Today I am excited to interview author Pamela D. Beverly on my blog.
INTERVIEW:
About the Author
Welcome. Please tell us a bit about yourself.
My name is Pamela D. Beverly and I was born in Camp Springs, Maryland. I am a member of the Federal Government, which seems to be on the endangered species list these days. I was once in the Air Force, stationed in England and Missouri. I like to travel and enjoy my attempts at guessing where the people I’ve met in my travels are from. I’m proud to say that I’m right most of the time.
What or who inspired you to start writing?
As a child, I used to draw cartoons and did so for years. Some of them had extended storylines so the writing just seemed to develop as a kind of off-shoot to the cartoons. I stopped drawing and began to write stories and never looked back. Now I can’t draw even if I tried. S.E. Hinton, the woman that wrote the novels, That was Then, This is Now and The Outsiders, inspired me. She wrote That was Then, This is Now when she was 16 and I remember as a young girl thinking that that was the coolest thing. As a teenage, I wrote a story, talked to a local author that was a teacher at a local middle school, where I first heard the expression, “Write what you know.”
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I first thought of myself as a writer when I made the transition from drawing cartoons to making up stories to amuse myself all those years ago. I considered myself an author when my novel, Relations, was publishedearlier this year.
How much of yourself, your personality or your experiences, is in your books?
A lot of my personality as well as some of my experiences are in the novel. Up until the year or so, I traveled a lot for my position, which kind of served as the impetus for this book. I’m not the most patient woman in the world and I am even more impatient and intolerant of racism and injustice, which are some of the qualities that the protagonist, Frank Ellis possesses. He also has a temperamental stomach, like I do. In fact, something that happens to him in the book has actually happened to me. He also is an insomniac, as am I.
Have you started your next project? If so, can you share a little bit about your next book?
I have several projects in the pipeline. I keep getting asked by people who have read my book if I’m going to write a sequel to Relations. I hadn’t planned on it but I am now considering it. Relations was the last of six manuscripts that I have written over the years but the first to be published. I attempted to have my first manuscript published years ago and was discouraged by the rejection letters that I received. A vanity press publisher wanted to publish it soon after but I’d never heard of vanity press publishing back then and so I didn’t choose to do that. I put it aside and began writing another manuscript. Relations took me almost two years to write but I actually began writing it years ago, around 2004. I was traveling so much that I developed writer’s block. I only wrote about a page and a half of it when I started, until I finally rid myself of the writer’s block and began writing it in earnest in June of 2010. I can’t really share much about my next project because with the limited time that I have as I market Relations, I have been revisiting two of my old manuscripts and I don’t know which of them will win out in the end.
How do you find time to write?
I’m old-school, if you want to call it that. I never write outlines or use index cards or any of that stuff. I just carry around a tablet, scratch paper or a journal of some sort and start writing. I can be anywhere, at the dentist or the doctor’s office, wherever it’s boring or nothing’s going on. After I have written a fair amount, I transfer it to my laptop. I don’t usually feel the inspiration to write when I’m sitting at my computer (maybe because it feels too much like work) but when I write in longhand, it just flows naturally.
About her Book
Please tell us about your current release.
My novel, Relations, is about the long-distance interracial relationship between Frank Ellis, a financial consultant, who lives in Washington, DC and the woman he meets during his travels, Delilah Carpenter, who lives in Savannah, Georgia. At first glance, it is about their relationship but it is also about all of the relations that intertwine–her family, his friends, her co-workers and supervisor and those with whom they come in contact on a daily basis.
What inspired you to write this book?
During my travels all over the United States, I would listen to the instructors and the guest speakers at the training classes I support and I thought about how I and some of my co-workers would go to each class, set them up and break them down, sort of like circus performers. I thought about the people I’ve met from different parts of the U.S. and the world and my adventures on airplanes and in the airports. I’ve talked to people that I’ve sat next to on planes for hours or in airports during layovers and delays for hours on end, only to never see them again. I just found it fascinating. Initially, my main character, Frank, did not start out as a financial consultant. He sort of developed into one over the course of my writing the book. But I noticed that I still experience racism, even in the building where I work, in a metropolitan city like Washington, DC. And one day I just got fed up with it. I thought to myself, Will it ever end? So the two subjects kind of came together.
Which of your characters is your favorite? Do you dislike any of them?
My favorite character would be the main protagonist, Frank Ellis. As I mentioned earlier, he is closest to me than any of the characters to having the same qualities that I possess. He believes in fairness and equality for everyone. Sometimes he just gets in his own way because he’s not always able to rein in his impatience with those things that he dislikes about society. The two characters I dislike the most are Delilah’s supervisor, Mr. McDermott and her co-worker, Agnes. People will have to read the book in order to find out why (laughs).
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Frank Ellis has it all–good looks, a charismatic personality that draws people to his financial seminars in droves, and a multitude of women for the choosing. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough anymore.
As Frank leads one of his entertaining seminars on financial planning, one audience member captures his attention-the beautiful Delilah Carpenter from Savannah, Georgia. Bewitched by her charming accent and sexy curves, he is thrilled when he encounters her again in the hotel bar after the seminar. They go to dinner, but not before he has had too much to drink. After he makes a less-than-favorable impression, he passes out at the table, leaving Delilah to ensure he gets back to his room safely. When he awakens the next morning and discovers she has already checked out, Frank wonders if he will ever get a chance to redeem himself.
Frank and Delilah come from different races, different backgrounds, and different parts of the country. But in a passionate affair of two lonely hearts, only time will tell if all of that really matters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Pamela D. Beverly is a Jacqueline-of-all-Trades but a master of none. Mostly she is a student of human nature that enjoys writing and studying mankind. She has traveled all over the United States as well as to several foreign countries and enjoys meeting people of all races, religions and creeds. Her main wish for mankind is that we learn to get along and enjoy one another’s differences.
You can purchase Relations at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million.com.
Jase took the medicine and had a wonderful Christmas morning. It is amazing that you can see almost exactly when the medicine wears off. His face is flush and he just curls up on the couch. The next day he was feeling even worse and tried a liquid cold medicine. It didn’t go over too well. After that, he refused to take any medicine. And since he fever was under 102, I didn’t force the issue. We just concentrated on giving him fluids and letting him rest. We offered him anything he wanted to drink, but he stuck with juice (which he almost never drinks) and milk. I was just happy to get him to take anything since he didn’t eat at all the day after Christmas.
Into Another World 