done.

Our aim is to have one voice telling the story. If readers can feel the shift between us, it takes them out of the storytelling and we never want to do that. We don’t know why it works, but at this point we don’t question it. It’s a great gift and we’re grateful for it.

CB: It really is a special gift. I’m not sure I could ever pull it off. How much do you draw from your real lives for your novels?

DeBerry and Grant: We may use situations in our lives for inspiration, but we don’t recount them verbatim. For instance, in Far From the Tree, there is a lot of Della, the mother in the Frazier family who has closed off her past to her daughters, which reminds Donna of her grandmother. But Prosper, the North Carolina town Della grew up in, is based on Wadesboro, the town where Virginia was born.

In Gotta Keep on Tryin’, we gave one of the characters an eating disorder–it was an issue we hadn’t seen dealt with for adult African-American women. While Donna doesn’t share exactly the same situation, she has struggled for many years with using food emotionally. It gave her some insight into the character even though the specifics are different.

CB: Book tours can be such a chore. Does having each other make touring more enjoyable?

DeBerry and Grant: Absolutely. We keep each other going, even if it’s 1:30 in the morning and we’ve arrived at the last terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport only to find that the tram isn’t running and we have to walk a mile to baggage claim and neither of us is wearing hiking footwear. And we have an interview at 7AM the next morning (this just happened). Whatever the circumstances, we manage to keep laughing and that gets us through.

CB: Can I get each of you to tell us something about yourself that we don’t already know?

DeBerry and Grant: Hmmm. OK–on the silly side–Donna gets a kick out of ballroom dancing. No, she hasn’t participated yet, although she and her husband keep threatening to take lessons. But they both like to watch. Especially the Latin dances–Mambo, Samba, Rumba, ChaCha. And Virginia is not a natural blonde, as some have asked (go figure), even though many of her friends think she has always channeled her inner blonde. She’s also an excellent cook.

(Visit DeBerry and Grant at their website.)