Amena Brown:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of HER With Amena Brown, and I'm your host, Amena Brown. Thank you all so much for joining me for taking this new ride of HER being relaunched under Seneca Women's Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. I'm so excited. I have so many cool ideas I want to share with you all. Thank you for all of the comments you've been giving me on social media, I cannot wait to continue interacting with you all.
Amena Brown:
These episodes release on Tuesdays. So as of the Tuesday that this episode is releasing, we are 27 days from Election Day, and every election is important. And this election is very important. So I want to give you three things to do. Number one, make sure that you register to vote. Number two, check your voter registration. If you are already registered to vote, make sure that you check and make sure your status is current. We are seeing voter suppression happening all over the country here in the States. So make sure that you know that your status is current so that when you go to vote you know that your vote can be counted.
Amena Brown:
And number three, fill out your census. The census is really important. That has been extended until October 31st. So make sure if you have not filled out your census, that you do it, it does not take a long time, took me 10 minutes or less to be able to fill that out online. So let me tell you the sites that you can go to for this. To register to vote and to check your voter registration you can visit, whenweallvote.org. And I just picked this site. It's a good one. There are many great sites as well. So you can pick your favorite site to visit to make sure you are registered to vote, and if you're already registered to check your voter registration status. And in order to fill out your census, you can do this online at my2020census.gov.
Amena Brown:
Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, "Ooh girl, I already did all of those things because I'm on it, because I have it together," I am so glad you do. And your assignment will be to make sure you check with your friends, your family, your close people, check with them, make sure they're registered to vote, make sure their voter registration is current to make sure they have filled out their census. And don't worry if you cannot remember all of these links while you might be driving or cleaning up or whatever you might be doing while you're listening to this podcast, you can always get the links and information about the episodes from the show notes on amenabrown.com, that is /herwithamena. Amenabrown.com/herwithamena. You can check out the show notes there. Let's make sure that we are registered to vote, that you have filled out your census so we can make sure we get our voices heard.
Amena Brown:
I want to talk about some TV shows that are getting me through right now. And I think it's interesting to contemplate the TV shows that get us through certain situations. Like I remember going through a time where I was really, really depressed and what got me through was Real Housewives of Atlanta. Like I had never watched even a whole episode and I just started watching it from the very beginning and as crazy as it might seem, it just brought me a lot of peace of mind to watch it.
Amena Brown:
So as we are in a stressful time for some of us personally and collectively as a community and in our country, I wanted to tell you about a few TV shows that are getting me through right now. Number one, 90 Day Fiancé. And I mean all of them. 90 Day Fiancé, 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days, 90 Day Fiancé: After the 90 Days, 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way, 90 Day Fiancé Two Can Play, 90 Day Fiancé: B90. There's like 1,000 90 Day Fiancés and I am here for all of them, every single one of them.
Amena Brown:
This is the reason why 90 Day Fiancé is really getting me through this stressful time. Number one, if you were looking for an opportunity to yell at other people where they can't hear you, 90 Day Fiancé is a perfect opportunity for that. There are always quite a few people on this show to yell at. It's almost like the feeling I get when I was watching Catfish. And you're just like, you can't tell you being catfished?! Like you feel that urge to yell and save them even though they can't hear anything you have to say.
Amena Brown:
90 Day Fiancé is like that for me. It's just, I think the way I'm feeling about 90 Day Fiancé is maybe how other people feel when they watch a boxing match. It's like it gets out of them their own aggression yelling at the fighters in the ring. And basically 90 Day Fiancé is like that for me. I am yelling at these people. I'm yelling at this man who is trying to date Lana over in Russia somewhere and he refuses to believe that this lady is dodging him after he's been over there three, four, five times and that lady will not meet up with him. And yes, I yell at him. I yell at all of them.
Amena Brown:
So 90 Day Fiancé, yes, I'm here for it. Also while I'm talking about shows I like to yell at, I would like to bring up Married at First Sight. And Married at First Sight, if any of you have been following Married at First Sight from the very beginning, Married at First Sight is getting to a point now where I get to the end of the season, there are always only a small number of couples that actually stay together, and I get to the end and I just feel really lackluster and I feel upset with the experts.
Amena Brown:
And if you're not familiar with Married at First Sight, Married at First Sight is a show where three experts match couples and they don't meet each other right until they get married. And you follow them through their first couple of months being married and then at a certain point, 8 weeks or 10 weeks, however long, they go back to the experts and have to decide, do they stay married or do they get divorced? And at the end of every season, there's always a couple I really love that doesn't stay together, and there's always a couple I really hated that does. And I watch them, I yell at them, I get to the end of the season, I have regrets about how much time I've spent watching it, I have regrets about whatever the experts are doing wrong.
Amena Brown:
And then I'm like, "This show makes me so tired. Like this show is such a waste of time." And then they announce they're going to be in a new city the next season and when the start date is, and I'm definitely going to watch it all over again. So you need some shows to yell at when you're going through a stressful time. Get you some shows to yell at, 90 Day Fiancé and Married at First Sight are two great examples.
Amena Brown:
Another show, I'm back in the Real Housewives franchise here, I've never fully watched Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I started back from the very beginning. I actually made it to the episode where the meme of the one woman and then the cat, like I actually watched that episode and I felt, I don't know, I just felt the feeling of like what you must feel if you've never seen The Godfather before and you finally see The Godfather and you get to that scene of like the horse, the horse's head in the bed. And then you think about all the other movies you've seen where they were nodding to that scene. Like that's how I felt getting to that, but you know, it was a meme instead of an amazing film.
Amena Brown:
So I am watching this from the beginning and it is ridiculous, but it's almost like if you're having a lot of drama in your own life, there's something so healing in a way about watching something where you're like, they are having much more drama in their lives than I am. There's some sort of escape to that. So yes, I am watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills from the very beginning. I will continue to report back as I progress through the seasons. I would love to hear from you if this is also a show that you love, or if you have other tips and suggestions from me on the Real Housewives franchise overall.
Amena Brown:
I would also like to bring up number three TV show that is getting me through, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I am subscribed to HBO Max, which is where you can watch all episodes of the Fresh Prince. And first of all, I don't think that I've watched the Fresh Prince fully as an adult. I mean, I think I've had just some times in the last 20 years or so that like random episodes were on. And of course that was huge TV for me when I was in high school, that was like a TV show that you wanted to be at your friend's house or have your friend come over to your house or be on the phone talking to your friend like while you watch the show.
Amena Brown:
It's been really amazing actually watching it from the beginning. And sometimes I just need a show that makes me laugh, that doesn't have like huge amounts of triggers and things that are in it. The Fresh Prince is doing all of these things for me, and is so well-written. Like I look back on that and I'm like, "It's so well-written." So shout out to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Yes.
Amena Brown:
Last show that has been getting me through is Issa Rae's, Insecure. I have been loving Issa Rae's work since Awkward Black Girl. I forget which friend of mine it was that told me about Awkward Black Girl, but I just fell in love with Awkward Black Girl as a show. If you've never watched it, it is still on YouTube for you to watch. It is wonderful and hilarious and great. So when she got her deal with HBO, I was so excited. And Insecure does not disappoint. It does not disappoint. It was one of the few shows that I actually watch live most of the time, mainly because it is a Twitter connected show, and very specifically a Black Twitter connected show.
Amena Brown:
So that means if I am not watching the show on a Sunday, I'm out somewhere else doing something else, I have to stay away from Twitter because people are live tweeting while they're watching the show, sharing their thoughts. And I feel like it's one of those TV shows that causes me to reflect on my own like dating life before my husband and I got married and on my friends and what my 20s and early 30s were like. I mean, it is such a wonderful place of reflection and music. And I love also about Insecure that it is being written and acted and directed from this lens that is unapologetically Black, and Black in this way that refuses to stop and explain all sorts of things to you.
Amena Brown:
And I also love that it is not only unapologetically Black, but it's unapologetically Black and West Coast, but there's something very specifically LA and California about watching it. And as someone from the South and specifically who now has been in Atlanta, Georgia, for over 20 years, there are certain things that... like when I watched the Atlanta show that Donald Glover did, there's certain things that I was like, "That is very uniquely Atlanta." And I think even though it's awesome that now we have like all these ways, we can have access to different people in different cultures, all around the world, I think it's really important that we don't lose the storytelling of the city, the neighborhood, the region that we are from and what makes that place unique. So I love that about Insecure.
Amena Brown:
I love that Insecure makes me feel like I'm getting all the tea. I love that Insecure has made me yell in my house like I was watching a football game. Like I have yelled like that at the characters. I even yelled at the end of this season. I won't do any spoilers for you, but if you want to talk to me about that, please get into my comments on social media and I would love to discuss it, but I was yelling at the finale this season. Yelling.
Amena Brown:
So I'd love to hear from you what are some TV shows that are getting you through right now? What are the shows that you're yelling at? What are the shows that feel soothing to you, that are making you laugh, bringing you some joy, bringing you the information that you might want to have? Talk to me. I'd love to hear from you.
Amena Brown:
I'm excited to welcome romance fiction author, Adriana Herrera, to our HER Living Room this week. I really enjoyed this conversation with Adriana. We talked about the importance of people of color telling their own stories, and we also talked about why it's important for people of color to read and watch stories of people who look like them and get a chance to have unapologetic happy endings. Check out our conversation.
Amena Brown:
I am excited to welcome social worker, world traveler, fiction romance author who loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people. Welcome Adriana Herrera to the podcast.
Adriana Herrera:
Yay. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh. Part of what's great for me about having a podcast is it just gives me a good channel for how nosy I am. And so as soon as I was like looking into like your writing and your story, I was like, "Oh, I have so many nosy questions I want to ask." Adriana, this is going to be great. I want to give a shout out to my friend, our mutual friend, Leigh Kramer, who also does amazing work as a virtual assistant, which basically means she's my friend and she fixes my life.
Amena Brown:
One of the ways that she fixed my life is I was just going through the different guest lists that we had and she was like, "Oh, I know who you should interview." So thank you to Leigh for connecting the two of us. I think the two of you are online friends. She said you've never met in person.
Adriana Herrera:
Yeah. We have never met in person, which is a very common occurrence in the romance world or as we call it Romancelandia. You meet a lot of people through Twitter and it's basically all very connected to love of books. So Leigh and I know each other through our love of romance, which is super awesome. And it's one of the things that I really love about the romance community, but yes, she's amazing.
Amena Brown:
And she really has educated me so much on just the romance community, like when she just starts rattling off to me like the different authors that she knows. And of course, I'm just so proud of her for the book that she's also written. I'm so glad that you are on the podcast because I have so many things I want to know about what it's like to be a romance writer and the things that inspire you.
Amena Brown:
Let's get into it. I want to, first of all, I always like to start with an origin story. And one of the themes that's been coming up whenever I talk to other women who are writers, there's this interesting relationship we all have as writers to the moment that we realized we were a writer or the moment we felt comfortable to call ourselves a writer. Do you remember what the moment was when you discovered you were a writer? Was it early on in your life or was it later in life?
Adriana Herrera:
It was later in life. And I think it was very connected to my upbringing. I grew up in the Dominican Republic. I came to the US when I was 23 on my own to go to grad school. So I lived my whole life there. I went to college there and everything. And in the Dominican Republic, and I think that's a big developing world thing, it's like being an artist or being a creative person is not something that's like to a degree like really encouraged, especially like I think for middle class, upper middle class, where you really need like a solid profession. You want to be a doctor, you want a lawyer.
Adriana Herrera:
So even though my entire life like books were like the most important thing in my life, I never even dreamed the dream of being a writer. Like I just thought that was not for like someone like me. So when I came to the States, I also like toyed with it because I was starting grad school and there's just like a lot more space for creativity. Like there's creative writing degrees, things like that, which in the Dominican Republic it's like not even a thing.
Adriana Herrera:
So I think then I felt like, "Okay, like just regular people can be writers." So I think as the years passed, I started blogging about books, I had a couple of blogs where I reviewed books and those were really well received and people really like kind of commented on like how I wrote. And I was like, "Oh, maybe I could do this." So, that was like a little seed that was planted a long time ago, but my moment where I decided to do it like seriously was probably like two years ago right after the election. And I think like a lot of people had like cathartic moments after the election.
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Adriana Herrera:
So many people like saw the light, but I mean, my thing was, I was just so troubled by the narrative around immigrants that was happening at that time, and it's gotten worse, which is really sad, but I really was feeling compelled to bring, after Latinx stories, like the type of stories that I know of from like my family that came here in the 60s, of my own passage coming on my own. Like I just wanted to place those stories in the romance space because I really felt compelled to present stories of people of color thriving and getting like unapologetic happy endings.
Adriana Herrera:
Like we work for our happy endings so vigorously. It was a combination of like me kind of having this idea that I couldn't be a writer, and then kind of like coming into my own, like I'm 40, I just turned 40 last year, and I'm feeling like in a good moment to reinvent myself. So I thought this is a good time to finally do this. And romance has always been a great space of like self-care for me, reading romance. So yeah, that's like my long origin story answer.
Amena Brown:
I love it. And I love that you described for you that reading romance is a self-care practice because I think I look at my library a lot lately, Leigh and I were actually talking about this when she was in town last, and so part of it is decolonizing your library, so got rid of a bunch of things that way.
Amena Brown:
And then some of it was also just now that I've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff, it's like looking at what's on my shelves now and thinking like, "Well, what are the gaps? What are the holes of books I wish were there?" And I realized like I need more fiction and more poetry. A lot of the books in my library are nonfiction, which is great and has its use, but I think there is so much that just reading fiction gives to us and it gives to us in a different way than reading... an autobiography does or I think reading just like a nonfiction book does. So I think that's a really powerful idea to remember listeners that reading fiction and reading romance can also be a self-care practice.
Amena Brown:
So you are a writer and you are a social worker in New York City. You work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Would you say your vocation informs what you write or is it an outlet from your vocation? How is the relationship there between what the day gig is and your life also as a writer?
Adriana Herrera:
Definitely it influences that. I've always been a romance reader, but I'm like a very voracious reader. I'm known for my reading appetite, like I read a lot. But romance has always been like a place, like I said, of self-care, but something that I always do like for fun, like reenergizing, because I also read a lot of heavy books. My work is in trauma, I'm constantly reading books on trauma. And so romance is kind of like my way of re-imagining kind of like life. I hear so many things that are tough on a day-to-day basis.
Adriana Herrera:
So one of the things that I think my work really helps me with is it really makes me thoughtful and mindful about how I present and render relationships like power dynamics and relationships, power and control. Consent is something that I think a lot about. I've been having this conversation because my debut novel just came out, so I've been having some conversations about the book, and people are curious about that connection.
Adriana Herrera:
And I've been talking about not just consent as a yes, which of course we always want affirmative consent in any type of intimate relationship, but it's also kind of like the undergirding and like the building of a foundation for a yes that has substance.
Adriana Herrera:
From the moment that the relationship begins, and romance would call that moment the meet-cute, when two people meet for the first time, the two characters that are having the romantic relationship. So I see it almost like as a series of contracts, verbal contracts that happen between those two people and they are going on back and forth until like the moment of the big yes and there's like about to be like physical intimacy, but there's been already kind of like a building up of consent because the relationship's been like balance and power and control has been aligned. That's something like I think about a lot, and I think it's because I see so much in my work.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, so many moments where those power and control dynamics go wrong. But in your writing, you are able to write about moments when that goes right, goes well, for a character.
Adriana Herrera:
Yeah. And kind of also like the piece of specifically in men and women relationships, I think we live in a patriarchy, right?
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Adriana Herrera:
So it's the piece of like the woman's only power is the ability to consent to sex. Then is that, yes, really that powerful? Because if he has the power in every other aspect of life, he's a billionaire and he's like a magnate and he's like gorgeous and he's like seven feet tall, and she's like the woman and the only thing she can consent or deny is her body, then how powerful is that? You know what I mean? So I think like I like to play with those ideas of like kind of dismantling like the patriarchy a little bit as I create those relationships.
Amena Brown:
A word. Using romance to dismantle the patriarchy. Yes. Yes. We are here for everything about that. I want to ask you as a reader and now as a writer of romance, why do you think it's important to have works of romance like out in the world? Like what do you think that brings to the reader? And being involved in a community of other authors who are also writing romance, what does it bring to the writer?
Adriana Herrera:
This is something that is not something I said, is something that... Sarah Wendell is her name. She is the founder of this website called Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. And it's a website that's dedicated to like the romance genre. And she talks about happily ever after as being revolutionary. Like the idea that you are not only happy, but that you all that happiness is absolute and yours, is revolutionary. And I think in the moment that we're living in, unapologetic happy endings is like saying all of this happiness is mine and I've earned it because I'm me not because I had to change myself, not because I had to erase my identity, who I am, my sexual identity, my gender identity, all of that encompass still gets me my happily ever after, I think it's incredibly powerful.
Amena Brown:
I think so too. And I never, until just hearing you describe this, like I don't know that I ever thought about this or put language to it, but I think what you're saying is so right. Like I remember when my husband and I were first getting married, we were in that first one to two years, that newlywed time. I remember the first several months I had to have like a talk with myself, like, "This is a beautiful and happy moment in your life. You've married somebody that you love, that loves you, that respects you, that gives you this space that you need in your life."
Amena Brown:
And I think there was this part of me sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop in life. And sometimes the other shoe does drop. I mean, that's how life is, but that there are also these moments that you can just be inside of exceeding joy and happiness. And I just had to have like a talk with myself at that time of like, you have not been married 20 years like this crusty woman that you talked to about her marriage, she's like in a terrible relationship, she hates it real bad, you know? So she's looking at me and my newlywed time like, "Oh, well, I hope you enjoy it while it's good." You know?
Adriana Herrera:
Right.
Amena Brown:
And I sort of took in her sentiments in a way and I had to just kind of take whatever that was I took in and like put it back out and say, "Hey, this is my happy ending right here, my happy beginning in some ways too, you know? And I should enjoy that moment." And I think there are a lot of times in our real lives that we're not enjoying that happy ending, and maybe that's a way to your point that reading romance can teach us how to do that, how to be even in those happy moments, right?
Adriana Herrera:
Yes. Brené Brown is like really popular and she's a social worker, but she writes like a lot of like self... it's not self help, but in one of her like talk she talks about love and how like none of us would want to live without love. Like if anyone of us is asked, "Do you want to live for the rest of your life without love?" None of us would say, "Yes," right?
Amena Brown:
Right.
Adriana Herrera:
And I think we've created this idea that like being able to like sit in our happiness it's almost something that we don't deserve. Like we have to continue to like brace ourselves because it's so life-changing to find that type of love. And like we've been taught I'm almost like socialized to expect it to be taken away almost. And I think for women of color or marginalized people, women, a person of any gender that's living at the intersections of marginalized identities, it's not just that we're told, like what we see is that the people that get to be in the movies or in the magazines getting those happy endings, don't look like us.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Adriana Herrera:
And so we are taught that like we're imposters, like this is not supposed to be what we get. And I think that's like also the power of romance and romance that has diversity and own voices, because then we can see ourselves, like literal reflections of ourselves in people that are getting to have the gigantic happily ever after. Like it's so affirming to see someone in a story getting that kind of happy ending that is just like you in real ways.
Amena Brown:
Ooh, I mean, Adriana got me out here like, can I find a romance about a Black woman married to this red-headed man? You know, like I'm just like, let me go looking and find my life today because I'm here for all of it.
Adriana Herrera:
I am here for the ginger and Black lady in love.
Amena Brown:
Yes. Yes. I was literally thinking like, because my first, actually to be utterly honest, Adriana, my first thought was, "Could I write that?" And then I immediately was like, "no, sis." I mean, I could write it, but it's not like when I'm doing, when I'm writing fiction, it don't sound like what you doing. Okay? It's bad. So I could try it and then one day what I'm planning to do is just release a series that's like, "Here's all my really bad novels guys." And like I'm not going to try to make these like non-cliché, I'm just going to leave all the cliches in there, please enjoy, but you are encouraging me to find some stories to read to take in. I think that is such a powerful reminder.
Amena Brown:
I want to talk about your book, and I want to make sure my listeners know that this book that has just released, American Dreamer, is in the Dreamers series. So you are going to release more books that go along the lines of this one. So talk to me about American Dreamer. Like tell my listeners a little bit, just we want to give them a little taste right here that'll make them go buy it right away. So tell us a little bit about that, and then how does American Dreamer as a book sit in the series of books to come?
Adriana Herrera:
American Dreamer is a LGBT romance. So the two main characters are two gay men, and Nesto Vasquez is a Dominican entrepreneur. I'm Dominican, so I felt like the first one should be a Dominican guy.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Adriana Herrera:
And he grew up in the South Bronx and he put himself through like culinary school and he has an Afro Caribbean food truck that he wants to make a success. So he moves upstate to try to make a go of it. His mom is already there and he's just like giving himself six months to kind of like get it off the ground. And if things just don't work out, he might just have to go to his regular job.
Adriana Herrera:
So as soon as he gets there, he meets Jude Fuller, who is a librarian in town and is also trying to like get his own project off the ground. He wants to get books to the rural areas, to the youth in the rural areas of the county where they live. And it's a striving story is what I'm starting to call it. It's like two people who are striving to be their best selves in terms of like their dreams, but also along the way figure out also different things that are valuable and that should be priorities.
Adriana Herrera:
And for Nesto, it's like he's an immigrant, right? So he's like all about the hustle. He's out there like in those like... it's like the streets trying to make this truck be a success. And Jude is someone that grew up in like a really conservative family, so he's still kind of like grappling with the emotional wreckage of coming out and being like disowned by his family. It's a love story, but I think it's also kind of like an American dream story.
Amena Brown:
I love that. I love that. Just the parts that I had a chance to read, I was like, "Oh man, like..." And knowing a little bit more of your story too, one of the things I really loved about writing my bad fiction was you have all of these experiences, places that you've been, things that you've done, and you're not writing something that's necessarily a fictionalized account of your life, but you can take these bits and pieces of your own, things you've seen, stories you've heard, and you can put that into this whole world that you get to create when you sit and write a fiction story. I mean, that is just so inspiring to me.
Adriana Herrera:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So talk to us about, did you know when you were first writing American Dreamer that you had enough stories here for a series? Like how did you know this is not just a book, this is going to be a series of books?
Adriana Herrera:
So romance tends to be kind of like a genre where like there's multiple books, unless you're writing like a very specific type of sub genre like fantasy or something like that, like books will come out standalone, but usually there's a series. So I kind of have that idea in mind. And then when I started thinking about this book, my hope was to be able to render, not just Nesto and his own experience, but I wanted to show thriving communities of color.
Adriana Herrera:
Because Nesto's story is not just his story, but it's like his community story. Like his mom, his friends who are like his brothers. It was important to me to show queer communities of color that were thriving. Because even in LGBT romance, which there's a lot of, it's very white. And when you do have a character that's Latinx or black, it's kind of like that friend, you know?
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Adriana Herrera:
So I wanted to create a community, create a world, where the norm was Afro-Latinx queer people. And that's the space that I was in, and these people were thriving and thriving. That's how I kind of came up with the idea. And then for Nesto, I gave him three best friends who are all Afro-Latinx.
Adriana Herrera:
The second book is actually coming out in May and it's a Cuban-Jamaican social worker and he works in New York City. Basically, it's kind of like my same job. And then the third character is he's Haitian. And he came to the US as a refugee with his mother when he was a child. And he is an Ivy League professor and he's an economist. And the last character is a Puerto Rican man who works for the Yankees.
Adriana Herrera:
So I wanted to show like people who were like doing well. Like I didn't want to show like a struggle story. I keep saying this and I really truly like feel that it's like I don't want to write stories of people of color that are earning their happy ending through brokenness.
Amena Brown:
That's powerful.
Adriana Herrera:
Because I am tired of seeing broken black and brown people in fiction, and I want... I mean, we have struggles. Of course, we do. Our lives are full of conflict, but there's also so much joy in being who we are. And I really wanted that to come through out of the gate.
Amena Brown:
Let me ask you a question that I've never had the opportunity to ask a fiction writer. When I was in college I studied English with actual intent to be a novelist and became a poet. And just most of my writing is poetry. But we watched a documentary, I cannot remember the name of it now, but I remember part of it was this interview with Alice Walker. And she talked about how when she writes fiction, her characters talk to her. And when she said that, 18, 19 year old me is like, "That's crazy. No, that is not. Whatever she's talking about, that's crazy."
Amena Brown:
But later on as a writer, I understood more what she meant. Do you find that to be true? Do your characters talk to you when you're sitting down to write, or even if you're not sitting down to write, do you have moments that a character might sort of reveal themselves, or a piece of the plot kind of comes to you? Like how is that part of the creative process?
Adriana Herrera:
There are authors, I think there's like pansters is what we call them, people that kind of just like sit down and they're like channeling a character and they're just like in it. I find that my process is a little bit different than that, because I need to really kind of like build scaffolding for me to start writing. So I kind of have to really think about origin stories and like what is the wound? Like who hurt you? Character. Like that sort of thing.
Adriana Herrera:
And then once I'm like really feeling like I have a grip on the emotional arc and stuff like that, then I sit down and it really kind of comes through in my head. Like I can think of like what's happening in the scene and I can really see it play out. I don't have like voices, but I know that there are writers that are so in tune with their characters that they're just kind of like rendering what they're seeing, but I'm a control freak, so I need to have like an outline and a plot, basically.
Amena Brown:
I also, you know, when I wrote my first nonfiction book, I thought I was going to have the experience you watch writers have in the movies, you know? Where they sit down and it's like some bolt of inspiration hits you and you just start click-clacking at your typewriter obviously, it has to be a typewriter from people you see in the movies, but that's how you wrote a book. And I quickly discovered, oh, gnosis, like you need to have an idea of what you was trying to write today. Like you need to have like an idea or you're going to drive yourself crazy or that you're going to procrastinate and then you're never going to get this book written. That's also a good point. Scaffolding was a great word for that.
Adriana Herrera:
That's me. I'm the person with the outline. One of our most beloved romance authors is Beverly Jenkins. And she is an African American woman that writes, she writes everything, but her historicals are my favorite, some of my favorite books. And she's a pantser. So she likes sits down and she talks about having like arguments with her character because she is so in tune with her muse. I have to do a lot more work, although of course I wouldn't like even allude to being in the same category as Beverly Jenkins because she's like a treasure in basically royalty and romance, but her process is very different than mine.
Amena Brown:
I think we were talking about this before we started recording, it was really wonderful for me to hear you say that a part of the process of you beginning this book and now this series of books was you were like, "I'm turning 40. This is a great time to reinvent myself." Like now that you are on the other side of 40, like I remember being in my early 20s and like 30 feeling like, "Whoa," I had some thoughts about what I thought life was going to be, it is not that, but then it also turned out to be this totally like new decade for me of going, "Well, I don't need to hold myself to whatever I thought 30 was going to be."
Adriana Herrera:
Right.
Amena Brown:
And I, for some reason in my mind, I had an idea that 40 was going to be this like, I only have like an airplane metaphor for this, but I just thought 40 was like we've reached 10,000 feet. We unplug our seatbelts now, we move about the cabin. Like there was some sort of like cruising that was happening in my 40s. And now I feel like my whole life is about to reinvent itself. Can you talk more about what your thoughts have been about that as you're like entering this new decade of your life?
Adriana Herrera:
I think it's because our age, I think maybe our generation, that you saw 40 as something like where you have to be an established person and you have to have all your things figured out by 35. And I think as I was in my 30s, it was time to really find my voice in terms of like my work and the things I believe in and how I wanted to show up in the world. I don't have enough time. Like I need like the entire decade of my 40s to really kind of like polish this new person that I feel like I'm becoming.
Adriana Herrera:
And so I think I'm going to have to like kind of push back this like cruising altitude, as you mentioned, kind of like timeline. And so I went back to school two years ago, I'm actually finishing up my master's in social work. I had a master's in international relations and then I did social work for a long time, and then I decided to go back to school. So I thought the going back to school time was a good moment for me to kind of like do the writing thing. So I kind of like used this two years moving into my 40s to do some things that I had wanted to do that I hadn't done. I feel like I'm like my best moment. I feel like I love who I am, I've found my voice, and I feel like I think I want to like another 50 years, I'm not done.
Amena Brown:
Right. Yes. Oh, that is so inspiring. Ah, like thank you for answering that question because I hadn't planned to ask you, but as we were talking, I was like, "You know, let me circle back and ask her," because I think it's good to process in a way what we expected our happy endings to be, but then maybe realizing, which is a lesson that we can learn from just brilliant writers like yourself, realizing in our real life we can also rewrite some things, we can also reinvent where we thought we might be headed and find ourselves down a totally different story that may have totally different happy endings, but they are wonderful happy endings nevertheless. Thank you for answering that for me, that was like a little nosy question I needed to know.
Amena Brown:
What tips do you have for other people that might want to also not only write fiction, but write romance. What tips would you have for writers who are interested in this genre just getting started?
Adriana Herrera:
I think get out of your own way is one thing that I had to tell myself and this I think is a very Woman of Color thing. I think we really never feel like we have enough credentials to do what we want. So like, "Oh, well, if I'm going to write, I need to get an MFA. Oh, well, if I'm going to write, I need to get a PhD and whatever." I mean, it's a reinforced message that we're like, you don't belong here.
Adriana Herrera:
I just finished the Michelle Obama memoir like two weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it a lot because she kind of like had that also that experience of like having to tell herself like, "No, I belong in this room." And I think for us, for me, for any fiction writer, it's like you have a story to tell, you can just tell it. And of course there's structure, there's technical things that you need to do to make that story polished and strong and have good pacing and plot points and all that, but you can tell your story and then you can build it into like a book that you can like put into the world. So I would say, just tell your story and get out of your own way. Like you belong here too.
Amena Brown:
And not like building these barriers in front of yourself because that's definitely a thing for a lot of women of color I know who are entrepreneurial or in creative work or just even in business and all sorts of fields. I feel like there can be this idea of like, "I got to add 10 steps to myself before I move on whatever this idea is that I have that I want to put out in the world."
Amena Brown:
And even when you talked earlier just about your initial writing being on your blog and about the books that you loved reading, that also was really inspiring to me too, because I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal now to be able to say, "Hey, this is a thing I want to do. Let me give it a shot." You know?
Adriana Herrera:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
Let me try and see and see how people engage with that and see how you feel in the process. Like I really think, I think that's a dope way to think about it is really what can you do just to start? You know, like-
Adriana Herrera:
Yeah. Right. I think it was Elizabeth Gilbert, I think she wrote, Eat, Pray, Love. Someone was at a talk with her and she said something I think is so great. She said, "Perfectionism is fear in a bad mustache, like poorly disguised fear." And I think, again, I think for a lot of Women of Color, we really have this ingrained idea that we have to show up perfect. And not because we made it up, like it's something that we are told by all of society.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Adriana Herrera:
Like the twice as good thing. Like you need to be five times better than everyone else just so that you can like sit there and feel like you belong in the room. And I think that turns into like a fear of failure and a fear of like told that we're not good enough. That really hinders us just going for our stuff.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. So listeners, whatever your thing is, if it's a book, a business idea, something you want to do in your community, whatever it is, we are telling you start today. Pick something and start today. You deserve to be in the room. I love that. If people are listening to this, they want to buy your books, they want to buy more than one copy of your book because they want to have one for themselves, they want to buy one for a friend, they want to follow you, where should they go? What should they do?
Adriana Herrera:
I have a website, it's adrianaherreraromance.com. And there you can find everything that you would want to know about my books and my writing, what I'm working on. I'm pretty active on Twitter and my handle is ladrianaherrera, L-A like Ladriana. Those are the two places I'm on.
Amena Brown:
People, go there. Go there and do the things, go and buy these books right now. And I just want to thank you so much Adriana for being on the podcast. I have learned so much for answering all my nosy questions. Thanks for joining us today.
Adriana Herrera:
Thank you for inviting me. It was so wonderful to talk to you.
Amena Brown:
Yes. Yes, I loved that conversation with Adriana so much. Didn't you? Doesn't it make you want to go and read some really good romance fiction right now? You should, and you should start with Adriana's books. Make sure you check out her website, get her latest books, get all her books, do all the things. And if you forget any of these links, don't worry, all of the links for information about my guests is available in the show notes, which you can find at amenabrown.com/herwithamena.
Amena Brown:
For this week's edition of Give Her A Crown, I wanted to give a crown to Katori Hall. My husband and I had a chance right before the pandemic really tipped here, in February of this year, we had a chance to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and it was fabulous. And I had no idea that Katori Hall was the book writer and co-producer of not only Tina, but also West End.
Amena Brown:
Now, I have to say the reason why I know Katori Hall's name is because Katori Hall is also the showrunner of P-Valley, which is a new Starz drama. And I have to tell you, the show is amazing. As someone who's lived in the South most of my life, I loved how Southern it was, I loved the layers of that. So many layers to the story, so many complexities and contradictions in a lot of the characters.
Amena Brown:
I was really for Lauren when season one was over, and I cannot wait to see what Katori Hall and the wonderful actors, actresses, and crew are going to do with season two of P-Valley. So make sure you check that out, and let's give her a crown. Thank you, Katori Hall.
Amena Brown:
HER With Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.