138. An Interview with Beverly Jenkins

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 138 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is historical and contemporary and inspirational author Beverly Jenkins. We talk about writing Black American history and historical romance, creating sexual tension without actual sex, writing painful history, giving characters happy endings, her appearance in the Love Between the Covers documentary, and her community of readers on her very active Facebook page. I will have links to many of the things that we’re discussing, including her Facebook page, in the podcast entry.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chasing Danger, the new novella on the sizzling-hot Deadly Ops series from New York Times bestselling author Katie Reus. Download it on April 21st.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. I’ll have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And before we get started, one more thing. It is almost RT time. If you are going to be at Romantic Times and you might like to do a quick three-question interview with me for the podcast, email me! Because that would be really fun, and I would love to meet more of the people who listen to the podcast. Don’t be shy. I am very short, I’m loud, but I’m very nice, I promise. Rumors of my being an absolute monster with fangs who rips people apart, totally untrue. I don’t have that kind of upper body strength. So you can email me at [email protected] and say, I’m going to be at RT! And we’ll find a time to do a quick three-question interview. And you can even bring a question and ask me a question, but I’ll have questions for you too, because I’m really nebby, which is Pittsburgh-ese for nosy. So I hope you’ll email me, because I think that would be really fun.

And now, on with the podcast.

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Sarah: Well, I know you just finished a book.

Beverly Jenkins: Right.

Sarah: Which book is that? ‘Cause you write contemporary, you write contemporary – is it contemporary inspirational? Is that the, a fair way to describe the Blessings series?

Beverly: Yeah, I think so. It’s in a lot of sort of different boxes?

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: Women’s fiction, women’s Christian fiction –

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: – contemporary something?

[Laughter]

Beverly: But, you know, I’m just blessed to be able to write in, in all these different genres, you know, and, and that’s a, kudos to my publisher and to my editor, Erica.

Sarah: Well, you, you have to have some credit yourself, ‘cause you’re the one doing all the writing.

Beverly: Well, yeah, you know, it, it’s a struggle, but you know, somebody’s got to do it, right?

Sarah: [Laughs] So what book did you just finish?

Beverly: I just finished, it’s called Forbidden?

Sarah: Ooh, that’s not a Blessings novel, is it?

Beverly: No, it’s not.

[Laughter]

Beverly: No, the new Blessings novel will be out April 28th, it’s book six in the series, but I just finished a historical –

Sarah: Ooh!

Beverly: – and it is a, sort of a continuation – well, it’s got a side character from my book I did back in ’97 or ’98, Through the Storm. The heroine’s brother, who’s very, very fair-skinned, has decided that he’s going to cross the color line and live out the rest of his life as a Caucasian. When she meets him, she’s in one of the contraband camps, and he’s a Union soldier, and she’s pretty upset that this is what he’s going to do, even though she’s bright enough to pass also. But, so it’s, like, fifteen years later, he’s in Virginia City, and this young woman comes into his life, and he’s got to make a decision. So he’s forbidden to her, she’s forbidden to him – going to be interesting.

Sarah: Uh, yeah!

Beverly: Yeah. I ran across some – doing the research for Virginia City and, you know, all this great research, but some archaeologists were doing a dig there, ‘cause Virginia City burned to the ground in 1875 –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and they came across a hot sauce bottle. Now typically, hot sauce bottles are, you know, stereotype or not, are tied to African-Americans. They did the research, and they found out that this place called the Boston Saloon that was in Virginia at the time was owned by a free Black man. It had the best cuts of meat, it had offered the best array of spirits – I mean, they found a Gordon’s gin bottle, all of this – so I based the character in Forbidden – his name is Ryan Fontaine – I based his saloon on this place, ‘cause I like putting my stories where African-Americans actually walked.

Sarah: So the hero owns a saloon.

Beverly: Right, owns a saloon. She is a cook. Came across another piece of history. Guy said he saw a Black woman walking across the desert with a cook stove on her head. ‘Scuse me? So I’ve always wanted to know what her story was. Never found anything else about her. So her name in the book is Edie Carmichael, and she’s going to be our heroine. And so I’m waiting for revisions to come back and see what Erica thinks, and we’ll finish it up and hopefully have it for the readers by the fall.

Sarah: That’s excellent. So is this the start of a series?

Beverly: Yes, it’s the start of a series; it should be three books.

Sarah: Woohoo!

Beverly: Edie has two nieces –

Sarah: Of course she does.

Beverly: – yep – who are young women right now. They are, I think, twelve and ten –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – so I’ve always wanted to do the beginning of what they call the Negro club movement with Mary Church Terrell and, and – oh, God, names, of course escape right now.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: Oh, Mary McLeod Bethune.

Sarah: Yes.

Beverly: And, but that didn’t start ‘til the 1890s, so we’re going to kick this story ten years into the future with the nieces –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and then I can do the great history of that and give people a great story as always, and we can learn while we are fanning. [Laughs] Fanning from the love scenes.

Sarah: This is a good plan. I have to say, one thing that I really have a lot of respect for in your writing is that with the historicals and with some of the contemporaries, you get super, super steamy, and then in the Blessings novels, you rely on a completely different set of tensions to create almost the same level of heat without the sort of –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – explicitness.

Beverly: Yeah. I’ve always felt that if you can do the same type of a story –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – without the sex –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – then you’ve got a really good story.

Sarah: Yes.

Beverly: You know, so I had some of the, my readers were kind of skeptical when the Blessings series started, but bless them for following me all over the genre map –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – from the Young Adults to, to all that, but once they read it, they’re like, you don’t need the sex! Like, nope. Tension’s there –

Sarah: Tension exists.

Beverly: – you know Trent and Lily are having lots of sex, but –

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s just not on the page.

Beverly: It’s just not on the page, so –

Sarah: I have a friend that I made a huge fan of the Blessings series because she is, she is a very devout Christian, but she is, well, I like, I like to tell her that she is Christian in the best sense of the word. She is compassionate –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – and she is truly a lovely human being, and I’m so proud to know her, but she does not like explicit sex in her books, and so –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s very hard for me to recommend books for her, because I know that that’s not what she likes, and I was like, you are going to love the Blessings series. She has converted everybody in her church group, everybody in the choir, everybody at her sister’s hair salon, they are all reading the Blessings novels. They just adore them.

Beverly: The little old ladies at my church –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – in fact, a couple of them came up to me on Sunday and said, where’s our book?

Sarah: [Laughs] They follow you everywhere!

Beverly: Oh, they follow me everywhere, so, you know, they feel better supporting me with the Blessings series –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – than they do with the – and although there are some of them that, you know, prefer the, the steamy historicals, but the majority of the, of the elders in my church prefer the Blessings series, and, and that’s a blessing too.

Sarah: [Laughs] So let’s talk about your readers, because one of the most interesting parts, I think, of the documentary about the romance genre, Love Between the Covers, is that it features you and your readers.

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: And you go on historical tours together.

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you do that every year?

Beverly: We don’t do it every year. The one that Sarah – Sarah, Lord, I’m, I’m thinking you – the one that Laurie did –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – I just wanted to get some ladies together and celebrate my sixtieth birthday, which was what that Charleston trip was, and we had a woman who put the historical stuff together for us –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – but I go every year with a different group of ladies. There’s about – we call ourselves Diva Daze, D-A-Z-E –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – and there’re about thirty-five of us, and most of us are, I think the, the babies are in their forties.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: Most of us are fifty, sixty, and we’ve got a couple who are seventy-two, and we have done some awesome trips with them. In fact, we’re on our way to D.C. middle of May, and we’re going to do the historical Black tour; we’re going to see the African American Civil War Museum. So, you know, it’s, like, party with a purpose?

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: And we learn, and we have a good time, and we have what we call sistership, which is, you know, sisters of our hearts –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – melded with friendship? So we’re going to do the White House tour. We’ve done Savannah, and we found out that there was no African-American tour of Savannah the first year that we did this.

Sarah: Wait, really?!

Beverly: Yeah, there was not. So the first year, the woman who was in charge of, of Diva Daze is a good friend named, her name’s Gwen Osborne –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and Gwen, I feel like through Gwen I know every African-American woman in this country, you know, ‘cause it’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – six degrees of separation. So she knew Dr. Deborah Mack, who is one of the premiere anthropologists in this country –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and Debbie did the, helped with the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, she helped put together the B.B. King Museum in Memphis – I think it’s, it’s in Memphis. But Debbie put together a tour for us for Savannah. So we had our little trolley, and you know, if you’ve ever been to Savannah, you know, they’ve got the trolley, and you go from place to place.

Sarah: It’s one of the most beautiful places in the, in, in America –

Beverly: Oh, I –

Sarah: – that I’ve ever been.

Beverly: And the food is awesome.

Sarah: Oh, my gosh, yes.

Beverly: [Laughs] So Debbie took us around, and we saw, you know, just, we saw, of course, the first Af-, First African Baptist Church, which if you have never seen, the next time you go to Savannah, take the tour. And then we’ve gone to Ossabaw Island, we took a boat out to one of the sea islands, and there’s the, the, the remnants of plantations out there. I mean, it was, it’s just been an awesome experience just hanging out with Gwen, so when I wanted to do my sixtieth birthday, I got my girls together, and Gwen went with us, and Laurie called, and she had done a little bit of filming before that and asked if she could go, and I said, pay your own way, sure, come on! So she showed up with her camera man, Joseph, and, and, and her sound man, Danny, and they hung with us all weekend and got some great shots, and you know, the rest, as they say, is history.

Sarah: So with your readers in your group, you, you do a lot of research for your books –

Beverly: Right.

Sarah: – and I know that at the conference at the Library of Congress you said that you wish that there were more writers writing African-American historicals and historicals about Black Americans, because you said it was, it’s nice having the branch to myself, but I’m the only one swinging out here, and it would be nice –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – to have company. You’re still one of the few writers who writes Black American history.

Beverly: Yeah, and that’s kind of sad in a way.

Sarah: Good for marketing, though. [Laughs]

Beverly: Oh, yeah, great marketing. Fabulous! But you know, it, it, it would be nice, like I said, if, if, if we could have somebody else. But then I told this story too about the young woman who came to me and said she, she, she tried to, to float a story, and an editor told her, well, we already have Beverly Jenkins. You know, and that’s sad, and that’s, you know, angering and, and, and stupid and, and all of that other stuff because, you know, we got more than Eloisa! We’ve got more than Sarah MacLean, we’ve got, you know, more than, than, than Jenny Crusie, so, you know, why should there only be one of me?

Sarah: It reminds me of Nora Roberts approaching Harlequin, and they said, well, we already have our American writer. We already have Janet Dailey; we don’t need you. And it’s a, it’s a good thing she kept going. [Laughs]

Beverly: Oh, I know, I know! You know, I can’t imagine, I can’t, well, I can imagine the look on Nora’s face.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: But you know, it’s, it’s, it’s so limiting. The Pew research couple years ago said the woman most likely to read and buy a book is an African-American woman with two years of college, so these are the women who are buying the Grishams, and these are the women who are buying the Dean Koontz and the Stephen King and, and, and the Nicholas Sparks, so why would you not feed that market? So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, as we say in the nineteenth century, it’s a conundrum.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, I should say!

Beverly: [Laughs] And I, I just, I just don’t understand it, so I, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just glad to be working, I guess.

Sarah: I have always been a little baffled by what seems to be a very circular discussion when you talk about the underrepresentation of women of color in romance and the lack of books in, in larger numbers that depict people who are not white –

Beverly: Right.

Sarah: – and the answer so often when I speak just in, in random conversations when I speak to people in publishing or I speak to authors, I so often hear the phrase, those books don’t sell. Which baffles me because I, I know there’s an audience. I hear from them every day, and I know you know there’s an audience, ‘cause you ride a bus with them around Savannah, and you go to church with them! Is it the, it the problem they just don’t know how to market to that audience?

Beverly: I think that might be part of it. I mean, when you’ve been doing something the same way for so many years –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – sometimes change is not considered, and I mean, I know that there’s a Latina market out there. I know –

Sarah: Oh, gracious, yes.

Beverly: I know that there’s an Asian market out there. I know there’s a Muslim market out there! But I think that the problem becomes how do you take, you know, a marketing model that’s been in place since, like, Charles Dickens –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. [Laughs]

Beverly: – and revamp it so that it does reach Latinas, so that it does reach Asians, so that it does reach the Muslim women? So I don’t know, girl. You know, I, I’m, bigger minds, I’m sure, than mine, have, are, are hopefully contemplating that.

Sarah: I remain baffled by the idea that, you know, those books don’t sell, when I have met your readers, and I have met the, the women who write romance about Black Americans, and they have an enormous pool of talent.

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: They are so talented.

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: What, wh-, where is this breakdown happening? [Laughs]

Beverly: I, I, you know, I, like I said, I, I have no clue. But you know, I don’t know –

Sarah: But you’re going to keep on doing what you do.

Beverly: Yeah, you know, I, I’m just, you know, pleased that they’re letting me write, you know? So –

[Laughter]

Sarah: So Forbidden is your next historical series –

Beverly: Right.

Sarah: – and then you have a Blessings novel coming out this month –

Beverly: Right.

Sarah: – which will, actually, that’ll come out right around this, the time this podcast goes up, so would you be willing to tell me a little bit about this, the Blessings novel?

Beverly: Yeah, it’s book six in the series, following – For Your Love.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: I mean the title is For Your Love, following Heart of Gold. Trent July, who was one of the, the men in, in the town, grew up without his mom. All he knew about his mom was that he was born, his maternal grandmother – his mom was a teenager when he was born. Her parents left town. A couple months later, her mother shows up back in town with him. Gives him to his paternal go-, grandmother, drives off, and he never hears from her again.

Sarah: Whoa!

Beverly: Yeah. So he’s not sure if she’s alive. He’s not sure if, you know, if, you know, if she didn’t want him, if, you know, what the circumstances were. But he’s grown up with the love of this community. He’s grown up with the love of his paternal grandmother, who is just awesome. Tamar is, is a force of nature all in herself. And so we find out what the deal is on the mom. And she comes back to town. Her life is turned upside down. You know, and I’m going to give a spoiler here, ‘cause you said this is coming out at about the same time. Her parents told her the baby died in childbirth.

Sarah: Oh, dear!

Beverly: So she finds out the lie from a letter her mother leaves after her death, and she is totally freaked out.

Sarah: Because she has this child that she doesn’t, didn’t know about.

Beverly: Right, that she thought died. But here it is forty years later, and she is just broken up, and she’s – so she says, you know, she’s got to go back and talk to him and, and find out, you know, just whether he hates her, whether – so I’m telling everybody, make sure you have a box of Kleenex with you when you read this, this story, because –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – I cried when I wrote it. I know you’re going to cry, but it, it’s got a, a force in it. I mean, it’s, it’s just an awesome, moving kind of book, and then Trent’s adopted son, Amari, has been – his mother rejected him. She said she didn’t want any contact when he, as an adoptee, tried to contact her, so we see Amari also get closure. So, pretty moving book, pretty moving story, ties up some ends, some loose ends.

Sarah: Oh, it’s just, you know, motherlessness. That’s not really a big deal.

Beverly: No, it’s not a big –

Sarah: Oh, easy pie.

Beverly: Or, you know, you find out forty years later that the child that you thought was dead was alive and well, so, you know, but it was – this is such a, an awesome series. I mean, I don’t know where these stories come from. You know, I’ve said that before. They come through me. They’re not of me. We’ll see what happens with, I’ve got contracts for two more, so there’re going to be at least eight, and we’ll see what happens after that.

Sarah: Is there a period that you enjoy writing in most? ‘Cause I know you write in so many different venues. Have you ever thought, you know, it’s time for some paranormal science fiction.

Beverly: Well, you know, I’ve got this drag-, I’m a big fantasy reader. That’s what I read, mostly, and –

Sarah: Yes, I think you and I both love dragons.

Beverly: We love dragons.

Sarah: I love dragons.

Beverly: I just discovered Jenn Bennett over the weekend.

Sarah: Oh, goodness, are you in for a treat. She’s wonderful.

Beverly: I have been binging on her for the last three days. I’m also a huge Jim Butcher fan. Big Richard Kadrey fan. I’m, I’m, Sandman Slim, I mean, I just love him. So, yeah, I would love to be able to do a paranormal story with an African-American kind of base. I know there’s, you know, there’s, there’s quite a few women that are doing it really, really well –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – but I’d like to see what I can do with my spin on it. But when am I going to have the time?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: Good Lord! I feel like, you know –

Sarah: It’s only a few books a year.

Beverly: Yeah, I’m only a, you know, it’s – I have, you know, plenty of time! But I’d like to do that. I’d like to also, I left my readers hanging with my romantic suspense. I’d like to do some, maybe self-published stuff with that. So, you know, I got, I’m going to need another life in order to get all of this stuff done, so –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: And I tell people when I, when, when I, when God calls me home, I’ll be banging on the, the, the inside of the casket going, no, no, no! I still have stories to write! Wait, wait, wait!

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, no.

Beverly: I need another fifty years, please! You know, so, we’ll see.

Sarah: I have a question for you from RedHeadedGirl, who reviews for me. She wants to know if, if you ever get so upset by some of the things you research and learn that, like, you need to go take a walk or cuddle a puppy –

Beverly: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – because there is so much agonizing history that you are uncovering. I mean, on one hand, in the Destiny series, you have, like, the story of the founding of California was one of the most interesting things that I learned from that series. I thought that was fantastic. And then on the other hand, you have books like Indigo, where every moment of the heroine’s life is heavily immersed in fear, and her, her sense of peril and precariousness every day is palpable in that book, even though it’s a beautiful love story. Are some of the things that you research so difficult sometimes you have to, you know, go, go hug a small dog? I mean, what do you do?

Beverly: Yeah, I, there’s, there’s so much pain there. So much pain there. I tell my readers that I do the crying for them.

Sarah: And you’re creating more happy endings where there weren’t so many before.

Beverly: Right, yeah, because, you know, there’s nothing, there’s no happy ending in slavery. I mean, there is no HEA in slavery at all. But you can take it, take the stories and mold them in a way that the pain is there, but you’ve also got sweetness. The nineteenth century is my favorite because it’s so bittersweet. You have the, the awfulness of the first Civil War years. You have the honor of the 180,000 Black men who, who volunteered for the war. You have the great strides that were made after Reconstruction, the colleges going up, and the businesses, and, and especially Black women stepping up and, and, and being doctors in places where there were no doctors at all, of any color or any gender. And then you have the awful, awful period of Redemption, when the Democrats came in, and the disenfranchisement started, and the rise of the Klan, and yet, on the other side of that, you have the great exodus of 1879, when the Black folks said, okay, we’re out of here. We’re moving west, which brought about those, those small Black towns in Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska and Colorado. So you try and put that balance in there. You don’t want to gloss over the history, but you want to put the history there in a balanced way so that you see the, the bitterness along with the sweetness, so, but, yeah, some of it’s very, very painful.

Sarah: So what do you do to, to sort of cope with that, aside from writing happy endings? Do you have to sort of take care of yourself in different ways?

Beverly: Well, you know, I just sort of have to step back sometimes and, and leave it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and go and, you know, maybe play some Angry Birds or –

[Laughter]

Beverly: My daughter says she’s going to put me in rehab because of that –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: But you know, it’s, it’s history.

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: It’s there!

Sarah: Can’t change it.

Beverly: No, you can’t change it, you can’t gloss over it, but, you know, you do it in a way that, that, that people are proud of not only the, the, the horror but, but proud of the beauty as well, so, yeah. But yeah, Angry Birds is my thing, girl. I’ve got all of them. I’ve got Seasons, I’ve got Transformers, I’m into Transformers right now, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy.

Sarah: That game is so fun.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s addictively fun.

Beverly: It is addicting, period, yes. Yes.

Sarah: So what are you reading right now? I know you mentioned Jenn Bennett. What books have you really enjoyed lately that you’ve been reading?

Beverly: I, I don’t get a chance to read when I’m working?

Sarah: Of course.

Beverly: So –

Sarah: You have a stockpile of books, now that you’re off deadline?

Beverly: Oh, my Kindle is like, can you send me to Weight Watchers?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: It is so fat. I read the latest J. D. Robb, ‘cause I’m a big J. D. Robb fan; Brandon Sanderson?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: Jenn Bennett, like I said, I’ve been binging on her for the last four or five days, but I’m, you know, I’ve got the, the itch to get back to work?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: So I will probably do that starting today. I’ve given myself two weeks off, and it’s probably a week more than I, I’m, I’ve earned, so – but I’m rating, waiting on the new Jim Butcher, I’m waiting on the new Richard Kadrey, I’m waiting on the new Ilona Andrews!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: Now, I’m a big Ilona and George fan. Love their stuff. So my, you know, my world is, is fantasy.

Sarah: I was hoping that you would be up against Ilona in the final of the DABWAHA. I was really hoping that that would be the final matchup, ‘cause that would have been so fun.

Beverly: She’s got those two books, and I’m like, okay, I don’t really stand a chance with this, but that’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – if I hadn’t been running, I’d have voted for them too! I love, I love them both. Have met them a couple times. Love their stuff. I’m a big Kate and Curran fan. Waiting on that new book too, coming out, I think, in July. So, you know, it, it, it was fun. It was fun. We had a good time, very good time.

Sarah: You do, every year, your, your Facebook posts getting people to vote are always a lot of fun.

Beverly: [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s where you, that’s where you hang out with your fans the most. You’re, you’re most on Facebook, isn’t that right?

Beverly: Some Facebook, yes, and it’s, it’s a great marketing tool for me, and it’s a way to connect personally with the fans?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: I know about their kids, I know about their moms, I know about their, you know, their dads, and they, in turn, know a lot about me.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: They know when, you know, I’ve been trying for the last week to get this office cleaned up so I can at least get in here. I’ve been writing on a garden table in the other side of my office. I felt like one of those hoard-, you know, you see the hoarder videos with –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – they’ve got the little space that they’re living in, and then everything around them is chaos?

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: Well, that’s my office for the last, like, year or so.

Sarah: Oh, dear.

Beverly: Yeah, so I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m clean right now. We’ll see how long it lasts. But also, too, being connected with them has increased my sales.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Beverly: It’s increased my sales because, you know, I have a problem with the, with the stores when, when I get a, a message from a fan that says, well, Ms. B., I went to, you know, four different outlets of the big chain, and none of your books are on the, the shelves.

Sarah: Ugh! Which I know is so frustrating to hear as an author. That’s not what you want to hear at all!

Beverly: It is so frustrating. So this way, they can pre-order, I can put the links up, they can do what they need to do, and they’re not in the store cussing out bookstore sellers because –

Sarah: Right.

Beverly: – you know, the books aren’t there.

Sarah: And they can demonstrate, hey, this store –

Beverly: Right.

Sarah: – there’s an audience for author –

Beverly: Right!

Sarah: – and you should order more of them.

Beverly: Right, you know, ‘cause they don’t, as far as I know, you know, many of them re-order, but many of them do not, so –

Sarah: Mm-hmm, or they only order, like, book two and three of a four-book series.

Beverly: Right, or they tell them, well, you know, this books is not in print; it’s only in e-edition. I’m like, ‘scuse me?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: That’s bullshit. So, this has given me a way to reach out and touch. We do book club once a month on my author page, and they get a chance to discuss the books with me, so, you know, it’s, it’s like a family. You know, we’ve got just a little community that we created. You know, the ladies call it Bevyville, and it, it’s an awesome opportunity to reach out and, and touch and be touched in, in return, ‘cause they’re a blessing in my life. They really, really are. I told them when I count my blessings, I count them twice, because they are so awesome.

Sarah: And I’m sure that your fans, like many romance authors, because you’re writing about such intimate things, that you’re writing about grief and loss and joy and sexuality and emotions, that they share a lot of things with you.

Beverly: Oh, they do! They do, and, and you know, the, the – [laughs] – we’re doing Black Lace, which is the third book in my romantic suspense series, we’re doing Black Lace tomorrow, and the first, when that book first came out, I got lots of emails and stuff from women who were saying, you know, after reading that book, I went and bought all new underwear and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – and my husband wanted to know, you know, who are you meeting after work? You know, just craziness, and I get a lot of letters from the guys.

Sarah: Really!

Beverly: Yeah, who were saying, thank you, Mi- – you know, I remember this one letter at the beginning of the, my career from a, from a man who said, Ms. B., thank you so much, because now my wife is – and he used the word – amenable to other stuff. So – [laughs]

Sarah: Oh! Well! That should, why is that not at the top of your website, Beverly Jenkins? Makes women amenable –

Beverly: Oh, fellas –

Sarah: – to other stuff.

Beverly: So, I, I have a lot of guys who go out and buy the books for their wives.

Sarah: Aww.

Beverly: You know, I just saw Ms. Bev’s book, and – you know, but one of the most interesting letters was a woman who told me that Vivid saved her marriage.

Sarah: Wow!

Beverly: She said it was Christmas Eve. She and her husband had been fighting for, I don’t know, weeks, I guess, and she decided she was just done. She said Christmas Eve she wrapped up the baby, she was on her way out the door, she was going to her mother’s house, and her husband said, what, you’re not going to open your Christmas presents before you leave? So she said – [exasperated noise] – she said, I put the baby down, and I picked up this small package, and I opened it up, and it was a copy of Vivid.

Sarah: Aww!

Beverly: And she said, you know, and it was out of print, so he paid, you know, an in-, an incredible amount of money for it, and she said she just cried. She said, so Ms. Bev, you saved my marriage, she said, because I didn’t leave him that night.

Sarah: Aww. That is so touching.

Beverly: And I was, I was like, wow! Or the letters you get from people who say they’ve never read a book before. Which for you and me who grew up, you know, reading forever, that’s just foreign and –

Sarah: Shocking.

Beverly: – awesome and shocking and – but I’ve gotten that quite a bit from women who say, you know, I’ve never read a book before, and I read all of whatever book it was.

Sarah: I remember at an RWA signing I was, you, you had a couple women in line, and I was talking to them as I was wandering around the book signing, and one of them said to me, well, I love Ms. Jenkins’s books, because I am from this, this town, and I am, I lived in that place that she wrote about, and then, of course, because romance fans are the most awesome people, the two other people turned around and said, oh, my God, that book was amazing! And it’s like spontaneous book club erupted –

Beverly: [Laughs]

Sarah: – which is great –

Beverly: Yeah!

Sarah: – and all of them were so excited that themselves and their history and things that connected to their lives and, oh, and my grandmother lived in that town, and my grandfather lived in that place, and it was just like, whoa! Wow! Because –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – I don’t, I don’t read historical romance and think, well, you know, back in the day, my ancestors were in London. They actually weren’t, they were mostly in Scotland and some town off to the side. I learned a couple years ago through the internet that one of my ancestors owned a grocery store in a town called Newport Pagnell in England, and they made mustard.

Beverly: Oh, see.

Sarah: And I found this out through a guy who is a dumpster diver in London, and he says, my wife does not like this hobby, and I can’t imagine why she’s got a problem with it –

Beverly: Oh, I can’t either.

Sarah: – but he found a Victorian mustard jar that had my family’s name on it –

Beverly: Oh, that is cool!

Sarah: – and he found me on my old website and said, I’d like to send it to you, so I am descended from mustard makers, and I’m obviously not going to read that in a historical, but everybody looks like me.

Beverly: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: And it’s, there’s not enough of everybody else.

Beverly: Yeah. When I did Indigo in ’96, everywhere I went, women were crying. There had never, as far as I knew, been any kind of romance that featured dark-skinned women. And the women were so moved, not only by the story, but by Hester in general and her description and the, you know, the purple hands and all of that.

Sarah: The purple hands have stayed with me. I read that book a couple years ago when we did it –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – for the book club, and the, the image of her hands being permanently stained and –

Beverly: Yeah.

Sarah: – and how her mother and her aunts and the other women on the plantation were like, this is not a thing to be proud of. You will never get rid of that stain. That is, that is, that is something that sticks in my mind too.

Beverly: Yeah, yeah. But to have this man fall in love with this woman and just give her, I mean, the world, the women were so overwhelmed by it all that they were crying, I was crying, everybody in line is crying. I mean, that, that book – and it’s still resonating today. I mean, I can’t imagine that it’s still in print! You know, what, twenty years later? So it’s a testament to that market.

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: The women are looking for stories that reflect them in a way that’s positive, in a way that’s fulfilling, in a way that’s uplifting.

Sarah: And that acknowledges the hard past –

Beverly: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – honestly.

Beverly: Yeah, yeah! And you learned that there were, like, more than five people in African-American history!

Sarah: What?! No! Really?

Beverly: You know, Black History Month is so – I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a needed thing, but it’s so frustrating to me, because, you know, you’ve got, you know – [exasperated noise] – five Black people in history, but now because of my books – they say when you, when you educate a woman, you educate a race –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – so the ladies have, and I’ve got granddaughters who are reading my books, and they’re no longer doing just those five people. You know, they’re doing the Black and Brown outlaws, they’re doing Queen Califia, they’re doing the Black whalers, they’re doing the Black Civil War vets, they’re doing, you know, the Buffalo Soldiers –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and I think that’s just awesome, because the more we as a country know about each other, the better things’ll be.

Sarah: Well, you know, we have a Black president, so we’re not a racist culture anymore.

Beverly: Oh, yeah, right, right, right, right.

Sarah: [Laughs] And if Hillary gets elected, we won’t be sexist anymore, either. It’ll just take care of that little problem.

Beverly: Oh, that – right, right right.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: Hope she’s got her wards and her, you know, her, her, her lightsaber, ‘cause she’s going to need it.

Sarah: Yes. [Laughs]

Beverly: You know, we all try and do our little part, and I would like to think that my honoring the ancestors and their struggle and their triumphs and, and their just awesomeness, their cleverness, their determination has, has helped, you know, in its own small way.

Sarah: For Passover this year, we, we host our, a Seder –

Beverly: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and, and we make it very mellow and very short, ‘cause I have young children, they’re seven and nine, so they’re not prepared for two straight hours of, you know –

Beverly: Oh, God, no.

Sarah: – the story of the Exodus. One of, one of the readings that we had this year was published by the American Jewish World Service, and it was written by a Washington, D.C. based rabbi and by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg –

Beverly: Okay.

Sarah: – and it talked about the story of the Exodus through the perspective of all of the disobedient women –

Beverly: Yes.

Sarah: – who refused to obey, from Pharaoh’s daughter, who refused to obey her father and took Moses out of the water, and the midwives who refused to deliver a death decree to the Jewish babies, and all of these women who, one after another, were disobedient. Disobedient women are the, are the most fascinating pieces of history.

Beverly: Right, yeah. Mild, meek women do not make the newspapers.

Sarah: That’s right, that’s right.

Beverly: You know, that is so –

Sarah: Well-behaved women rarely make history.

Beverly: Rarely make history. Well, you know, I stand on the shoulders, you know, with my work, of all of these “disobedient women.” Ida B. Wells and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, who, you know, was arrested for voting.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: Mary McLeod Bethune, Caroline Still Anderson, I mean all of these, these, these women who would, who said, what do you mean, I can’t be a doctor? You know.

Sarah: Says who?

Beverly: So, you know, it, this is my tribute to them, because had it not been for them, I would not be here. So, you know, I stand on their shoulders.

Sarah: It must be extra infuriating to hear people dismiss the genre of romance when you are taking on so many important challenges in your writing. To represent history, to represent a culture that is largely ignored or dismissed, in the United States especially, to ack-, acknowledge the idea of Black history in the United States. Oh, well, romance, it’s all the same, it’s just pornography, it’s nothing.

Beverly: No, no –

Sarah: It must be really extra annoying when you hear that crap. [Laughs]

Beverly: No, I, I, I was at a, I was at, I was doing a workshop last year, and we had a really good time. I was the only person of color in the room.

Sarah: No, again? Damn it!

Beverly: Oh, again, yeah, yeah. I, I get, I, you know, tokens are made to be spent, as my mother said.

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, God!

Beverly: So –

Sarah: I’ve never heard that before!

[Laughter]

Beverly: So I’m, you know, I’m talking, and this older guy, he had to be in his seventies, stood up and said, well, you know, I was told that, you know, romance writers, you know, you just get your plots from TV and, and then you just – and I’m looking at him, and I said, Lord, please put your hand over my mouth.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: Close my hands, so I don’t go over here and slap the shit out of this old man. I think, you know, part of it, and we, you know, we’ve talked about it. We, we always talk about this. Part of it is, is, because we’re women, they think we write with crayons –

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: – but some of the best writers in this country are writing romance, started as writ-, as romance writers, because we write about the human condition!

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: You know, and we don’t get it from the soap operas on TV, and we don’t get it from, you know, wherever, and I was, you know, I was at this big, fancy convention last year, and, girl, some of that, you know, you’re supposed to keep it quiet because it’s, it’s bad public and all of that, but some of the, the movers and the shakers of the country were there –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – and I was on a panel the last night with a Nobel prize winner in Physics and, you know, a head of the Cleveland Clinic, and I mean all these awesome people, and me!

Sarah: Right?

Beverly: So the guy who’s the, who’s the head of this is a former ambassador to, you know, one of the European countries, and he holds up a, a, a copy of one of my books, and he says – and he was being, you know, funny – he said, you know, how are we supposed to take this seriously? You know, with the, the, the clinch and all that, and I said, well, who doesn’t look, who doesn’t like looking at a good-looking man, right?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: So the audience starts laughing, and I proceeded to tell them about us, and what I did, and how seriously we take this genre, and if we’re writing about PTSD, we’re, we’re taking it seriously.

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: If we’re writing about, you know, soldiers who are coming home with, with, with, with their appendages gone, we take that seriously.

Sarah: You take human emotion seriously –

Beverly: Right!

Sarah: – which none of us manage to do in the –

Beverly: Right!

Sarah: – main, mainstream images of it.

Beverly: Right! My, and you know, and the guy sitting next to me is a big-time, you know, network journalist, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: And I, and I said, and when I’m writing about the African-American soldiers, Union soldiers, who were buried alive at Fort Pillow, I take that very seriously. I thought this man was going to fall off his chair.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: He looked at me like, what?! Hello? You know, I’m not supposed to know about that, I guess. So at the end of that, girl, if I had had books, I could have sold books to all 250 people in that room.

Sarah: Oh!

Beverly: They were on their feet applauding when I got done. And so the big-time journalist standing next to me, he says, I think I’m going to start reading your books. I said, you read the Blessings series. The other stuff might kill you.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – serious. But I think we don’t get the opportunity to talk to non-romance audiences, to tell them how seriously we take what we do, and how awesome we are in doing what we do. I mean, people were there with their mouths hanging open when I got done with them, but I can work a room, you know that.

Sarah: Of course. It is a gift.

Beverly: [Laughs]

Sarah: It is absolutely a gift.

Beverly: Sometimes it’s a curse, though –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: – when I’m cursing. But that moment in time really, really stuck with me because these people came into this, you know, and you had your little name tag on, and people would say, well, who are you? What do you do? And I said, I’m a romance writer, and it was like…You know, and nobody was unkind, and nobody was dismissive, but you could see the head spinning around on their necks –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – going, romance writer? What is she doing here? And when I got done, they knew why.

Sarah: Yep.

Beverly: So, yeah. We need more opportunities like that. We need more opportunities like the, the Library of Congress event.

Sarah: That just made me so happy, that, that entire day, just an entire room, standing room only, all day, of people talking about romance in the Library of Congress.

Beverly: Yeah, and, and, and when that woman, and I don’t know who she was, stood up back to that last session and said how blown away she was. She said, you all are, are all so articulate, and, and you’re all so smart –

Sarah: [Whispers] Oh, God!

Beverly: – and you – and I’m like, uh, didn’t you see my say, we are the shit?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: So anyway. But, yeah, we need more opportunities like that, and I’m very honored to be one of the first romance writers who’s going to be at the nat-, on the National Mall with the, the book fair, along with Sarah –

Sarah: That’s brilliant.

Beverly: – in, in September.

Sarah: You must be so excited.

Beverly: I really, really am, and I get forty-five minutes to work the room too? Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs] I hope it’s filmed. It should be live broadcast.

Beverly: Oh, well, well, we’ll see, but, you know, just the opportunity to be able to, you know, represent not only my race, but be able to represent romance, be able to represent my publisher, be able to represent my fans and my readers –

Sarah: And history, and Detroit.

Beverly: – of all races. Yeah, you know, the D.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: You know, the whole thing. So I’m looking forward to having a good time with that.

Sarah: So I have a hard question for you before, before we disconnect, and this is, this is a challenging one to ask an author. Do you know how many books you’ve written? That’s not the hard question. That’s, like, the half-hard question.

Beverly: Thirty-, I think the one coming out, I think the Blessings is thirty-two, I think.

Sarah: Nice!

Beverly: I think.

Sarah: So for a reader who has not ever read your books, and you’ve written in a bunch of different subgenres within romance, and you have a lot of different series, which of your books would you recommend for a reader who has never tried a Bev Jenkins novel but likes historical or likes romantic suspense or likes contemporary Christian women’s fiction. I mean , that would obviously be Blessings 1, that’s kind of an obvious answer, right?

Beverly: Yes, Blessings 1 would cover all of that, but if you’re into historicals, I always, I start ‘em out with Topaz.

Sarah: Good choice!

Beverly: Because it’s fun –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – it covers the history, it gives you a look at, at the strong heroines, you’ve got an awesome hero, and you’ve got a lot of laugh-out-loud moments –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Beverly: – with that. So, and you’ve got the suspense, and you’ve got, you know, the road trip, and I mean, it’s, it’s all, it’s everything a romance writer, or reader, would love. So –

Sarah: I love a good road trip.

Beverly: Yeah! You know even though she’s, like, what do you mean, I’ve got to marry you?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Beverly: So, yeah, it’s just, you know, it’s just, can he even read? Topaz, ‘cause it’s fun. And it’s a Western, too, so, and I love my Westerns, so, yeah. And contemporary? I like Deadly Sexy, because it’s sports, and it’s a great suspense, and you’ve got a great couple.

Sarah: She’s a sports a-, sports agent, right?

Beverly: Yeah, she’s a sports agent, and her sister has a book also in Sexy/Dangerous, so. Yeah, I mean, they can really just pick anything, but if I had to recommend, I would recommend they start with Topaz, ‘cause that gives them a good look at, at the breadth of what I can do.

Sarah: Which is a lot.

Beverly: Well, you know, the struggle is real, girl, so –

[Laughter]

Beverly: Just trying, you know, it’s just, just trying to pay a light bill, that’s all.

[music]

Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode. I want to thank Beverly Jenkins for taking the time to hang out with me on Skype and talk about all of the books that she’s written. I will have links to most of the books that we have discussed, as long as they’re available for linking, ‘cause sometimes they’re too far out in the future. I will link to her Facebook page and to the other things that we discussed, and her appearance and clips from the Love Between the Covers documentary.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chasing Danger, the new novella in the sizzling-hot Deadly Ops series from New York Times bestselling author Katie Reus, on sale on April 21st.

The music this week was provided, as always, by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is Sonata for Piano, Op. 26, Allegro con spirito by Samuel Barber, and if you’re, like, way into music and I pronounced that horribly, I apologize. This was performed by Jade Simmons from her album Revolutionary Rhythm, which is available as an MP3 and as a CD wherever your fine music is sold. This whole album is really funky, too. It’s a lot of very modern and very, for my ears, very strange harmonies and sounds, and it’s really cool. She’s a very talented pianist.

As I mentioned in the intro, it is nearly time for the Romantic Times book loving convention, or Booklovers Convention. All of us book lovers who are book loving will be at this convention in Dallas. If you’re going to be there and you would like to do a quick three-question interview with me, I would really love to do that. I think that would be super fun, and I would love the opportunity to meet more of the listeners of the podcast. You can email me at [email protected]; we’ll try to find a time. I don’t have an unlimited schedule, but I will try to fit as many micro-interviews as I can, because it would be most awesome to meet some of you at RT. So email me.

And! If you have questions or ideas or comments, or you want to ask Beverly Jenkins a question, you can email the podcast at [email protected]. We love getting listener email. We have a bunch of ‘em saved up for a most excellent listener email episode, coming soon.

Future podcasts will feature me and also Jane talking about RT and romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here.

And in the meantime, on behalf of Ms. Beverly Jenkins and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.

[awesome music]