After the Book Is Sold

by LaConnie Taylor-Jones

I once read that a writer is someone who writes stories. An author is someone who sells books.

It took twelve months to complete the first draft of my manuscript. Five revisions and six months later, those three hundred and ten pages circled through the literary community in search of a home. Days turned into weeks and before long, twelve months had come and gone. My manuscript was still homeless. Finally, I received ‘the call’ in the fall of ‘06 and thought I’d won the battle, right? Aah!!

The war hadn’t begun, yet.

Why didn’t someone park me, this neophyte writer down in a chair somewhere, and tell me all the things that come after the book is sold? Even if they had, I probably won’t have really understood what they were saying. Think about it from this perspective, a mother shares the birth experience with a mother-to-be from start to finish. At that point, does the expectant mother really comprehend the miracle of life? No, but she will just as soon as she goes through it herself. There are simply some lessons only experience can teach you.

With an already hectic schedule, how would I ever find a way to pile on my plate the other necessary components that have absolutely nothing to do with the creative aspect of writing such as deadlines, industry networking, and the granddaddy of them all, promotion? There are a few more I could add to the list, but you get the picture. Now combine all of the above with the responsibilities I had before the book. It’s a wonder I haven’t voluntarily committed myself into the nearest mental institution.

To sum it all up, I’ve learned two important lessons on this short literary journey. First, it’s not for the faint at heart. On any given day, it can test the fortitude of the mightiest. Secondly, if you can’t accept constructive feedback or rejection, might wanna keep the day job. This isn’t the gig for you.

So, you might ask, what do I plan to do now that I’ve been through the baptism by fire?

If faint heart ne’er won fair lady, then fair lady ne’er won with a faint heart.

Victoria Rowell, best known as Druscilla Winters on CBS’s daytime series “The Young and the Restless,” first penned her memoir, The Women Who Raised Me, last year. It went on to become a best-seller and won many awards. We first featured her here in March, where we talked briefly about her background as a foster child and an actress.

Now the paperback and audio versions of The Women Who Raised Me are available at bookstores everywhere. And if you order them from Victoria Rowell’s website (see below for addresses), you can get her to send you an autographed copy. Victoria Rowell is fast becoming a writing powerhouse, with more books and even a novel on the way! Read on for all the juicy details.

Connie Briscoe: Your memoir, The Women Who Raised Me, received widespread recognition in the literary community and hit the major bestseller lists including the New York Times and Essence magazine. Do you have plans to do more writing in the future? If so, what kind of book might that be? Fiction, nonfiction, more memoirs?

Victoria Rowell: Yes, I plan on writing two companion books—The Men Who Raised Me and The Perfectly Imperfect Inheritance. Currently I am working on a novel, which will be my next book, Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva. I am also happy to announce that the audio book version of The Women Who Raised Me is complete, which is read by me and went on sale May 1, so please log on to www.victoriarowell.com and get your copy. It’s a great Mother’s Day gift!

CB: It sounds perfect for Mother’s Day. Was writing what you thought it would be? In other words, was it harder or easier than you had imagined to open up and put your thoughts and feelings on paper?

Victoria Rowell: Actually this was the hardest thing I have done in my career. Ballet was hard, but writing has been the hardest because of the solitude nature. Revisiting people in my life was also a challenge. I can say it was really joyous and painful at same time.

CB: What time of day did you do most of your writing and what was your favorite writing spot. Why do you think that was?

Victoria Rowell: Morning time. For The Women Who Raised Me (hardback), I was really under a tight schedule. I had a serious deadline to meet so I would get up around 4:00 a.m. and write prior to going to the CBS set for The Young and the Restless tapings. By nature, I am a morning writer.

CB: What were you trying to accomplish by writing your memoir? Who were you hoping to reach?

Victoria Rowell: The purpose of writing my memoir is to thank all of the extraordinary women throughout the country for sharing their lives. I wanted to share the fact that too often our mentors do not get enough recognition. I also wanted to shine light on the ordinary people doing extraordinary things…the millions of mothers and mentors who go unheralded. I want The Women Who Raised Me to be a call to action so I have listed resources in the back of the book. Anyone who is willing can be a mentor, a volunteer or foster parent if your heart and mind are in the right place. Connie, I really think we achieved that in the hardcover, which, as you stated, is a New York Times and Essence magazine bestseller! For more information on my book, you can visit www.thewomenwhoraisedme.com.

CB: My children were adopted out of foster care at ages 6 and 8, so I’m well aware of how important good foster care homes are. What is the message about foster care that you hope we get from The Women Who Raised Me and your work supporting foster children.

Victoria Rowell: I want all to be aware of the fact that 98% of foster parents are doing a great job! Unfortunately, the media tends to write about very discouraging stories. It is very important that I write about the majority. My ambition is to smash this myth that all foster parents are not doing their job, when it’s really only about 2%.

CB: Thanks for doing that. It’s so important. What’s next for you in film? Anything in the works?

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Karen Siplin is the author of His Insignificant Other, Such a Girl and Whiskey Road. She also contributed a short story (”Nice Jewish Boy”) to the anthology This Is Chick Lit, edited by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. His Insignificant Other was a 2002 Borders Original Voices selection and named one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s sexy summer reads. Such a Girl was a main selection of Black Expressions Book Club. Karen has a degree in film production from CUNY’s Hunter College.

Connie Briscoe: How do you come up with your story ideas?

Karen Siplin: I like to write about issues that are significant to me in some way, issues I want to explore. Whiskey Road, for example, is about the relationship that develops between a black female celebrity photographer and a white small town contractor when she ends up spending some time in his rural New York town. I’ve traveled through a lot of provincial towns in the United States with my husband, and we were always aware of the way white people stared at me. Sometimes, we weren’t sure if the looks were unwelcoming or just curious. With Whiskey Road, I wanted to explore this idea that black people can’t just pick up and move anywhere in the United States without this uncertainty following them.

CB: How do you come up with your characters?

Karen Siplin: My characters come from my imagination. But pieces of them (especially my secondary characters) come from people I know or strangers who catch my attention either because they have an interesting look or enormous personalities. Sometimes my main characters come to me through a line of dialogue or a thought that pops into my head while I’m walking or taking a shower. They sound a certain way in my mind, and I try to create a character around that voice.

CB: Sounds like you draw from your real life quite a bit.

Karen Siplin: I try not to write autobiographically, but some aspect of my life always makes its way into my books. Either a retelling of a single experience I’ve had, or someone I know has had, or a quirky personality trait I find endearing or maddening. The main character in my second novel, Such a Girl, is a hotel telephone operator. I was a hotel telephone operator for a while.

CB: Do you think that you are strongest in developing plots, creating characters, writing dialog or something else?

Karen Siplin: I’ve been told writing dialogue is my strength and I agree. I have a degree in film production and my main interest was in screenwriting. I think that may be how that strength was developed.

CB: Interesting, because your descriptions are very visual. As you described the plot in your first response, I actually saw it as a film in my mind’s eye. When and where do you write best?

Karen Siplin: I write best at the New York Public Library but I rarely go there! I’ve become so dependent on my computer and all of my various notes that I can’t work without them for long periods of time. After spending a few years lugging my laptop everywhere, I’ve done some damage to my shoulders, so I can no longer carry my “writing stuff” everywhere. I’m most inspired during the quietest time of the day—early morning.

CB: I think most of us women end up damaging our shoulders or coming close at some point in our lives by carrying laptops and heavy shoulder bags.

You contributed to a chick lit anthology. Do you consider your novels chick lit? Is chick lit a dying breed?

Karen Siplin: I considered my first two novels chick lit. My third novel isn’t chick lit, and I’m not sure there’s a suitable label for it. I don’t like labels anyway, even though I understand they can make life easier when trying to market books.

I don’t believe chick lit is disappearing completely. It’s been around for ages but it was just called something else and there was a lot less of it. I think the market became oversaturated and I think books that weren’t really chick lit were getting chick lit type covers just because. Now that publishers are toning down the number of chick lit books that they’re publishing and it’s being referred to as commercial women’s fiction instead, it seems as if it’s dying out.

CB: What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not writing?

Karen Siplin: I love reading books in almost every genre and watching good TV. I’ve also rekindled a passion I’ve had much of my life for 19^th century and early 20^th century architecture. My husband just gave me two wonderful coffee table books on mansions in New York City and North Shore Long Island, and I spend hours perusing them. I’ve been wondering whether I’m too old to seriously consider a second career in architecture, and I daydream about buying land somewhere to build a modest Beaux Arts style mansion. I think that would be a very time-consuming (not to mention expensive) hobby, so it’s still just a daydream.

For more about Karen Siplin, visit her website.

Carleen Brice is a fiction and nonfiction author and also editor of the anthology Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife. She is a two-time finalist for the Colorado Book Award in nonfiction. Her first novel, Orange Mint and Honey (don’t you just love the title?) was published in February of this year to outstanding reviews from Essence magazine and others.

Connie Briscoe: You had been very successful writing nonfiction, including Walk Tall: Affirmations for People of Color, which sold more than 100,000 copies. Why did you decide to write a novel?

Carleen Brice: Fiction is where my heart is, but I think I was too chicken to start out with fiction. Writing a novel seemed like something other, more “special” people did, like going to the moon or something. My husband encouraged me to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did!

CB: How did you come up with the story idea and title for Orange Mint and Honey?

Carleen Brice: I set out to write a mother-daughter story about forgiveness and redemption. As I worked on it, it evolved to include the themes of gardening and music. The title comes from the orange mint the mother grows and uses to make tea, which she serves with honey. It’s symbolic of bitter and sweet coming together.

CB: Interesting. How much did you draw from your real life for the novel?

Carleen Brice: I have felt all the emotions the characters express: jealousy, resentment, love, joy, surprise, sorrow. And the characters have bits and pieces of my personality and the traits and personalities of people around me. But this novel isn’t directly autobiographical.

CB: Do you think that you’re strongest at developing plots, creating characters, writing dialog or something else?

Carleen Brice: Characters and dialog are my strong suits. Plot is definitely hardest for me, but I’d say that now after two novels I’m starting to get the hang of it.

CB: What has the publisher done to help you promote the book? What are you doing yourself, if anything?

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Denene Millner is a columnist for Parenting magazine. She has worked as a senior editor at Honey and as an entertainment and political journalist for the New York Daily News. She is also the author of several books including the movie tie-in for the blockbuster film “Dreamgirls.” She lives in Atlanta with her husband and their two daughters.

Connie Briscoe: How did you end up writing Hotlanta with your co-author, Mitzi Miller?

Denene Millner: Mitzi and I got into the teen market by invitation. Alloy Media, the company behind the uber popular teen lit series The Gossip Girls, the A-List, The Clique, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, among others, was looking for a writer to pen a teen series featuring African American characters, and their reps called our agent to see if Mitzi was interested. She was, but Alloy wanted the series to be set in Atlanta, and so they were anxious to have an Atlanta-based writer on the project as well. It just so happened that a month prior to the start of those conversations, my family and I had moved to a town just outside of Atlanta.

So it kind of worked out for everyone involved; Mitzi and I, who had collaborated on the humorous non-fiction book The Angry Black Woman’s Guide to Life, and the novel, The Vow (with Angela Burt-Murray), got another opportunity to team up again, and Alloy got their Atlanta-based author.

We eventually sold the proposal to Scholastic and ended up with a three-book series, entitled Hotlanta. It’s about the lives of Sydney and Lauren Duke, the popular and privileged daughters of a wealthy Buckhead, Atlanta, couple that has a dark, mysterious, dangerous history that the girls discover. And let the drama begin . . . .

CB: You’ve published in a variety of genres–fiction, nonfiction, the movie-tie in for “Dreamgirls” and now teen fiction. Why the teen market?

Denene Millner: Why the teen market? Why not? I’ve always been passionate about books; they were my best friends when I was coming of age and a welcome respite when I got grown. And when I started writing them, they became a viable way for me to help feed my family and save up for that Yale tuition.

I’m also the mother of two beautiful little brown girls, and before our first was even born, my husband, Nick Chiles, and I filled her room with as many African American children’s books as we could find because we thought it was important for her to see characters who look like her, to hear stories that reflect her experience.

And believe it or not, just about nine years ago, those stories were few and far between. While we’re doing a lot better with picture books featuring black characters, there has been a dearth of black teen fare. So I thought writing Hotlanta provided me with the perfect opportunity to put out stories that are universally appealing, but that reach an audience that has been grossly underserved.

CB: Doesn’t that require a big shift in gears mentally?

Denene Millner: It didn’t take that vast of a mental stretch to write Hotlanta. When we wrote the proposal and the first book, my then-16-year-old niece was living with Nick and I, and my 15-year-old stepson lives with us now, so I get to see the ways of teenagers up close and personal—sometimes a little too close!—and get their input as I’m writing so that the words, the voices, and the way they deal with the situations you find in the book ring true.

But really, writing for teens isn’t about lowering your level or standards or talking in any kind of different way. We write for them the same way we do adults—in a straightforward, clear way that’s smart and exciting and interesting.

The only real challenge we had was keeping up with was the pop culture obsession of it all; by the time we’d finish referencing something teens are into and move on to the next page, we’d find out that they’re just not into that one thing anymore. But I think we did a good job of keeping current without sacrificing a good, solid story.

CB: If you had to come up with a general theme for all or most of your novels (and books) what would it be?

Denene Millner: I’m extremely passionate about shining a light on the African American experience in a way that stretches beyond stereotypes, in a way that recognizes our layers and the nuanced lives we live. For too long, all anyone interested in the black experience had to go on were the stereotypes parading across the 11 o’clock news, and I think a lot of us 90s authors—you, Terry McMillan, Benilde Little, Bebe Moore Campbell-helped show the publishing world that there’s so much more to us.

This is the philosophy I carried as a journalist for The Associated Press and the New York Daily News; I carved a niche as one of the only black journalists writing about African Americans in the film, music, TV and book industries, as well as our lifestyles. It’s important to me because it reflects my world the way I was raised, the way I’m raising my children, my friends and family, our existence here on this earth.

Seldom are we heard, but we are here—these black folks who are solidly middle class, getting good educations, succeeding at work, living a good, thoughtful, authentically black life. My books always speak to this or validate it, really.

They also serve as a testament that black love, in all of its manifestations, is possible. I see it everyday in my marriage and the marriages of my friends, family, parents, and in-laws. And I show it to my children every single day, so that they’re clear of the possibilities, too. I really hope that is the takeaway for the work I’ve done.

CB: Do you do things outside of what the publisher does to promote your books? If so, what?

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Annette Fix, former exotic dancer and now author, has penned her memoir, The Break-Up Diet, in which she talks about how she survived being dumped by her live-in boyfriend, when she thought she was going to live with him “happily- ever-after.” The Break-Up Diet is self-published, and Annette has devised some really creative ways to promote herself and her book, which she shares generously here.

Connie Briscoe: You seem to wear many caps: fiction and nonfiction author, spoken-word performer, publicist, senior editor for a popular website on writing, and last but certainly not least, a mom. How do you find the time and energy to do so much?

Annette Fix: I love everything about what I do. I think that makes a huge difference in my attitude when I wake up and start each new day. I just wish there were more hours in a day to do it all! I’m fortunate that my son is older now and very close to testing his wings. It was harder to juggle everything when I was working, home-schooling, and trying to carve out time to write. Although I seem to keep adding more on my to-do list!

CB: I understand that. There’s an interesting story behind your memoir The Break-Up Diet. Tell us what it is about and why you decided to write it.

Annette Fix: I was initially working on a feature film screenplay with a producer who had a picture deal with Disney. Then my live-in boyfriend dumped me off the back of the happily-ever-after horse. It turned me into a complete wreck, and I started journaling about the break-up. One of my girlfriends suggested I write it as a book. I backed out of the film project and began writing The Break-Up Diet. It started as therapy and I had no idea if it would end up being a 900-page diatribe of horrible relationship experiences, but it turned out to be my own real-life fairytale.

CB: You indicate that you found an agent but still struggled with landing a publisher. Why do you think that was?

Annette Fix: My agent was shopping my memoir as fiction because my voice and the content of the story are very “chick-litty.” The biggest problem was that the chick-lit market was saturated, and the editors didn’t feel my story was strong enough to compete. But I believe the actual strength of the story is that the happily-ever-after ending is true, and my message is that it really can happen.

CB: So you decided to publish The Break-Up Diet yourself and spent a year learning the ropes. Tell us a bit about that time.

Annette Fix: When I first considered self-publishing, I looked into a few of the major subsidy publishers such as Author House and iUniverse. But I ultimately decided their business model wasn’t right for me. So I established my own indie (independent) press and went step-by-step through the production process. It was a crash-course, and I made a lot of financial missteps along the way but I’m very happy with the final product. I think the best part of the process was being in the position to call my own shots about how the cover and interior would look, how it would be marketed, and so on.

CB: You’ve also been very creative as far as promoting the book with forums, blogs and other ideas. Tell us more about some of the things you’ve done to promote the book.

Annette Fix: I’ve tried to think of every possible way to incorporate marketing ideas I’ve read about. I wanted to find ways to create fun things on my site to connect with readers, some things that would also help promote the book.

I’m not quite finished implementing everything I have planned, but so far, on the book website for The Break-Up Diet, I’ve posted excerpts of the book, an audio clip of me reading from the book, a video welcome—which will soon be replaced by a hilarious book trailer—a blog—which I really should keep up more than I do—a MySpace page, and reading questions for book groups. I also created a forum called My Break-Up Story, where women can read and share—and have the last word telling their break-up and dating stories. I think that will really be a blast when more women find out about it.

I plan to create a fun, Cosmo-like “How do you know if you’re on the break-up diet?” quiz. And I’m currently working on a free down-loadable companion e-book that has tips and distractions to help women get over a tough break-up. I’ll be encouraging readers to pass it along to their friends who need it.

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Bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby has written 10 novels. Her latest, Sin No More, was published earlier this year and has already hit #16 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction and #4 on the Wal*Mart bestseller list for hardcover titles.

Kimberla has been so successful that few people realize that her debut novel, Behind Closed Doors, was originally self-published. Here she shares marketing tips for authors and much more.

Connie Briscoe: You’re on book tour for your latest novel Sin No More. What do you like about touring? What could you do without?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: The best thing about touring is meeting all of my loyal and very dedicated readers, people I never would have had the amazing opportunity to meet had I not written any books. It’s wonderful because when I hear positive and enthusiastic comments about my work during discussions, it encourages me to keep doing what I do.

The one thing, however, I could sometimes do without is very early morning wake-ups! This isn’t always the case, but there are many times when I do need to take early morning flights to get to the next city.

CB: I know all about the 5 a.m. wake-ups when you’ve been up until late the night before at a book signing. A lot of people don’t realize how tough book tours can be.

Your novels always do so well, hitting the New York Times and Essence bestseller lists consistently. Do you think touring actually helps sell books?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: I really do. I always say that whenever you meet readers in person and they also enjoy your work, they are your readers for life.

CB: What else do you do to promote your novels besides touring?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: In addition to what my publisher does for each book, I also do lots of pre-publication promotion on my own. To name a few items, I send newsletters out to my mailing lists, hold contests for general readers as well as a separate contest for book clubs nationwide.

And I get a lot of traffic on my web site, which I keep updated with my current book signings, events, speaking engagements, and other information. I now also have a MySpace page, and this has proven to be a wonderful marketing tool as well.

CB: Yes, MySpace is a wonderful marketing and networking tool for authors. How do you come up with your story ideas?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: I always try to write about real-life social issues, so I am inspired by all sorts of topics. I never base my stories on any real situation, but I am inspired by much of what I see and hear.

CB: How do you come up with your characters?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: Once I know what topic I’m going to be focusing on, I spend days mentally creating my characters. I do this for weeks and eventually they become very real people for me.

CB: Do you outline or write character sketches? If so, tell us how you do it. If not, how do you organize your writing?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: Yes, I do outline each book I write. Basically, what I do is write a synopsis of each chapter, which can range anywhere from one to two pages and sometimes even three, depending on how in-depth I want it to be. Then, when I finish the outline, I write the actual chapters.

CB: Do you feel pressure to write more frequent or more detailed sex scenes in your novels these days?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: No, actually, as of Sin No More, I stopped writing detailed sex scenes of any kind. Even in my past novels, I never wrote erotica and worked hard not to write anything offensive, but I finally realized it just wasn’t necessary to include all the details unless the story is somehow centered on sex.

CB: How much do you draw from your real life for your novels?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: The only time I based a character on myself was in my fourth novel, It’s a Thin Line. I based the Sydney character on me and the Delores character on my mom, who really did have a benign brain tumor. It was very therapeutic for me, and the other reason I wrote it was because I wanted to show what it was like losing the most important person in my life, my best friend, and how it took a lot of prayer and every bit of faith I had to get through a loss of that magnitude.

Also, I wanted to show how even though my mom was the one dying, she never stopped lifting up me or the rest of our family. She kept her faith strong until the very end.

Visit the Kimberla Lawson Roby website site for more.

Cheryl Robinson tells us how she went from self-publishing her first two novels to landing book deals with New York publishing houses. She also discusses why she decided to try virtual book touring for her latest title, Sweet Georgia Brown.

Connie Briscoe: You started out as a self-published author. Why was that? Did you try to find an agent or traditional publisher first? Tell us about those early years.

Cheryl Robinson: It took years before I decided to put my first novel to paper. I made a conscious decision when I started writing that I would self-publish because I had heard the horror stories on finding an agent or publishing company. I had also tried in the past to obtain an agent and I did receive my fair share of rejection letters, which discouraged me from pursuing my passion for several years.

So when I did finally sat down in front of my computer and decided to write my first novel, which was Memories of Yesterday, my thought process was that I would publish my first novel myself, and I felt very confident that I would gain the attention of publishers from that point.

CB: How did you finally land a literary agent?

Cheryl Robinson: I self-published Memories of Yesterday and sent it off to Earl Cox in New York who owned a small press and also provided consulting for authors. I was hoping that with his assistance I could take my novel to the next level. He wasn’t interested in my first book so the following year I self-published another novel, When I Get Free. I went all out with my promotional material–with a full-color press kit folder, a catchy title and a nice tagline.

I went back to Earl Cox and this time he was very interested. He received my novel on a day when he was flying to Los Angeles to meet with a literary agent about another one of his clients and he took my book with him, read it, and loved it. He passed my book on to the agent who also loved it. Within 30 days from that point, I had a literary agent.

CB: How is it different working with an agent?

Cheryl Robinson: The agent is the go between you and the publisher. Even if you have been working with the same editor for a while, the proper protocol is to have your agent pitch your next book deal and of course negotiate the contract. The right agent can make or break your career, I believe. They are very important and they must believe in you as a writer and in your work in order to work out the best possible deal for you.

CB: You are currently on a virtual book tour. Is this your first one and how is it going?

Cheryl Robinson: It is my first one and I am having a lot of fun.

CB: Why did you decide to go on a virtual book tour?

Cheryl Robinson: I needed to save money. I was spending thousands of dollars on marketing my novels, and travel was an enormous expense for me. I also needed to save time and find a smarter way to market my titles. For me, I think the virtual book tour is the best way for now.

CB: So you liked the idea of going on a book tour without ever having to leave home. When and where do you write?

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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?

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Author Lolita Files–that’s her real name–has five dogs and one bird. And she loves fried chicken, shoes and the internet. But don’t send her an IM. She can’t stand that. You’ll have much better luck getting a response if you send her a message through e-mail.

Connie Briscoe: How many books have you had published?

Lolita Files: I have six novels, one novella, and three short stories. I’m currently working on my seventh novel.

CB: How do you come up with your story ideas?

Lolita Files: Sometimes the stories just come to me on their own. Other times, I’ll get a spark of an idea from something I read in the news, see on the street, or hear about in pop culture.

CB: This week on my blog I talked about where I write. When and where do you write best?

Lolita Files: Sitting in bed with my laptop–usually during the day and early evening–with the television on the in the background. With the exception of one book, I’ve written everything this way.

CB: Do you outline or write character sketches? If not, how do you organize your writing?

Lolita Files: Historically, I do not outline or write character sketches. I just sit in front of the laptop and wait for the first few words to come–this part can be torture–then I let the characters take over and lead the story.

CB: Those first pages are always the toughest. How much do you draw from your real life for your novels?

Lolita Files: Not as much as readers would think. I may layer in a particular interest I have–travel, pets, food cravings–but beyond minor details, I prefer creating worlds and characters that are unique to the specific story.

CB: How has the publishing market changed since you had your first book published?

Lolita Files: More books by authors of color are available on the market, which is a positive in one regard. Major publishers, however, have attempted to marginalize the types of books that are published by writers of color, focusing heavily on street fiction and erotica-based literature, seriously limiting exposure to the wide range of voices and genres that deserve to be heard.

CB: So true, unfortunately. What can we expect to see from you next?

Lolita Files: I’m doing a sequel to Tastes Like Chicken, which was the last book in the Misty/Reesy series. It ended with a few cliffhangers that I needed to tie up. The book is called Next Day Feathers.

CB: Your books always have such interesting titles. Tell us something about yourself that most of us don’t already know.

Lolita Files: I love snow. I was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so I never had true winters while growing up. I now live in a place with lots of snow, bitter winds, and freezing temperatures in winter…and I love it!

(Visit Lolita Files at her blog on pop culture–The Lo Zone)