S04.10: Beverly Jenkins: Trailblazer
This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Beverly Jenkins—the first Black author of historical romance featuring Black main characters. We talk about her path to romance writing, about how librarians make the best writers, and about her role as the first Black historical romance novelist. We’re also talking about writing in multiple sub genres, about lifting up other authors, and about the importance of the clinch cover.
Thank you to Beverly Jenkins for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story.
There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack (which includes Beverly’s Wild Rain!) from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus.
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.
Show Notes
Welcome Beverly Jenkins, the author of more than 50 romance novels, and the recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance.
You can hear Beverly’s interview on the Black Romance History podcast, and last February, Jen interviewed her for Love’s Sweet Arrow when Wild Rain was released. Wild Rain was also one of our best of 2021 romance novels.
Beverly Jenkins's first agent was Vivian Stephens. You can listen to Julie Moody-Freeman's interview with Vivian in two parts on the Black Romance Podcast.
Some of the people Beverly mentioned: sweet romance author Laverne St. George, author Patricia Vaughn, author Anita Richmond Bunkley, publisher Walter Zacharius, editor Ellen Edwards, editor Christine Zika, cover designer Tom Egner, author Shirley Hailstock, author Donna Hill, author Brenda Jackson, editor Monica Harris, author Gay Gunn, marketing expert Adrienne di Pietro, editor Erika Tsang, agent Nancy Yost, Romantic Times owner Kathryn Falk, and Gwen Osborne from The Romance Reader.
Here’s more information about 1994, the summer of Black love, and here’s a PDF of Beverly Jenkins’s 1995 profile in People Magazine.
Transcript
Beverly Jenkins 0:00 / #
The idea that I was out in the marketplace, the African American readers were just over the moon. Some of the stories they told me of going in the bookstore and seeing Night Song, and you know, the first thing they did was flip to the back to make sure it was written by a Black woman, and one woman said she sat in the bookstore right there on the floor, and started reading.
Sarah MacLean 0:30 / #
That was the voice of Beverly Jenkins. We are thrilled to have Beverly with us. We've been working on getting her to join us on Fated Mates since Season One, and pandemics and busy-ness got in the way, but we're finally here and it feels right that the first time we talked to Beverly, we're talking to her as part of the Trailblazers series. You will hear her talk about her life, her time beginning writing her work, her research, publication, her editors and her readers, and we think you'll love it. Welcome to Fated Mates.
We are so thrilled to have Beverly Jenkins with us today. Welcome, Beverly!
Beverly Jenkins 1:18 / #
Thank you! Thank you! I'm thrilled to be here. This is - you know we've been trying to hook up for a while, so thanks so much for the invite!
Sarah MacLean 1:26 / #
We really have! And obviously, for many, many reasons, Jen and I have been wanting you to come on Fated Mates to talk about all sorts of things. I don't know if you remember this, but you and I were together outside of the National Book Festival, what feels like 1000 years ago when we could be with each other, and you started telling me stories about the beginning of your career and the early days and it was one of the most magnificent afternoons of my life, and so I am basically just here to make you tell those stories on tape.
Beverly Jenkins 2:09 / #
I've got a million of them, so you'll have to let me know which one -
Sarah MacLean 2:12 / #
I love it! No, I want to hear them all.
Sarah MacLean 2:14 / #
So we are - the conceit of this whole - the work that we're doing right now with our Trailblazer guests is to really get the voices of the genre and the voices of the people who built the house on tape, and to also say the names of the people who maybe we have not heard of. The not Beverly Jenkins'. So that's why we're doing this. That's why we think it's important and that's why we are so grateful to have you with us.
Beverly Jenkins 2:48 / #
I'm proud to, proud to represent. So hit me up with your first question.
Jennifer Prokop 2:55 / #
Well, I think one of the things and this is true for all romance writers, readers, everybody, which is how did you come to romance? How did you become a reader and a writer of romance?
Beverly Jenkins 3:08 / #
I tell the story about I grew up reading everything. You know I was one of those kids that read everything in the neighborhood library, from the kiddie books to the teen books to the adult books. This would be late '50s, early '60s. I think I got my first library card when I was like eight. So that would have been like 1959, right, but there was nothing in the books that represented me in the classics, of course that my mom would make us read or insist we read Langston Hughes and Bontemps and you know those folks. But for popular literature, there was nothing, but it didn't stop me from reading. You know I love a good story. So in my journey through Mark Twain Library, that was the name of the library, eastside of Detroit, Gratiot and Burns, it's no longer there, and I'll tell you a terrible story about that eventually, but they had when I got to the teen books, I read Beany Malone. I don't know if you're familiar with the Beany Malone books. YA, family, small town. Beany was the the youngest kid, so you had her adventures. They had Seventeenth Summer which I think everybody my age read and then I moved to Mary Stewart, you know, This Rough Magic, all those great books. So then that brought in Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney and Jane Aiken Hodge.
Sarah MacLean 4:37 / #
Victoria Holt is one of those names that comes up every time you talk to a group of romance novelists who started, you know, young.
Beverly Jenkins 4:44 / #
Yeah, she was there. So read her. Charlotte Armstrong. I don't know if you're familiar with her. She's got a great book. What is the name of that book? The Gift Shop, I think! Awesome! It's you know, a sweet romance but it's a young woman who is on a quest with this guy. Somebody left some kind of, if I can remember correctly, some kind of a secret something inside of a gift shop. They were, it was inside of a little glass pig, [laughter] so she and this guy are traveling all over. I don't know if it's the world, I think was a country, trying to run down these pigs to get whatever it was that was inside and it's just a great story and probably holds up pretty well. I haven't read it in a 1000 years, even if it's still in print?
[Laughing] I'm gonna report in. I'm gonna find this.
Jennifer Prokop 5:35 / #
I know me too. I'm down, so yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 5:38 / #
Yeah, Charlotte Armstrong, The Gift Shop, great! Then you had stuff like Cash McCall, that they made the movie with Natalie Wood and James Garner, I think. So I had always loved a good love story. You know you had Doris Day and James Garner and all of that. You know, my sisters and I, I have five sisters, four sisters, three of us are stairsteps. So you know, we loved you know that kind of stuff. So reading and pop culture, but like I said, there was nothing that reflected us. Then you've got the Toni Morrison quote, you know, if it's not out there, and you want to read it, then you need to write it, but I was just writing for me. I wasn't writing for publication because the market was closed. So that's sort of how I got started, I guess, a long winded answer to your question.
Sarah MacLean 6:36 / #
So when you say you weren't writing it for the market, walk us through kind of putting pen to paper and then -
Sarah MacLean 6:45 / #
I mean, now you're in the market, so how did that happen?
Beverly Jenkins 6:47 / #
Now I'm in the market, now I'm in the marketplace. There were you know, other than, and I did not read those because I didn't even know they existed. Elsie Washington and Vivian, who really started this industry for us, the American side of it. Have you heard her interview with?
Jennifer Prokop 7:07 / #
The Black Romance Podcast.
Beverly Jenkins 7:08 / #
Oh my gosh!
Sarah MacLean 7:09 / #
It's fantastic! We'll put links to it in show notes, everybody.
Beverly Jenkins 7:12 / #
Just amazing. So Elsie and Sandra and I had no idea they were out there. But I was writing for me, and this was like, God, BC, Before Children. [laughter] You know me and Hubby, we were like "No, we're not having no kids. We are having too much fucking fun!" [laughter]
Sarah MacLean 7:35 / #
Were you writing historical or were you writing contemporary? What?
Beverly Jenkins 7:39 / #
I was writing Night Song.
Beverly Jenkins 7:42 / #
I was writing Night Song, didn't know I was writing Night Song at the time though you know, I had no title for it, but it was just a story for me and I would come home from working at the Michigan State University Graduate Library. And I'd come home, he had played tennis in high school, so he would come home, 'cause he was a printer back then, so he'd come home, clean up from all that ink. You know, he had ink in his fro and all of that. Ink in his nose, man had ink coming out of the backs of his hands for years because there's no OSHA back then you know.
Beverly Jenkins 8:13 / #
So he'd come home, clean up, grab his tennis racket and go play tennis, and I would read because you work at a Graduate Library and the little old ladies in cataloguing loved me. So I can go through the back halls of the library and grab stuff off people's carts, mainly science fiction which is what I mainly read back then, take 'em home. So if I wasn't reading, I was working on this little story just for me. Buffalo soldier and a school teacher. I had no idea it was going to be published or would get published because I already had my dream job. I was working in the library. That's all I ever wanted out of life, you know. And then I met LaVerne, I was working in Parke-Davis.
Sarah MacLean 8:56 / #
Who's LaVerne?
Beverly Jenkins 8:57 / #
LaVerne? LaVerne is the reason we're here today. Her and my mama. She writes under LaVerne St. George. She's a sweet romance writer. This is probably, oh, let's see if I was working at Parke-Davis, this is probably somewhere between '85 and '90, and LaVerne had just gotten her first book published. We were working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical library, which was a whole different story, that's a whole different conversation. Parke-Davis was probably one of the, maybe one of the first big pharma companies. It started in Detroit and they moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor, which is where I was working. So she had just gotten a sweet romance published by a small publisher here in Michigan. So we're celebrating her and I was talking about this little manuscript I was working on and she wanted to see it and I knew she was a member of RWA back then and I didn't know anything about any of that. I'm just writing a story, right? So I bring it in and she says, "You really need to get this published!"
Jennifer Prokop 10:03 / #
Did you hand write this manuscript? Is it typed?
Beverly Jenkins 10:06 / #
Yeah!
Jennifer Prokop 10:06 / #
What does this look like?
Beverly Jenkins 10:08 / #
Oh, okay, it was...I had [she chuckles] this little what we used to call close and play typewriter.
Jennifer Prokop 10:16 / #
Okay.
Sarah MacLean 10:17 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 10:17 / #
You know, you could carry it.
Jennifer Prokop 10:18 / #
Oh yeah.
Sarah MacLean 10:19 / #
They were very lightweight, right?
Beverly Jenkins 10:21 / #
Very lightweight, [laughter] you opened it, you open it like you open a laptop
Sarah MacLean 10:24 / #
Giant. [giggles]
Jennifer Prokop 10:25 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 10:26 / #
Yeah. I mean, it's little and I had one of those. So it was very bad because I couldn't type back then at all, very badly typed. In fact, my husband's secretary wound up typing it once I got it ready for publication, but most of it though, at the beginning, was handwritten.
Sarah MacLean 10:45 / #
I mean nobody, this is one of those minor little things, but nobody realizes how much work it was -
Sarah MacLean 10:51 / #
To write a book at this point.
Beverly Jenkins 10:53 / #
OH...MY -
Sarah MacLean 10:54 / #
If I had to do this, there would be no -
Sarah MacLean 10:56 / #
We would not know each other. [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 10:58 / #
Oh, girl!
Jennifer Prokop 11:00 / #
Right! That's why I was so curious. It had to be -
Beverly Jenkins 11:04 / #
It was so, you know, once we got published, right, there was no - we were using word processors 'cause this is before computers.
Beverly Jenkins 11:13 / #
And it was all cut and paste, for revisions, and I mean actually cut and paste. [laughter] I mean, you would have to, okay, when you did revisions, you had to cut pieces out, tape 'em in, and then tape them to the pages. So you may have some - and then you have to fold it up. So you may have something that unscrolls from me to you in Chicago. [laughter] You know, fold it up.
Beverly Jenkins 11:43 / #
You know when you - then you've got tons of Wite-out.
Jennifer Prokop 11:47 / #
Oh yeah.
Sarah MacLean 11:47 / #
Oh, remember Wite-out?
Beverly Jenkins 11:49 / #
Put it in a mailer. Oh God, Wite-out, yeah, I saved them.
Sarah MacLean 11:51 / #
Our young listeners are like, what's Wite-out?
Beverly Jenkins 11:54 / #
I know. I guess they're using Wite-out now for something else, but yeah, it's a little thing that you could, [laughter] paint over your bad mistakes and you can type over it once it dried. You had to wait for it to dry though.
Sarah MacLean 12:06 / #
Yes! Oh and if you didn't then it gummed up the typewriter!
Beverly Jenkins 12:10 / #
Yeah, it would get, occasionally get all gunky.
Sarah MacLean 12:13 / #
We'll put it in show notes. Learn about Wite-out in show notes.
Beverly Jenkins 12:16 / #
Oh God, yeah. Lord have mercy. You know, and then you'd have to call FedEx to come get it.
Sarah MacLean 12:22 / #
Yeah. There was no - I mean me sliding in -
Jennifer Prokop 12:25 / #
To drop off -
Sarah MacLean 12:26 / #
Two minutes before midnight on the day.
Beverly Jenkins 12:28 / #
No, no. You had to send it. Well you know, you had to have an account 'cause they'd come pick it up from your house.
Beverly Jenkins 12:37 / #
Umm, it was a mess!
Jennifer Prokop 12:39 / #
Sorry. I know, that's a digression, but I was curious.
Sarah MacLean 12:41 / #
No, but Jen it's so important -
Beverly Jenkins 12:42 / #
It's a great question, a great question.
Sarah MacLean 12:44 / #
It sort of, it speaks to this kind of mentality -
Jennifer Prokop 12:47 / #
The time!
Sarah MacLean 12:48 / #
The time, but also the commitment. You have to commit to being a writer at this point.
Beverly Jenkins 12:55 / #
'Cause it was a lot of work. Oh my God! You know, the folks that are using Scrivener and even Microsoft Word, you have no idea what a joy!
Sarah MacLean 13:07 / #
[laughing] Living the high life!
Beverly Jenkins 13:09 / #
We old hens, oh God! So yeah, we had all that to do.
Sarah MacLean 13:14 / #
So anyway, so LaVerne had published her first book.
Beverly Jenkins 13:16 / #
Right. She had published her first book.
Sarah MacLean 13:18 / #
And you had Night Song.
Beverly Jenkins 13:19 / #
And I had Night Song. And she, I just tell folks, you know, she harassed me everyday. She and I laugh, we're still good friends. She laughs about me telling people that she harassed me every day at work, but I think she did. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Sarah MacLean 13:33 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 13:34 / #
And I don't know how I found Vivian? I cannot tell you how I found Vivian. I think maybe by then I was reading Romantic Times?
Sarah MacLean 13:43 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 13:44 / #
And maybe, you know, she showed up in there or something? Anyway -
Sarah MacLean 13:49 / #
So wait, this is a good point. There used to be a romance magazine and it was called Romantic Times and you could subscribe to it. If you were romance fan, you subscribed to it and there were reviews in it and interviews with your favorite authors and if you were a romance author, it was like Time Magazine for romance authors. If you ended up on the cover of Romantic Times, stop it, you were on your way.
Beverly Jenkins 14:09 / #
You were on your way. They were some of my biggest supporters at the beginning. I will always -
Sarah MacLean 14:14 / #
Mine too.
Beverly Jenkins 14:15 / #
Be grateful to Katherine Falk. But I don't know how I found Vivian. So I sent her my little raggedy manuscript, just to get LaVerne off my ass.
Sarah MacLean 14:25 / #
At Harlequin at this point?
Beverly Jenkins 14:27 / #
No, she's - no she was -
Sarah MacLean 14:28 / #
That's right, she was gone!
Beverly Jenkins 14:29 / #
She was freelance. She was gone, they'd let her go by then.
Sarah MacLean 14:31 / #
That's right! Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 14:32 / #
Yeah, she was on her own.
Sarah MacLean 14:33 / #
So we're in the late '80s.
Beverly Jenkins 14:35 / #
We're late '80s and we're almost at '90. We might be even at '90 because they bought the book in '93. Sent in my little raggedy manuscript, 'cause it was baaaaaddd. Oh my God.
Sarah MacLean 14:47 / #
I don't believe it.
Beverly Jenkins 14:48 / #
Girl, let me tell you stories. It was baaaddd. Anyway, so she called me at work because I was working at the reference desk.
Sarah MacLean 14:59 / #
On the phone.
Beverly Jenkins 15:00 / #
On the phone! And said, you know, she wanted to represent me. So me not knowing anything, you know, about this whole process, I was like, "Sure! Okay!"
Beverly Jenkins 15:13 / #
Right. I don't think we ever -
Jennifer Prokop 15:15 / #
Seems like a nice lady calling you at work.
Sarah MacLean 15:16 / #
Was she running - she was running an agency at this point.
Beverly Jenkins 15:19 / #
Right, a small agency out of her house. And she had me and she had Pat Vaughn, Patricia Vaughn.
Beverly Jenkins 15:29 / #
Who just sort of disappeared. I don't know whatever happened to her. Murmur of Rain, which came out right after Night Song did. I don't think Vivian and I even signed a contract. This was just a -
Sarah MacLean 15:40 / #
Sure, handshake deal.
Beverly Jenkins 15:41 / #
Just a verbal kind of thing. So, umm, took us a while to sell it. I got enough rejections to paper all of our houses because they didn't know what to do with it!
Jennifer Prokop 15:53 / #
Well and my question is how clear was it to you that, "We don't know what to do with it?" means, "We just aren't going to carry Black romance?"
Beverly Jenkins 16:02 / #
No, there was no box for it.
Jennifer Prokop 16:04 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 16:05 / #
You know and even with romance and I didn't care, I mean, probably, if I had been set on getting published, all of those rejections would have probably broken my heart.
Sarah MacLean 16:17 / #
Of course.
Beverly Jenkins 16:18 / #
But I had a dream job! I was getting up every morning going to the library! I could care less about a rejection letter, but the interesting thing was, they all said the same thing basically: great writing but, great writing but.
Sarah MacLean 16:34 / #
What do we do with it?
Beverly Jenkins 16:36 / #
Yeah and 'cause 19th century...
Sarah MacLean 16:38 / #
America.
Beverly Jenkins 16:39 / #
American history. Even 1990, if it's a 19th century story involving Black people, it should have been about slavery.
Jennifer Prokop 16:50 / #
Right.
Beverly Jenkins 16:51 / #
So here I come with -
Jennifer Prokop 16:52 / #
We know how to sell it if its Roots.
Beverly Jenkins 16:54 / #
Right. Yep, its Roots. Barely. We know how to sell it if its Roots, and you have to remember that there were only, maybe, three Black romances out there. I mean, Vivian had the connections to send it to everybody.
Sarah MacLean 17:08 / #
So let's talk about who that is. Who were the other names who were writing Black romance? And they certainly, they weren't writing historical. You were the -
Beverly Jenkins 17:19 / #
No. Anita Richmond Bunkley had written Black Gold, which was not really a romance more like women's fiction, but it was historical, about a woman in an oil field family in Texas. And she had also written Emily...Emily The Rose. It's about a free Black woman in Texas in the 1820s and 1830s and her journey, and it wasn't a romance either. I mean, there was rape and -
Sarah MacLean 17:46 / #
Emily, The Yellow Rose.
Beverly Jenkins 17:48 / #
There you go. Okay. Yeah, yeah. We don't talk too much, we don't talk very much about Anita very much. In fact, I've neglected to talk about her for years. You know, I was going through some stuff last night, just so I could be prepared for this, and came across a bunch of stuff I was like, "Oh man, I forgot about this! I forgot about that! I forgot this!" Anyway, nobody was writing historical romance. So they're looking for a book, slavery. That's the box. So here I come with a story with a Buffalo Soldier and an overly educated school teacher in a free Black town, on the plains of Kansas, 1879, and they're like, "What the hell is this? What are we supposed to do with this? We don't know what to do." So, I do remember one editor at - I don't know what house she was at, but she sent me a very, very encouraging letter. And she said she really, really wanted and she was just, I think she's like an executive editor now and she was just a baby, baby assistant back then. And she said, she really, really, really wanted to publish this. She said that she could not convince the higher ups to take it. You know? And like I said, I didn't care! You know, I was working at a library in the morning. You know, hey! Hello! Then came, I guess, the news and I didn't know anything about this, that Walter Zacharias was going to be putting out the Arabesque line.
Jennifer Prokop 19:22 / #
Oh, sure.
Beverly Jenkins 19:23 / #
And it was my understanding that Avon didn't want to get left behind because you know they were the number one publisher of romance back then and you couldn't find anybody. So Ellen Edwards, who used to be Vivian's assistant back when Vivian was working in that closet, you know with the candle lights, called her and said, "Do you have anybody? Do you know anybody?" And she said, "Well I just happen to know this little lady in Michigan." And so she called me on June 3, 1993. I told the story about my husband and I having this hell of a fight that day. I don't, like I said I don't know what we were fighting about, something stupid probably, and the phone rang, and it was Ellen, and she said she wanted to buy my book. So of course, I stopped the fight. [laughter]
Sarah MacLean 20:17 / #
Some things are important. [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 20:19 / #
Oh yeah! You know, he was like, "I guess I got to take your little ass to dinner." "Yes, you better take my ass to dinner!" [More laughter] So they kept sending me contracts.
Sarah MacLean 20:29 / #
This was 1993.
Beverly Jenkins 20:31 / #
This is 1993 and the book came out in '94. Summer of Black Love is what we called it, because that was also the summer that Arabesque released their first four or five, and so, on you know, on the road from there.
Jennifer Prokop 20:48 / #
So once you sold Night Song, did you immediately start working? I mean at that point how did you start to balance the idea of I have my dream job, but now I also have a writing job?
Beverly Jenkins 21:02 / #
Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. It was all - [she laughs]
Sarah MacLean 21:06 / #
Feels very real. [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 21:09 / #
I had no idea what the hell I was doing because I had the writing. I had the job. I had the kids. I had the hats that I was wearing in the community. The hats I was wearing at church. I had a Brownie troop. [laughter] You know and because I was a stay-at-home mom, you know, after we adopted Jonathan, my son, early on too in the career, so as a stay-at-home mom, so then I'm doing field trips and I'm doing snow cones on Friday at school and you know, all of this stuff. The kids are in the band. And luckily, all praises to my late Hubby, because that first deadline, Ellen sent me a 14 page revision letter.
Sarah MacLean 21:58 / #
On Night Song.
Beverly Jenkins 21:59 / #
Yeah. 'Cause it was bad. She was like "Bev, -"
Beverly Jenkins 22:03 / #
"We love the love scenes. We need a story." [laughter] I was like, "Yeah, you need a story. Really?"
Sarah MacLean 22:12 / #
I just want to say something about Ellen Edwards because we have sort of danced around her in the past on Fated Mates, but you are the first of her authors who we've had on. She was editing in the heyday of the '90s authors.
Beverly Jenkins 22:28 / #
She was amazing!
Sarah MacLean 22:29 / #
At Harper. She edited, for our listeners, she edited Lisa Kleypas' Dreaming of You. She edited -
Beverly Jenkins 22:35 / #
She was amazing.
Sarah MacLean 22:37 / #
Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels. She edited you.
Jennifer Prokop 22:41 / #
Wow. I mean that's amazing.
Sarah MacLean 22:42 / #
This woman was, SHE was building romance too.
Beverly Jenkins 22:46 / #
Right, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 22:47 / #
And really setting -
Beverly Jenkins 22:48 / #
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 22:49 / #
A lot of things in play. So what, so talk about that a little bit. What was the feeling like right around then?
Beverly Jenkins 22:55 / #
You know it was interesting because she taught me how to write commercial fiction. I will always be grateful for her, because of, and we had some, we had some bumps.
Beverly Jenkins 23:12 / #
We had some bumps and she's the reason I'm here. She taught me the differences in writing a romp as opposed to a period piece to - she was absolutely amazing! And when she left, her assistant, Christine Zika was amazing, 'cause Christine edited Vivid, and she edited Indigo.
Jennifer Prokop 23:39 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 23:41 / #
Will always be grateful to her for those two. So I guess I was doing okay, they kept offering me contracts.
Sarah MacLean 23:48 / #
You were doing great. [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 23:50 / #
You know, wasn't a whole lot of money and wasn't making a lot of money, but the idea that I was out in the marketplace, the African American readers were just over the moon. Some of the stories they told me of going in the bookstore and seeing Night Song, and you know, the first thing they did was run to, flip to the back to make sure it was written by a Black woman, and one woman said she sat in the bookstore right there on the floor, and started reading.
Sarah MacLean 24:22 / #
That's amazing.
Beverly Jenkins 24:23 / #
You know.
Sarah MacLean 24:24 / #
Well these also, the cover, it had that original cover? That burnt orange cover with the clinch on it.
Beverly Jenkins 24:30 / #
Mmmhmm. Right, yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 24:31 / #
Oh, it's so good.
Sarah MacLean 24:31 / #
I mean, it's such a beautiful cover.
Beverly Jenkins 24:34 / #
Tom, Tom Egner gave me just, you know, always grateful to him. He gave me some just fabulous, fabulous covers. And you know, a lot of times I would win Cover of the Year and all of that and I always sent the awards to him.
Jennifer Prokop 24:52 / #
Oh, that's nice.
Sarah MacLean 24:52 / #
What a decent person.
Beverly Jenkins 24:55 / #
And he said, "Nobody's ever done this before." I said, "Well, I didn't do the cover. You did!" [laughter] "So put it on your, on your whatever." You know.
Sarah MacLean 25:03 / #
For those of you listening, Tom Egner was the head of the art department at Avon. He basically designed all those clinch covers.
Beverly Jenkins 25:11 / #
I know. He was amazing. I miss him a lot. But then Avon's always got great art, you know, so, but I do miss him. So yeah, so then we got the People magazine spread, right after Night Song. I think it was in February of - book came out in '94. The spread, five pages!
Beverly Jenkins 25:33 / #
In People Magazine in February '95 and -
Sarah MacLean 25:38 / #
And what was that? About you?
Beverly Jenkins 25:40 / #
It's about the book and me, and you know, pictures of my husband, and pictures of my kitchen, and all of that. And the lady who did the article, her name was Nancy Drew. That was her real name.
Jennifer Prokop 25:51 / #
Amazing.
Beverly Jenkins 25:52 / #
And I got calls from people all over the country, "I opened my People magazine and there you were!" [laughter] And I'm like, "Yes! It is me! It is I!" You know, "I have arrived!" Umm, but very, very heady days, in the beginning.
Sarah MacLean 26:09 / #
Yeah. When did you know that romance was a huge thing and that you were making waves? I guess that's two questions. [Ms. Bev gives a throaty laugh] So -
Beverly Jenkins 26:22 / #
Yeah, it is, you know, and I have girlfriends who told me that I really don't know how influential I have been. You know, I'm just writin'. I'm just trying to tell the stories that I would have loved to have read as a teen or a young woman in my 20s or even my 30s. But I don't...I'm still amazed that people are buying my books! My mom used to tell me, she said, "Well, that's a good thing!" You know, so that you're not jaded or whatever and entitled, and all of that. I'm still amazed.
Sarah MacLean 27:00 / #
Did you feel, at the time, something was happening in the world though? Did it feel like - or was it just sort of, you know, life?
Beverly Jenkins 27:09 / #
It was just sort of life! I mean, yeah, you know, we were changing, in the sense that you had more Black women writing. Brenda and Donna Hill and Shirley Hailstock and -
Jennifer Prokop 27:22 / #
Now did that feel like it was because of Arabesque? Was it just sort of an explosion? Or -
Beverly Jenkins 27:29 / #
I think it was Arabesque.
Jennifer Prokop 27:31 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 27:32 / #
Because they were doing Contemporaries and these Black women were eating those books up.
Sarah MacLean 27:36 / #
Mmmhmm.
Jennifer Prokop 27:36 / #
Sure.
Beverly Jenkins 27:37 / #
And plus they had a great editor in Monica -
Sarah MacLean 27:41 / #
Monica Harris?
Beverly Jenkins 27:42 / #
Monica Harris. Yes, and she was just an amazing editor for those women. Rosie's Curl and Weave. She edited those anthologies, and they all absolutely loved her. Just loved her. So it was, it was sort of like an explosion.
Sarah MacLean 28:00 / #
But on the historical side, it was just you.
Jennifer Prokop 28:04 / #
Still just you.
Sarah MacLean 28:04 / #
There was no one else.
Beverly Jenkins 28:06 / #
It was just me and then the two books by Patricia Vaughn.
Beverly Jenkins 28:11 / #
Murmur Rain and I don't remember what the second title was. Gay Gunn had done Nowhere to Run, or was it nowhere to hide? Nowhere to Run. So, you know, Martha and the Vandellas. [laughter]
Sarah MacLean 28:23 / #
So at this point, who is your - whenever we talk to people who came up through the 90s in romance, there is such a discussion of community. Who you turn to as your group?
Jennifer Prokop 28:36 / #
Your people.
Sarah MacLean 28:39 / #
Who was that for you at this point?
Beverly Jenkins 28:42 / #
The readers.
Sarah MacLean 28:44 / #
Talk a little about your readers.
Beverly Jenkins 28:46 / #
It was the readers. I mean, all this fan mail I was getting and then we had two young women here who wanted to start the Beverly Jenkins Fan Club.
Sarah MacLean 28:54 / #
Amazing.
Beverly Jenkins 28:56 / #
Gloria Walker and Ava Williams and so they were, you know it was all snail mail back then. So they were sending out applications and they were sending out membership cards and newsletters and all of that. I was doing a lot of local touring, a lot of local schools and stuff, and so when I told them that I wanted to have a pajama party, they sort of looked at me like, really? [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 29:24 / #
What was the first year that you did that? Do you remember?
Beverly Jenkins 29:28 / #
Ahhhh, shoot - maybe '99? Maybe '97?
Jennifer Prokop 29:33 / #
So, a long time.
Beverly Jenkins 29:34 / #
It's been awhile, yeah, but Brenda and I would switch off years. I would do the pajama party one year and then she'd do her cruise the next year, but we sent out letters, because like I said, there was no computers back then, at least that I was using.
Jennifer Prokop 29:51 / #
Right.
Beverly Jenkins 29:52 / #
And 75 women showed up, from all over the country.
Sarah MacLean 29:55 / #
Amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 29:56 / #
It is amazing.
Beverly Jenkins 29:57 / #
And we had a hell of a time! And we talked books and my husband came, because you know, these were, "his women" he called them. [laughter] They loved him, he loved them. These women, Saturday night, when it was time to go home, everybody cried. We had formed this sisterhood, "a sistership" as we call it, and nobody wanted to go home. So we started doing it every two years. They were my, they were my bottom women. You know in the pimp world, your bottom woman is your original hoe, right? [laughter] And she's the one that keeps everything together and all of that, when he starts bringing in new women. So they were my foundation and a lot of them, most of them, are still with me today. So in the meantime, you know, online is growing.
Beverly Jenkins 30:52 / #
And people are telling me, "You need to be online" and I'm like, "No, I don't." [laughter] I don't need to be online.
Sarah MacLean 30:59 / #
I have my pajama party ladies.
Beverly Jenkins 31:01 / #
I have my pajama party ladies.
Jennifer Prokop 31:02 / #
I don't need a TikTok.
Beverly Jenkins 31:03 / #
Don't need a TikTok, don't need a 'gram. [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 31:08 / #
This was even before social media. This would have been more like a web page or -
Beverly Jenkins 31:12 / #
Yeah, and it was a, we started with a -
Sarah MacLean 31:15 / #
A blog.
Beverly Jenkins 31:17 / #
No, we started with a Yahoo group.
Sarah MacLean 31:18 / #
Oh, sure!
Jennifer Prokop 31:19 / #
Sure. Okay, that makes sense.
Beverly Jenkins 31:21 / #
So little did I know that there were other Black women reading groups online, and one of them was, and I cannot remember what the real name was, but they called themselves The Hotties because they read hot stuff. And this was a group that was connected to Gwen Osborne and Gwen is sort of like the griot of Black romance. She was one of the early reviewers for The Romance Reader. She knows where all the bodies are buried. [laughter] We sort of combined her group and my group, and that's when we started doing the traveling, going to all these different places and all that for African American history kinds of stuff and books! So it, you know, so I'm trying to build my own little empire, because I'm not getting a whole lot of support from my publisher. I mean, I guess they were just, one of the young editors said, "Well, they just like the cachet of having you." So I'm like okay, well I can handle that. I'm still gonna go out, do my thing and all of that, but (she sighs) then after my husband passed away in '03, I met Adrienne di Pietro, and she was the marketing director for Avon and we were at one of those Avon dinners in Dallas.
Sarah MacLean 32:46 / #
Those famous dinners.
Beverly Jenkins 32:48 / #
Mmmhmm! She and I were outside smoking. I didn't know who she was, she didn't know who I was. So we hit it off really well and we got to talking, and when we got home, about a week later, I got a call from her and she said, "You know what? I have looked at your file - " she said, "and we have not done a damn thing for you." She said this is getting ready to change. And it did. 'Cause I got a lot of support in the beginning, the first couple of years.
Jennifer Prokop 33:19 / #
People Magazine.
Sarah MacLean 33:20 / #
Five pages in People.
Beverly Jenkins 33:21 / #
Yeah, right, you know, and then nothing. I think too, I tell people, I said, "You know what? When my husband passed away, you know, it's like God says "Alright, I've taken something very, very precious from you. So how about try this as a replacement?"" And my career took off. So I don't know if it was the Spirit or I don't know. Whatever. Everything in its own time and place is also how I deal with it. So Adrienne just started pushing to want a lot more for me. I mean, she sent me a box of bookmarks that had to have 20,000 bookmarks in it. What am I going to do with these? [laughter] I still have half of that box somewhere in the house.
Sarah MacLean 34:04 / #
[Laughing] Oh my god! Bookmarks! Remember bookmarks?
Beverly Jenkins 34:07 / #
Oh God, girl, oh no, Lord have mercy. But she was amazing, and I was very, very sad when she was let go.
Sarah MacLean 34:17 / #
I only knew her - she was let go almost immediately after I started at Avon.
Beverly Jenkins 34:21 / #
Yeah, she was amazing as a marketing director.
Jennifer Prokop 34:25 / #
At this point, with the big RWA implosion, there was a lot of talk about how Borders in particular, which is a Michigan -
Beverly Jenkins 34:37 / #
Right.
Jennifer Prokop 34:37 / #
Didn't buy Black romance. So how aware were you of the impediments at the bookstore level?
Beverly Jenkins 34:47 / #
I didn't have that issue.
Jennifer Prokop 34:49 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 34:50 / #
Because I knew the people. Borders did my books for my pajama parties.
Jennifer Prokop 34:55 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 34:55 / #
Okay. In fact, one of the ladies, Kelly, who was supervising that, she and I are still friends. She's out on the coast doing something with books somewhere, but Barnes and Noble I had issues with.
Jennifer Prokop 35:11 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 35:12 / #
Still do. But Waldenbooks, Borders, you know and that whole thing with Borders and the Black section of the bookstore started at one of the stores near me, and the store was run by a Black woman. And this was at the height of the hip hop stuff, the urban stories. And from what I heard, she said the kids didn't know how to use a bookstore. And they would come in and they would ask for, you know, their favorite titles, and she would have to have her people, take them by the hand and show them where the spot was. And she got tired of it. So she put them all in one spot, so all she had to do was say, "Over there." Her sales went through the roof. Corporate, doing nothing but looking at the bottom line instead of the purpose behind it -
Jennifer Prokop 36:01 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 36:01 / #
Said, "Okay, let's put all the Black books in one spot."
Sarah MacLean 36:04 / #
Everywhere.
Jennifer Prokop 36:05 / #
It worked here.
Beverly Jenkins 36:06 / #
So now we've got this, you know, Jim Crow kind of section in bookstores. I had a reader tell me one time she said, "Miss Bev, I found your books in men's health." [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 36:22 / #
Good for them. That's where it should be. Leave those books there. [laughter]
They should really be put together. Romance and men's health. [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 36:31 / #
Yeah, I mean, Brenda and I, and the early Arabesque women were always shelved with romance. We were never not shelved with romance. Only in the last, whatever, 20 years or so, and it's such a disadvantage for the young women of color who are coming up to not be in the romance section, because it cuts down on discoverability.
Jennifer Prokop 36:56 / #
Of course.
Beverly Jenkins 36:57 / #
I would be nuts if that was happening to me right now. But luckily for me, because you know, people didn't know any better back then, I was in romance. I was in historicals. I was in African American fiction. I was in men's health. [laughter] I was all over the store, which was great, and then my readers were fierce about making sure the books were available. I would get emails and Facebook messages from women who said, "Well, I went to, you know, five different stores in LA and your book's not there." or, "I made them go in the back and get the box out and put your books out." [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 37:42 / #
Amazing.
Beverly Jenkins 37:43 / #
So you know, they were amazing. And then my mother! Bless her heart! She'd go into a bookstore and just move books around.
Sarah MacLean 37:51 / #
That's what mothers are for, no?
Beverly Jenkins 37:53 / #
Right! Exactly! Right. You know, she said, "I had to run out!" We lost her two years ago. She would carry around one of those little bitty spiral notebooks, purse size and it'd have all my books, every page had all my books on it. And she'd go to the mall, and she'd just hand it out to people. "This is my daughter's books! This is my daughter's books!" She was marketing when I had no marketing. She was director of marketing back then. [laughter] I remember her saying one time she was in Target, and you know, I had to tell her, "Mom, they were alphabetical." She said, "I don't care. Your books are on the bottom." And she said, "and I looked up in the camera was on me!" She said ,"and I ran out of the store!" [laughter] I don't think they're gonna put you in jail.
Sarah MacLean 38:36 / #
For re-aarranging shelves!
Beverly Jenkins 38:38 / #
For moving books around.
Sarah MacLean 38:40 / #
So there obviously has been a shift from when you started in 1993 'til now in romance. There have been tons of shifts, seismic shifts, I feel like romance moves so quickly.
Beverly Jenkins 38:53 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 38:53 / #
Can you speak to the way that you have seen the genre shift over time? You know, both as a writer and as a person who knows a lot about romance.
Beverly Jenkins 39:05 / #
Yeah. First we had the hardware shift from cut and paste and Wite-out and all that to computers and Scrivener and Google and, you know, I had to use libraries, of course, when I did my first book.
Jennifer Prokop 39:24 / #
Sure. For research.
Beverly Jenkins 39:26 / #
Yeah, 'cause none of the Master Goo, Mr. Google, Aunt Google, whatever people are calling her today, was not available back then. So that's been a seismic shift. The model is no longer blond and blue eyed and a size five. Everybody gets to have a HEA now no matter who you are, how you identify, who you love, because love is love. And that's been an amazing thing. Books are no longer rapey!
Jennifer Prokop 40:01 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 40:03 / #
You know, which was a big issue back in the day. A lot of women didn't want to read romance. "Oh, they're rapey!" "Well, yeah." "But it's not really rape." "Yes, it is." That's changed. We're now all about consent and consent is sexy! And then, you know, but we have fewer houses, too!
Beverly Jenkins 40:26 / #
When I started out, God, it had to be like 25 different houses. Now we got what? Four? Three?
Beverly Jenkins 40:33 / #
One maybe? Coming up?
Sarah MacLean 40:34 / #
Fewer and fewer it feels like every day.
Beverly Jenkins 40:36 / #
I know, it's such an incestuous business you know. They're eating their young all over the place.
Sarah MacLean 40:42 / #
What about book selling? What about stores? And discoverability?
Beverly Jenkins 40:47 / #
There are fewer stores. You don't have, we don't have book signings like we used to. Yeah, where people would be lined up outside for books and for autographs, and all that. And what I was going to say, is the biggest seismic shift for me, has been the rise of indie writers.
Sarah MacLean 41:08 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 41:09 / #
Their refusal to be told "no." Their bravery and stepping out there on faith and saying, "My story has value." I don't think romance would have opened up the way it has in the last 10 years without them.
Jennifer Prokop 41:26 / #
Agree. Absolutely.
Beverly Jenkins 41:28 / #
I take my hat off to them because they were like, "Fuck this! You don't want my stuff? Fine!" And now publishing, realizing how much money they've been leaving on the table. They're still not on board all the way, but now they're saying, "Oh, well you were successful over there. So how about you come play with us now?" And the ladies are saying, "Sure, but I'm not giving up my independent and I'm still gonna do, you know, I'm still gonna do hybrid."
Sarah MacLean 41:57 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 41:58 / #
And they learned the format, and they learned the marketing, and they learned the distribution, how to do the data and looked at the metadata. I'm just amazed, and, you know, I bow to them for - 'cause they changed the industry.
Sarah MacLean 42:14 / #
Mmmhmm.
Beverly Jenkins 42:14 / #
They changed the industry. So those are some of the seismic changes that I have seen.
Jennifer Prokop 42:20 / #
Do you think your relationships with fans are different because of social media? I mean, you've always had such a strong fan base that you built.
Beverly Jenkins 42:29 / #
I don't think it's changed. I think it's expanded my -
Jennifer Prokop 42:33 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 42:34 / #
My base, because you know how much I love Twitter. [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 42:40 / #
Same.
Beverly Jenkins 42:43 / #
I think it's given me access to more readers who are like, "Oh! She's not a scary Black woman! Let me read her books." You know, and then they realized, "Oh, these are some good ass books! So let me buy more!" I think my readership has probably expanded a good 35%.
Sarah MacLean 43:03 / #
Oh, wow.
Beverly Jenkins 43:03 / #
Just from from social media. And you know, and I know it's a cliche, but I always tell my fans, when I count my blessings, I count them twice. Because they have been - I wouldn't be here without them! Books are expensive!
Jennifer Prokop 43:22 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 43:23 / #
And they're taking their hard earned money and they're buying me or going to the library and borrowing me when they can be using that money for something else. So I'm very, very grateful, and that's one of the things that I always tell new writers and aspiring writers is to, "treat your readers like they're the gold that they are" because they are gold. So, but yeah, I never met a, never met a stranger! So you know, I'm loving the love that I get from social media. People keep telling me I need to be on Instagram, and I'm like, my editor would slap me if I was on another [laughter] social platform.
Jennifer Prokop 44:05 / #
Write the book.
Beverly Jenkins 44:05 / #
Right, right.
Sarah MacLean 44:07 / #
So now I do want to talk about, I'm bouncing back a little to your career, but you moved from, you didn't move, you added contemporaries, at some point along the way.
Beverly Jenkins 44:19 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 44:20 / #
And sweeter romance. So can you talk about that choice? The choice to sort of expand? You write a lot of books!
Beverly Jenkins 44:29 / #
They asked me! Erica asked me if I had any contemporaries.
Sarah MacLean 44:34 / #
That's Erica Tsang, everybody. The editorial director of Avon books.
Beverly Jenkins 44:38 / #
Yeah, she is awesome. She's been my editor since she was 12. [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 44:44 / #
Doogie Howser, editor M.D.
Beverly Jenkins 44:48 / #
I always say "you never say no."
Beverly Jenkins 44:51 / #
You know, you never say no. So basically, what I gave her was (The) Edge of Midnight, but it was my first manuscript that I sent to Avon, in probably the late '80s?
Sarah MacLean 45:07 / #
Oh! Wait now, see? This is a new piece of the story!
Beverly Jenkins 45:11 / #
Yeah, this was my contemporary. It was so bad. [laughter] God! You know, I tell people, I said, "That book was so bad, that the rejection letter almost beat me home from the post office." [laughter] That's how bad it was. It was awful, but I put it away.
Sarah MacLean 45:31 / #
Wait! I'm sorry I have to stop. I have to put a pause on this. So you did write a contemporary?
Beverly Jenkins 45:36 / #
Mmmhmm.
Sarah MacLean 45:37 / #
While you were, was this simultaneous to writing Night Song? Like were you writing them at the same time?
Beverly Jenkins 45:41 / #
Mmmhmm.
Sarah MacLean 45:42 / #
And so, so why did you write a contemporary? Was that because that was what romance was?
Beverly Jenkins 45:49 / #
That's - because the stories started coming.
Sarah MacLean 45:52 / #
That's what it was for you.
Jennifer Prokop 45:53 / #
Yeah, right.
Beverly Jenkins 45:54 / #
The stories started coming. So I put it away, and then when she asked if I had a contemporary, I brought this very, very bad manuscript out again, and I looked at it, and I realized what it was. The reason it was so bad, was number one was I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know how to write. And number two, the characters were the descendants of Hester and Galen from Indigo.
Sarah MacLean 46:25 / #
Aaahhhhh.
Beverly Jenkins 46:25 / #
So that book could not have been published until after Indigo was written. So I went in, I cleaned it up, now that I know how to write, right? You're like -
Jennifer Prokop 46:37 / #
Sure. You've learned how to write commercial fiction now.
Beverly Jenkins 46:40 / #
Right. Right. You know, it's like 14 books in, I know what I'm doing now. I guess. And I realized, like I said, who the characters were. So that kicked off the, I think the five, the five romantic suspenses that I had. So it's (The) Edge of Midnight, (The) Edge of Dawn, Black Lace, and then the two Blake sisters, Deadly Sexy and Sexy/Dangerous. And then I did, I don't know how many, six or seven little novellas for Kimani in the middle of all of this. And then I realized, you need to take a step back, 'cause you are wearing yourself out writing all - 'cause I was doing like, you know, two big books and a novella, or and two novellas a year. So doing four books a year and I was no longer a spring chicken. So I had to put those away for a while. So the characters in my Avon romantic suspense, are descendants of my historical characters. And then the YA was something else that they asked me to do. I think there were five or six of us that they asked. We did two apiece. So I did Belle (and the Beau) and I did Josephine (and the Soldier). I think it was Meg Cabot and Lorraine Heath, and I'm not sure who the other ladies were.
Jennifer Prokop 48:11 / #
And then when did the Blessings series? Was that something you wanted to do? Or something they suggested?
Beverly Jenkins 48:18 / #
[She laughs] Nancy sold the series without telling me.
Sarah MacLean 48:20 / #
[Gasp] Oh, Nancy! What are you doing?
Beverly Jenkins 48:29 / #
She had been on me for years about writing a small town series. And I'm like -
Sarah MacLean 48:36 / #
Well, let's be honest. For a long time it felt like small town was where the money was in romance. If you could pull off the big small town where lots of people, there's just always a cupcake shop and a veterinarian.
Beverly Jenkins 48:49 / #
I know. I know, but I didn't want to do that.
Sarah MacLean 48:52 / #
Nancy was like "Beverly, you like money." [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 48:55 / #
Well, I do. I do, but I was content to continue to write these award winning African American historicals, right?
Beverly Jenkins 49:06 / #
So after Mark passed away, I was up north was his mom, and got a call from Nancy on my cell phone. She never called me on my cell phone. In fact, I didn't think she had a cell phone back then. And she said, I was like I thought somebody had died! You know, I'm like Oh God, is Erica okay? You know, that kind of thing. And she said, "Well, I sold the series." I'm like, "what are you talking about?"
Sarah MacLean 49:34 / #
What series?
Beverly Jenkins 49:36 / #
Exactly. She said, "Remember that small town series I've been trying to get you to write?" And I'm like, "Yes." [laughter] She said, "Well..." I (Ms. Bev laughs) I love Nancy to death. She's just, she's so in charge of me and I really need somebody to be in charge of me and she is just THE best. She said, "Well, I sold, they only want a paragraph. Here's the money."
Sarah MacLean 50:01 / #
Since then [laughing] 25 books.
Beverly Jenkins 50:03 / #
Right. They only want a paragraph to get it started and here's the money. And I'm like okay, well, I guess I'm writing a small town series.
Jennifer Prokop 50:12 / #
Well, and it's how many books now? I mean, 12 or - ?
Beverly Jenkins 50:15 / #
Ten. I'm at ten.
Sarah MacLean 50:15 / #
And a television show in progress, I mean.
Beverly Jenkins 50:18 / #
If Al Roker would, you know, get it together and call us [laughter] maybe we could figure out what we're doing, but -
Sarah MacLean 50:25 / #
I mean, that's an interesting piece too, Bev, because you started publishing in the early '90s, which felt like a real time in romance and now you are thriving in this new - it feels like we're in another new time in a lot of ways.
Beverly Jenkins 50:40 / #
Yeah. We're in a different era now.
Sarah MacLean 50:42 / #
You have a film that is complete and out and everybody can watch now.
Beverly Jenkins 50:47 / #
Yep, yep. Iris, bless her heart, she did such a great job and she made that movie with safety pins and rubber bands.
Jennifer Prokop 50:57 / #
And a very handsome man.
Beverly Jenkins 50:58 / #
Oh yeah. Travis is pretty good, easy on the eyes!
Sarah MacLean 51:02 / #
And then you have Forbidden.
Beverly Jenkins 51:04 / #
Then I had the Sony thing. We sort of got a green light and then the damndemic hit and the people who had been so gung-ho about it scattered. Yeah, we're now back out on the block again, looking for a home. And then Al Roker's, I didn't even know he had an entertainment arm. Frankly, I had no idea. My girlfriends are like, "Well, didn't you ever see the Holly Robinson Peete stuff on - " I'm like, "No. I don't watch Hallmark." [laughter] So you know, back then Black people didn't have Christmas on Hallmark. You know, no brown people and Black people did not have Christmas on Hallmark or Lifetime. So why would I watch that? Umm. Sorry.
Sarah MacLean 51:48 / #
No, it's real.
Beverly Jenkins 51:50 / #
It is what it is, you know. So, but now things have changed, which is awesome. Supposedly they're in talks with Hallmark. I'm not, you know, we're still waiting to see what is really going on, but if that is the case, I'm pretty, pretty excited and all that. So we'll see, hopefully soon, what we can talk about is going to happen. So.
Sarah MacLean 52:14 / #
Can we talk a little bit about legacy? I know that you still think about, you're still surprised people buy your books but - [laughter]
Beverly Jenkins 52:24 / #
I am! I am!
Jennifer Prokop 52:25 / #
We're not.
Beverly Jenkins 52:26 / #
Are they gonna throw tomatoes at me this time? [laughter]
Sarah MacLean 52:30 / #
I mean I'm really curious, I'm curious about a couple of things. I'm curious about, one of the questions that Jen and I, we've sort of been dancing around this. What's the question, the really, the best question to ask? So we have a few.
Beverly Jenkins 52:42 / #
Okay.
Sarah MacLean 52:42 / #
The first, the one that sort of came to me this week, is when did you know you could do this thing? When did you feel like I'm a writer? I can do it. This is my - I feel good about it.
Beverly Jenkins 52:56 / #
After I survived the first deadline.
Jennifer Prokop 52:59 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 53:01 / #
14 pages of revision.
Sarah MacLean 53:04 / #
Wite-out and tape.
Beverly Jenkins 53:04 / #
That they wanted in 35 days. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I did it. Hubby did all the cooking. He did all the, you know, grabbing the kids from school. He did all of the mom stuff. Fed me. And after that first book, and then when I saw it in the stores! One of the best things about that first book was that some of my elementary school teachers were still alive, and they were at those first signings, when I did signings in Detroit, and they just wept. They just wept. Because, you know, my mom always saw me, my momma always said, "You know, you're gonna be somebody special." And the teachers dealt with me that way. They put me on a stage in the fourth grade, and I've been on stage ever since. [laughter] Never, never met a microphone I did not like. [laughter] But the idea that they were there to see my success meant a lot. So I don't know, you know, legacy, girl... I don't know. I think your legacy should be written by somebody else, not yourself. I think the readers could probably tell you what the books mean to them more than than I can. I just like the idea of writing it and elevating our history and poking holes in the stereotypes, like you would do with a pen and a balloon. And always, always portraying the race in a positive way. So I don't know, is that a legacy? [laughs]
Sarah MacLean 54:35 / #
I think so.
Beverly Jenkins 54:37 / #
Standing on the shoulders of the actual historians who, are actual historians, and not kitchen table historians like me. [laughter] I owe a lot of people a lot for where I am today.
Jennifer Prokop 54:52 / #
I don't think there's ever been a time, Bev, when you and I have talked or when I've heard you speak where you haven't named the names of the people who have been a part of it.
Beverly Jenkins 55:02 / #
You know, it's so important because, you know, I didn't just show up and show out. [laughter] You know, this was - I've been a project all my life. My mother pouring stuff into me. My dad pouring stuff in me. My aunts who taught me style, wit and grace, pouring stuff into me. My teachers, people in my neighborhood, my church, my siblings. We all just don't start out as the sun, you know, issuing, gotta wait for the Earth to cool and all of that kind of stuff, so.
Jennifer Prokop 55:41 / #
When you think about your body of work, what do you think of as being the hallmarks of a Beverly Jenkins novel?
Beverly Jenkins 55:53 / #
Entertainment. Education. Heroines who know who they are, and the men who love them madly. I like the banter. I like that they all have the three gifts that I've talked about with Dorothy Sterling and the sense that they all work. They all have a commitment to community and they all in different ways push the envelope on gender and race. And they're fun!
Jennifer Prokop 56:22 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 56:23 / #
You know, they're inspiring to many people. They're uplifting. My stories center dark-skinned Black women in ways that have never been centered before. I'm just a little Black girl from the east side of Detroit trying to write a story [laughs] that I can be proud of and that those who read it can be proud of.
Sarah MacLean 56:45 / #
Do you feel like there was a book that turned the tide for you in terms of readership?
Beverly Jenkins 56:51 / #
I think my books are being discovered every day, which is an amazing kind of thing. Indigo, of course. Everybody talks about Indigo. And then we had a whole group of people with the Blessings series. That's a whole different group of folks. And then the YA, because there's nothing for young women that's historical that way, and in fact, I got lots of - this is why I had to add an extra chapter when we did the re-publishing. The girls wanted to know did they get married? [laughter]
Jennifer Prokop 57:25 / #
Sure.
Beverly Jenkins 57:27 / #
So I added the weddings.
Sarah MacLean 57:29 / #
Oh my gosh. What a gift!
Jennifer Prokop 57:32 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 57:32 / #
At the end of each book, and I got a lot of letters from the moms that were saying that she wanted her daughters or daughter, however many, to know that this is how they should be treated by a young man. Old school. I mean, so okay, so we got milestones. We've got Night Song, which is first, and then we've got the YA, and then we've got (The) Edge of Midnight, because that was my first -
Sarah MacLean 57:59 / #
Contemporary.
Beverly Jenkins 58:00 / #
And then from that very, very awful manuscript to my first romantic suspense, to the Blessings. So what is that? Four or five different milestones?
Jennifer Prokop 58:13 / #
So we talked a little bit about your covers.
Beverly Jenkins 58:16 / #
Mmmhmm.
Jennifer Prokop 58:16 / #
Okay, I have to ask about Night Hawk because it's hot. I mean, [laughter] I mean, look, I'm a simple woman.
Beverly Jenkins 58:26 / #
Hey, I'm with you.
Jennifer Prokop 58:27 / #
I don't know the order, because I my brain is full. Night Hawk is, I mean, obviously he's so handsome, but it's not a clinch cover.
Beverly Jenkins 58:36 / #
Nope.
Jennifer Prokop 58:37 / #
Right. So is that something you asked for, or is that something where they gifted you this present?
Beverly Jenkins 58:43 / #
Tom did that on his own.
Jennifer Prokop 58:46 / #
Okay. Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 58:47 / #
He sent it to me, and I tell the story, I was on deadline. I booted up the laptop and that was the first thing I saw.
Jennifer Prokop 58:58 / #
Okay.
Beverly Jenkins 58:58 / #
And it was just the picture. It didn't have any of the printing on it. There's no letters, just this very hot guy, and I went, "Oh hell, that'll wake a sister up!"
Sarah MacLean 59:08 / #
Yes, please.
Beverly Jenkins 59:10 / #
Yes, more please! Then I put him on the, because I was like okay, the ladies gotta see this. So I put it on the Facebook page and they went insane. [laughter] I told them around noon, "Okay, I'm taking him down now, so he can get a towel from y'all slobbering all over him and licking him everywhere and all of that. Right?" So then I got a request, a Facebook friend request from him. I don't remember his name now, it's been -
Jennifer Prokop 59:40 / #
Oh, the model.
Beverly Jenkins 59:41 / #
Yeah. It's like I said my head's full, just like yours is full. But yeah, no, that was you know, that was Tom's gift.
Jennifer Prokop 59:51 / #
Okay.
Sarah MacLean 59:51 / #
Tom. Tom knew.
Jennifer Prokop 59:53 / #
Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins 59:54 / #
And then it's, and that whole thing with Preacher is so interesting because if you read his Introduction to his character in (The Taming of) Jessi Rose, he's very underwhelming. Very underwhelming.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:08 / #
He just wasn't ready yet.
Beverly Jenkins 1:00:09 / #
I know and the women were like, "Preacher! Preacher! Preacher!" and some of my girlfriends were like, "Why in the hell do they want a book with him?"
Sarah MacLean 1:00:15 / #
But isn't that amazing? Romance readers, they just, they know. They know.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:20 / #
We know.
So I had to give him a makeover [laughter] in order to make him, you know, Jenkins worthy or whatever, but I always, that always tickles me because, he was not, he was just a bounty hunter. He wasn't even -
Listen, romance. Just a bounty hunter. Come on.
Beverly Jenkins 1:00:40 / #
I know. I know. I know.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:42 / #
Well and that's it. It's interesting and that was, let me look, I'm going to look here, 2010, oh, 2011.
Beverly Jenkins 1:00:50 / #
Okay. Okay.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:51 / #
Okay, so I mean, and that's the thing to me, it feels like, but he really is the star of that book. You know what I mean?
Beverly Jenkins 1:00:59 / #
He is the star of that book.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:59 / #
Right. He's such a fascinating character.
Beverly Jenkins 1:01:02 / #
Yeah, he's the star of that book, and then Maggie. I met the real Maggie. I was in Omaha, Nebraska for a book signing, and this young woman came up to me, and she was in tears. She was Native and Black. And she said, nobody's writing for me, but me. Nobody's writing for her but me and we really, really had a nice bonding kind of moment. This was before I wrote the book. So when we decided to do Preacher's book, I named the character Maggie. That was her name, Maggie Chandler Smith, and gave Maggie the real Maggie's ethnicity. So she does exist. Somebody told me this, "Oh, Ms. Bev, you know, all your characters really existed in life sometime." I'm like, okay, that's kind of scary, but Maggie does exist. She's in Nebraska.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:09 / #
Wow, what a gift, Bev. Wow. Well, this is fabulous. [Ms. Bev laughs] Thank you so much.
Sarah, I love listening to Beverly Jenkins talk.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:23 / #
I mean, I could listen to her all day, every day. She's fascinating.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:27 / #
I've been lucky enough to interview her when Wild Rain came out. I did a YouTube interview with her for Love's Sweet Arrow. So, you know, I have had the pleasure of talking to Ms. Bev, you know, several times, but I still think hearing someone's longitudinal story? Right? You know, the focus is different when it's like, oh, you've got a new book out.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:49 / #
I think it's worth listening to Bev's interviews on the Black Romance (History) podcast.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:55 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:56 / #
As well, we'll put links to those in show notes. Over there, you'll get a different kind of history from Bev, and I think the two together will be really interesting if you're Beverly Jenkins fans like we are. You know, one thing we should say is that she in fact does have a new book coming out.
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:14 / #
This month Bev is returning to romantic suspense.
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:18 / #
And she has a book out with Montlake called Rare Danger, which, listen to this: a librarian's quiet life becomes a page turner of adventure, romance and murder!
Sarah MacLean 1:03:29 / #
Doo doo doo! Also, now you know that all that librarian stuff will be properly sourced from her own life.
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:40 / #
I mean, Rebecca Romney is gonna love this. For Jasmine Ware, curating books for an exclusive clientele is her passion. Until an old friend, a dealer of rare books, goes missing and his partner is murdered. You know, I really love Ms. Bev's romantic suspense. So I think it's really cool to see her returning to this. To have an author still be experimenting, you know, she's written YA, she writes romance, she writes historical. She's returning to romantic suspense. I love that there's - I think it's a real model for you can keep doing whatever it is you want to do.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:14 / #
Yeah. What's amazing to me as a writer, is we all kind of have quiet stories in our head that we think oh, maybe someday I'll write that book.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:22 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:23 / #
But it seems to me Bev has just an endless supply of them and I don't feel like that. I always sort of know what the next couple are, but -
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:33 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:33 / #
But I feel like she's, she's got romantic suspense. She's got the Blessings series. She's got all of her glorious historicals. I feel like someday there's gonna be some epic sci-fi or fantasy something from her.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:46 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:46 / #
And I just, every time I talk to her, I just feel really blessed to know her. And the other thing I really like from an author perspective, Bev always reminds me how valuable readers are. And what I mean by that is, I mean obviously, I love, I love the people who read my books, and I feel really honored to have them all read my books, but what Beverly reminds me of, every time we talk, is how important, how the relationship between author and reader fills us both.
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:21 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:22 / #
And that is something that you can lose sight of when you're kind of deep in the manuscript, like in the weeds, you forget sometimes that the well is filled by readers in the end, and that is always a good, a good reminder. And I really value my friendship with Beverly because every time we talk, that's a piece that always comes through.
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:46 / #
And we heard her describe how different it was back in the day, right? Where you're like sending actual newsletters, were not just emails or -
Sarah MacLean 1:05:58 / #
Yeah. In print.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:00 / #
[laughs] Right? And I mean, I think that's a part of it too. One of the things I really have loved about the Trailblazers, I mean obviously just hearing people's stories, but also hearing what it was like. I mean, okay, this is everybody, you and me, we've seen Romancing the Stone, and at the beginning of this movie, and she's a romance novelist in the '80s. She's packing up her manuscript, is, you know, is a bunch of papers in a box!
Sarah MacLean 1:06:27 / #
We can't talk about it, but there's another Trailblazer episode where we fully forgot that, or I fully forgot that the world the technology did not exist.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:36 / #
Yes!
Sarah MacLean 1:06:37 / #
Back in the day.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:38 / #
And that's I think, part of what's cool about that, is anytime you hear a story where people talk about how the technology has changed, it just goes to show you how fast the world moves. I really love those stories too. Thinking about what it was like to curate a group of passionate readers, who are your devoted fans and doing it without social media.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:06 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:07 / #
And so that's the thing that I also found, that reader connection with Bev is so strong, so -
Sarah MacLean 1:07:13 / #
We're avowed stans of Beverly Jenkins here at Fated Mates. It will surprise none of you. So we are really, it's just one more week of feeling incredibly lucky -
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:25 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:25 / #
To be able to do this thing that we love so much. You've been listening to Fated Mates. You can find us at fatedmates.net, where you'll find all sorts of links to all sorts of fun things like gear, and stickers, and music and other things. You can find us on Twitter at Fated Mates or on Instagram at Fated Mates Pod. Or just you know, you can find me at sarahmaclean.net, Jen at jenreadsromance.com, where you can learn more about getting her to edit your next great masterpiece, and we are produced by Eric Mortensen. Thanks so much for listening!