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Author
Q&A
1. What do you like to do in your free
time?
I love to prepare, a nice warm (almost
hot!) bubble bath, light some scented candles
and put on some soft music—maybe
Jill Scott. She really knows how to stir
up memories about that special man, doesn't
she? "You're here, I'm pleased. I
really dig your company..." Or something
old school like ConFunkShun, and
relax with a good book. There is
something about candle lights, the right
music, and bubbles, that is soooo soothing!
2. What kind of music do you like to listen to? Why?
I like all kinds of music. Sometimes when I want to put
myself in the mood to write, I'll listen to AFRICA by Toto,
To My Unborn Child by Tupac or I'll put on some
piano solos, like Ferrante and Teicher. My father
played piano and I miss that. The way he would just pound
away on the keys and move his body as he made music always
fascinated me. He never studied music formally, but he made
the music his own. That's why I like piano solos. It
unleashes memories that spark my creativity. The horn
solo in AFRICA does it for me, too. It takes me there.
3. What's your all time favorite movie? Why?
Wow. That's a hard one! "They's so many of 'em!" LOL! Ok
that was a line from one of my all time favorites, “The
Color Purple”. When the family gets together, we are
always quoting lines from that movie. One of us will
ask a question and someone will answer with a line from
that movie. Usually it's "Hell naw!" Then
there's “Devil In A Blue Dress”. I love
Denzel, but Don Cheadle's portrayal of Mouse in that movie
did it for me! “To Kill A Mockingbird”, Alfred
Hitchcock's “The Birds”, “Jason's Lyric”,
(Oh, I do love me some Allen Payne!) The list goes
on and on. See, that's not a fair question to ask someone
who loves movies as much as I do!
4. What's your all time favorite novel and/or writer? Why?
Here we go again! This question really ain't fair, y'all!
I love books! It's impossible to pick just one. I
love Richard Wright's Native Son. Nobody builds
drama and anticipation better than he does in this story.
From the moment Bigger Thomas took the job "driving
Ms. Daisy" you knew something bad was going to happen.
You just could never believe how deep and how bad it was
going to get! I love Walter Mosely, Diane McKinney
Whetstone's Leaving Cecil Street. Tina McElroy
Ansa's The Hand I Fan With, James Patterson and
his Alex Cross series, especially Roses Are Red and the
sequel Violets Are Blue, Eric Jerome Dickey, E.Lynn
Harris, Kimerla Lawson Roby's Curtis Black Series. Come
on now! Do I really have to pick just one? Okay, I read
this book when I was younger, I think the title was Thorpe.
And I have tried to find it again, but all that comes up
when I google that title are books about Jim Thorpe, the
athlete. Anyway, Thorpe was an excellent book. Thorpe
was this little white girl, whose two best friends were
these two little black kids, a brother and sister, who lived in
the south somewhere around the 1930's or 40's. I remember
this scene that had tears running down my cheeks. The young
black girl, I can't remember her name, had been raped and
was pregnant at twelve, something she didn't quite understand,
and her younger brother, Theotus, and Thorpe thought
she was just getting fat, and fussed at her for moving so
slowly and not being able to play their favorite game with
them any longer because she had grown so big. The
game they loved to play was going down to the creek that ran
beside this huge oak tree. One of the branches had this
coarse, thick, braided rope knotted on the end for a foothold,
hanging from a huge limb. The three of them would climb
the tree and grab hold of the rope and swing out as far
as they could before letting go and splashing down into
the water. But they couldn't swing out too far, because
there was this deep eddy, sort of a whirlpool out in the
middle of the creek that had a strong current and would
pull you under if you weren't careful, which everyone called "the
mouth of hell" or something like that. This particular
scene, Theotus' s sister was standing on the bank watching
him and Thorpe take turns climbing the tree and swinging
out over the water and laughing and splashing, while she
played with leaves on a nearby bush, pouting because she
couldn't join in on the fun. But then Theotus swung out
too far and when he let go of the rope, he landed right
in the middle of the mouth of hell. Thorpe and Theotus's
sister thought he was playing when he didn't come up right
away, not realizing or not willing to believe that
he had landed in the mouth of hell. Then they saw the bubbles. Theotus's
sister knelt down close to the edge of the water calling
her brother's name. "Come on, Theo baby, please! Thee!
Come on, Thee! Please!" And by the time the adults
got there he had drowned. If anyone has read this book,
and if I have gotten the title wrong, could you please let
me know. I'd like to read this book again and add
it to my library.
5. What do you like best about being a writer?
I love the way the Creator allows me to create. That's number
one. I think the common truth that most writer's share is
that we knew, early on that we had to write. We were born
to write and we set about doing it. We didn't care where
the writing took place or what we wrote on, it was just
any clean space we could find. A chalk board, the backs
of an older brother or sister's homework (hey, it looked
like a clean sheet of paper when you flipped it over!) blank
pages in your mother's books, the walls, it just didn't
matter! We just had to get our ideas down and tell the stories
in our heads. That's what I like best, putting the story
down on paper. I like being able to create worlds, and people
and making their lives interesting, complex, and hopefully
spinning a story that readers carry with them long after
they've read the last page and closed the book. That's what
I strive for. And to get paid for doing it, now that's
the chocolate icing on the moist, yellow cake!
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Donna Hill
Brenda Jackson
Francis Ray