Tag Archives: joeypinkney.com

5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Dwayne Joseph, author of If It Isn’t Love

JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Dwayne Joseph, author of If It Isn’t Love
(Urban Books)

After receiving a shocking medical diagnosis, Jean Stapleton-Blige is forced to contemplate her life. She’s married to a prominent minister and has three successful children. To people on the outside looking in, Jean has had the perfect life. But the truth is, Jean’s husband has spent years seducing other women, while her children want nothing to do with her. With six months to live, can she fulfill her dying wish of making her family whole again?

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the idea and inspiration to write If It Isn’t Love?

Dwayne S. Joseph: As a writer, I’m constantly trying to think of different scenarios I can throw characters into. When I wrote this novel, which was back in 2002, I was doing a lot of relationship drama at the time. In my trying to come up with something different from some of the other books I’d done, I realized I hadn’t really delved into doing a struggle dealing with family. As a result, I came up with my main character, having just received news about a terminal illness, and posed the question, if her family were estranged, what would she want to do before she took her final breath?

JP: What sets If It Isn’t Love apart from other novels in its genre?

DJ: If It Isn’t Love, while it has its relationship drama elements with the supporting characters and the issues they’re dealing with, is really about a mother’s desperation to bring her family together. She wants to mend wounds that she and her husband have caused over time. It’s a deeper novel than people may anticipate it being.

JP: As an author, what are the keys to your success that lead to If It Isn’t Love getting out to the public?

DJ: Keys to success: use of the Internet! Communicating with readers using numerous sites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Iseecolor.com, Goodreads.com, etc. Communicating with people such as yourself are also important, along with utilizing web-based fliers promoting your work to send out via email. And of course book signings.

JP: As an author, what is your writing process? How long did it take for you to start and finish If It Isn’t Love?

DJ: My writing process: once the idea hits me, I escape to the Barnes and Nobles cafe, grab a vanilla latte, open my notepad and just scribble away. Very seldom will I utilize an outline. I’m one of those authors that really likes to let the characters come to life and dictate to me what’s going to happen. When I wrote If It Isn’t Love, I was actually laid off at the time, so I got to do that one fairly quickly. Also my rug rats hadn’t been born yet! It took me about three months to complete.

JP: What’s next for Dwayne S. Joseph?

DJ: Next up is my novel, Betrayal, which hit the shelves this October ’09. It’s a very dark, suspenseful, intense thriller about a husband who wants to have his wife killed after receiving photographs showing his wife having sex with another man. The kicker is that he wants his son-in-law to do the deed because he discovers his son-in-law cheating on his daughter. It is one hell of a ride! After Betrayal, will be the sequel to Home Wrecker. I’m actually getting away from writing relationship drama. I’ll be giving the readers a lot more sex, suspense and mystery.

http://www.urbanbooks.net/
http://facebook.com/dwaynesjoseph
http://myspace.com/dwaynesjoseph

Djoseph21044@yahoo.com

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… DeiIra Smith-Collard, author of Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies

JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
DeiIra Smith-Collard, author of Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies
(Anexander Books)

“What is told into the ear of a man is often heard a hundred miles away” and the women of Love, Lust & a Whole Lotta Distrust have the halls of Synergy Wireless a buzz. Five years have passed since a storm of betrayal and deceptions swept through the call center halls. Everything seems calm, but underneath the peaceful quiet lurks long forgotten secrets and lies that threaten to expose sins, both past and present.

Nicole, still hungry for love and craving attention, is desperate to find a man to show her true affection. True to her nature, she is willing to have it at all cost. Carmell constantly longs for Louis. But is she willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of his love? Natina is devastated by loss and blames others for her misfortune. Anger causes her to employ her by-any-means-necessary tactics of revenge. Years after, Kendra is still torn between desire and obligation as she struggles to find her way. Can she end up finding herself?

Satiate your appetite for drama with Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies as some secrets will be revealed while others concealed. Get ready for another turbulent voyage.

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the idea and inspiration to write Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies?

DeiIra Smith-Collard:
Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies is the sequel to my first novel. Initially, I said I was leaving those crazy characters of Love Lust & a Whole Lotta Distrust alone and moving to someone one new. I started a different novel, but I wrote halfway through and couldn’t finish it. Those characters started to speak to me, and I listened. I felt there was so much more to tell of their story, and my readers were demanding to know what happened to them.

JP: Where did you get the idea to incorporate a wireless company into the lives of the characters we find in Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies?

DS: I am influenced by my environment. For the past ten years, my day job has been in the call center of a prominent wireless company. Working in a call center is quite the experience. If you ask anyone who’s ever done the job, they will surely say it’s a whole new world. I took in the countless rumors and drama that seemed to take place on a daily basis.

On the surface, it was business as usual. Everyone was working hard to make sure our company ran smoothly. But underneath the calm exterior, if you listened close enough, there was always some office drama. I thought it would be a great setting for all the antics of both Love Lust & a Whole Lotta Distrust and Secrets Sins and Shameful Lies. While sitting at my desk taking in my surroundings, Synergy Wireless was born.

JP: As an author, what are the keys to your success that lead to Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies getting out to the public?

I think the greatest key is hard work. Working with such a great publisher and publicist has taught me to constantly think outside of the box, and it has helped me to achieve success. Because there are so many means and methods in which to market my work, I’ve explored various promotion opportunities such as book signings, readings, book clubs, online marketing and book giveaways.

Word of mouth is extremely effective, so I never miss a chance to tell everyone who I think maybe interested. I always have books with me just in case. Every event won’t be a success, but there is always something positive to take away from the experience.

JP: As an author, what is your writing process? How long did it take for you to start and finish Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies?

DS: There are many methods to my madness. It depends on my mood. I keep a recorder to record my ideas when I’m on the go. I also make notes on the direction I would like my story to take. I write out a simple outline with a clear destination in mind. Sometimes the characters of the story have a different idea. So what may start out one way, may take a completely different turn and I will begin to freestyle.

Depending on what I am writing, I have other strategies and techniques that I use. Music always seems to inspire me, and it played a large part in the writing of Secrets, Sins and Shameful Lies. I started the book in Feb of 2008. Partially through, I experienced writers block. I didn’t write for months. I tried, but nothing I typed was good enough. With a little over a month to deadline, I was hit with a gust of fresh air while listening to my iPod. I began to write, write and write. I averaged no less than a 1000 words a day. Within a month and a half, I completed the novel and walked away proud of what I had written.

JP: What’s next for DeiIra Smith-Collard?

DS: My next project is an anthology with four other fabulous authors. Bedtime Stories was released on July 21, 2009 and will feature my story The Sin, which is an erotic short story with an unexpected twist. My goal is to continue writing and entertaining my readers, while challenging myself to grow as a writer and further master the art of storytelling. I see great things for DeiIra Smith-Collard!

http://www.deiira.com/

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Booker T. Mattison, author of Unsigned Hype

JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Booker Mattison, author of Unsigned Hype
(Baker Publishing Group)

I’m Tory Tyson, but you can call me Terror Tory because I bring terror to all producers and DJs. I’m from the hood side of Mount Vernon, which is right next to the Bronx. I’m fifteen, and I already met my future wife. I just have to get her to see it that way. Did I mention that my beats and turntable skills are sick?

This summer I’ll be spinning at a block party in my neighborhood on Friday nights. You should come through. It’s going to be hot (pun intended). Me and my partner Fat Mike are going to enter the Unsigned Hype demo contest on New York’s Power 97, “the nation’s number one station.”

If we win, my whole life will change. But there’s always somebody hatin’. I’m trying to stay focused, but every day it’s different drama.

Man, I just want to make it . . .

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the idea and inspiration to write Unsigned Hype?

Booker Mattison: A publisher contacted my agent and asked her if she could find a book with a black male protagonist that wasn’t about violence, vice and hyper sexuality. My agent approached me about it because all of her other writers are female.

As a former rapper, producer and DJ, this story flowed out of my experience as an African-American male and a former wayward youth. As a result of my experiences, I have developed a heart for the hood in general, but specifically for young African-American males.

JP: What sets Unsigned Hype apart from other novels that mixes Hip Hop and Urban Literature?

BM: What sets Unsigned Hype apart from other novels that mix Hip Hop and Urban Literature is its realistic portrayal of the African-American community, complete with a diversity of voices and characters. It grapples with class differences, generational relationships to hip-hop and secular and Christian debates in the black community. All of this is set against a back drop of African American music history as seen through the lens of hip hop.

JP: As an author, what are the keys to your success that lead to Unsigned Hype getting out to the public?

BM: The key to my success is knowing my purpose. This allows me to easily determine if a relationship or an option is an obstacle or an opportunity to me fulfilling my God given purpose. I firmly believe that this story was divinely inspired as an instrument of uplift for African-Americans.

Too much of our literature today is designed to shock or titillate. There is still a place for African-American stories that empower; like those written by Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and other African-American literary legends.

As for the work getting out to the public, I just so happened to know the right people at the right time. In my opinion, the market is ripe for this kind of story.

JP: As an author, what is your writing process? How long did it take for you to start and finish Unsigned Hype?

BM: My process is to seek God on what story he wants to channel through me. I then have to have the courage to write what I am given. I work at it daily and the end result is something for the reading public to respond to.

It took me six weeks to write Unsigned Hype, a rare feat for completing a novel. Right now I’m working on my second novel Snitch, and I’ve been working on that for a lot longer than six weeks and I’m not even close to being finished!

JP: What’s next for Booker T. Mattison?

BM: My novel Snitch will be released in the spring of 2011. It is the story of a bus driver who witnesses a crime, the inner drama he experiences in whether or not to break the common code of silence not to cooperate with the police, and what he must overcome to save himself and his family when he becomes a target of the perpetrators.

I am also a filmmaker, so I just started writing the screenplay for Snitch last week. My last film, The Gilded Six Bits (adapted from the Zora Neale Hurston story of the same name) which I wrote and directed aired on Showtime. It starred Chad Coleman (The Wire), T’keyah Keymah (That’s So Raven, Cosby, In Living Color), Wendell Pierce (Treme’, The Wire, Ray) and Novella Nelson (The Antwon Fisher Story).

Accomplishments for Booker T. Mattison and Unsigned Hype: Unsigned Hype has been favorably reviewed in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and featured in The Source and Black Beat magazines. It won the “New African American Voice” award at the 2010 Afr’Am Festival. It was voted one of the Best Novels of 2009 by Black Pearls Magazine and one of the Top 50 Fiction Novels of 2009 by Conversations Book Club.

The book trailer was voted the Best Book Trailer of 2009 by African American Literature Book Club. Unsigned Hype has been optioned for development into a television series by the producers of Boyz N Da Hood, Hustle & Flow, Run’s House and Def Comedy Jam.

This past semester it was required reading in Dr. Nicole Hodges-Persley’s Hip Hop and Popular Culture class at the University of Kansas and Dr. C. Vernon Mason’s Theology and Urban Ministry class at New York Theological Seminary.

http://www.bookertmattison.com/
http://www.facebook.com/booker.t.mattison

P.S. Join the Joey Reviews Newsletter at http://joeypinkney.com/joey-reviews-newsletter.html.

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