Urban-Reviews.com - Inside Out with Virginia Deberry and Donna Grant

Urban Reviews: Start by telling our readers about Gotta Keep On Tryin'.
DeBerry and Grant: Almost since Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made hit the shelves, readers have been asking for a sequel--something we never thought about after we completed that book. But 10 years worth of requests later--we decided to tackle the project. It was nerve wracking--but ultimately fulfilling to revisit the characters we'd put down so many years before. We thought long and hard about how to approach the story and concluded that the best way was to allow for time to have passed in Pat, Gayle and Marcus' lives too. So in Gotta Keep on Tryin', we pick them up six years after Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made ended and bring them forward to the present time.

Gayle Saunders, Marcus Carter, and Patricia Reid, were linked for life when an accidental gunshot took the life of Marcus's brother. The real-life drama continues in Gotta Keep on Tryin', as each character battles demons from the past in order to preserve their future. Marcus and Pat face a paternity crisis after a teenager shows up claiming to be Marcus's daughter. Gayle has her own family drama, as the ghost of her gambler husband Ramsey continues to cast a shadow over her attempts to start a new life with daughter Vanessa. And Pat and Gayle's business, The Ell and Me Company is either poised for huge success or total collapse. We hope that Gotta Keep on Tryin' will keep readers enthusiastically turning the pages to find out.

Urban Reviews: Gotta Keep On Tryin' is the sequel to Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made. What made you decide to do a sequel to this novel after ten years since the original book?
DeBerry and Grant: When we wrote Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made, we had no idea how much readers would identify with Pat, Gayle and Marcus--their struggles and triumphs, but most of all their friendship. From the very beginning we got mail that asked about them and wanted to know how the saga continued.

Well, ten years have passed, which means a lot has gone on. Gayle's daughter, Vanessa, was a child when we left her. Now she is a young woman, with ideas about how to make her own bed.

Pat and Gayle had renewed their friendship and were on the verge of starting a business together when we left them. Ten years later, the business is a success, but has it taken a toll on their friendship? It is a question we are often asked personally, so it was interesting to explore the possibilities for discord and to see if it could be resolved.

Readers were happy for Pat and Marcus, felt they belonged together. What happens when you mix, marriage, busy careers, and one partner who wants children with one who is reluctant to take that plunge?

And what ever happened to Gayle's gambler husband, Ramsey? There was so much to explore, in addition to the new characters who come into all of their lives, that we felt it was finally time to visit these old friends.

Urban Reviews: Can you tell us how both of you started your literary careers? How did you come up with the idea for writing as a duo?
DeBerry and Grant: It's one of those crazy but true stories-in different cities, Virginia in Buffalo and Donna in New York, we both accepted dares from friends to try out for this new thing called "plus size modeling." We ended up at the same agency, competing for the same assignments. And although we were both featured in catalogs, ads, magazines and TV, we were never booked together because we were both black models and there would only be one on any given booking . But we discovered that we really liked each other--that we cracked each other up and had a lot in common. We were both English majors in school, so there was a whole range of conversations we could have surrounding what we were reading at any given moment.

We also had a lot of life in common and we realized that the client was going to book who they wanted to book--that the decision had nothing to do with us--so there was no reason to let that get in the way

Our modeling careers led to the opportunity to launch Maxima, a quarterly fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women, where Virginia was editor-in-chief and Donna the managing editor. For months we did everything--assigned, wrote and edited stories; set up fashion shoots; made lunch for the models. We were thrilled by what we had achieved and shocked when, on New Year's Eve, after only a year and half, our backers pulled the plug.

It was horrible and we went through all of the emotions you would expect. After we stopped cursing, spitting blood--and consuming many alcoholic beverages, we decided that the best thing we had ever hit on was working together. There was something that the two of us found together that we'd never found in any other kind of working situation.

We used to sit around and talk with a bunch of other people about romance novels and how we could write one --if we wanted to--so when the magazine went belly up, we asked ourselves if we could really do it.

We read a paperback guide to writing and publishing romances, wrote an outline and four chapters and submitted it to an agent Donna knew. She sold it in two weeks with the caveat that we had to complete the novel, Exposures, in four months, in order to nab the slot offered by Warner Books. We used a pseudonym we created from our middle names, Marie Joyce. Exposures was a paperback original and focused on the 80s-style life and loves of a white fashion photographer and sold well. But when our second effort failed to find a publisher, we reconsidered our approach.

We decided to move the focus away from what everybody did for a living, and move away from Manhattan, and the glitter. We set the story in places like the ones where we grew up, and wrote about people who were really like the ones we knew.

At that point, we had both lived a lot of life and made our share of mistakes. You figure out how to make things right; it's a part of growing up. We were both very interested in the whole process of making choices and then dealing with the choices that you made. The result was Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made.

Urban Reviews: Do you each focus on one aspect of the book such as the plot and characters?
DeBerry and Grant: No. We both do everything. We really do write and re-write together. Which is why we say we are the "author" of our books, not "authors."

Urban Reviews: Are you working on any upcoming projects?
DeBerry and Grant: We have just finished another novel, What Doesn't Kill You, which will be published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in January 2009. It's the first book we've written from the first person perspective--which presented it's own challenges, but we've had loads of fun with it. We are also thrilled to let readers know that we are producing Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made as an independent feature film--and we hope for a late 2009 release. Far From the Tree has also been optioned, the script is done and we will also be involved in that film as executive producers. You can keep up with what's happening on the movie front by checking our website: deberryandgrant.com.

Urban Reviews: What are some of the changes that both of you have noticed in the African-American book industry since the release of your debut novel?
DeBerry and Grant: It's sad to say, but it seems as if the AA book world has "dumbed down." There is so much being written, published and read that is poor quality. We firmly believe that people have the right to read and write whatever they choose--so this isn't about being against erotica or street lit--it's about being against the badly written, unedited or under edited material that's clogging the shelves of bookstores. It's sensational. It perpetuates negative stereotypes and elevates a self-destructive, self-defeating image of African Americans to a position where it is seen as something to be emulated. And most unfortunate of all we feel that writers, publishers and readers are all equally responsible.

Urban Reviews: Do you have any favorite authors or books?
DeBerry and Grant: We have wide and varied tastes in books and authors including--John Irving, Zora Neale Hurston, J. K. Rowling, Bernice McFadden, Richard Wright, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Eisa Nefertari Ulen, Tina McElroy Ansa, Gloria Naylor, J. California Cooper, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ....The list goes on and changes every day.

Urban Reviews: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
DeBerry and Grant: That writing is a business and they must be prepared to learn as much about the business of publishing as they have learned about their craft. The art is why we do what we do, but knowing the business is how we survive.

Urban Reviews: What do you want the world to know the most about the both of you?
DeBerry and Grant: We're fairly transparent---what you see is what you get kind of women. So we are very forthcoming about ourselves and our histories--from the questions we've been asked (and have answered) on tour to our bios on our website and various interviews that can easily be found online it's pretty much all out there already. If you have a question and you haven't seen the answer--ask. You can reach us at: deberryandgrant@gmail.com, http://deberryandgrant.com and http://www.myspace.com/twomindsfull. We blog too--so far we post on Mondays and Thursdays. You can read it on MySpace and on http://www.myspace.com/twomindsfull. We'll be on book tour in January and February--details can be found on the "TOURS" page on our website. Hope to see you while we're on the road.