Novella November- An Interview w/Katrina Jackson
I first learned about Katrina Jackson when I participated in the 2018 Smutathon. Pink Slip was on several TBR recommendation list, so I followed suit and added it to my TBR. Spoiler alert- I devoured Pink Slip and immediately became a Kat Jackson fan (**cough stan**), let me explain why. I love her ability to write fun, sexy, complicated, sometimes messy couples; we get to read over the top couples like Chleo and Robert (Grand Theft N.Y.E.), but then there are sweet couples like Alejandro and Deja (Office Hours). Regardless of the couple you can always expect great SEX. The other secret sauce about her writing is, Kat Jackson writes women from different walks of life and to date the heroine is always a Black woman. For me, there's something special reading about Black women having varied and fulfilling relationships. We stan!
As I was planning for Novella November, I knew I wanted to interview Kat Jackson. It took me almost 3 months to work up the courage to ask, to my surprise she agreed. I'm so happy to share my interview with Katrina Jackson (psst make sure you read to the end because there's giveaway information).
KJ: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with R.L. Stine. I was obsessed with scary stories and my first stories were probably full of plagiarism, but I wrote them to read to my mom and her boyfriend at the time. They pretended to be interested. In high school, I started writing slam poetry and did that through college. I used to imagine having a life as a writer, but then I went to graduate school. I started writing fiction again when I was finishing my master’s thesis to remind myself that writing could be fun.
WR: Who does Katrina Jackson write for or to be more specific who do you think needs to read your books?
WR: Writing a novella requires skill because you have to write a fulfilling arc. How do you decide when a book should be a novella vs a novel? For instance, in Pink Slip you mentioned in the authors message that this particular story you thought it would be a novella but kept writing.KJ: To be honest, I write for myself first. I know a lot of authors say that, but for me, I’m usually writing a thing I would like to read; a thing I’ve always wanted to read. After I publish the stories, I don’t have a conception of who needs to read my book, but the readers I’m always happy to have find my books are queer people, especially queer women of color. When people tell me that they’re happy at all the queer people in my stories, I feel as if I’ve found my people, because I try and write worlds I would want to live in. I want to write worlds that make me happy as a reader and writer.
KJ: No idea! I have no idea. I’m notoriously (in my own mind) terrible at predicting how long books can, should or will be. I’m getting better at it, I think, but I don’t plot any of my books, so sometimes I’m surprised by what happens. Pink Slip was originally supposed to be a novella, but it’s a novel, and Private Eye was supposed to be the same length as Pink Slip but it’s long as hell.
❤WR: Private Eye is my favorite book in the Spies Who Loved me Series ❤
KJ: What I will say, is that when I set out to write a novella and succeed, I usually imagine the story as a snapshot in the lives of the characters and I can see it fully, even though I don’t plan. So Layover is one of my most popular novellas and I envisioned it first as a soundtrack where each song was a beat of the story. I built the soundtrack first and then followed the emotional development of that music to mirror the arc of the main character fairly closely. Usually, I can view a novella from beginning to end; not so much with a novel.
What changed with Pink Slip was perspective. When I envisioned the story at first, it was all from Kierra’s perspective and I wrote that as a novella. But when I was done, I realized it wasn’t complete, so I sat down and I wrote every Lane and Monica chapter around Kierra’s narrative, filling in and adjusting her story with theirs.
WR: And as a follow-up question, what do you think makes a good story?
KJ: I think a “good” story is entirely subjective. What floats my boat, won’t work for someone else and that’s okay. So for me, a good story is one full of characters I understand. I don’t, actually, need to relate to all the characters, but I want to understand them. OR, I want them to be dynamic enough that I want to understand them. I don’t need a lot of action all the time because sometimes quiet or deep introspection can just pull me out to sea in the best ways.
WR: Which do you prefer to write stand alone's vs series? Why?
WR: Your writing centers Black women and characters of color who have nuanced relationships. Why is this focus important to you?KJ: I prefer stand-alone stories and yet I too often write what should be a standalone book and then build a series around it. That’s what happened with Pink Slip. I meant for it to be a standalone right up until I introduced Chanté and Kenny and then Asif and Maya took on new significance and my brain just kept spinning. It’s terrible. LOL!
KJ: I grew up in Oakland and Berkeley, California. While it was not, by any means, a racial paradise, the way that I viewed the world from childhood was always diverse. I never grew up in a Black community, because my mom – a single mother – moved wherever she could find affordable housing for my brother and I. What that meant was that for much of my childhood I lived in immigrant communities. Our neighbors were Mexican, Vietnamese, Laotian, Filipino, Salvadoran, Cambodian and other poor Black people. And I went to Berkeley public schools where there were those groups and also poor white kids and Muslim kids – who were either Middle Eastern or Black children whose parents were in the Nation of Islam. So, the answer to your question is that I’m writing what I know. Until graduate school I lived primarily in communities that were not white or necessarily American-born.
The other part of the answer I guess is that my stories center Black women because I’m a Black woman whose training is in Black women’s history. I’m fascinated by Black women as protagonists in history and yet they are often written out of American and global histories and even out of Black histories. But I love Black women. That’s the point of my professional work. So I write Black female protagonists almost as an homage. All the things I love about Black women, broadly and specifically, make their way into my stories eventually.
WR: How do you think romance can or should engage in social justice discourse?
KJ: This is a hard question. On the one hand, I believe that authors can and should write whatever they like. On the other hand, I do believe that authors should be cognizant of the context in which they’re writing. I don’t think every romance has to tackle social justice issues head on, but I do think authors shouldn’t be reifying harmful stereotypes without critique. Writing Black female characters who are steeped in racist tropes (the Angry Black woman, the Tragic Mulatto, Jezebel, etc.) without doing carefully or thoughtfully pushing back at them is harmful. So while I don’t think every romance has to engage social justice discourse, I do think that anyone writing today should be seeking not to do harm.
I think so often people imagine that simply writing characters of color is enough. It’s not. We might be writing these characters from our own imagination, but we shouldn’t be inflicting or furthering any harm in doing so. For instance, Maya and Chanté in The Spies Who Loved Her series are sex workers and I try not to reify stereotypes about sex workers while writing them. I won’t always get that right – none of us will – but I try at the outset to treat them respectfully. I also remain open to critiques so that I can do better.
So I guess the answer is that romance and, more importantly romance authors, can do the work beforehand to produce respectful representation of our marginalized characters AND we can listen to critiques so that we can do better.
WR: Who’s your favorite couple to write?
KJ: My favorite couple so far is Maya and Kenny. They’re just both annoyingly careful and sweet with one another. But I think Ezra and Candace are a very close second because they’re both such messes and I deeply relate to that.
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