Urban-Reviews.com - Inside Out

Urban Reviews: Tell us about Supreme Clientele.
JaQuavis: Supreme Clientele is a story of a woman's grind. It tells the story of a young woman named Zya who is blinded by the allure of the game. It shows the rise and fall of a New York Queen Pen.

Urban Reviews: Where did you come up with the idea for this novel?
Ashley: Supreme Clientele is actually a spin-off from our debut novel, Dirty Money. Dirty Money got such a strong reaction from our fans and jumped out of the gate when it was released, but we sort of left the readers hanging at the end of the book and everybody we talked to wanted to know when we would be writing the sequel. In Supreme Clientele, we incorporated the characters from Dirty Money and brought their personalities into the new storyline.

Urban Reviews: Explain how both of you got into the book industry.
JaQuavis: We had a manuscript, we contacted Shannon Holmes and he told us to send it to him. One of his business partners ended up reading it and was feeling it. At the time we only had half of it done and he told us that we should finish it because it was a good novel. We were both surprised that one of our favorite authors was feeling our work so we started shopping it and got an immediate response. After that it was a wrap. We got on.

Urban Reviews: How did you come up with the idea of dual authorship?
Ashley: With Dirty Money we couldn't have completed the manuscript without each other because it was like 75% true. We were telling two sides to one story. After we received our book deal our publisher urged us to create a gimmick (Ashley JaQuavis). They wanted it to appear that it was just one author. After the first book's success, we just kept it pushing together. There are advantages to writing together. We write twice as fast as the average author. JaQuavis and I have like eight books completed. Another advantage is that we get to tell realistic point of views from both the male and female perspectives so that anybody can relate to our novels.

Urban Reviews: Would either of you consider breaking off and doing solo books in the future?
JaQuavis: We write separately all the time. Ashley and I have ghostwritten stories for other authors and as far as the solo careers, we are both discussing solo deals right now. We are just waiting for a company to put the (right) cake up. The readers will get a glimpse of our solo efforts in Girls From Da Hood 4.

Urban Reviews: Can you give us a sneak peak at your next novel?
Ashley: The title of our next novel is self explanatory. It's called Closed Legs Don't Get Fed.

Urban Reviews: What have you learned about the book industry being relatively new authors? Is it what you expected?
JaQuavis: The book world is all politics. This career is not for the lazy and sometimes a good story is not always the recipe for a successful career. It sort of reminds me of the streets how you have to stay on a constant grind to get ahead.

Urban Reviews: Are there any authors or books that inspired the both of you to become authors?
Ashley: Honestly there isn't a certain author or book that inspired me to write. I've always wanted to be in the literary game in some form or fashion and the emergence of street fiction just allowed me to create stories the way that I wanted to. The genre is so raw and uncensored that it gives me an opportunity to show our fans a glimpse of what I see everyday where I'm from.

Urban Reviews: What's the best advice an author or someone in the literary industry has given you?
JaQuavis: Sister Souljah gave us some advice when we first started out. She told us not to read another author's work while creating our own. I feel her on that because it's a lot of biting going on right now. Every storyline is so diluted. Some authors are killing street fiction. I'm not referring to the authors that work hard and are original. Real authors respect that comment and the ones who get mad are the ones who are most likely killing it.

Urban Reviews: What do you want the world to know most about both of you?
Ashley and JaQuavis: We want the world to know that we pride ourselves on keeping it real and thorough. What do we look like writing about a 40-year-old person's relationship problems when we haven't crossed that bridge yet. We write about what we see, what we hear, what we live. Anybody that really knows us knows that we are not too different from the characters that we write about. --Oh yeah, and Urban Reviews is our favorite website!