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An Interview with Beverly Jenkins
[00:00:00]
Katherine Grant: Welcome to the historical romance sampler podcast. I'm your host, Katherine Grant, and each week I introduce you to another amazing historical romance author. My guest reads a little sample of their work, and then we move into a free ranging interview. If you like these episodes, don't forget to subscribe to the historical romance sampler, wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am thrilled to host a very special episode of the Historico Romance Sampler today. An interview with icon Beverly Jenkins. Ms. Bev started publishing in 1994 and since then she has led the charge for inclusive romance. Her work has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and [00:01:00] peers alike, garnering accolades from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, and NPR.
She is the recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Historical Romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature, and was featured both in the documentary Love Between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning.
She has even been the namesake for a character in a historical romance novel by Eva Leigh. So, Ms. Bev, I want to start, thank you so much for sharing your time with me today.
Beverly Jenkins: Oh, thank you for the invite. We, you know, I would tell folks I was sick last month and I sort of slept through. I forgot all about it.
I was just dead. So. That's all good. I mean. She's been just wonderful. She's been, Katherine's been wonderful to me. So. Whatever she wants me to do, I'm, [00:02:00] I'm here to do it.
Katherine Grant: Whatever you need to do to recover, we want you to do. Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins: I'm feeling good now.
Katherine Grant: So, you've said before that you did not consider yourself a writer.
And yet, here you are. So, first of all, do you consider yourself a writer yet? Yes.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, I guess I do. I mean, I've been doing this now for 30 years, 31 years. I don't think I'm qualified to do anything else at this point. And plus I love what I do. So, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of, you like what you're doing.
You look forward to the next chapter or next book, met some lovely people along the way, both authors and readers. So it's all good. I think, you know, yeah, I, I, I guess I do consider myself. A writer. Now.
Katherine Grant: Do you have a sense? Was that like within the last five years or the [00:03:00] last 20 years or?
Beverly Jenkins: You know, I don't know.
After the first book, excuse me, they kept sending me contracts. I kept sending them books. They kept sending me more contracts. I kept sending them more books. So now 30 years later, we're still doing that. So, you know, I guess, I don't know, you know, I, my girlfriends often tell me that I have no sense of my impact on the genre because I'm just writing kissing books.
Right. I'm, I'm not trying to, I'm trying to write the stories that I would have loved to read growing up. Cause there was nothing in the marketplace that reflected me or looked like me, or, You know, my mom and my sisters and I'm just trying to write books, you know, Tony Morrison's got that quote. I know I'm going to mess [00:04:00] it up, but she said that, you know, if there's a book out there that you want to read that isn't out there, then you need to write it.
Yeah. So that's how I feel. And I guess, you know, a lot of accolades along the way, and I try not to pay any attention to that because you know, your heads get so big, you can't get through the door, but to be known for writing good stories. I think that's all I really want out of this whole quote unquote legendary life.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, absolutely. Well, who were some of the, were you reading romance before you started writing romance?
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, I mean, I read everything. I mean, there was really no quote unquote designated romance when I was coming up. You had Mary Stewart, you had Victoria Holt, you had who else? I also read Louis L'Amour, and I read, you know, [00:05:00] Shakespeare, and I read, you know, Sherlock Holmes, and I read, you know, everything, you know, I'm one, and I've told this story before, I'm one of those kids that, that read everything in my neighborhood library, you know, from the, from the kiddie books to, to the adult books.
So, romance. As a pre genre, because that's really what it was back then was just one of the many, many, many things that, that I read. But I'd always loved a good love story. I mean, you know, it was on screen, like I said, nothing in print. But my sisters and I, we, you know, we loved the Rock Hudson and the Doris Day movies and James Garner and, you know, all of that.
And and we had romance in our lives with our parents and our aunts and our uncles. And You know, and we all, you know, if you go to church, you have that, that little old couple that's been married for 50 years who is still holding hands, coming out of the church, going across the parking lot to the car to go home for [00:06:00] dinner.
So you know, the romance is there, even though it wasn't reflected in the, in the major culture. So,
Katherine Grant: yeah. And did you write your first manuscript thinking I'm going to sit down and write a kissing book or were you writing a story that you found interesting and then found a publisher who wanted a kissing book?
Beverly Jenkins: I was writing strictly for me because this was gosh, I think I started night song back in the seventies. Oh wow. Yeah. I'm an old lady. And this was BC- before children. So my husband who played tennis in high school. He was a printer back then when we first got together. So he would come home from work, you know, wash off the ink and go play tennis.
And I was working at the Michigan State University library, in the graduate library. So I could go down to cataloging and grab, you know, whatever was on a, on a card as long as I brought it back and it, you know, wasn't dirty or [00:07:00] cleaned or, you know, wasn't dropped in the mud or whatever. I would come home and read.
And, right, working on this story for me. So fast forward about maybe 10 years, 15 years. I was working for another I was working for Park Davis Pharmaceuticals in their library. And one of my colleagues had just written a, a sweet romance. And she had just gotten that published. We were celebrating her.
I was telling her about this little romance that I was working on. And she said, you know, bring it in. I've told this story a thousand times. Bring it in. She looked at it. She said, I needed to get it published. And, you know, this is what market was closed. I'm like, where, where am I going to get this published?
You know? So I tell people, she, you know, harassed me every day. I didn't do an agent. Fine. So some kind of way I found Vivian Stephens. I have no idea how I found Vivian. She's my first agent. She had gotten out of publishing and I sent her my [00:08:00] little raggedy manuscript and she called me less than a week later, said she wanted to represent me.
And then like a thousand rejections later Ellen Edwards at Avon bought the book on my husband's birthday. Yeah. Yeah, I told the story. I told the story at one of the RWAs. We were having a hell of a fight that day. I mean, I don't know what we were fighting about. We were fighting up and down the steps and their necks rocking and all of that.
And the phone rang. And it was Ellen. And she said she wanted to buy my book. So time out on the fight. You know, my husband said, I guess I got to take your little butt to dinner. Yes, you do. So then it was published a year later, which was Nightsong my first book. So it was a summer of Black love because that was also the summer that Arabesque published their first African American contemporaries with Bette Ford and Donna Hill and those ladies.
But I [00:09:00] was the only one doing historicals. So, so now what, 30 years later, I'm still. But then I've been in a lot of sandboxes, you know, I've, I've, I've been blessed to have a publisher that trusts my writing. So, historical, I've done contemporaries, I've done YA women's fiction. I'm glad that I was not just relegated to one box, one sandbox.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. One question I have for you that might tie into that is, how do you maintain the stamina or finding inspiration for writing book after book over 30 years?
Beverly Jenkins: I have no trouble with stories. I have what I call the green room in my head and there are characters in there that are sitting there doing this.
You know, when's my turn? When's my turn, lady? Come on, lady. You know, whereas I have some girlfriends who are writers who have a really hard time trying to come up with something different, but [00:10:00] we all bring different stuff to the table. You know, they may be stronger in other areas than I am. But I have no trouble coming up with, you know, whether I can turn it in on time.
Now that's, that's a, that's a issue sometimes, but I got stories. When I'm, you know, when, when my last day on earth comes around, you know, I'll be banging on the edge of the, on the inside of the urn going, wait, wait, wait, I got, you know, four more stories I need to write, you know, so
I think it's part of the imagination and I have no trouble coming up with, with stories, which is good for me.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what about maintaining a career part of the authoring for 30 years? Do you think there's a secret sauce for you and your peers who are still publishing 30 years later as opposed to people who maybe started at the same time as you and aren't still publishing?
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah. You know, I don't know how or why that is. You know, people drop out, I think, for [00:11:00] different reasons. Some people are, you know, have health issues. Yeah. Yeah. Some people have family issues, some people have personal issues. And then there's some of us, like I said, who are not qualified to do anything else.
So we're just, you know, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. It's a, it's a blessing at least that's the way I look at it, to be able to do this for 30 years and still have people buying your books. I mean, that's the, the biggest thing, you know, I, I, And even though, you know, I've been at this a long time, I all, I still worry.
Are they gonna throw tomatoes at me this time? You know, is it gonna be terrible? You know, and I, I, I try and make an effort not to write the same book twice. Mm-hmm . I give my readers a different, a different flavor, a different swagger, a different, a different theme, you know, every time. And ' cause they, they will be truthful with me, which is a good thing.[00:12:00]
Yes. You know, they will tell me if I'm writing crap, you know, so, because you want that. But I've been lucky so far, you know, not too many tomatoes have been thrown my
way.
Katherine Grant: Well, not just lucky. I think there's a fair amount of talent and skill that goes behind it.
Beverly Jenkins: Well, you know, you try to, you try and be, you know, humble about it.
Katherine Grant: Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins: And not, you know, well, yes, it's because I'm this, and this, and this, and this. No, no. You're only as good as your last book, so.
Katherine Grant: Well, and have you ever had to put out a book, because of contract deadlines and stuff, have you ever had to put out a book that you wished you had more time to work on? And you don't have to name it, but do you have advice for authors who might have that?
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, I think we all, we all would like a redo sometimes on some things. I have some books that I know are absolutely perfect and I could not have have done more with, some that I wish I had had another two weeks to play around with it would have been a lot [00:13:00] bigger or a lot whatever, but yeah, I think we, but you know, you can't go back.
So you just have to sort of take the lessons that you learned or didn't learn and put those into the stories going forward. So, yeah.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. And You're iconic for one reason, for the level of research that you put into your books, especially historical. Mm-hmm .
Where does the research fit into your creative process?
Beverly Jenkins: Oh, well, you know, I wanna tell the story. I, you know, I, I, I call it edutainment entertainment and education because I think one of the functions of art is to educate. One of the functions is, is to entertain, and one is to educate.
Which is why I love writing romance, because you can do that in so many different ways with romance. So to be able to tell the true story [00:14:00] of American history
in ways that it hasn't been told before, whether we're dealing with women, whether we're dealing with African Americans, whether we're dealing with, you know, Chinese Americans or, or Native Americans as told through their gaze,
I think you get a truer vision of history. And then make that the background for a great love story. And you have a perfect story, at least in my mind. And there's no test on, and no test on Friday, you know, so.
Katherine Grant: Absolutely. And so, so when you're thinking about like the next book that you're going to write, do you begin by doing, you know, a month's worth of research and then coming up with the story?
Beverly Jenkins: Each book's different. I'm a pantser. So each book is different. Sometimes it's a kernel of a story. Sometimes it's a character. [00:15:00] Sometimes it's a historical incident. I just sort of go with whatever the muse gives me and then try and figure out what the muse wants me to say. Because if I had to, you know, I love being a pantser because if I had to write out everything and outline and for me, it takes all the energy out of the story.
And I'm ready to go on to the next book, so this way I am as surprised as the readers are. Oh, this is what we're going to do? Okay, okay, you know, hold on, let me catch up, you know, so, but yeah, I, I like being a pantser. I like being a pantser because, like I said, I, I, it's more fun for me this way.
Katherine Grant: Absolutely. And sometimes that gut reaction that you get tells you whether you're This is a good idea, or, or, oh, this is boring, need something more exciting.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, because if it, you know, if your eyes are going to glaze over, then the reader's eyes are going to glaze [00:16:00] over. And if you're going to cry, then the readers are going to cry.
And if you're going to laugh, more than likely they're going to laugh too. So I try and, and I write for me, basically, and then see what happens when it, when the, if the readers get the same kind of reaction when the book comes to them.
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Katherine Grant: Of all the different eras and pockets of history that you have researched and written about, do you have a favorite?
Beverly Jenkins: I think the whole 19th century is my favorite because there's so many different stories to tell that haven't been told or haven't been told fully. Whether you're talking about, you know, the years leading up, whether you're talking about abolition, or Civil War, or Reconstruction, or a redemption, or the move west, or the move north whether you're dealing with the, [00:19:00] the Hispanics and the Blacks in California, or whether you're dealing with, the small towns in Kansas.
I mean, there's just, just a wealth of stories out there told from a different point of view that, you know, you can have fun with and educate and entertain and all those other good things that makes a good story. So. I, like I said, I love what I do. I really do.
Katherine Grant: That's wonderful. I mean, I'm sure that's one of the reasons why your books keep speaking to us is because you love it.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah. I see.
Katherine Grant: Now, one of the things that's going around the internet these days is that historical romance is dead. Is this a cycle that you have seen before? Have you heard this before?
Beverly Jenkins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've heard this before.
But nobody has said this to the readers of historical romance. You got a lot of pushback from, from some of the publishers. You are getting pushback from the little kids [00:20:00] Booktok and TikTok and all of the clock people. But you're not getting that from the mainstream readers. Historical readers.
Mm-hmm . They're waiting for more stuff, you know? And I don't know, I think it's something that's gonna come back and bite 'em in the butt publishers. Mm-hmm. Because the community is so large. And a lot from what I'm seeing have stopped reading because of how different the books are now, as opposed to the way that they were constructed and, and, and written, say, even 10 years ago.
So it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I think those of us who write historicals are going to continue to write historicals, whether it's going to be romance or whether it's going to be paranormal or whatever it's going to be, it's going to still be. [00:21:00] With a historical view because like I said, I'm not qualified to do anything else.
So I'm going to do that. I like some dragons. I'm going to do some dragons. But then I can also write suspense and I, you know, cause I've got suspense titles that I've been promising my readers for the last 15 years, lying to them about having this book done. So as long as, you know, as long as I got a publisher, you know, I'll write something.
Katherine Grant: Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins: Historicals are my first love.
Katherine Grant: Yeah.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Do you look back and think, do you have any observations on how your writing has changed and or do you have observations on how your writing has remained constant to itself?
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah. I think the writing has changed in the, in, And who gets to be in the story. Because back when I started the heroines were mostly, well, were all white.
Size six. Most of the men were, were [00:22:00] alpha holes. And now you have just this wealth of, of, of diverse characters, all identities. Women and men doing different stuff. Men writing stories for people who don't really identify as, as, as love stories. So I think that's a wonderful thing because it puts, you know, regardless of the political machinations going on right now, it puts romance, I think, ahead of a lot of genres and who gets to participate and who gets to be, who gets to be seen on the page.
Yeah, I think we lead the way in that. But there's still a lot to do, you know, it's not perfect. Otherwise we wouldn't have had to burn down [00:23:00] RWA. But I guess I think we lead still a lot to do. My writing has changed in the sense that I don't rely as much on the research as I used to because I've already educated my readers and I don't have to.
And I don't have to hit them over the head anymore, or myself, with like what's happening in Louisiana in 1877 or, you know, I don't have to do the, the great exodus of 1879 anymore because we've already done that. So I can take the stories, make those parts of it, the foundation, and not have to teach because they already know.
So it makes, it makes for less of a historical. Historical, historical, but you still get that foundation and you still get, hopefully, a great [00:24:00] story. Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. That's really interesting. And can you tell us anything about what we can expect
from you in the next year?
Beverly Jenkins: Well, right now, right now, the the book 12 of the Blessing series coming out in August.
And that's the last book of the series. And for the first time in 30 years, I have no contract, which is kind of cool because, you know, my agent and I can, you know, play with stuff. We can, you know, float stuff that, you know, I've been maybe sitting on or, you know seeing who's interested in, in different parts of, of the Beverly Jenkins universe whereas the kids say the multiverse and see what happens.
I'm kind of excited. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm home for, you know, the first time really, and I think I did 14 visits last 14 flights last year. I'm too old for this girl. [00:25:00] So we're going to see what, you know, what, what happens. My birthday was last weekend. Oh, happy belated. Thank you. Thank you. So it's kind of exciting because I got a lot of stuff in the pipeline that I would love to do, but we're going to keep, keep going.
We're going to keep it quiet and see and wait and see what my agent comes up with. But she's got great ideas too. So yeah, the two of us, you know, we. We may conquer the world before this is over, who knows?
Katherine Grant: Well, do you, are you going to use this time to just literally write for yourself since no one is waiting on a book for you?
I mean, we are all waiting on a book from you,
but
you're contractually obligated.
Beverly Jenkins: And I, and I, and people are asking for, because I haven't done a historical in a while. In at least, what, two years, three years? So people want historicals. People want the suspense book that I've been lying to them about for the last 20 years.
I want to play in the [00:26:00] dragon sandbox because I'm a big fantasy reader. So I don't really know what we're going to do. We're going to see who bites. We're going to put the line out there and bait it with all kinds of stuff and see who nibbles. Yeah. Go from there. But yeah, I want to write for me, but I also got to pay my mortgage.
So, you know, there, there is that. But my agent has a good. Indie shop in her agency too. So that's going
Katherine Grant: to
I was going to say you could clean up.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, that, that, that's also, you know, on, on the, on the line too, you know, it is, is to be able to do it Indie. So, so we'll see. Cause you know, I got less time ahead of me than I got behind me.
So you want to try and have fun but still pay the mortgage. But also, like I said, have fun because that's what this is about, you know, is. [00:27:00] It's about the journey. It's not necessarily about the destination. So
yeah, where it
goes.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well speaking of having fun I'd like to close it out by playing my game.
Love it or leave it.
Beverly Jenkins: Okie dokie.
[Musical Interlude]
Katherine Grant: All right Do you love it or leave it? Protagonists meet in the first 10 percent of the story
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, cuz you know, I don't I'm trying to think of my books. Yeah, everybody meets Within the first, yeah, I do, because, you know, you want to get the story started, you know, you don't be like, well, what are they doing?
Where, where is he? Or where is she? You know, so, yeah. Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Love it or leave it, dual point of view narration.
Beverly Jenkins: Definitely. Because when I started in 94, everybody wrote dual. And now we got these new, [00:28:00] and I guess they're not new anymore, but these newer, younger editors who don't like that for some reason.
But I love it. I mean, I want to see her reaction. I want to hear his reaction. I don't want a whole chapter from his point of view, a whole chapter from her point of view. It's a ruined romance. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Katherine Grant: Alright love it or leave it, third person past tense.
Beverly Jenkins: God, what is that? I don't even know, I don't know, what is third person past tense?
Katherine Grant: Like he said, she said, instead of he says, she says, or I say.
Beverly Jenkins: Oh, okay. Eh, I can take it or leave it. You know, just give me a good story. A lot of times you don't even need the tags, if you're doing it right.
Katherine Grant: All right. Love it or leave it, third act, breakup, or dark moment?
Beverly Jenkins: Sometimes a story, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Depends on the couple [00:29:00] and what you're trying to do with the story. Sometimes like I had this great story and it had no conflict at the end. And the editor was like, well, we need a conflict. I'm like, why? You know, they've accomplished all they need to accomplish. And the readers sometimes say, why are they fighting at the end of the book?
They've already, you know. So it depends, I think, on. The couple, it depends on the story and what you're trying to achieve. And I'm not saying no to it. I'm just saying, sometimes you want to do something different.
Katherine Grant: Alright, love it or leave it, always end with an epilogue.
Beverly Jenkins: No. Have I always ended with an epilogue?
No. And I know some people say, well, if I need an epilogue and I need a baby, y'all need a life.
All right. [00:30:00] Sometimes, you know, cause I have a story where within Wild Rain where she didn't want any kids and there's no epilogue. And I got a lot cause we do, I do the book club on my Facebook page. And so there were some people that were asking, well, Are you going to write a sequel where she's with these kids that she didn't want?
I'm like, no, she didn't want any babies. She's not having any babies. People who have babies don't want babies. I'm like, come on now. But people seem to think that... some people seem to think that you need an epilogue and you need a baby for it to be a true romance. And you know, not everybody wants that. So,
Katherine Grant: All right.
Love it or leave it, always share research in your author's note.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah, I do, because I want people to, [00:31:00] if they want to do more research, I want them to be able to find it and not wonder where I got this stuff from. I also put that in the first book because I kept getting these questions, were the black people really do this?
Yes, they did. Here's the sites. Go read the sites and come back and we can talk, you know so I think they're important. I borrowed that from, from the icon, Susan Johnson, but she has footnotes in her early in her early. Wow. So I thought this is really cool because she did a lot of Native American stories and she had footnotes.
And so I was like, okay, I need to, I need to copy her so that I can, you know, help people find out more information on, on whatever the subject is. So. So I did not invent that. I sort of borrowed it from Susan.
Katherine Grant: Well, that's fascinating and it's interesting to have the idea of [00:32:00] footnotes in fiction.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah.
Katherine Grant: All right, well, and then are there any other romance rules I didn't ask about that you break?
Beverly Jenkins: Well, I don't know. I mean, I've done just about everything. I've broken all the rules. And you're still standing. I'm still standing. Books are still standing. I don't think I don't think anybody has ever. done a Orgasm on the first page. Yeah, I think, I think, Billy and Archer, not Archer, Billy and what was his, Andrew, from Destiny's Surrender?
One of those. Captives, no, Surrender, yeah. Captive was the pirate book. I've had a heroine shoot people a couple times. Mm hmm. Generational. No, I think, you know, I, I, I don't [00:33:00] like secret babies, but somebody told me that I did write a secret baby book. And I realized I did, even though I don't like secrets.
Secret baby books, and I was like, I was like, no, I didn't write a secret baby book. They were like, Ms. Bev, this is what happened in this story. Is that a secret baby or not? I was like, Oh shit. Yeah, I guess it's a secret,
Katherine Grant: but well, I think you were saying that you don't always understand or have a feeling for the legacy that you've created for this genre.
And I would say part of it comes from the fact that you have broken rules and shown us that these rules can be broken and it can still be a romance. And in fact, it can be a better romance for it.
Beverly Jenkins: Yeah.
Oh,
I like that.
I like that. I'll send you a check
for that.
That's in the mail, babe.
Katherine Grant: Well, I [00:34:00] want to thank you very much again for coming on. Are there any specific plugs you want to make? Do you want people to follow you you sign up for your newsletter or follow you on a social media or anything?
Beverly Jenkins: Okay. Newsletters. I'm terrible at it. I can, I can hear my assistant screaming.
At me from North Carolina about getting the newsletter, but I do have one. It's very infrequent, but you can sign up on my website, beverlyjenkins. net. You can follow me on Blue Sky. I left the hell mouth after the election and the romance community on Blue Sky is amazing. We have rebuilt Romancelandia.
Facebook, I have one, two, three pages and a fans of Beverly Jenkins page that you can hook up with and they have great fun and they do all kinds of stuff, giveaways and all kinds of stuff. So, [00:35:00] follow me that's why I can never get a book in on time, I'm too busy playing on social media.
Katherine Grant: All right, well, I will put links in the show notes, so listeners, you can hop on over and click through.
Beverly Jenkins: Thank you. Thank you.
Katherine Grant: And thank you. This has been amazing. I am so honored to have been able to ask you all my questions.
Beverly Jenkins: Well, thank you for having me and, and we should do this again sometime.
Katherine Grant: Let's, please.
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