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!
S04.05: Radclyffe: Trailblazer
This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Radclyffe—author of lesbian romances and founder of the LGBTQIA+ publisher, Bold Strokes Books. We talk about her path to romance as a reader and an author, and a publisher, about the early days of queer romance, about the importance of independent booksellers to the queer community, and about how readers find themselves in books.
Thank you to Radclyffe for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story.
Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Kahn Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.
Show Notes
Welcome Radclyffe, romance author and founder of Bold Strokes Books. The internet archive has preserved her fanfiction site.
Bookstores mentioned: Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, Womancrafts in Provincetown, and an article about the current state of Queer bookstores in America.
Publishing and Distributors Radclyffe mentioned: Naiad Press, founded by Barbara Greer, Sarah Aldridge, and Muriel Crawford; Regal Crest Enterprises is now Flashpoint Publications; Fawcett; Bella Books founded by Linda Hill; and Alyson Books.
Awards mentioned: Lambda Literary Awards, and the RWA Prism award
Further Reading: Creating a Literary Culture: A Short, Selective, and Incomplete History of LGBT Publishing, Part I, Part 2, and Part 3 by Michael Neva in the LARB,
S04.02: Sandra Brown: Trailblazer
The Trailblazers conversations begin this week with the brilliant, fearless Sandra Brown—aka Erin St. Clair and Rachel Ryan. We talk about everything from her first books, acquired by Vivian Stephens for Candlelight Ecstasy, about how Slow Heat in Heaven was her personal game changer, about the beginnings of romantic suspense, and about what makes a Sandra Brown novel, the most recent of which, Blind Tiger, was released last month.
Thank you to Sandra Brown for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story.
We’ve got an interstitial episode coming your way next week, but our first read along (in two weeks) is Amanda Quick’s Ravished—which Sarah describes as “Harriet, in a cave, with a rake.” It’s great. Get reading at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
You have two weeks to read, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and let us give you a preview of what's to come! Don't forget to like and follow in your favorite podcasting platform!
Show Notes
Welcome to our first trailblazer, romance legend Sandra Brown. Her latest release is Blind Tiger, which was her 73rd book on the New York Times bestseller list. Blind Tiger is a thriller set in Texas during the 1920s.
Prohibition went into effect on January 1, 1920. In Texas, the town of Glen Rose was the Moonshine Capital of Texas.
The Ford Model T was the first mass produced American car. Here’s a video of the actual driving experience of the 1915 model. If you’d like to see a bunch of Model Ts in the same place, you can visit the winter home of Thomas Edison in Fort Myers, Florida. Henry Ford visited so often that he eventually bought the home next door. Prohibition and moonshining gave birth to NASCAR.
Sandra’s first books were bought by Vivian Stephens for Candlelight Ecstasy under the pen name Rachel Ryan. She wrote for Silhouette under the name Erin St. Clair, and for Pocket as Laura Jordan. Carolyn Nichols at Loveswept wanted authors to use their real names, and now all of Sandra's books have been rereleased under her own name.
Sandra appeared on the cover of one of her own Loveswepts, The Rana Look, with actor Mclean Stevenson.
Some of the romance authors Sandra mentioned: Paris Afton Bonds, Candace Camp, Mary Lynn Baxer, Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz, Barbara Delinksy.
Some of the thriller/mystery writers Sandra mentioned: Helen MacInnes, Evelyn Anthony, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell, and Lee Child.
Sandra Brown 0:00 / #
I think there were several of us who say, hey, we have romance roots, but we still love the mystery. We still love the suspense, we still love wartime books, or we still love, you know, spy novels, and so the way I felt about it was that the attraction heightens both elements of the story, because you're never more afraid than when someone you care about is in danger.
Jennifer Prokop 0:28 / #
That was the voice of Sandra Brown.
Sarah MacLean 0:32 / #
Welcome, everyone, to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels, and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 0:37 / #
I am Jennifer Prokop. I am a romance reader and editor.
Sarah MacLean 0:41 / #
And this week, for our first Trailblazer episode of Season Four, we are absolutely beyond thrilled to have had a conversation with absolute fucking legend, as Tom Hardy would say, Sandra Brown.
Jennifer Prokop 0:59 / #
We recorded with Sandra, in August, I think.
Sarah MacLean 1:04 / #
That sounds right.
Jennifer Prokop 1:05 / #
And we will be talking with her today about her life in romance, about her new novel Blind Tiger, about her many, many, many New York Times bestsellers, and just about all the amazing history and story she has, as a romance writer, and how she started in the business and where she is now.
Sarah MacLean 1:28 / #
I think that was the best part of the conversation. This sense that we were talking to somebody who knew everything. Had been there from the start, and really had a lot to say about how the genre has grown and where the genre was and where it could be.
Jennifer Prokop 1:45 / #
So without further ado, here is our interview with Sandra Brown. Enjoy it as much as we did everyone.
Sarah MacLean 1:57 / #
Well, we are thrilled to have with us Sandra Brown. Welcome Sandra.
Sandra Brown 2:02 / #
Thank you very much, Sarah and Jen, I've looked forward to this.
Sarah MacLean 2:07 / #
Well, we're super excited about Blind Tiger, which is, did I see correctly on your Instagram? It is your 73rd New York Times bestseller?
Sandra Brown 2:16 / #
As of yesterday, I found out that it will be on the Times list a week from Sunday, but we find out like 10 days before, as you know, and so yeah, like last night, we had a little celebration here because it's officially my 73rd New York Times bestseller.
Sarah MacLean 2:38 / #
Wow! I mean, living the dream!
Sandra Brown 2:41 / #
Well, thank you. I've been very fortunate and all the people that I've worked with, and my fans have followed me from, you know, one genre to another, one type of book to another, shorter books, longer books and Blind Tiger was the longest book I've ever written.
Jennifer Prokop 3:00 / #
Oh, interesting.
Sandra Brown 3:02 / #
Yeah. So it and in itself, it was so different because I kind of switch, you know, time periods. I went back 100 years. So that was kind of a, you know, leap of faith and a trust that my readers would follow me, and so I'm pleased to say so far it looks like as though they are.
Jennifer Prokop 3:24 / #
So what was it like to go back and do research for a historical again, especially in 1920? Which is, you know, you wrote historical historicals in romance, but to have 1920 be the year.
Sandra Brown 3:38 / #
It was hard, actually, but the reason I did is because when it got time last year, to begin my next book, I thought, how do you write a book where people are wearing masks and the news was so bad every night and I hated even watching the evening news because it always left me so depressed and in a bad mood, and I thought, you know, I want some escape, and I figured if I felt that way that readers would feel that way. So that what was happening 100 years ago, and lo and behold, things aren't that different. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 4:15 / #
I was going to say, so you went back to a different pandemic.
Sandra Brown 4:17 / #
Right, a different pandemic. There was another women's movement that resulted thankfully and separate. Soldiers were coming home from a very unpopular foreign war with post traumatic stress, but they didn't even know the name -
Jennifer Prokop 4:34 / #
Have a name for that.
Sandra Brown 4:35 / #
At that point in time, and as if things aren't bad enough, nobody could buy a drink because Prohibition had gone into effect January 16th of 1920. So then I did, I just researched what was happening prohibition in Texas, which is where I live and who knew, but 50 miles down the road from where I have lived most of my life, was a town that was nicknamed the Moonshine Capital of Texas. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 5:09 / #
Perfect!
Sandra Brown 5:09 / #
I thought, Little Glen Rose? And you know, had all these bawdy houses and speakeasies and a lots of moonshining, because geographically, it was perfect for it. So I started doing research on that, the more I got into it, the more fun I started having, but Jen, you asked me about the research. It was so fun in one way, but in another way, it's very time consuming, because I would have to stop and look everything up, you know, it was like, and at one point in time, I said, Laurel, my heroine, floorboarded her Model T. She drove a 1915 Model T, so after I'd written that scene, and I went back thought better do some deeper research how to drive a Model T.
Sarah MacLean 5:55 / #
Sure, because someone is going to email you about this car.
Sandra Brown 6:00 / #
And so, lo and behold, a Model T 1915 model had three pedals on the floor. One was the clutch on the left, in the middle was reverse, on the right is the brake. The accelerator was on the steering wheel. So you actually controlled your velocity, your speed, by levers on how much, you know, gas you gave it, was controlled by a lever on the steering wheel. So I could have made that really terrible mistake had I not gone back and checked that.
Jennifer Prokop 6:34 / #
Done that research.
Sandra Brown 6:36 / #
So I couldn't say that she floorboarded it. (laughter)
Sandra Brown 6:39 / #
My dad lives in Florida and we went to visit, I think it's Edison's Florida home, and there's a huge collection of Model T's there.
Jennifer Prokop 6:47 / #
And the whole time I was reading this book was really thinking, I wonder what it would be like if these moonshiners had access to a Ford F 150 instead? (laughter) Because these things, they really are small. I mean, it's really kind of a miraculous to think about, I mean, it seems so big and fast to them, but you know, to us.
Sandra Brown 7:10 / #
Well, one thing they did, and this was also interesting, Ford would sell the chassis, the main chassis, but people would adapt. Before they started making pickup trucks, per se, people would add beds onto their Model T and kind of customize them. So customizing your automobile is not a new science that we figured out this century. They were already doing it, and so they were very innovative even before Ford started manufacturing all these things. So all of these little facts, you know, came out and then the part about moonshining was really fun to research because most of the stories, the tales that people had to tell, I would just laugh out loud because you'd be like, you can't make this up! I mean it was wild, and in terms of the speed with which they had their cars to go, that's where NASCAR started was because the moonshiners.
Sandra Brown 7:18 / #
That's right. So our NASCAR came to be because moonshiners would soup up their engines to outrun the cars that lawmen had, and that's where NASCAR was born, in the Carolinas, actually, but yeah, so all of this was just fun. You know, it was, it was a fun departure, and I think from a creative standpoint, it's good for writers to try something different, to go at a different pace. I've always, throughout my career, just spanned 40 years now, but just to try something different to challenge myself. And I think the worst thing that a writer can do is to become complacent, and just rely on you know, their history in the marketplace, because the market is constantly changing. It's an evolution every day and it's a learning curve every day. So in order to keep up and to remain vital in the marketplace, I think it's good for writers to challenge themselves. I've never tried this, you know, wonder if I can do that, and at the same time, maintain the expectations of their readers. You know, so I think Blind Tiger, yes, it's set in another century, and yes, I had to do a lot of research on historical facts, but the bottom line is it still has, I believe, the trademarks of a Sandra Brown novel, that when one opens it and starts reading, they more or less know it's still a Sandra Brown novel.
Sarah MacLean 10:02 / #
Oh, 1,000%. We were talking about that before the interview, that we just, I felt like I just fell right into it, to the Sandra Brown world. One of the things that I think is really interesting about this, and you've written historicals before, this is not your first historical. People who listen to Fated Mates know that, and one of the things that I think about a lot as a historical writer is we tend to be judged. There's often a sense in the world that, oh well, when you're writing historicals, you're just writing, you're closing the door on current day and just writing the past, and I mean, we know that's not true. And one of the things that really echoed for me in this book was how current it felt in the sense of, as you said, a hero coming home from war, the Spanish flu. These kind of large scale things that felt so, it's almost impossible to read the pieces where, because Thatcher, our hero, has had the Spanish flu, and it's impossible to read that without thinking, oh my gosh, we're -
Sarah MacLean 11:06 / #
We're doing that now. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how modern the book is, too, in that sense. How are you thinking about the world that way?
Sandra Brown 11:16 / #
Yeah, well, thank you for that, but that's how I made my pitch to the editor. (laughter) Guess what? I want to do a historical, you know, and it kind of took him aback, and because he's only edited my contemporary, thrillers or suspense novels, and he said, "Well, like where to?" (laughter) "Where are you going?"
Sarah MacLean 11:44 / #
What are you doing, Sandra?
Sandra Brown 11:46 / #
And so I started drawing for him all of the parallels that we've talked about, and I said, and when you really get down to it, I said, Shakespeare would have made the same pitch to his editors, because the human condition does not change. It hasn't for millennia, you know, and so, when you, when you start talking about human emotions, they're all still there. Greed, lust, jealousy, rage, you know, sorrow, grief, all of these things are still identifiable by every human being, and so I think if you tell a story correctly, and if you reveal to your characters, the emotions, you know, to your readers, the emotions of the characters, then they're going to relate to that. Because if you have, if you lose someone dear to you, beloved to you, you're going to feel the same thing that someone did hundreds of years ago. You know, that hasn't changed. Human heart has not changed. And so even though our devices certainly have, and I can't tell you what a relief it was to write a book without everybody's cellphones. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 13:11 / #
I bet. I bet.
Sandra Brown 13:13 / #
Because I think technology, in some ways, has ruined suspense, because you can't make people disappear as easily as you used to. But in answer to your question, Sarah, the emotions, human emotions, if you tell a story well, and you really explore the mind and the heart of your characters, then the story should be relatable, no matter where it's at and what time period. And so I wouldn't give too much credence to someone who says well, you're leaving contemporary life behind, because when you strip it all away, we're people and we've been people for a long time, and we've experienced the same emotions at one point in our lives or another.
Jennifer Prokop 14:02 / #
Okay, so, my dad was a soldier in Vietnam, and one of the things Sarah and I have talked about, sort of over and over again, and I joke that if I ever got a PhD in romance, it would be about the Vietnam hero returning home. Is a lot of your early romances - most of them, featured men who were, who had been in Vietnam, and Thatcher is a man coming back from World War One, so is this something that is of particular interest to you? Or do you, like me, sometimes think this is just an American story? I mean, maybe it's a story everywhere, but a particularly American story, about a man coming home from war and not knowing where he fits in. Thatcher can't even afford to get home. They've taken his uniform from him, and I was really fascinated to think about that in parallel with some of your early romances.
Sandra Brown 14:57 / #
Well, that and that's true and I have to confess, I guess that's an accidental thing, Jen, because I don't really set out to make any kind of, you know, political statement. That's not my role. I'm a fiction writer. I tell stories, but it's interesting, now that you mentioned it, because I really, really hadn't thought of that. But I suppose because the Vietnam War was so, you know, part of my development, as when I was in, well, I guess, junior high, high school, college, and then early adulthood, I knew people that were lost, you know, in that war and, and it was so much of our culture, and it was so much of a culture change in our country. So I guess, in the background in my mind, that was omnipresent, didn't even recognize it, and it's interesting that you should say, because even recent books, the hero in Thick as Thieves is an ex-soldier. There have been many who have served. The character in Lethal, what was his name? Oh dear? Coburn! (she laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 16:23 / #
73 bestsellers later, you're gonna forget some names, right?
Sarah MacLean 16:26 / #
It's really fine.
Sandra Brown 16:27 / #
I have a little glitch every now and then. (laughter) Yeah, and so that influenced, you know, his character and how he was very tough and cold toward the world until he meets this little five-year-old girl who totally disassembles him. So it's, I think in the back of my mind, possibly, it's kind of that injured male, whether the injuries are physical or emotional or mental. It's kind of that, you know, the beast, that by the end of the book is more or less tamed, but there's a reason for the way he acts. And I think that war and war experiences, you know, play into that in some regard. But it's a subconscious thing. I really never had thought about it until you mentioned it, but now that you do, I can see, oh, there's a pattern there! Thanks for pointing that out.
Jennifer Prokop 16:32 / #
You're welcome.
Sarah MacLean 16:48 / #
It's interesting, because as I was reading Blind Tiger, and knowing we were going to have this conversation, I was thinking a lot about heroes in thrillers and mysteries versus heroes in romance and how that sort of loner archetype really fits both worlds, and what you, I think, do so beautifully, in all of your books, is you deliver your loner hero a community, in a lot of ways. And Thatcher, for me, feels like your romance roots, kind of delivering these thriller heroes a different kind of happiness at the end, a different kind of satisfaction.
Sarah MacLean 18:09 / #
But I also want to talk about your heroines, because for me, a Sandra Brown heroine always has a purpose outside of the hero. That has, I mean, as a reader that inspired me, as a writer. I said on Twitter the other day that you were one of the reasons why I write romance. I think your heroines have really kind of imprinted on me in a lot of ways, the DNA of the Sandra Brown heroine. You know, the heroine who is backed up against the wall, we love, Jen and I love a heroine backed up against a wall -
Jennifer Prokop 18:35 / #
100%.
Sarah MacLean 18:43 / #
Who ends up a bootlegger because that's the avenue and also she's super badass!
Jennifer Prokop 18:56 / #
The minute she learned to drive, but the whole part where she says too, I mean, there's a part, I wish I would have marked it, where she says, once she decided this was her task, she was going to be the best at it, and I was like, "There is a Sandra Brown heroine!"
Sarah MacLean 19:10 / #
That's the Sandra Brown heroine.
Sandra Brown 19:12 / #
Well, I have to admit, when I first pitched the book to my editor, and it was going to be Thatcher's story. It was going to be his story, but once I started writing it, as my characters typically do, they took over, and the book actually turned out to be Laurel's story. Because beyond not, you know, he changed careers from that of a cowboy, and we see the potential in him early on to do more than just go back to the ranch, you know, and do that and he would have been happy to do that for the rest of his life, but he didn't. When the book is ended, he's more or less the same individual that he was. He still thinks the same way, still got that laconic cowboy nature, that code of honor that he lives by. You know, I'm not gonna look for trouble, but you don't mess with me or somebody I care about, or you're going to be in trouble, and so we get that early on, and we still feel that at the end of the book. Laurel is the one who has the character arc. It became her book when she said, "You are teaching me how to drive." And her father-in-law starts sputtering and she says, "Today."
Jennifer Prokop 20:47 / #
Today. (laughter)
Sandra Brown 20:51 / #
We weren't going to and I thought, huh, she's kind of taken over this, and then I loved you know, all of the things that she does. The limbs that she goes out on.
Sarah MacLean 21:06 / #
I mean, the whole operation being her brainchild, the pies and the -
Sandra Brown 21:10 / #
It's not just to survive now, it's not just to put food on the table. It's I'm going to thrive, and if I'm going to do, if I'm going to be a lawbreaker, I'm going to be the best at it. And of course, and another element, which I believe it was one of the questions that that you were going to ask me, what makes a good romance, and we can get to that, but one of the main elements is that they need to be forbidden to each other. And so in every Sandra Brown book that I've ever written, I've tried to make it if he's a fireman, she's got to be an arsonist. For whatever reason, this cannot happen. They cannot possibly get together because they're on opposite sides of something. And in this instance, it was so obvious, you know, when I first started plotting it, and I thought, Okay, can I really do that with a heroine? Can I really do that? And yes -
Sandra Brown 21:21 / #
Laurel was like yes, you know, hell yes, if you're going to write me, then I'm going to take over. And she did. And, you know, I think every reader, I hope every reader, male and female, will admire her gutsiness. You know, they might not admire the enterprise, but they, I think they will admire and can identify with somebody who says, "Okay, I've been knocked down twice, really hard." And that doesn't even count her upbringing, her parents, you know, her domineering father. So, she's refusing and resolved never to depend on anyone to take care of her again, and I think that is a lesson in what contemporary women in our society are learning, is that you know, as much as you love somebody, as kind of someone is to you, but you need to be able, because you don't know what fate is going to throw on your path, you need to be able to take care of yourself. Not depend on other people, anyone.
Sarah MacLean 23:41 / #
It was a joy to read Blind Tiger, and to return to your books, to your historicals. I mean, as an adult, as an avowed, we did a podcast where I said it out loud, as an Another Dawn fan, here we go, yeah! A dusty Texas. I'm ready.
Sandra Brown 24:04 / #
So funny, a little backstory on that. I wrote Sunset Embrace, and I sent it into my editor at the time. They were published by Bantam, and my editor at the time, after a month or so had gone by and the book was in production, and she called me one day and said, "The ladies here in the office have a request." And I thought, you know, signing books for their aunts, their grandmothers, their moms, and she said, "They want you to write another book and make Bubba the hero." And I went, "Ah! Well, let me see what I can do."
Jennifer Prokop 24:54 / #
The ladies in the office always know.
Sarah MacLean 24:58 / #
They know.
Sandra Brown 24:59 / #
So I set out to plot Another Dawn, and it was difficult because I had to age him 10 years because, in Sunset Embrace, it was really kind of a coming of age book for him. So I had to age him 10 years, and I thought, "Do I really want a hero named Bubba? I think I'm going to have to give him a new name." (laughter) And so I did that, and then thinking of the plot, and the plot broke my heart, actually, and I think it broke the heart of a lot of readers.
Sarah MacLean 25:39 / #
Of a lot of readers.
Sandra Brown 25:40 / #
It was essential to his and Banner's book, you know, the plot development there. So anyway, thank you for the compliment. I love cowboys. I'm from Texas. I'm a sucker at cowboys, as Thatcher, as Thatcher is, you know. I loved his bow-legged walk and his cowboy hat and his spurs and all of that.
Jennifer Prokop 26:08 / #
Everything.
Sarah MacLean 26:11 / #
Same. Well, I would love to hear about your journey into romance, because we've talked on the podcast about how you were really there at the start of Harlequin American with Vivian Stephens. We talked about Tomorrow's Promise on the podcast.
Jennifer Prokop 26:25 / #
Loveswept.
Sarah MacLean 26:26 / #
Yeah, the early Loveswept books. So I wonder if you could give us a sense of, paint us a picture of those early years and how you became a romance writer.
Sandra Brown 26:36 / #
My first five books were for Vivian Stephens in another house in another line. It was called Ecstasy, and it was published by Bantam Doubleday Dell. And how all of that happened, first of all, I got fired from my job. And I was working in television, for the ABC affiliate here in Dallas, and they came through one day and fired all of us who were on-air contributors for this magazine show. They said they needed fresh faces. So God bless my husband, who's still my husband. He's put up with me all these years, but he said, "You know, you've always said you want to write fiction, and now you've got time and opportunity to do it." And I had two babies at home. I mean, they were toddlers, my children. And I said, "Gosh, but you know, I don't know how to, I don't know how to do that." He said, "You won't know if you don't try. And you can either keep talking about it or you can do it." So I sat down and proceeded to start writing, and he had a talk show. This is a long story. But anyway, he had a talk show in the morning. He interviewed all the authors who came in on tour. So one was a local woman who wrote romances. Her name was Paris Afton Bonds. She volunteered as a favor for him having her on his show, to read one of my manuscripts, and she said, "You ought to be writing romances." And I was like, "What's a romance?" I didn't know, but you know, and she said, "Well, like a Harlequin romance." And that Harlequin was the only show in town, and they were, of course, a British company, so most of their writers are British, but I went bought 12 or 15 of them, started reading them, I thought, "Yeah, I think I can do this." So I proceeded to and Paris invited me to go with her to Houston to a writer's conference.
Sarah MacLean 28:44 / #
Oh my gosh.
Sandra Brown 28:45 / #
And there I met a woman named Candace Camp.
Sarah MacLean 28:48 / #
Oh my god!
Jennifer Prokop 28:49 / #
Of course!
Sandra Brown 28:51 / #
Who had first published The Rainbow Season, and that was one of the best books I had ever read, and I loved it! I couldn't speak when I met Candace, Candy, I called her. I was just like, "Uhhh!" She wrote that book under a pseudonym, Lisa Gregory. So I met her at that cocktail party, and also at the cocktail party, I met a woman from a small East Texas town, that had a bookstore, Mary Lynn Baxter, who later wrote for Silhouette. And she said, "Well, I've read everything ever written, and I have the ear of every editor in New York. So when you get a manuscript you like, send it to me, and I'll read it and I'll tell you whether or not it's any good." So about three months later, she had given me your phone number, three months later, I called her and said, "Do you remember meeting me and dada - " and, "Yes! What have you written?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to send you something." And she called me a few days later and said, "This is exactly what a woman named Vivian Stephens is looking for, for a new line of romances called Ecstasy."
Sarah MacLean 29:56 / #
Oh my gosh!
Sarah MacLean 29:58 / #
I have shivers.
Sarah MacLean 30:00 / #
I know, this is the greatest story! Do you have five or six hours to stay with us? (laughter)
Sandra Brown 30:06 / #
Vivian bought my first book about two weeks later, and then 13 days, she said, "Do you have another one?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm finishing it up." And she said, "Well send it. Is it same orientation?" And I said, "Yeah." "Same level of heat?" And I said, "Yeah." So she, I sent it to her, and she bought my second book 13 days after the first one. So I sold my first two and then she bought the next three, and then she moved to Harlequin, and that's when she she bought Tomorrow's Promise. And so, by then, at that point in time, every publisher was developing their own line. Jove had a line called Second Chance, and I later wrote for them. Silhouette had a line - Pocket had a line called Silhouette, and then Silhouette Desire, and then, what was the other - anyway, ultimately, I was writing for four different houses under four different names, including my own.
Sarah MacLean 31:12 / #
The pseudonyms. I'd love to talk a little bit about that because, was it four different houses under four different names, because each House wanted a different name?
Sandra Brown 31:20 / #
Right, right. My first pseudonym was for Vivian for the Ecstasy line, and I used Rachel Ryan, because those are my children's names.
Jennifer Prokop 31:32 / #
Oh, okay.
Sandra Brown 31:33 / #
And it was a bribe. If you let mommy work, (laughter) and leave me alone -
Jennifer Prokop 31:41 / #
That's awesome.
Sandra Brown 31:42 / #
We'll go get ice cream, and I'll put your name on every page of the book. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 31:49 / #
Oh my god.
Jennifer Prokop 31:51 / #
Perfect.
Sandra Brown 31:51 / #
I also felt Rachael Ryan sounded a whole lot more like a romance writer than Sandra Brown, but when I started writing for Carolyn Nichols, for the Loveswept line, Carolyn wanted to, instead of featuring the series, or making the series the selling point, she wanted the authors to be more spotlighted. She wanted the authors to be the prominent name and develop the trademark, of course, but also to really emphasize the individuality of the authors. And so she said, "I want to use your real name." And I said, "It's about time, too." You know, that idea. So that's the history.
Sarah MacLean 32:39 / #
So as we're talking about that question, I feel you you must know what's coming, but the Loveswept line, and them wanting readers to know authors, can we talk about this? Which is that Rana Look!
Sandra Brown 32:53 / #
You mentioned that to me. I had forgotten that. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 32:57 / #
First of all, I love that you have forgotten this.
Jennifer Prokop 32:59 / #
Imagine being so cool that you forgot that you are your own cover model. That's all I have to say about that.
Sarah MacLean 33:07 / #
And we have lots of serious questions too.
Sandra Brown 33:10 / #
How did that come about? Honest and truthfully, I cannot remember. I just remember being asked.
Sarah MacLean 33:17 / #
I don't think you were alone, because I think Nora Roberts was also on one around the same time. I feel like they they did this with a few people.
Jennifer Prokop 33:25 / #
There were a of couple people, I think. There was another one, I can't remember the name though.
Sarah MacLean 33:28 / #
Beautiful writers got to play model.
Sandra Brown 33:31 / #
My hair has never been that long. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 33:35 / #
I was going to say is this your actual hair?
Sandra Brown 33:39 / #
And I never had a dress that gorgeous either! So what I think they did, I think what they did is take our picture in that pose, and then they had, you know, the painting done, and it was a really pretty good rendition -
Sarah MacLean 33:57 / #
It's beautiful!
Sandra Brown 33:57 / #
Of my face, but I didn't have the hair -
Jennifer Prokop 34:00 / #
Flowing, locks.
Sarah MacLean 34:03 / #
We've talked about this on the podcast before, but this is McLean Stevenson from MAS*H, right?
Sarah MacLean 34:09 / #
Did you get to pick? Was he a favorite? Or were they just like, "Sorry, Sandra, you're going to have to be here with this guy."
Jennifer Prokop 34:14 / #
He's our local hottie.
Sandra Brown 34:17 / #
I don't know. I don't know how he got selected either.
Sarah MacLean 34:24 / #
He needed the press. He needed to hang out with you. He needed the glow up of Sandra Brown. So going back to those kind of early days, because we always think about that as it must have felt a little like there was an explosion of popularity, because prior to that it was so historic. We know that in the '70s it was big historical times, but this is really the burst of contemporary romance.
Sarah MacLean 34:48 / #
Did did it feel like it to you? Did you feel like you were on the precipice of something?
Sandra Brown 34:53 / #
Yes. In a way, because as I said, all of it up to that point in time, Harlequin published in London and in Toronto, and they had, I think the first American author that they bought was Janet Dailey. And I could be wrong on that, but I think that's right. And so it was like, well, duh, you've got a whole continent over here of women writers yet untapped. The competition among the houses, this is a great time to be starting, I've often said that I hit it at exactly the right moment in time, because the competition among the houses to sew up, you know, the Nora Roberts, the Jayne Ann Krentz, the Barbara Delinski, the -
Sarah MacLean 35:57 / #
Sandra Brown.
Sandra Brown 36:00 / #
I could go on and on and on, all the writers that, you know, came up out of this. And so it was very competitive among the houses to publish quickly. Well, I wrote like a frenzy all the time. I mean -
Sarah MacLean 36:18 / #
I was going to say -
Jennifer Prokop 36:19 / #
It must have been.
Sandra Brown 36:20 / #
When my kids got old enough to go to kindergarten and they were in school, because it was like I need to write without - so I think the year 1983, I think, which, oh gosh, that sounds so long ago. It was so long ago, but I think I had 11 books published.
Sandra Brown 36:46 / #
I had one a month except for one month, and so it was a juggling act. Each line, whether it was Silhouette, Loveswept, Second Chance, the American Harlequins, whether each line had nuances that were uniquely theirs, there was just something you know, a little bit different. And so I would tailor a story, if I thought of a plot, I would kind of tailor the story, oh, that would make a good Desire. Or, oh, that would make a good Loveswept. And then there were some differences in the lengths, so if a story was going to be a little bit longer, you know, I would tailor it. But it was a, kind of a juggling act. And I have to say, one lesson I learned early on, is I didn't talk about my business with anybody. I wouldn't share anything that I had spoken about with one editor with another. I kept very close counsel, and I wound up on speaking terms with everybody with whom I've ever worked. (laughter) I think one reason was because I didn't discuss my business, nor anyone else's with, you know, with anyone. So that might be a word of advice for a starting author. You know, hold your cards close to your vest and concentrate on your business and nobody else.
Jennifer Prokop 38:30 / #
One of the things that's really interesting, is you were just talking about how fertile a time it was for authors, but this is when, Sarah and I both kind of came up reading at this time. I mean, we were young. It's fine. It doesn't matter.
Sarah MacLean 38:45 / #
Barely even born.
Jennifer Prokop 38:46 / #
Doesn't matter. We were reading romances when we were 10, and I don't, I'm not sad about it. But I also think this was an incredibly, then fertile, time to come up as a romance reader. So can you - are there - do you have stories? Do you get letters from fans? These books mean something to people!
Sandra Brown 39:05 / #
Yeah, and it's so humbling. It really is. But before we had email and social media, you know, fan letters, I would collect them from the mailbox. And I would dedicate, you know, like one day a month to answer, you know, by hand, all of these letters. It took a lot of time, but right now social media takes a lot of time. So, you know, but I was always so touched by the stories that people would tell me about how my story affected them. And to this day, it's really humbling and gratifying and validating because I can bang my head against the wall, think nobody is going to read this crap. (laughs) This is just a, just another, unhhh! You know, trying to get it right. And I struggle with that. I struggle with the insecurity of I'll never write another, you know, sentence again. Every day I do that. But when you get a letter that says, "This touched me. It's such a needful time in my life." Whatever it is: an illness, the loss of a partner or child, or something really tragic. And they say, "Your books just saved me through this." And that's when it's like, you know, if that one person is the only person who took something from that labor that I put in, it was worth it. You know, it makes those long hours and days at the keyboard really, truly worthwhile.
Sarah MacLean 40:54 / #
We'll get to the shift, the way that you moved from romance, to thrillers, but I'm curious, particularly about readers and the separate genres, because it often feels when I'm at events, or you know, when Jen is at events, it often feels like people always say, "Oh, romance is totally different than everyone else." The thriller audience isn't like this. It doesn't become as personal. Do you, have you had that experience? Or because you're sort of still Sandra Brown? Your books still feel Sandra Brown-y. Do you still get the feedback?
Sandra Brown 41:28 / #
Sometimes, from really dumb people. (laughter) And I, you know, if someone says, "Well, I don't read those kinds of books." And I say, "Well, have you ever read one?" "No." "Well, then how do you know what kind it is?" (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 41:46 / #
Right.
Sandra Brown 41:48 / #
You know, I'm less sensitive to it than I once was, because then in the same breath, they'll say, "Gosh, it but it must be really, you know, how do you write a book?" And I'll go, "Yeah, that's, that's kind of tricky." You know if it were easy everybody would be doing it, because the writer's life is a great life. So I kind of dismiss that anymore, you know, and, but because I know how hard it is, and my husband knows how hard it is, and my children and grandchildren know. And my colleagues that I care about deeply know how hard it is, and we commiserate. Sarah, you know how hard it is. And so it's, it's really, I just, I don't bother with that anymore. And also, I fall back on a book that really inspired me, and I thought, "You know what? You can combine thrillers and sex." And the book that did that for me was Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett. That was one of the sexiest books, because you talk about forbidden, and you talk about the isolation, which I always tried to build. You said you bring your character into a community and form a community around that character, is very insightful of you, because I do try to create a world where the rest of the world is kind of just disappeared. It's that world and the characters, it's a microcosm. They have good people, bad people, but their lives are really uninfluenced by much that's going on. It's within that tight community that they're orbiting. And so when I read Eye of the Needle, I thought, here they are. It's got all the elements I loved. They're alone on this island, nobody knows where. The communication is gone. The weather is prohibitive. They're forbidden to each other, and yet that allure, you know, just that allure, and of course, he's an assassin. He's a horrible person, but the love scene -
Sarah MacLean 44:30 / #
We're for it.
Sandra Brown 44:32 / #
You know, it's just great. And so I thought now if somebody like Ken Follett can do this - (laughs)
Sarah MacLean 44:41 / #
What if you did it!
Jennifer Prokop 44:42 / #
What if you did, right?
Sandra Brown 44:45 / #
So that book really influenced me a lot, in terms of you can mix the two, and it has to be, integrated into the story and when people are running for their lives, it's a little bit impractical and implausible to think, "Oh, timeout. We've got to have sex." You know, so - (laughter)
Sandra Brown 45:06 / #
We have a name for that, Sandra, "the danger bang!"
Sandra Brown 45:10 / #
(laughter) I've never heard that term before.
Jennifer Prokop 45:16 / #
You're welcome.
Sarah MacLean 45:18 / #
It's yours now.
Sandra Brown 45:21 / #
Here's the thing, and I've done questionnaires and things on this before and asked, did you realize you were creating a genre or helping create a genre? No. No. It was a subconscious thing and I'm given far more credit than I deserve, because I read Helen MacInnes. I read Evelyn Anthony. I read all of these writers, again, mostly British, who were writing basically books during the Cold War. It was after World War Two, but still that influence, you know, the Nazis, the spies, the all that, and they had wonderful sexy books! Especially Evelyn Anthony was a big influence on me, her books are amazing! And the tension, because here again, the forbidden, and so I really get more credit than I deserve, because I felt like I borrowed, you know, so much from them, from other writers, and from my contemporaries. I think there were several of us who saw, hey, we have romance roots, but we still love the mystery. We still love the suspense, we still love wartime books, or we still love, you know, spy novels, and so the way I felt about it was that the attraction heightens both elements of the story, because you're never more afraid than when someone you care about is in danger. Even more than yourself. So it heightens that suspense. It heightens please don't let anything happen, and it heightens the urgency. If this is going to be the only time we have, then we're going to make the most of it. So it heightens both elements. It heightens the relationship and it heightens the danger, because they work against each other, with each other.
Sarah MacLean 47:35 / #
As you're talking about this community of these other writers who were doing it at the same time as you, because there were, it felt like something broke, meaning the tide broke, and suddenly there was romantic suspense everywhere in the genre. Did you have a community of other writers who were doing the same thing? Who were the members of that community?
Sandra Brown 47:56 / #
Well, I have to say, I have to give credit to International Thriller Writers. I was asked very early on, Gale Lynds asked me, and David Morel, who I didn't know at the time, Lee Child, some of these that were saying, "Would you like to become part of this - we're going to form a league of writers called International Thriller Writers and we're breaking barriers." They did. I mean, it was like, we wanted to incorporate mystery. We wanted to incorporate suspense, it can incorporate fantasy, it can incorporate romance, but every book should be a thriller, no matter what book you're writing, it should thrill your readers. So they were very democratic, you know, in this organization, and I think they possibly as much, if not more, went out of their way to include writers from another genre that wasn't so steeped in espionage, or so, you know, which we called a mind thriller. They had horror writers. It was everybody, and so I really have to credit that organization a lot with bringing everybody in, and recognizing the contribution that women writers had made to the marketplace. They were really a fundamental group that brought to the publisher's attention, "Hey, we got all these great writers over here and guess what, you know, they're women!" (laughs) What a concept!
Jennifer Prokop 50:00 / #
When you look back on your career, is there a book that you can point to where you thought, "Oh, I, I'm feeling my direction change, and I'm moving away from straight romance." Or was it just really a smooth continuum for you? There's not a Slow Heat in Heaven was the one or whatever.
Sandra Brown 50:21 / #
Yeah, well it was Slow Heat in Heaven. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 50:24 / #
There it is. That's the one we hear about all the time.
Jennifer Prokop 50:28 / #
All the time.
Sandra Brown 50:28 / #
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 50:29 / #
I mean, it's the book you hear about when somebody says, "Sandra Brown," if you're not us going, "Another Dawn! Tomorrow's Promise!" (laughter)
Sandra Brown 50:37 / #
It was kind of a breakthrough for me, but apparently for a lot of romance readers, it was like, "What happened to that nice girl we used to know?" (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 50:53 / #
Yeah! It was so gritty.
Sarah MacLean 50:54 / #
I can still remember where I was when I read Slow Heat in Heaven. I was in my sister's apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts, sleeping on an air mattress, and there I was.
Sandra Brown 51:06 / #
I've been to Waltham, Massachusetts! Anyway, I remember, I had finished the Texas! Trilogy. Lucky, Chase and Sage, who were the most, they were the most fun books I'd ever written, and they are in their 45th printing domestically. And so they have resonated with a lot of readers, and I love those characters, and they were so much fun. And I think I only wrote one other Loveswept after that. And then I had signed a contract with, it was the Warner books at the time, and they, I had kind of gotten to where I was, like, you know, I've got to stretch. I've got to do - I had written like 45 romances, and I thought I really want to kind of get past these boundaries that you know now, anything goes, but back then it was like, you know, you can't do this, you can't do gun play, you can't, you know, language had to be controlled, and there were certain plots, I was, as I said, always giving my editors heart attacks, because they were going, "(gasp) Sandra!" and you know, one of the characters in Texas! Trilogy, the plot, she was married, and when I told my editor I was going to do that, well, when I told my editor, who was Carolyn Nichols, and when I told her, I said, "I want to do these books from a male point of view." And she said, "Well, you can't do that." And I said, "Well, you kind of can." (laughs) I can!
Sarah MacLean 52:52 / #
Let me show you.
Sandra Brown 52:55 / #
They're thinking such wonderful things. I think this would be and I want to make them longer, and I will throw in a third book. I'll give you a woman point of view, I'll give them a bratty younger sister, and so that's where that came about and -
Sarah MacLean 53:14 / #
That's so fascinating. I mean, that changed the game!
Sandra Brown 53:18 / #
I had to fight for that, and when I told her that the heroine, you know, in Lucky was going to be married, she said, "Your readers will never forgive you, if you use, if you have an adulterous, you know." and I'll go, "Carolyn, how many books have I written for you? You're just going to have to go out on a leap of faith on this." And so, you know, made it that way. But when I, after I finished all those romances, I thought, I want to do something where I don't have any kind of parameter. I'm having to stay with that. No borders. No fences. So I signed this book with, this deal, with Warner, to write a standalone novel, and it was Slow Heat in Heaven, what became Slow Heat in Heaven. And from the get go, I loved Cash Boudreaux. And I said -
Sarah MacLean 54:15 / #
Same. Obviously.
Sandra Brown 54:17 / #
I said, "This is gonna be the Sandra Brown hero. It's the one that needs redeeming.
Sarah MacLean 54:24 / #
And did you know in the moment? Were you like, "Oh, I knew I was writing "the book.""
Sandra Brown 54:30 / #
The minute he showed up with that hoe across his shoulders and then he kills the snake. And I thought, "This is the Sandra Brown hero." And it's the one that, you know, needs love, that needs to be loved. It's hardened by life and the -
Sarah MacLean 54:54 / #
Poor baby. Poor baby. Also, someone else kills a snake.
Jennifer Prokop 54:58 / #
Thatcher kills a snake too. So you're going back to your roots. You might not know, but we do. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 55:05 / #
We're paying close attention here.
Sandra Brown 55:07 / #
I thought it the minute he walked on the page, and a lot of people, you know, it took them so aback. The sexuality was a whole lot more graphic and everything, but I remember you had Susan Elizabeth Phillips on.
Sandra Brown 55:24 / #
And I definitely remember a, I guess it was Romance Writers of America, some writer's conference, where she and I were both attending, and I think that's first time I met her. I think it was. Maybe not, but anyway, we were both there, and we were very friendly. Love her. Still love her. Sterling lady. And she was making a speech at lunch. She was the keynote speaker. And she was going on about she said, "We as writers have to be fearless. We have to be fearless. We can't be inhibited by our own timidity." And that was her point, you know, be fearless. She said, "I have a post it note on my computer screen, "be fearless."" You know, take the chance. And she said, "Sandra Brown." (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 56:26 / #
She called you out.
Sandra Brown 56:27 / #
Strawberry shortcake is - (laughter) and she said, "She shocked us all with Slow Heat in Heaven." And she said romance readers all over the country were saying, "(Gasp!) How dare she?" And she said they couldn't get enough of it.
Jennifer Prokop 56:53 / #
How dare she. Can I have some more? Yeah.
Sandra Brown 56:56 / #
And so she said and it was kind of, it was definitely a turning point in my career, but it was also a book, that as you both have mentioned, kind of put readers back on their heels with what, I didn't know you could do this, you know.
Sarah MacLean 57:13 / #
It felt different.
Jennifer Prokop 57:14 / #
It did.
Sarah MacLean 57:14 / #
It was different. It's interesting because you brought up the Texas! Trilogy, and I feel like in Texas! Chase, which we did a deep dive episode on, so we read it and thought about it. You were moving into romantic suspense. There are too, there's a whole stalker -
Sarah MacLean 57:34 / #
Threadline through that book, and it's clear that that was the path you were on, even before.
Sandra Brown 57:42 / #
Yeah. I never felt like I've deserted the romance genre. I felt like I learned so much from writing the romances. First of all, when they were, when your page count was dictated you know, you had to be, I had to learn to get into the action immediately, join the scene in progress, and that didn't come with the first several books. I spent a lot of time you know, tiptoeing through the tulips and describing everything and showing off to the reader how much research I'd done about a place. Really what they wanted to know was when are they going to meet, what, you know, what's going on?
Jennifer Prokop 58:25 / #
When are they gonna kiss?
Sandra Brown 58:27 / #
I was learning.
Sarah MacLean 58:28 / #
It feels very real.
Sandra Brown 58:29 / #
And I got better at it, but little tools like that, that I had to learn when writing romance, I brought with me. I don't feel like I deserted anything, and as you say, the books always had shadings. I remember even my fourth book, A Treasure Worth Seeking, was about an FBI agent having to move into the heroine's apartment because her brother is escaped jail or something like that, and they're kind of hiding out hoping he's gonna show up. So there was always that, that thread in there.
Sarah MacLean 59:06 / #
So you move to Warner to publish Slow Heat in Heaven, and so I guess my question is, did you move to Warner because you knew Warner would let you do something that maybe romance wouldn't let you do?
Sandra Brown 59:20 / #
My agent kind of threw the idea out there, and they were the first to, you know, to really bite. I think I did a three book contract, my first one. The first two books, Slow Heat (in Heaven) and Best Kept Secret had basically had a terrible cover on it, and we had a meeting and I said okay, and what they had suggested is that if I was going to establish myself as as a, you know, more suspense or mystery, then perhaps I would rethink writing category romances. And that was a tough, that was a, it was a, that was tough to leave that safety net, than it was, you know, on the high trapeze without one, and I couldn't, you know, I had to make up my mind, and I thought, yeah, this is where I want to go. So that was a career decision. So we had this meeting, and it was so, it looked like a historical recycle cover that had been recycled from historical because you've got the heroine lying back with the bosoms falling out, and the shirtless hero with the biceps and everything, and so, and I said, "This is set on a horse training ranch. I haven't seen any body in West Texas who dresses like this." (laughter) And so I said, "No more bosoms and biceps." I said if you're going to ask me to kind of start edging away from the romance elements into more mystery and suspense, then you've got to give me covers. that also indicate that.
Sarah MacLean 1:01:24 / #
You have to help me succeed.
Sandra Brown 1:01:26 / #
That's exactly right. And so on Mirror Image, they did a completely different type of cover, and guess what? It was my first book on The New York Times bestseller list. So I made my point. And from then on, I didn't have to, you know -
Sarah MacLean 1:01:43 / #
Fight for it.
Sandra Brown 1:01:44 / #
I had a little bit more cool.
Sarah MacLean 1:01:47 / #
Was there any discussion of changing your name?
Sandra Brown 1:01:50 / #
No. No. I wanted to publish under Sandra Brown.
Sarah MacLean 1:01:54 / #
That's great. You hear other people having to, you know, make that switch. It still is a thing that people say in romance. You know, well, if you want to write something else, you need to change your name. I'm just going to tell everybody, "No. Sandra Brown didn't."
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:07 / #
Sandra Brown didn't, you shouldn't have to either.
Sandra Brown 1:02:10 / #
And that also is my real name.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:14 / #
That helps too. So let's talk about Sandra Brown, because we've already talked about you know, what makes the Sandra Brown romance a little bit, but what do you think, kind of is the hallmark of the Sandra Brown romance? What do you think saying to readers?
Sandra Brown 1:02:27 / #
Well I don't know about the same two readers, but I had a, I've worked this out over time. I have four elements to me that are critical, and in every book, and I've carried it over into the suspense novels, but the romance aspect of that. The first one is that the hero and the heroine must be codependent to solve their problem. In other words, they share a problem that each has to try and overcome. They're coming at it from different angles, and willingly, they have to work together in order to solve it. That's the first thing. So build in, if I can, a problem they're going to share, and they're dependent on each other. Not liking it at first, but that's the way it is. The second thing is they've got to share space, and this is the hardest thing to do. Because you got to keep them together. And that, you know, all of the peripheral characters in Blind Tiger, were a lot of people, but I tried as much as possible, even though Thatcher and Laurel were not living with each other. He kept showing up. He was always showing up.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:59 / #
I love it.
Sandra Brown 1:04:01 / #
And so I kept them together as much as possible, but in a romance novel, I think it's almost essential that they're on every page together. The desire is a given. It's going to be chemistry from the get-go. First time they see each other sparks are gonna fly, even though they don't demonstrate it. Sparks can fly in anger. but there's going to be that static electricity, you know, automatically. So that's a given. And then the one that we've touched on in this, I think is as important as any if not the, it can't be easy. They've got to be forbidden, for one reason or another. So you've got them a problem they've got to solve together. You've got them to share space. They're gonna have the desire but they can't give into it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:54 / #
This explains everything about the kind of romance reader, I mean, it's just hard wired right into my system. Because I say that a lot, a thing I struggle with, I think, in modern romances, they aren't trying to solve the same problem. They have separate problems, and I'm always like, okay, but I don't care. What are they doing together? And I know that makes me old-fashioned maybe, but I don't care. Solve a problem together. That's what I want to see you do.
Sandra Brown 1:05:18 / #
I think old-fashioned works, if it, you know, if it's written correctly. A contemporary book by contemporary writer and I read them and I love them, eat 'em up. And as I said, the human emotions have not changed. So, you know, we can go back and we can read, you know, books written hundreds of years ago, Dickens, Shakespeare, you know, Wilkie Collins, anybody, and those, those emotions are still there, identified.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:56 / #
I would love to hear - one of the questions we sent you, and I think it's so important for these interviews and for women in general, in publishing, is, when did you know you were Sandra Brown? Right? When did you know you were a big deal? Was there a moment when you were like, oh, no, I'm a thing. I'm leaving a mark.
Sandra Brown 1:06:17 / #
I can't wait for that day. Because I still feel, I mean, very much, a yeoman. I mean, I am, I work hard. And every day when I come to this computer, it's like, I've never done it before. I start from scratch every day. And so I know, I don't think of Sandra Brown as Sandra. In fact, my friends have heard me say before, my family has heard me say, frequently, I've got to go be Sandra Brown today.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:03 / #
A separate entity. Sure.
Sandra Brown 1:07:06 / #
It's like, you know, I don't fluff up every day. And so it's, it's like, I still consider myself, you know, just a, someone who works very, very hard, and has been blessed with the opportunities that I have been given and, and to be able to do what I love doing and, and make a living at it. And I know that a lot of people, you know, just take their jobs, but they're necessary. And I get to do what I love doing and get to have a job out of it. So I'm grateful every day and I never, I think the you know, it's really bad for a writer to start reading the press releases, because when you start getting complacent about what you are, you can get really lazy and so I face, I am very paranoid and very fearful that whatever talent, I don't even like to use that word, but I guess that's the word that has to suffice, but whatever storytelling ability that I may have had or forming a sentence or creating a character yesterday will have left me last night, and I live in the fear of being exposed as the biggest fraud that ever pulled off, you know, a hoax.
Sarah MacLean 1:08:39 / #
That just sounds like you're a writer. This is all very comforting for me, but I think we, Jen and I, will say you are obviously a legend to us and to many.
Sandra Brown 1:08:52 / #
Well, thank you. Thank you. That means a great deal, and I love to, to hear other, I mean, you know, I'm buddies with a lot of other writers and some are, you know, very fearful the same way I am. Some are very, you know, laid back something, you know, gosh, you know, isn't this fun, and I remember being, it was actually at George and Barbara Bush's home in Houston for a luncheon, for one her foundation's literacy programs. And Harlan Cohen and I were there and we had our spouses with us, this lovely lunch. And so we were outside in their garden, having our picture made with him and everything and he, you know, he's very, very tall, and he leaned down and he said, "Do you believe we get to do this?" And I said, "You know, I pinch myself all the time." I mean, telling my stories, writing my stories has enabled me to do amazing things, meet sports stars and movie stars and rock stars and go on two USO tours, an opportunity that would not have been afforded me, had I not been, you know, a writer. And so I'm forever grateful. But yeah, I don't look at you know, Sandra Brown the mom is just mom, believe me, Sandra Brown, the grandmother is just that, you know. And Sandra Brown, the one that goes to work every day is the different one that shows up to make a speech.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:43 / #
So as we wrap up, though, one question that I think, it's just a reflective question, and you've seen this in advance is, when you think about your body of work, especially romance, since this is a romance podcast, although you're welcome to talk about any one of your books. Do you have a favorite? Do you have a book that you are especially proud of, or that you hope will outlive you?
Sandra Brown 1:11:08 / #
Well, I make, when I'm asked this in a public speech, public arena, I always say my favorite is the one that you're about to buy.
Jennifer Prokop 1:11:23 / #
Great answer.
Sarah MacLean 1:11:24 / #
But let's say you're asked for posterity.
Sandra Brown 1:11:29 / #
I think if, if I hadn't, well, of course, and this is not, I'm not being facetious on this, I was very proud of Blind Tiger. Because it was a, it was a different kind of book, and I hope it has long legs. I hope it, you know, lasts for a long time, I hope that word of mouth will spread, because it is a different kind of story, and it's kind of a yarn, you know, in a way and I want people to read it. I thought there was some very interesting character development in it and social implications in it, and so I'm proud of it. A book that comes around a lot is Envy. People - there's a lot of fan base that say Envy, you know, was one that I really loved. And so I think it might, it might live a longer time. And I think the trilogy will, just because they're so much fun. And they're still wanting an e-book. I can't get them an e-book, and because -
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:41 / #
Oh, yeah! 'Cause we had to order, I had to order paperbacks.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:44 / #
We had to read them in print. Why can't they be an e-book?
Sandra Brown 1:12:47 / #
Well, it's all contractual stuff. I hate that side of it, because, you know, well, I could comment more, but I'm not.
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:02 / #
I'm sure.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:03 / #
That's fine. You can come again, when you're ready.
Sandra Brown 1:13:06 / #
Let's put it this way. As soon as it becomes feasible, I would love to have them available to readers in e-book. Yeah. And I love people that read them. You know, in the whole volume, the one volume, because then they can read it like one thousand page book. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:26 / #
I love, I mean, this is such a tiny, tiny thing, but that exclamation point really does a whole lot of work!
Sandra Brown 1:13:33 / #
You know what, I heard you comment on that.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:39 / #
Did you hear me call them sex-clamation points!
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:44 / #
We're teaching you all the good stuff.
Sandra Brown 1:13:47 / #
I may be wrong, but I think you attributed that to the publisher, and that was me! Because I thought when I can't just say "Texas Trilogy" because that doesn't say anything, and so I thought what if I put an exclamation point? And I did and so when I sent the manuscript in -
Sarah MacLean 1:14:08 / #
It's perfect.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:09 / #
It is.
Sandra Brown 1:14:10 / #
I said now, the exclamation point is part of the title, and it's gonna be on all of the books. So yeah, that was my idea.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:18 / #
We're going to put, I'm going to put a special beginning on the text of that episode to make sure that we get this correct.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:18 / #
Get it right.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:18 / #
I want to correct the record. Those exclamation points are glorious, and I love them very much.
Sandra Brown 1:14:30 / #
Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:31 / #
So this is sort of a separate question that I would love for you to answer. But is there anybody lesser known in romance, who, from, you know, who you think, as we're, Jen and I are planning to interview, you know, as many people as we can over the next few years for this kind of a conversation? Is there anybody who you absolutely think we have to talk to? And not just authors.
Sandra Brown 1:14:53 / #
I don't know who you have lined up? I think the contemporaries of mine that I mentioned before, I think Jayne Ann Krentz, because she writes multi-genre, and she does them all extremely well. Nora Roberts, of course.
Jennifer Prokop 1:15:13 / #
We'd love to get Nora Roberts, of course.
Sandra Brown 1:15:16 / #
And Candice Camp, because she has written contemporaries and historicals, and she's been around more than 40 years, and still turning out great books. And so she would be one I would suggest, because they do have that history, you know, they do have that longevity. And recently, not too recently, but someone asked me, "What are you most proud of?" You know, and it can't be your children, and it can't be your long marriage, and it can be anything easy like that, but from a writing standpoint, from your, what, what's the thing you're most proud of? And I said, "My longevity. It's not easy to maintain." And I respect authors, like, you know, like the Dean Koontz's and the Stephen King's, and they were all, they had all just started, you know, when just years, a few years ahead of me. And I read their works as inspiration when I first started out, and, and Dean Koontz is a great plotter. I mean, he just, and he wrote a book on how to write fiction and it became a bible early on. So all of these writers who year after year and decade after decade are still on the bestseller lists. That speaks well of not just their talent, but their work ethic.
Jennifer Prokop 1:16:54 / #
Well, I also think it's nice as a genre reader, to see people I deeply respect becoming more widely respected. I mean, when I was younger, Stephen King was just a horror writer. But now Stephen King is Stephen King.
Jennifer Prokop 1:17:10 / #
And I think that there's a way in which, I appreciate deeply, this, the idea that great storytelling and great writing is isn't just found in literary fiction, right? It's found in thrillers and horror and romance, and I think that that's one of the things that's so nice about seeing those people on those lists and seeing that longevity, is there's readers now who read Sandra Brown that wouldn't read, you know, Demon Rumm, and that's too bad, right?
Sandra Brown 1:17:40 / #
Yeah. You're right. You're exactly right. And so I think there is a, sometimes there is a prejudice there, you know, but it speaks well of a storyteller who can come up with that many stories and over a period of decades, I mean, just decades, and remain a marketable commodity to publishing houses. And so I'm proud of that longevity, and it's work. I mean, it's just work, and it speaks not just to, you know, sit and wait to get inspired, you really have to put your butt in the chair, you know, and get your head out of the clouds and put words on paper. That's the only way I know how to do it. There's no other way that I know to write a book except one word at a time. And I had another brilliant thought, now it's left me, but back to the longevity and just working at it, just working at it. I never aspired to do anything except entertain. I don't care if I win prizes, but my books are collecting dust on somebody's bookshelf. I want to be the book they take to the beach, into the bathtub, you know, to bed with them at night, that have the coffee stain, the Coca-Cola stain, the suntan oil, you know, they're frayed from taking on the subway, because, you know, that's the one you don't want to put down. That's the one you're carrying around with you, and that's the one that keeping you engrossed, and so if I entertain my reader than I can go to sleep at night, that I've done my job for the day. That's, that's the one thing that I always set out to do, is entertain my reader. Tell the reader a story.
Sarah MacLean 1:19:43 / #
Well, you have done it very well. Thank you so much for so many years of fabulous books and writing.
Sandra Brown 1:19:52 / #
Thank you. Y'all are so sweet! I'm very honored.
Sarah MacLean 1:19:56 / #
On a personal level, thank you for inspiring, I mean, you are the reason I write romance, so it is a huge honor to talk to you.
Jennifer Prokop 1:20:06 / #
It is an honor.
Sarah MacLean 1:20:07 / #
We just learned that we have, you have imprinted on our on our reading.
Jennifer Prokop 1:20:13 / #
I was trying to be real cool, but when you described you meeting Candace Camp that was me meeting you. It's fine.
Sarah MacLean 1:20:23 / #
Sandra, this was an absolute delight. Thank you so much.
Sandra Brown 1:20:27 / #
Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Sarah MacLean 1:20:31 / #
Man, when that was over, I was like, that's why that's Sandra Brown. That's why she's Sandra Brown. She was the best.
Jennifer Prokop 1:20:42 / #
I'm like not even really making words. I'm surprised I did when we talked to her because I don't think people realize, this was such a formative author.
Sarah MacLean 1:20:53 / #
We were really, I mean, I think longtime listeners will not be surprised to hear that we were very stressed out about doing this right.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:03 / #
Y'all, we prepared. We prepared so hard for it.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:06 / #
Almost too much. I was a little worried by how much we prepared.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:08 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:09 / #
I was like, uh-oh, what if we lose our mojo? But it was so great. I loved her. I love just how she - I loved her wisdom. I loved that when she, when we asked her about the hallmarks of a Sandra Brown novel -
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:22 / #
She had a list.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:23 / #
She knew exactly what she wanted, what she was. And she knew exactly how Sandra Brown novels feel. And I mean, the second she said, "And they're pretty fearless." I was like, that's it. That's the whole ballgame. And we've talked so much about that over the last three years, not just about her, but about all the books that we've loved.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:43 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:43 / #
Just that there's this sense of fearlessness in them, and so it just reminded me that as writers, our work is to swing for the fences, and maybe we clear them and maybe we don't but you swing.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:57 / #
We're going to talk a lot this year about the history of romance, and you know, The Flame and the Flower was this really important kind of marker. Romance existed before in a lot of different iterations and a lot of different ways, but you know, sort of genre romance. And the thing that I have been thinking a lot about is, the romance reader you are is really formed by your primordial romance texts. And when Sandra Brown talked about what makes us Sandra Brown romance, it was so, this is what is romance is to me.
Sarah MacLean 1:22:37 / #
Yes! Like she unpeeled you, straight to your core.
Jennifer Prokop 1:22:40 / #
Right there, she made me who I was. But I think the other thing that's really interesting is that can be true at the same time that I can see how romance has really changed.
Sarah MacLean 1:22:40 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:22:52 / #
And so that's the part that I think continues to astound me, is outsiders to romance are kind of like, aren't the books all the same? And I was like, no. Yes and no, right? Yes, there's something that delivers to me every time and hearing Sandra Brown verbalize what she wants to do in her books really made that clear to me, but also, so much has changed.
Sarah MacLean 1:23:18 / #
Yeah. Well, it was interesting because reading Blind Tiger, which is probably 60% mystery/thriller, 40% romance really gave me a feel for it. There were so many moments where I thought, oh, that's Sandra Brown. That's it. This feels, it's a lesson in authorial voice reading that book, you know, 30 years after I read my first Sandra Brown novel, because I can still hear her in it. And then after meeting her, you sort of have this moment where you're like, oh, it all connects in this really cool way. But also, it feels like the romance there is a Sandra Brown romance, not a romance of an author who just started this year, and that is also very cool. I think, the work of what we have talked about, us wanting this season to be, feels like we're really, in that first interview, it just felt like okay, we're starting to see already the long road, and I'm really excited about that.
Jennifer Prokop 1:24:23 / #
I think one other thing I've been thinking a lot about is, I think I've mentioned a couple times here and there, there's a podcast I really enjoyed listening to with my husband called Hit Parade, which is about pop music. And it talks about, sort of opens with, we're going to talk about disco and Donna Summer, but then it traces back all of the people that sort of influenced that music, and then there's sort of a part where it's like, who has Donna Summer influenced, right? That's a really good episode, everybody, by the way. One of the things I was thinking about as we talked to Sandra Brown was Tia Williams. So we interviewed Tia Williams about her book, Seven Days in June -
Sarah MacLean 1:25:03 / #
Last season.
Jennifer Prokop 1:25:03 / #
Last season, but Tia Williams talked about her love of Slow Heat in Heaven and Sandra Brown. And when I thought about it, it made perfect sense, because I could see sort of the influence. And I think that's the part about knowing I mean, you know, my brain's got to be good for something, I guess, is it is really fascinating. We talk about like the romance family tree and sort of how, who influences who. I think that's another thing we are hoping that these Trailblazer episodes can do is really show you the people who, you know, these things are all connected. Every romance has that common DNA, but some people tune in more to some authors than others, and it's really, that was another fascinating thing for me.
Sarah MacLean 1:25:51 / #
What's remarkable to me is how all of these people that we've talked to have been able to name other authors who inspire them, push them, kept them moving, you know, helped them in the early days of their career. And I think that is, when, as I think about this piece of it, I keep coming back to this heroine's journey question that we've talked about so much when we're talking about the actual books, but the heroine's journey is really the journey of a lot of these writers too. Just finding community, in general, writing is such a lonely road, but I don't think any of us in romance or out of it, get anywhere without a community. So it's really wonderful to hear those names spoken.
Jennifer Prokop 1:26:36 / #
Yes. Yeah. So I hope everyone enjoyed this conversation as much as we did.
Sarah MacLean 1:26:42 / #
It was the best.
Jennifer Prokop 1:26:43 / #
There are some - we have a lot of awesome things teed up for you. We have written some - talk about swinging for the fences. If you even knew the emails we've been sending to people.
Sarah MacLean 1:26:54 / #
We're not clearing all the fences, but we sure are trying.
Jennifer Prokop 1:26:56 / #
We're trying. And you know what? I think the other thing that I will try and do in Show Notes is maybe put some of our favorites of these authors. So they're talking, we've asked about their favorites books that they love, but so, Show Notes I hope will be something else.
Sarah MacLean 1:27:15 / #
That's right. I did just have a moment where I was like, should we read Slow Heat in Heaven when we read the Texas! book, but -
Jennifer Prokop 1:27:21 / #
You know what, I did when we read that book.
Sarah MacLean 1:27:24 / #
Did you reread it?
Jennifer Prokop 1:27:25 / #
That's one re-read when we did Sandra Brown, so I will make sure we link to that episode as well.
Sarah MacLean 1:27:31 / #
That's right. Oh, also, how cool was it that she clearly listened to our Sandra Brown episode?
Jennifer Prokop 1:27:36 / #
I don't even want to talk about it.
Sarah MacLean 1:27:37 / #
It was amazing! It was amazing! She had prepped information about our favorite books and honest to god, what a class act.
Jennifer Prokop 1:27:47 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:27:49 / #
Sandra Brown. You're the best. Thank you so much. Come back anytime. And that's that. You've been listening to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah MacLean.
Jennifer Prokop 1:28:02 / #
I'm Jennifer Prokop. You can find us on Instagram @FatedMatespod, on Twitter @FatedMates and in your earholes every week.
Sarah MacLean 1:28:09 / #
Every week at FatedMates.net or on your favorite podcatcher. You can like and follow us on your favorite podcatcher and you won't miss a single episode. We've got a lot cooking for Season Four. Also at FatedMates.net you can buy merch and stickers from Best Friend Kelly and Jordandené. There's also, ooh, you guys, for Season Four there's a Fated Mates tote bag now and a Fated Mates mug, so don't say we never do anything for you. Have a great week. We hope you're reading something great. Next week is an interstitial week. We haven't talked about the trope yet. We're going to do that now.
Jennifer Prokop 1:28:42 / #
We'll figure it out everybody.
Sarah MacLean 1:28:50 / #
We prepped for Sandra Brown and not for next week. So.