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Speaker 1: Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,

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Speaker 1: I'm Danielle Robe and this is Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.

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Speaker 1: This week feels significant. Let me tell you why. For

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Speaker 1: the first time ever, generations of romance writers Beverly Jenkins,

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Speaker 1: Tia Williams, and Kennedy Ryan are in an interview together Romance.

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Speaker 2: One of the things that drew me to it is

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Speaker 2: how opposite.

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Speaker 3: Of my worldview it is. It's like lithium literary lithium.

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Speaker 4: Lolita is not a romance. Neither is Anna Karenina. No,

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Speaker 4: you've got a woman who throws herself under a train

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Speaker 4: because of a can I say, boy, Yeah, we.

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Speaker 5: Are glad that you said it.

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Speaker 1: And if you read romance, you know that this is

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Speaker 1: a big deal. And if you aren't a romance girly yet,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you this is a big deal. So

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Speaker 1: here's the rundown. Ever, really, Jenkins has been publishing since

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Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, long before algorithms in book talk and

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Speaker 1: before romance was a billion dollar business. Right she helped

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Speaker 1: pioneer black historical romance when the industry wasn't exactly asking

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Speaker 1: for it. She writes these sweeping meticulously researched love stories

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Speaker 1: where black women are desired and complex and undeniably the

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Speaker 1: heroine for so many readers and writers. Beverly didn't just

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Speaker 1: publish books. She widened the doorway, and then Tia Williams

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Speaker 1: walked through it, and in her very teaway she redesigned

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Speaker 1: the house. One of my favorite romance books ever is

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Speaker 1: Hers Seven Days in June, And if you read that

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Speaker 1: or her novel A Love Song for Ricky Wilde, you

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Speaker 1: know that Tia can wreck us emotionally in the most

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Speaker 1: exquisite way. And before she was even a novelist, Tia

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Speaker 1: was shaping culture as a beauty editor at l Essence

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Speaker 1: and Glamour. No matter her medium, Tia knows how to

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Speaker 1: tell a story. And then there is Kennedy. Ryan Kennedy

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Speaker 1: builds outward. She's built a global community around romance that

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Speaker 1: does not look away from real life. Her books are

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Speaker 1: sweeping and sensual, yes, and they also confront disability, addiction,

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Speaker 1: reproductive rights, systemic injustice. Kennedy insists that love stories can

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Speaker 1: hold both heat and humanity. There's a few things I

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Speaker 1: deeply loved about this conversation. It wasn't just the laughter

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Speaker 1: or the banter between the three of them. It was

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Speaker 1: so cool to hear about and witness in real time

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Speaker 1: what a difference a generation makes. When Beverly started out,

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Speaker 1: romance novels were read in private and kind of pass

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Speaker 1: hand to hand under the table. And now Kennedy and

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Speaker 1: Tia are superstar novelists whose books get passed around like

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Speaker 1: a viral meme. So if you believe in the power

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Speaker 1: of love stories, if you've ever needed permission to take

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Speaker 1: up space on the page, or if there's just a

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Speaker 1: story in your heart waiting to be written, you're in

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Speaker 1: the right place. Let's turn the page with Beverly Jenkins,

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Speaker 1: Tia Williams, and Kennedy Ryan. Welcome to the club, Tia, Kennedy, Beverly,

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Speaker 1: this is so exciting.

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Speaker 3: So thrilled to be here. Thank you for having us.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, glad to be here.

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Speaker 1: Is this the first time you've all been together in

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Speaker 1: one room?

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Speaker 5: I think so, the three of us together never So

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Speaker 5: I need my screenshot before this is all over.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, these are two of my favorite girls.

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Speaker 1: Well, I feel like I'm in the presence of romance

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Speaker 1: Royalty right now. You have given us friends to lovers,

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Speaker 1: second chances, enemies to lovers, slow burns that I think

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Speaker 1: nearly killed us the whole spectrum of falling in love.

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Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be honest with you all. I'm determined

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Speaker 1: to meet a man this year.

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Speaker 4: Girl naming and claimingfication. Make sure it's a good one though.

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Speaker 4: You know there's a bunch of frogs out there right.

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Speaker 1: Well, I need the experts and with your deep knowledge

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Speaker 1: of what makes a relationship actually thrive. So what is

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Speaker 1: the best relationship wisdom that you have gained through writing

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Speaker 1: your love stories? Beverly, you are the pioneer of this

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Speaker 1: modern genre. Will you do the honors of going first

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Speaker 1: for me?

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Speaker 4: I mean, whether it's writing books or whether it's real

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Speaker 4: love us hard work, you know. And I had my

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Speaker 4: husband for thirty years before you know, I lost him

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Speaker 4: a cancer. But there were days when I wanted to

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Speaker 4: bury him in the backyard. And I've said it before

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Speaker 4: and as the days he wanted to bury me in

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Speaker 4: the backyard. So love is hard work. So that's my.

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Speaker 1: Take, Well said and real thank you, Beverly, Tia.

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Speaker 3: What do you think you know?

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Speaker 2: It's funny you say you want to find a man

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Speaker 2: this year. You can find a man outside right now.

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Speaker 3: You could go to the bodeque. They're everywhere. But the

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Speaker 3: thing is, it's the right man.

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Speaker 2: And I feel like the right man for an evolved

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Speaker 2: woman is an evolved man. And you know, I always

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Speaker 2: say that in my books all the men have gone

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Speaker 2: to therapy. While that's not you know, it's harder to

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Speaker 2: find in real life. I think having intellectual curiosity and

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Speaker 2: emotional curiosity and a willingness to sort of unpack his layers,

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Speaker 2: I think that makes a great partner, assuming that you,

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Speaker 2: as a woman, have also done the work too. I

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Speaker 2: feel like we get into problems with guys when they

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Speaker 2: show up like halfway realized, like they have. They don't

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Speaker 2: really know why they do the things that they do,

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Speaker 2: and if they haven't done that work, it's hard for

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Speaker 2: them to like show up with any grace and authenticity.

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Speaker 2: For us, that was so much weaponized therapy talk.

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Speaker 1: I'm so embarrassed, Tiya, you're speaking to my So that's

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Speaker 1: what I run into, Kennedy, what do you think?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it kind of builds off of both

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Speaker 5: of those answers in that I'm looking for I have.

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Speaker 5: I have been married to the same man for almost

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Speaker 5: thirty years. So we got together young and we've grown together,

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Speaker 5: and I think he's a therapized man. You know, he

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Speaker 5: wasn't always neither one of us were. But it goes

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Speaker 5: back to what Miss Bev was saying about, like doing

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Speaker 5: the work. And I think that one thing that has

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Speaker 5: been So we've been through a lot, you know, even

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Speaker 5: when I write, I talk about people like why do

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Speaker 5: you write the hard stuff? And I'm like, really, I

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Speaker 5: think that love shines brightest when it's tested, you know,

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Speaker 5: and being with someone who you can walk through hard

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Speaker 5: things with, and that it's somebody who is secure enough

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Speaker 5: to support you no matter what, and you feel the same.

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Speaker 1: What I'm hearing from you is a deep commitment, like

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Speaker 1: a not giving up regardless of the circumstance. Yeah, that's beautiful, Beverly.

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Speaker 1: You've been publishing romance for over thirty years. Jesus, you

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Speaker 1: survived fabio covers, you survived the mass market paperback era,

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Speaker 1: you survived the kindle revolution, and now you're surviving book talk. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what was your oh this is it moment back

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, when did you know I'm not

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Speaker 1: just writing books, I'm shifting culture A.

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Speaker 4: Lot of things black women had been reading romance forever,

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Speaker 4: even when there was nothing in the market for us.

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Speaker 4: And the stories that I received, you know, on tour

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Speaker 4: and you know, at my pajama party and stuff about

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Speaker 4: how they reacted let me know that, you know, we

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Speaker 4: sort of put a shift in the world. One woman

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Speaker 4: told me that when she picked up she saw a

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Speaker 4: Night Song, which was the first book she picked it up,

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Speaker 4: she was freaked out by the cover two black people

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Speaker 4: on a romance, she said. The first thing she did

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Speaker 4: was open it up to the back to see who

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Speaker 4: had written it, she said, And when I saw it

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Speaker 4: was a black woman, she said, I sat on the

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Speaker 4: floor in the bookstore right there and started reading. Oh wow.

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Speaker 4: So I got a lot of stories like that, And

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Speaker 4: then I got when Indigo was published, a letter from

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Speaker 4: Dangerfield Nuby's descendants. And Dangerfield Nuby was one of the

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Speaker 4: black men who was killed with John Brown during the

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Speaker 4: the rated Harper's Ferry, and they were writing me to

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Speaker 4: let me know that they were so proud that I

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Speaker 4: was highlighting their ancestor and his contribution. And I was like, WHOA,

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Speaker 4: this is wild. I was, you know, I was so

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Speaker 4: moved and so just to love and respect. And you know,

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Speaker 4: I don't know purpose that the book served over these

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Speaker 4: thirty years. So I'm so grateful to the readers. I

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Speaker 4: don't know what to do. And these young ladies here too.

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Speaker 1: It's not often, especially nowadays, that anyone or I have

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak to somebody who pioneered an industry,

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Speaker 1: and so to hear your perspective is personally just so

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Speaker 1: exciting to me but also so valuable. And I see

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Speaker 1: Tia and Kennedy as you're speaking. I can tell both

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Speaker 1: of you are so moved by Beverly's words. Can I

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Speaker 1: just ask you, like what you were feeling as she

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Speaker 1: was sharing.

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Speaker 5: That every time I am with Miss Bev, I feel

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Speaker 5: incredibly moved. This is this is like now, it's like

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Speaker 5: legend for me, lore for me that the first time

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Speaker 5: I met Miss Bev was at Essence Fest maybe two or.

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Speaker 4: Three years ago.

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Speaker 5: But when I came face to face with Miss Bev,

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Speaker 5: I literally, Miss Bev, is this that true? Sobbing?

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Speaker 4: It was an ugly cry It was a cry job.

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Speaker 5: You know, and I couldn't control it. I didn't know

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Speaker 5: what was gonna happen, but I just felt like I

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Speaker 5: am standing in the presence of greatness, you know, I

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Speaker 5: felt like I am standing in front of somebody who

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Speaker 5: every time I talk about it, I get emotional. But

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Speaker 5: I just felt like I'm on this woman's shoulders, you know,

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Speaker 5: And like I am a lifelong romance reader. I started

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Speaker 5: reading romance in the eighth grade, which was a long

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Speaker 5: time ago, and I remember how overwhelmingly white it was,

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Speaker 5: you know, even in people who would inspire me as

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Speaker 5: a writer. And then to come back to romance later

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Speaker 5: and to see somebody like miss Bev, who I always

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Speaker 5: say it didn't exist. There was no blueprint for it,

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Speaker 5: there was no roadmap for it, and she made it

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Speaker 5: out of nothing, you know. And so to be in

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Speaker 5: that tradition, you know, of black romance and of romance

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Speaker 5: writing as a black woman, it's incredibly moving. Like I cry,

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Speaker 5: just every time I'm with her, I cry. I mean,

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Speaker 5: I also could be paramid a pause, but like.

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Speaker 4: You and I have to bring up too though, that

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Speaker 4: I'm standing on shoulders, you know. I'm standing on Sandra

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Speaker 4: Kit's shoulders. I'm standing on Roslynd Wells shoulders. I'm standing

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Speaker 4: on Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. Nineteenth century abolitionists womanist, one

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Speaker 4: of the first women to ever do a whole lot

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Speaker 4: of stuff, and she wrote the very first African American romance,

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Speaker 4: Iola LeRoi in eighteen ninety two, she was seventy years old,

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Speaker 4: to go with her the most iconic poem in abolition,

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Speaker 4: Bury Me in a Free Land. So we are all

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Speaker 4: standing on shoulders, and I would be remiss to say

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Speaker 4: that I invented anything because I didn't.

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Speaker 1: Spoken like a true pioneer. Beverly Tia, do you remember

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Speaker 1: the first time you read a Beverly Jenkins book? Was

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Speaker 1: it a I see myself? Was it, Oh, this is

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Speaker 1: what's possible? Was it this is what I need to do?

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Speaker 1: What did you feel?

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Speaker 2: So when Miss bev was telling the story about the

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Speaker 2: woman who sat down in the bookstore, that was me?

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Speaker 3: I mean was that was not me? But that was

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Speaker 3: my reaction with nights on Wow.

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Speaker 2: I've been a romance reader since I was nine years old,

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Speaker 2: stealing my mom's historical romances.

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Speaker 3: And you know, yes, we.

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Speaker 2: All stand on shoulders, but in my lifetime they're just

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Speaker 2: it just didn't exist. And so I grew up with

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Speaker 2: the Jude Devereaus and the Woodow Whisses, and I loved them,

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Speaker 2: and I would recast all the characters as black people.

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Speaker 3: In my mind. And I knew at a young age.

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Speaker 2: That I was going to grow up and write those

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Speaker 2: kinds of books but starring us, because having to picture

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Speaker 2: yourself as the black version of something is whack. And

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Speaker 2: then so reading Night Song, just seeing the cover took

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Speaker 2: me clean out because I'm still coming from a place

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Speaker 2: and I think culturally where we're all still coming from

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Speaker 2: a place where do we even want.

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Speaker 3: To read historical fiction starring us? Like what was really happening?

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Speaker 4: You know?

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Speaker 2: And I know that Miss Bev opened my mind up

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Speaker 2: to a world in which we had humanity, and we

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Speaker 2: had love, and we had all of the feelings and

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Speaker 2: the passions and the emotions that we have now then,

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Speaker 2: So yeah, it was like seeing myself for the first time.

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Speaker 1: First of all, thank you for sharing that, Tiya, And

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Speaker 1: per usual, you bring up an even larger point I think,

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Speaker 1: which is that historical romance can sometimes romanticize the past.

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Speaker 1: And when I watch Bridgerton, I want to fall in

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Speaker 1: love with a castle and wear ball gowns. But a

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Speaker 1: lot of the stories that take place in a past

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Speaker 1: era where shaped by racial violence. I'm curious Beverly, How

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Speaker 1: did you thread the needle of depicting a beautiful love

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Speaker 1: story without softening the reality of the era that it's

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Speaker 1: shaped by.

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Speaker 4: By keeping the story focused on the couple, you know,

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Speaker 4: because it's a romance. And yes, you have Jim Crow,

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Speaker 4: and yes you have you know, the Red Summer nineteen nineteen,

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Speaker 4: and you've got Tulsa and you have the Luncheons. But

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Speaker 4: our people survived that with fearlessness and cleverness and love.

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Speaker 4: So I focused that my story is on that relationship

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Speaker 4: and the rest of it is in the background. Because

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Speaker 4: even with like I said, even with all of the

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Speaker 4: crap that we've had to put up with as black

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Speaker 4: people in America, we still loved. We still had marriages,

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Speaker 4: our men still courted us, we still built colleges, you know,

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Speaker 4: so that tradition of all of the things that we face,

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Speaker 4: and we still loved.

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Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to interviewed Tia a year or

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Speaker 1: two ago, and I learned that she sort of had

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Speaker 1: this past life before she became a novelist. She was

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Speaker 1: a beauty editor at a very prominent magazine. Tia, your

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Speaker 1: law runs so deep.

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Speaker 5: It's pretty deep.

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Speaker 3: I have some stories, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I actually don't know if Beverly or Kennedy had a

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Speaker 1: past life either. Were you guys full time writers always

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Speaker 1: or did you also have a past life?

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Speaker 5: Oh gosh, I definitely have a past life. My background

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Speaker 5: is journalism. And when my son was diagnosed with autism

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Speaker 5: when he was two, maybe within the next like two years,

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Speaker 5: I started a foundation for families with children with autism

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Speaker 5: and I ran that for eleven years. I have still

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Speaker 5: an auction that raises a lot of money for autism,

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Speaker 5: like that's connected to the book community. So autism advocacy,

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Speaker 5: special needs parenting, like that's something that is such a

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Speaker 5: huge part of my life and my life purpose. So

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Speaker 5: that's a big part of my life. Before I started publishing,

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Speaker 5: you know, I thought I was going to be, you know,

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Speaker 5: reporting from a war torn country, and now I'm writing,

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Speaker 5: you know, meet cutes.

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Speaker 4: So I had no intention of being a writer. All

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Speaker 4: I ever wanted to do was work in a library,

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Speaker 4: and life gave me that. And the next thing, I know,

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Speaker 4: you know, life sometimes or the Lord of the universe

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Speaker 4: hands and stuff and says here where this hat. And

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Speaker 4: I was like, oh okay, one of my colleagues had

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Speaker 4: just gotten published and I told her about this little

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Speaker 4: raggedy manuscript that I was working on just for me.

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Speaker 4: Because this was like nineteen eighty five. There was no

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Speaker 4: mass market for us in romance or anything else back then,

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Speaker 4: very limited. She wanted to see it, and so I

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Speaker 4: brought it in and she said, you need to get

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Speaker 4: this published. And I'm like, where, how? With who? And

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Speaker 4: some kind of way, I found Vivian Stevens, who basically

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Speaker 4: invented American romance. She's the first black editor at Harlequin.

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Speaker 4: She started Silhouette. So all of that anyway, I sent

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Speaker 4: my little raggedy manuscript to her to shut Laverna up

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Speaker 4: my friend at work. She called me at the desk

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Speaker 4: less than a week later and said she wanted to

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Speaker 4: represent me.

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Speaker 2: I think I should say that when I was growing up,

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Speaker 2: I had two dreams, and it was to be a

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Speaker 2: magazine editor, live in New York and do that whole thing,

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Speaker 2: but also to write fiction and to be a romance novelist.

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Speaker 3: I always knew that, and.

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Speaker 2: I moved to Brooklyn and I started as an editorial

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Speaker 2: assistant y a magazine. I was like, okay, so that dream, okay,

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Speaker 2: I can you know, check that off the list. But

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Speaker 2: now I have to write my novel. But I realized

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Speaker 2: that I didn't really have any exciting experience. I sat

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Speaker 2: down to write, and I was like, what am I

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Speaker 2: writing about? I went to college, I just graduated, and

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Speaker 2: now I'm doing like I hadn't really had like any

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Speaker 2: big boyfriends or any like, how am I going to

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Speaker 2: write about sex?

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Speaker 3: What am I doing? I mean, I wasn't a virgin,

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Speaker 3: but like it was early.

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Speaker 2: Just to be clear, you're clear, I mean I was

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Speaker 2: out there, but I wasn't out there, so I wanted

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Speaker 2: to get some experience. So like fast forward four years later,

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Speaker 2: I met Glamour. I'm the first black beauty editor at Glamor. Okay,

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Speaker 2: and this was a big deal. And I was dating

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Speaker 2: a very charismatic psycho and which is what you do

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Speaker 2: at twenty five And this is like Devilwar's Prada magazine era.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 3: I had an editor throw a bagel at my head. Okay,

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Speaker 3: Like oh wow, it was wild, and I was like,

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Speaker 3: you know what, it's a no for me.

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Speaker 2: So I broke up with the guy, put all my

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Speaker 2: stuff in storage, quit the job at Glamour, which was

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Speaker 2: a big deal because I was the first and the

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Speaker 2: only in the room, but I felt like I was

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Speaker 2: slipping away. So in a move of self preservation, I

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Speaker 2: went to Seville, Spain for six months to teach Spanish

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Speaker 2: to third graders. And while I was there, I the

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Speaker 2: story of my psycho romance. But I wrote it in

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Speaker 2: my favor and made him fabulous and gave it a

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Speaker 2: happy ending. And when I got back to New York

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Speaker 2: and you know, went back to my magazine job, I

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Speaker 2: realized that that was my first book.

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Speaker 4: I wrote it.

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Speaker 3: That was the Eccidental Diva in two thousand and four.

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Speaker 1: First of all, Tia, thank you for chiming in and

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Speaker 1: sharing the larger story, because I would have been so

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Speaker 1: sad if we didn't hear that. But also, I actually

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Speaker 1: I'm really curious how you guys feel about happy endings.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that a romance book requires one?

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Speaker 5: Yes, I mean the genre, the definition by definition, in

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Speaker 5: the genre, a romance requires a happily ever after, or

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Speaker 5: it's not a romance. That's something for some reason. It's

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Speaker 5: like hotly debated now, like you can have a love

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Speaker 5: story with a tragic ending, but you can't have a romance.

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Speaker 5: And I know people are gonna be like what some

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Speaker 5: people still, but like a romance novel, by definition of

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Speaker 5: the genre, has a happily ever after.

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Speaker 4: It's either a HIA or a hf N, which is

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Speaker 4: happy for now, which is most ya. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Now, do you all think that you were optimistic by

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Speaker 1: nature and so you were drawn to romance or has

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Speaker 1: the genre made you really believe in the hia the

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Speaker 1: happily ever after?

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Speaker 3: I'm not optimistic at all.

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Speaker 5: That's why his favorite genre is like horror, okay, And.

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Speaker 4: I'm a big fantasy reader, so gotta have dragons.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I prefer when everyone dies.

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Speaker 4: At the end.

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Speaker 2: But romance, one of the things that drew me to

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Speaker 2: it is how opposite.

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Speaker 3: Of my worldview it is. It's like lithium.

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Speaker 4: Well, literary is not a romance. Neither is Anna Karenina

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Speaker 4: throws herself under a train because of a can I say, boy.

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Speaker 5: We are glad that you said.

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Speaker 4: A lot of times you know blue, But that is

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Speaker 4: not a romance.

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Speaker 5: I think the thing I love most about romance is that, like,

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Speaker 5: I write about some really difficult things, you know, like

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Speaker 5: and I enjoy that, and people are like, oh, why

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Speaker 5: do you write trauma? I'm like, we're not writing Trauma's

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Speaker 5: just life. And a lot of our white counterparts get

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Speaker 5: to write deeply emotional stories that really excavate the human experience,

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Speaker 5: and that's what they call it is it's deeply emotional,

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Speaker 5: excavating the human experience. But when we write it, it's like, oh,

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Speaker 5: that's it's trauma just because we as black women are

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Speaker 5: writing it. And I never write the hurt without the healing.

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Speaker 5: But I think that the thing I love about romance

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Speaker 5: is it is the safest genre landscape to unpack those

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Speaker 5: big emotions and those huge, deeply evocative human experiences. And

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Speaker 5: the reason I say it's safe is because we have

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Speaker 5: guaranteed joy at the end. So it's like, yes, I

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Speaker 5: am talking about something that's really deep, I'm talking about

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Speaker 5: something that's really possibly hurtful, but there is a path

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Speaker 5: to healing and there's a path to joy, and we

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Speaker 5: are the only genre that guarantees that. And so when

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Speaker 5: people talk about the predictability of the happily ever after,

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Speaker 5: like it's so predictable, the human experience is not predictable.

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Speaker 5: Like the journey that we are taking to become who

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Speaker 5: we become a part and together is not predictable. The

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Speaker 5: only thing that is safe is that you will get

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Speaker 5: joy in the end. And so that's my approach to romance.

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Speaker 5: You know, Kennedy Deacon, Kennedy girl.

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Speaker 3: When you talk, it's like, listen, we're in church.

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Speaker 5: I love it.

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Speaker 3: It's so true, it's so good.

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Speaker 1: All of you write multi layered characters with agency and desirability.

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Speaker 1: What does it mean to write black female desire without

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Speaker 1: a apology?

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Speaker 4: Freedom? It's revolutionary, it's radical. We look back through our history,

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Speaker 4: Dorothy Sterling says, the black women in the nineteenth century

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Speaker 4: had three gifts. We worked whether we were enslaved or free.

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Speaker 4: We had a commitment to social activism and cultural activism,

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Speaker 4: and we pushed the envelope on gender and race. We

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Speaker 4: are still practicing those gifts today because we have no choice.

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Speaker 4: So we are still doing all of those gifts. And

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Speaker 4: you put those with the women that we write, and

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Speaker 4: you got a complete character there.

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Speaker 3: Tia.

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Speaker 1: At the beginning of this conversation, you were talking about

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Speaker 1: how you had to put yourself into these white characters, which,

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Speaker 1: to quote you felt whack. I agree. When you think

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Speaker 1: about readers who see themselves represented for the first time

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Speaker 1: in your books, what are you hoping that they internalize

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Speaker 1: about their own desirability and self worth.

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Speaker 3: That's a great question.

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Speaker 2: I really just I want, through my characters for women

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Speaker 2: and whoever to feel possibility and to see what can be.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I always say that I write for Black

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Speaker 2: women first and anyone else who comes to it. You know,

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Speaker 2: I love that, but it's really a gift for black women.

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Speaker 2: I want everything to be larger than life. I want everything,

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Speaker 2: every emotion to be big. I want the dialogue to

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Speaker 2: really sparkle. I want even if they're in a Starbucks,

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Speaker 2: I want it to be the most dazzling experience in

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Speaker 2: a Starbucks. I want it to be an escapist, fantasy gift.

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Speaker 3: And through that escape.

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Speaker 2: I want women to learn about what they like or

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Speaker 2: what they want, or what they can reach.

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Speaker 3: For or even in the careers that.

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Speaker 2: I give my main characters, Because like I said, I

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Speaker 2: was really into Judah Krantz and Jackie Collins and Daniel Steele,

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Speaker 2: these women in their in their books. You know, they

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Speaker 2: were art galleries, they were model agents, and you just

435
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 2: never saw black women, you know, in those jobs. And

436
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 2: also in a lot of our you know gen X

437
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 2: and boomer homes.

438
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 3: We were taught if you're going to be anything.

439
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 2: You need to be a lawyer or a doctor and

440
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 2: get us out of here, you know, And and the.

441
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 3: Artistic professions weren't really encouraged.

442
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 2: So all of my main female characters are artists in

443
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 2: some regard. Most of the men are too, because I

444
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 2: want my readers to see that possibility as well, and

445
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 2: see a way to, you know, a way forward doing

446
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 2: something they really love.

447
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 3: And not something they're you know, cornered or pushed into.

448
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,199
Speaker 1: Well said, I love how you said that you write

449
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: for black women? And then whoever else? Kennedy and Beverly,

450
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: who do you write for me?

451
00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 4: Basically because Tony Morrison say, if there's a story out

452
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 4: there that is not being told and you want to

453
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:05,480
Speaker 4: read it, then you need to write it. And I

454
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 4: grew up in the fifties. There are no books in

455
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 4: the you know, and I read everything in my neighborhood library.

456
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 4: There's nothing on the page for me. So when I

457
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,720
Speaker 4: was writing Ninth Song after work, I was writing a

458
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 4: love story for myself.

459
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: Kennedy, how about you?

460
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I write first for black women. I

461
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 5: do have. I have an indigenous main character. I have

462
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 5: a first generation Mexican American main character. I have an amputee.

463
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:35,680
Speaker 5: I have a lot of the experiences that I am

464
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 5: writing are identities, communities, experiences that have been peripheralized, and

465
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 5: in my work, I want to bring them to the center,

466
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 5: you know, Like I'm constantly thinking about what is the

467
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 5: experience that we haven't seen at the center of narrative,

468
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 5: where those women haven't been told that they are worthy

469
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 5: of a happily ever after, that they are worthy about

470
00:26:57,320 --> 00:27:00,919
Speaker 5: pages and unconditional love. And when I'm writing, there's a

471
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 5: specific person in mind. So when I wrote this last book,

472
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about women, specifically Black women who have bipolar

473
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 5: disorder in this country, and what does that experience look like,

474
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 5: and what does it look like when you're navigating something

475
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 5: that lifelong and difficult to have a partner come alongside

476
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,919
Speaker 5: you and stand unconditionally and stand no matter what you know.

477
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 5: So that's constantly like the ethos of what I'm doing

478
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:26,880
Speaker 5: in Romance Kennedy.

479
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: When I read your books, I feel as if I'm

480
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:34,160
Speaker 1: getting a story I haven't read before, And I think

481
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 1: the identity aspect is part of it, because you are

482
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: calling people in and it doesn't feel like a peripheral

483
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: part of the story. It is the story, which is

484
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 1: so cool. I think each of you have found such

485
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:51,880
Speaker 1: a unique approach to stories of romance. And I'm curious,

486
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: from like a writing perspective, when you are pitching to agents,

487
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 1: how are you able to carve out a genre that

488
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 1: could feel in credit, be crowded and then get all

489
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: these people to be on board, because that seems like

490
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: a whole nother layer. And Kennedy, you are breathing heavy.

491
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:11,720
Speaker 4: You took it.

492
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 5: You took a breath. When I said that, I think

493
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 5: it was the word pitch to agents.

494
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 4: I was like, am I doing scary phrase? Yeah?

495
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,719
Speaker 1: I really wrote historical romance during a time that was

496
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 1: like really a time period that's overlooked in black history.

497
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, everywhere.

498
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: Tia, I think you blend sexy with serious in a

499
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: way that it feels like I'm reading somebody's diary, you know.

500
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: And Kennedy, you always touch on these social issues. You

501
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: each have such a path that you've carved out.

502
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 2: Well, I can say that, you know, and we don't

503
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 2: have to pitch to agents anymore. But you know, back

504
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 2: in the day, it was extremely hard because I came

505
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 2: along during this time that was like posts the nineties,

506
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 2: Black contemporary commercial fiction craze. Unfortunately, it ended up being

507
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 2: a trend, and honestly, I really do think the only

508
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 2: reason that my first novel was published is because it

509
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 2: was right on the heels of a lot of magazine

510
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 2: editor you know, Sex and the City type fiction, Devil

511
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 2: wors Prada, you know plum Sykes that Vogue wrote, wrote one.

512
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 2: You know, all the Vogue editors wrote fiction. Cannice Bushnell

513
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 2: was out here doing the lord's work, and mine was

514
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 2: a black one.

515
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 3: And I heard that all the time.

516
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 2: I mean, they even put a letto on the cover

517
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 2: with a very light skin foot to.

518
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 5: Everyone as coble as possible. I will never forget my

519
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 5: skin foot.

520
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: Listen.

521
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 2: The cover model, which I had no you know, control over,

522
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 2: was the light skin Puerto Rican you can imagine, which

523
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 2: would be great if my character was an extremely light

524
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 2: skinned perto Rican.

525
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 3: But she was a black woman from Virginia like myself.

526
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:14,840
Speaker 2: Oh man, anyway, But yeah, so you know I've come

527
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:18,479
Speaker 2: up against and when I was selling The Perfect Find

528
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, a year before, things changed quite drastically,

529
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 2: and you know, publishers were wanting diverse voices and wanting

530
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 2: to expand their lists beyond you know, white men and

531
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 2: then white women. It was extremely tough because it was

532
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 2: a novel about a fashion editor, and I had very

533
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 2: prominent editors would say things to me like, oh, well,

534
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 2: I don't think it's very believable that a black woman

535
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 2: would be a fashion editor on that level, or can

536
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 2: we change the industry from fashion to something that's more

537
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 2: believable for a black character, to which you know, it

538
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 2: was a no, no, no, I'm not going to change it.

539
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:00,719
Speaker 2: And you have to stick to your And I think

540
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 2: back to your question of you know, how do you

541
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 2: pitch something that doesn't feel believable or doesn't feel real,

542
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 2: or you know, sort of pushing a genre that doesn't

543
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 2: quite exist yet.

544
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 3: You just have to.

545
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 2: Have tremendous balls and stick to your guns if you

546
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 2: know that what you have is good, and if you

547
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 2: know that what you have is real.

548
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: Beverly, I'm so curious what it was like for you

549
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 1: when you started publishing.

550
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 4: It was interesting and you know she's talking about you know,

551
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 4: them not knowing anything about who we are. That was

552
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 4: part of the reason why I got so many rejection letters.

553
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 4: They didn't have a box for it. Publishing and America

554
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 4: in general, when you have a nineteenth century story with

555
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 4: black people, it's supposed to be about slavery, right, So

556
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 4: here I come with a love story starring an Oberlin

557
00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 4: educated school team a black buffalo soldier in an all

558
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 4: black town after the Great Exodus of eighteen seventy nine

559
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 4: on the plains of Kansas. None of that made sense

560
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 4: to anybody because the letters were like, great writing, but

561
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 4: great writing, but great writing. Butte and the Butt had

562
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 4: to do with what the hell we're supposed to do

563
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 4: with this. I was blessed that Ellen Edwards, who was

564
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 4: the executive editor at a Mine at the time, saw

565
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 4: the potential in the story. But you know, it was

566
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 4: a first book. You don't know what the hell you're

567
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 4: doing with your first book. She said, Beverly, I love

568
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 4: your writing, I love the love scenes, but we need

569
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 4: a story. I had like eight hundred pages of heat.

570
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 4: I mean, you need to ask Bestel's gloves to hold

571
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 4: on to that. And I was like, I gotta write

572
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 4: a story. It's just like, yeah, you gotta write a story.

573
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 4: So it didn't make sense, like I said, too, to

574
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 4: put all of that against a white majority background. So

575
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 4: I went in and did the history a little bit deeper,

576
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 4: because I doubt it would have been published the way it.

577
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: Was, beautifully, said Beverly Kennedy. I watched in an interview

578
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: in your latest book, Can't Get Enough, you said it's

579
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: the intersection of swoon and social commentary. And I am

580
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: so curious about your relationship with book talk. You're so

581
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 1: popular on there. How much do you take into account

582
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: what your fans ask for when it comes to the

583
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: stories you're telling.

584
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 5: I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't you know, I,

585
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 5: like I said, like, I figure out what matters to

586
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 5: me right now, And I'm real, do you know about

587
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 5: the creative process in the sense that I feel like

588
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 5: I'm going to tune in and I'm going to kind

589
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 5: of dial inside and figure out what am I supposed

590
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 5: to be writing right now? Like when I wrote before

591
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 5: I Let Go, I was wrestling with my own depression

592
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 5: and I wrote about depression, and I wrote about therapy

593
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 5: and I wrote about black men getting into therapy and

594
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 5: healing and all of that. It was like, this is

595
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 5: I don't think of myself as just releasing books. And

596
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 5: this sounds so elevated, like, oh my god, you think

597
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 5: you're so important? But I think of myself as not

598
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,839
Speaker 5: just releasing a book, but deploying a book, Like I'm

599
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 5: sending this book on a mission. And for me, the

600
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:38,839
Speaker 5: mission with each book is different. And with that book

601
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 5: was all about mental health. It was all about therapy.

602
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 5: It was all about depression, destigmatizing getting help for that,

603
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 5: specifically in the right right. So for me, when I

604
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 5: released that, that's what I'm supposed to be writing, and

605
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 5: I write it when I hear from people like, oh

606
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 5: my gosh, I just handed that book to my husband

607
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 5: who refused to go to therapy. Oh my gosh. I

608
00:34:58,120 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 5: called my insurance company to see if they will c

609
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 5: you know, my therapy. Oh my gosh. I was recovering

610
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 5: from this, and then I read your book, Like, for me,

611
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 5: that is the first metric of success, and the more

612
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 5: successful you become, the harder it is to stay close

613
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 5: to that. Like then you're like, oh, did I list

614
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 5: and did I sell? And did I do this? So

615
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,320
Speaker 5: I'm constantly reminding myself that my first metric for success

616
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 5: is that I achieved what when I dialed into that

617
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 5: voice inside I said was the mission for this book.

618
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,839
Speaker 5: When I see it played out in my interactions with

619
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 5: my readers. That for me is the first metric of success.

620
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: Kennedy, you were speaking to my soul.

621
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 4: But you know, that's why romance is so important, because that's.

622
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 5: What we do.

623
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 1: Yes, you're right, bever That's what we do.

624
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 4: We connect, you know, we change lives. You go to

625
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 4: signings and people say, well, my mom's in dialysis. Will

626
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:50,760
Speaker 4: you talk to her please?

627
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: Yeah?

628
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 4: I'm like sure. This past summer wanted me to talk

629
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 4: to his great grandmother. She's one hundred and four years old.

630
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 4: She loves my books. I was like, I will zone

631
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 4: with her. So I zoned with this one hundred and

632
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:08,760
Speaker 4: four year old lady and she loved the Blessing series

633
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 4: and her best character was Cleat as Dog. So I

634
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 4: think it's why romance is so important, because of what

635
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 4: we do for our readers' lives and their hearts and

636
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:25,800
Speaker 4: their mental health, and their relationship with other family members

637
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,760
Speaker 4: in the world and with themselves.

638
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:32,240
Speaker 1: I love Beverly. You know you made me kind of wonder,

639
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: what's the farthest you've gone with a fan interaction.

640
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,320
Speaker 4: I have a pajama party for two years with my readers.

641
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:42,359
Speaker 4: I don't do it anymore. And then Brenda Jackson has

642
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 4: a cruise and she's got like thousands of people on

643
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 4: this boat, including her pastor.

644
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 1: Kennedy, I saw you nodding. I think you have one.

645
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a lot. I mean, my therapist is

646
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 5: constantly telling me to get off social media. She's constantly like,

647
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,880
Speaker 5: get off because sometimes it's a lot, you know. But

648
00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 5: I love the interaction with my readers and like they're

649
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 5: obviously at this stage, you can't be close to all

650
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 5: your readers, you know, but there's a core of readers

651
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 5: who I interact with on a very consistent basis and

652
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,920
Speaker 5: we go pretty deep. Like they know I'm a PK

653
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 5: like Creature's kid, Pastor's kid. You know, my parents are pastors,

654
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 5: so they know that my faith is a big part

655
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 5: of my life. I have readers who are like mss Kennedy.

656
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 5: You know, they come in my dms and they're like,

657
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 5: I got a job interview tomorrow. Will you pray for me?

658
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 5: Like I have, Like it is a whole kind of

659
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 5: like ongoing thing, and it's not just like will you

660
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 5: pray for me? But they'll come in and you know,

661
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 5: ask for advice, and you know they'll come on, I

662
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 5: got a tattoo, you know, based on your book, you know,

663
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 5: and I'm like, oh, that's so cool, you know, so

664
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 5: you know, I it's to me. It's fueling, you.

665
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 4: Know, it's very fueling.

666
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: You know you've impacted someone when they put a tattoo

667
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: in inspired by one of your characters or something like

668
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: their world has entered yours at that point.

669
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's nothing like that, Tia, tell.

670
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 1: Me about yours, because your books really dig deep, like

671
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,760
Speaker 1: I think you play at the edge of romance almost.

672
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:16,839
Speaker 1: Like one of my favorites is Seven Days in June

673
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: and that deals with a lot of topics. I know,

674
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: you're hitting people in their hearts.

675
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a really sort of tight knit migraine

676
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 2: community among my readership because my main character in Seven

677
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 2: Days in June, Eva lives with chronic migraine, as do

678
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 2: I since I was a little girl. And it's not

679
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 2: really a represented disease. It's an invisible disease. It's completely

680
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 2: you know, debilitating. But you look quote unquote normal, you know,

681
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:52,799
Speaker 2: whatever normal looks like. People will have a hard time

682
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:57,920
Speaker 2: processing that your pain is real, especially.

683
00:38:57,480 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 3: When everybody's a headache.

684
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 2: You're in there when you eat some coffee or you're hungover.

685
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 2: So it's hard to understand how isolating that feeling is.

686
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 2: You feel like an alien. And so I think for

687
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 2: readers who have migraine to see themselves in a sexy

688
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 2: love story of all things, like the last things you

689
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 2: feel like doing.

690
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:17,959
Speaker 3: When you're in pain is having sex.

691
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 2: So, you know, seeing the possibilities of living with this,

692
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 2: you know, chronic pain, but also being you know, a

693
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 2: fully fledged, passionate person, fully embodied person is really special

694
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 2: to migrainers. And then I also have to say it

695
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:38,280
Speaker 2: was just invited to a wedding, which blew my mind?

696
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 4: Did you go?

697
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 3: I didn't go because I couldn't go, but I would

698
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 3: have gone.

699
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 2: She was getting married in Vegas, and so she was like,

700
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,239
Speaker 2: I'm shooting my shot, you know, will you come? I

701
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:50,239
Speaker 2: could not go, but I sent her a bunch of

702
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 2: books and a gift, and you know, yeah, but I

703
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 2: thought that was just completely fabulous.

704
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 4: That is so fabulous. Love it.

705
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: You know, you guys seem so generous with your knowledge

706
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,879
Speaker 1: and your learnings. I'm curious for emerging romance writers, what's

707
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 1: one piece of advice that actually matters? And then what's

708
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 1: one piece of advice that you think is outdated.

709
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:25,280
Speaker 4: Finish the book. We spend a lot of time talking

710
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 4: about the book. Finish the book, and then learn as

711
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 4: much as you can about the writing as a business,

712
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 4: because there are people out here who will steal your

713
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 4: dreams because that's their they think that's their job. So yeah,

714
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 4: those are my two little.

715
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 1: Ones, well said Kennedy. How about you?

716
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,359
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say for me, what is outdated and

717
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 5: for some people I wouldn't say outdated, but not fits.

718
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 5: One size fits all is write every day.

719
00:40:58,320 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 4: I don't.

720
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 5: I don't write every day, you know, and actually I

721
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 5: write very little. What I mean by that is like

722
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 5: the creative process for me is usually like a lot

723
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 5: I mentioned you in my background is journalism. I will

724
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 5: spend three months just interviewing people and reading the books

725
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 5: they tell me I should read, and listening to the

726
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 5: podcast and like literally I will spend three four months

727
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,480
Speaker 5: just doing that and then I'm like, oh god, now

728
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 5: I have to write them book.

729
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 4: You know.

730
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 5: But for me, that is writing, you know, Like I'm

731
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 5: in some of these groups like where they're like, you know,

732
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 5: how what's your word count for the day at five

733
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 5: thousand words? What about you?

734
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 4: Kennedy?

735
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 5: And I'm like, I have no words, but I did

736
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 5: three hours on Zoom interviewing and I read that. You know,

737
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 5: so for me that is writing. I think the real

738
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 5: takeaway from that is figure out what works best for you.

739
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 5: Like no one size, whatever, somebody tells you this is

740
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 5: the thing that you do that works for everybody. It's

741
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,399
Speaker 5: usually you know, for there's somebody that's not going to fit.

742
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:55,400
Speaker 5: And I think the big advice I think is it

743
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 5: kind of goes back to what mss bev was talking

744
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 5: about was craft, because I feel like there is just

745
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 5: like a deficit right now of like especially like a

746
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 5: deficit of craft, like a deficit of valuing craft. Dig

747
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:13,239
Speaker 5: into your craft. But also business going. Inde taught me

748
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 5: how to be a business woman, taught me how to

749
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 5: be a creative who is running a business. And I

750
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 5: brought that same mentality when I came back in traditional publishing.

751
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 5: I brought that with me. You know, I don't work

752
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 5: for anyone. I don't have a boss. I have partners.

753
00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 5: You know, we work together. We have a common goal,

754
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 5: which is to sell this book. You have a stake,

755
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 5: I have a steak. You have knowledge. I have knowledge.

756
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 5: You understand something about what you do. I understand my audience.

757
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 5: I understand black women. I understand who this book is

758
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 5: written for. That has to inform our strategy, you know.

759
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 5: So for me, it's like learn the business, learn how

760
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 5: because when you step into a lot of especially us

761
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 5: as black women, generally, black authors were not getting the

762
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 5: same promotional budgets. We're not getting the same strategy, We're

763
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 5: not getting the same level of support. You need to

764
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 5: understand how does this, how is this going to succeed?

765
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 5: What are the gaps I have to step into, because

766
00:43:10,719 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 5: there are gaps, you know. So that's what I would say,

767
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 5: is learn the craft and learn the business.

768
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 1: Well said Ta, I saw you nodding. I'm so curious

769
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: what your answer is to this question.

770
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 2: So I really you know, I love an MFA. I

771
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 2: love you know, creative writing, higher education, education.

772
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 3: All of that. I also really love just.

773
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 2: Reading everything, everything, the back of cereal boxes, everything, like

774
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:50,399
Speaker 2: just understand the way language moves. Understand you know. When

775
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,439
Speaker 2: I was a kid, I was so obsessed with Stephen King.

776
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 3: I would just write in.

777
00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 2: Longhand his paragraphs just to understand the architecture of like

778
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,080
Speaker 2: how a story flows, you know, go back to the basics,

779
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 2: like understand the architecture of a sense, the architecture of

780
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 2: a story, how plot works.

781
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:14,720
Speaker 3: There are a million ways to get to that happily

782
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:15,320
Speaker 3: ever after.

783
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 2: Yes, And it just behooves you to learn really the craft,

784
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 2: and you don't have to go to school for it,

785
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:24,799
Speaker 2: but you do have to educate.

786
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: Yourself well in that vein. Usually I ask people what's

787
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: on their bedside table, but I have three absolute lovers

788
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: of language here, so I'm gonna ask you a different question,

789
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:37,759
Speaker 1: which is, what is the last line or scene that

790
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: took your breath away? And who wrote it?

791
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:44,799
Speaker 4: Jesus, I don't know.

792
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Beverly, I know you've read some heat

793
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: recently that took your breath away.

794
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:57,759
Speaker 4: I have a book club on Facebook and we do

795
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 4: my books and so we start it over again and

796
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,479
Speaker 4: we're doing them in print order.

797
00:45:04,239 --> 00:45:04,760
Speaker 1: That's cool.

798
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 4: So I've been taking out some of the old historicals

799
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:11,879
Speaker 4: and reading them and stuff, and Through the Storm, which

800
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 4: is the book that we're going to do next month.

801
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 4: The trope is a lot of tropes, but it's also

802
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 4: a marriage of convenience mm hm. And Raymond, who is

803
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 4: the hero, has this love hate thing for the woman

804
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 4: that he has married, but he walks in on her

805
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 4: one night on the way to his mistress's birthday party,

806
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 4: and so it gets to the point where he winds

807
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 4: up spending the night and as he's leaving that next morning,

808
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 4: suit all wrinkled and stuff from being on the floor

809
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:46,840
Speaker 4: and you know, and all of that, and he's outside

810
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 4: with his brothers who were looking at him like, where'd

811
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 4: you sleep last night? You look like he slept in

812
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,840
Speaker 4: a garbage bind And she walks out. She got a

813
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:57,759
Speaker 4: wrapper on. She walks out into the porch and she says, Ray,

814
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,839
Speaker 4: you forgot your watch until you you're a mistress. I'm

815
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 4: sorry that I made you miss her birthday part. And

816
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 4: she just sat she's her little lass home back in

817
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 4: the house.

818
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 5: And her brother was.

819
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 4: Like, oh man, for me, I love that scene.

820
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 5: I didn't know where it was going.

821
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a good one.

822
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 4: Through the storm people through the storm.

823
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:31,760
Speaker 1: Grab a copy, I think because we're on audio Tia

824
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 1: and Kennedy, Kennedy and I were trying not to laugh

825
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: too hard for those so good.

826
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 4: I love it.

827
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: Oh amazing, Tia and Kennedy, if you have one, I'd

828
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: love to hear. And if it's too hard, I have

829
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 1: a different question I can ask you.

830
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 5: I have a recommendation. Like in general, I think everybody's well,

831
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,799
Speaker 5: a lot of us have been obsessed with heated rivalry.

832
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 5: I had read those books years ago, so I loved them.

833
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 5: But so I have like an mm, you know, queer

834
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 5: story wreck queer series. There is an author named Gregory Ash.

835
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 5: I love procedurals, so this series is kind of like

836
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:15,040
Speaker 5: True Detective, but make it queer. And Gregory Ash he

837
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 5: writes this couple Hazard in Somerset, and they have like

838
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 5: sixteen books, so it's not like a happily ever after.

839
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 5: It's like each book you're building a relationship over the

840
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,239
Speaker 5: course of like sixteen books, you know. So eventually they

841
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 5: get married, eventually they adopt kids. It's this whole world

842
00:47:31,960 --> 00:47:36,879
Speaker 5: and there's a serial killer the keeper of these and

843
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:40,839
Speaker 5: one of them is afraid for the other, and they

844
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 5: go out under the stars and they it's cold, and

845
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 5: they pull this blanket around each other, and there's just

846
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 5: this whole metaphor that Gregory builds using constellations and interstellar

847
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 5: language and its cosmic shifts, and it's just it's just gorgeous.

848
00:47:56,000 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 5: Like the language is gorgeous, the relationship is beautiful and

849
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 5: you feel like you know these characters over the course

850
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:06,280
Speaker 5: of like sixteen novels. So it's one of my favorite series.

851
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 5: It's Gregory ash and it's Hazard in Summerset.

852
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:09,320
Speaker 3: Amazing.

853
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:13,279
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is in the arc of Walter Mosley's

854
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 2: new book.

855
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:17,200
Speaker 3: It's called Galen, a Romance in Black.

856
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 2: It's you know, obviously Walter Mosley detective God right, like

857
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 2: detective fiction God. But there's a love story in it

858
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:30,480
Speaker 2: that is some of the most beautiful romance frankly writing

859
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 2: that I have read in ages. The main character, Galen,

860
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 2: is the focus of the book, but it starts off

861
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,560
Speaker 2: with how his parents met and fell in love in

862
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 2: the nineties, and it's just soaring, beautiful but really simple language.

863
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:52,400
Speaker 2: And sometimes I find as a romance writer that I

864
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 2: find inspiration in these places that are outside of our genre.

865
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: You know, Beverly earlier when you said Dragons, I was

866
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: thinking to Beverly Jenkins read Fourth Wing.

867
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 4: I did, Yeah, I did. I read it. I really

868
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 4: loved the first book. I have not had a chance

869
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 4: to read anything after that. But I'm a big fantasy reader.

870
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:14,920
Speaker 4: I don't read a lot of romance these days. I

871
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 4: read a lot of fantasy, though I have a dragon

872
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 4: book in me. Also, I have pitched it to my

873
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,719
Speaker 4: agent and she loves it. So I just don't know

874
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 4: when mama's gonna have the time to do it. You know.

875
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:32,399
Speaker 5: That's romanticy from Beverly Jenkins would be a.

876
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 4: Man, I'm telling me, you know. So, yes, I got

877
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 4: a couple things in the pipeline right now, but I'd

878
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 4: love to do do my dragons because I want to

879
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 4: see a black woman writing a dragon And I don't

880
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 4: know that there have been a few people who have

881
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 4: done that, but you know my own spin on it.

882
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 1: What are you all so obsessed with right now that

883
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:54,879
Speaker 1: you could just write a book about it?

884
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 5: I don't know that I'm as obsessed, obsessed enough like

885
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 5: to write a book about it. But like the obsession

886
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 5: I'm just coming off of, of course, is heated rivalry.

887
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 5: Like it was a it was at a really dangerous place.

888
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 5: It was in a dangerous place, like we're talking about

889
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 5: ordering the merch. I mean, I'm a loon. That's what

890
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 5: our fandom is. We're called loons. I'm in the lunacy.

891
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 5: So all of it, like think pieces, the whole thing.

892
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 5: So that's what I was obsessed with But I was

893
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 5: telling Tia, now I'm obsessed with industry, which is I

894
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:32,560
Speaker 5: love good television, like elevated prestige television. I love it,

895
00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 5: love it, love it. And so I'm obsessed with industry.

896
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: Me too, Tia. What are you so obsessed with you

897
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:40,319
Speaker 1: could write a book about it.

898
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,919
Speaker 2: So I am also in love with industry. But I'm

899
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:48,440
Speaker 2: really really gone down a rabbit hole of nostalgia with

900
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 2: a love story about jfk Junior and Carolyn Bassett. And

901
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 2: not just because I grew up in a Kennedy house,

902
00:50:57,520 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 2: but I was.

903
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,440
Speaker 3: I was there, like that was my era in New York.

904
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:02,839
Speaker 3: And you know, when I.

905
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:06,839
Speaker 2: Worked at L I was a few floors under George Magazine,

906
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,240
Speaker 2: and so John F. Kennedy Junior sighting was like everything.

907
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 2: And I actually saw him the day before he died

908
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:14,799
Speaker 2: on the elevator, which is a whole other story. But

909
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 2: it's just giving me so much New York in the

910
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 2: nineties vibes, Like it's the intersection of fashion and magazine

911
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:27,799
Speaker 2: and media and celebrity and the nightlife, and it's just

912
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:31,879
Speaker 2: really bringing me back to a really exciting, precious time.

913
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm you know, an entirely different kind of thing.

914
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 4: I'm obsessed with. Where the hell is spring? So I

915
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 4: can get outside and play in the dirt. You know,

916
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 4: I want to see how my rosas are doing. I

917
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:52,279
Speaker 4: want to see how my lilies, whether the squirrel has

918
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:56,840
Speaker 4: I love it, bulbs out of the box, you know.

919
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 4: So I'm an old lady. You know I'm a simple girl. Also,

920
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:04,280
Speaker 4: you know, those are the things that rock my world

921
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:04,799
Speaker 4: right now.

922
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: So I don't know when I'm gonna have you three

923
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 1: back in the same room. So I want to do

924
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: the mother of all romance pitches with the three of

925
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:18,959
Speaker 1: you together. We're gonna write a romance novel together. I'll

926
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: ask you a question, and then each of you builds

927
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 1: a new part of the story. Okay, ok I'm so

928
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: bad at this.

929
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:27,359
Speaker 5: Okay, go.

930
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: So, Beverly, I want to start with you. What era,

931
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:33,280
Speaker 1: time period setting?

932
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:37,160
Speaker 4: Oh, since they do contemporaries, let's do contemporaries so they

933
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 4: won't be scared. Okay, thank you? Miss Yeah. Present day

934
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 4: and we are in Harlem. How's that, TiO?

935
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,080
Speaker 1: What's the female main character's job or role?

936
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:54,480
Speaker 3: Portrait painter?

937
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:59,120
Speaker 1: Who Kennedy, this is your expertise? What's our meet cute.

938
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:05,400
Speaker 5: Okay. She is a portrait painter and a client wants

939
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:10,520
Speaker 5: her to paint her son for his birthday, and so

940
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 5: their mee cute is their first session where he's sitting

941
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:13,960
Speaker 5: for her.

942
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: Ooh, very titanic. I love it, Beverly. Yes, what is

943
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:25,720
Speaker 1: the job of our love interest?

944
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 4: What does he do? Hmm? If it was the forties,

945
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:34,600
Speaker 4: we could say he was a gentleman gangster. I sick.

946
00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 4: We could do that. We'll put it in the thirties

947
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 4: and he's a gentleman gangster.

948
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 5: I thought we were present day.

949
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:43,560
Speaker 4: Oh that's right. We did say preend. I won't say

950
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 4: I'm a pants or stuff changes.

951
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:52,280
Speaker 5: We're in the thirties now, Tia.

952
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,640
Speaker 1: What's the romance trope that you want to subvert and

953
00:53:55,680 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: play with?

954
00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:56,919
Speaker 4: Oh?

955
00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:00,839
Speaker 2: Okay, so grumpy sunshine. People always, for some reason, they

956
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 2: always think that the woman has to be sunshine and

957
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:06,920
Speaker 2: the man has to be grumpy.

958
00:54:07,239 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 3: So let's have the woman, the painter.

959
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:16,879
Speaker 2: Be really grumpy and really precious about my work and

960
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 2: very serious. Nothing's funny about this, no funny business. No,

961
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 2: you know, I'm super professional.

962
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 3: Keep it in your pants. I don't do nudes.

963
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 4: Mm hm.

964
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 2: And maybe the gangster guy getting his portrait. Yes, his

965
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:42,160
Speaker 2: mom gifted him this, but he is immediately in love

966
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 2: with her and decides to request a nude portrait. And

967
00:54:50,800 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 2: he's being very cheeky about it, you know, almost like.

968
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:58,320
Speaker 3: Daring her, like, oh, why are you so uptight?

969
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 2: You know what, it's the human bos Like, it's I'm

970
00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 2: just a client.

971
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:07,360
Speaker 3: I'm just you know, are you chicken?

972
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:14,080
Speaker 2: And she's like, no, I can do this, and so

973
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 2: she tries, you know, she paints his portrait and tries

974
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 2: to keep a straight face the whole time, and we

975
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:21,040
Speaker 2: see what happens.

976
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 1: Kennedy, what's our conflict? What's keeping them apart?

977
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:29,760
Speaker 5: What's keeping them apart is that she is a married woman.

978
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,279
Speaker 5: She's a married woman. But what he doesn't know is

979
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:39,840
Speaker 5: that it's a lavender marriage. We're in the thirties rights

980
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:41,320
Speaker 5: a lavender marriage.

981
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:42,239
Speaker 4: What does that mean?

982
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 5: That is when it's when a queer person is in

983
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:49,799
Speaker 5: a marriage basically for protection, you know, it's like almost.

984
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 3: Like a beard.

985
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's a lavender marriage, but it's not something

986
00:55:55,080 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 5: that she can leave easily. And also the man she's

987
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 5: in the lavender marriage with is his arch enemy, so

988
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:07,840
Speaker 5: he's also a gangster. He's a queer gangster. Oh my

989
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 5: lavender marriage with a portrait painter and his arch nemesis

990
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 5: is our sunshine gangster. So that's all right, there we go.

991
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 1: Okay, we are almost there, Beverly. What's our climax? Where

992
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:27,360
Speaker 1: do they profess their love to one another?

993
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:31,799
Speaker 4: Oh? My god? Okay, so we got these two men

994
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 4: are main heroes. Brother okay is also gay.

995
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 5: Oh I love this.

996
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:48,800
Speaker 4: He hooks them to up so that she can step

997
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:54,080
Speaker 4: out of that marriage. They can do their thing as

998
00:56:54,320 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 4: roommates or cousins. Yes, and she can step up into

999
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:04,800
Speaker 4: the relationship with our sunshine gambler. All is well, we

1000
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 4: got our hg A, we got two h e as

1001
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 4: well the end.

1002
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 2: And but also the gangster can launder his money by

1003
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 2: opening up a portrait studio for his woman.

1004
00:57:20,920 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 5: Yes, there you go.

1005
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: Yes, now that is a happily ever aka yay a,

1006
00:57:30,640 --> 00:57:32,920
Speaker 1: we did it, We did it. Do you think it's

1007
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: the best seller? I think we have a shot, guys.

1008
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:39,680
Speaker 4: I love it. I think we own and we own

1009
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 4: that that idea. So nobody who's listening to this.

1010
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,680
Speaker 1: Sorry, and Kennedy is going to get us the cover

1011
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 1: that we want.

1012
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:50,120
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, that I could do, that I could do.

1013
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: I'm wanting a Kennedy to you Beverly Tour. I don't

1014
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 1: know if that's possible. Maybe this is the beginning of

1015
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 1: something great. But I so appreciate all of your time.

1016
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 4: This was so fun. Thanks for having v having good

1017
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 4: time the best.

1018
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:09,960
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1019
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1020
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1022
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1023
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1024
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1025
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1032
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1040
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1042
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1043
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1044
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:32,760
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1045
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1046
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1051
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1055
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:15,080
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1056
01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 1: These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or

1057
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 1: prevent any disease. And if you want a little bit

1058
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 1: more from us, come hang with us on socials. We're

1059
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: at Reese's book Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes

1060
01:00:30,640 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 1: and behind the scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe

1061
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:37,840
Speaker 1: Roba y come say hi and df me. And if

1062
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:40,720
Speaker 1: you want to go nineties on us, call us Okay,

1063
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:43,720
Speaker 1: our phone line is open, so call now at one

1064
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.

1065
01:00:48,640 --> 01:00:52,080
Speaker 1: That's one five oh one two nine one three three

1066
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:58,160
Speaker 1: seven nine. Share your literary hot takes, book recommendations, questions

1067
01:00:58,160 --> 01:01:00,400
Speaker 1: about the monthly pick, or let us know what you

1068
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 1: think about the episode you just heard, and who knows,

1069
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: you might just hear yourself in our next episode, so

1070
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: don't be shy. Give us a ring, and of course,

1071
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:12,360
Speaker 1: make sure to follow bookmarked by Reese's book Club on

1072
01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:16,120
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your

1073
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: shows until then see in the next chapter. Bookmarked is

1074
01:01:21,640 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 1: a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart podcast. It's executive

1075
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 1: produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe. Production is

1076
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 1: by ACAST Creative Studios. Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez,

1077
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: Sarah Schleid. Our production assistant is Avery Loftus. Jenny Kaplan

1078
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:42,240
Speaker 1: and Emily Rudder are the executive producers for A Cast

1079
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:46,600
Speaker 1: Creative Studios. Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive

1080
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 1: producers for Hello Sunshine, Olga Cominwa, Kristin Perla and Ashley

1081
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: Rappaport our associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry

1082
01:01:55,280 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.

1083
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 2: He