I am the third child of Alabama sharecroppers and the first and only member of my family to finish high school. I never attended college or any writing classes. I taught myself how to write and started writing short stories around age four. I spent the first part of my life in Alabama and Ohio and moved to Richmond, California in 1973. I have lived in Oakland since 1984.
My first novel THE UPPER ROOM was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1985 and was widely reviewed throughout the U.S. and in Great Britain. An excerpt is included in Terry McMillan’s anthology BREAKING ICE. I endured fifteen years and hundreds of more rejection letters before I landed a contract for my second novel, GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY. It was published in October 2000 by Kensington Books. GOD DON’T PLAY is my seventh novel to be published, and it landed me a spot on the prestigious New York Times Bestsellers list for the first time! My eighth novel, “BORROW TROUBLE,” was released December 1, 2006. My ninth novel, DELIVER ME FROM EVIL, was released in September 2007 and my tenth novel, SHE HAD IT COMING, will be released in September 2008.
I won the Oakland Pen Award for Best Fiction of the Year in 2001 for GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY. I won the Best Southern Author Award for GONNA LAY DOWN MY BURDENS, in 2004. I am divorced, I love to travel, I love to mingle with other authors, and I love to read anything by Ernest Gaines, Stephen King, Alice Walker, and James Patterson. I still write seven days a week and I get most of my ideas from current events, the people around me, but most of my material is autobiographical.
What made you want to be a writer?
Writing was not something that I decided to do on my own, per se. I was born with an overactive imagination. I can remember making up stories and telling them to my playmates before I even started elementary school. I ‘wrote’ my first book when I was seven—a four hundred page disaster.
How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
I grew up around some uneducated and miserable people who had very little interest in reading anything other than the Bible. I received no encouragement from them. I was laughed at and called a fool. To this day, only a handful of my family members and friends have read any of my books. However, I get a lot of ideas from those same people...
What was the hardest part of writing your first book?
There was nothing hard about writing my first book. Writing is one of the easiest things I know how to do. I never took a writing class or attended college. Getting my first book published was another story. That was the hardest part. It took two years and got rejected fifty-five times.
Your first book was well received and enjoyed by many, however it would be several years before your second novel, why so many years?
My first book didn’t get promoted much by my former publisher so it didn’t sell well. Because of that I could not secure a second contract with that publisher, or any other publisher for that matter. Despite that setback I continued to write. It took me fifteen years and several hundred more rejections to get my second book published.
When you first started out if you had to choose, which writer/writers would you consider a mentor/role model?
When I started writing, I did not have access to books by black authors. The only reading material I had access to that was anything like mine was by white southern authors like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Once my family moved from the segregated rural south to Ohio, the local library became my second home. That was when I discovered James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Later, I discovered Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines and Alice Walker. If I had to choose one writer who influenced me the most I would have to say Ernest Gaines. In addition to those authors, I also enjoy James Patterson and Stephen King.
Now a bestselling author and role model yourself, what advice would you give to writers just starting out?
Read as much as you can and write something EVERY day. Write something even if it’s just one sentence. All writers need creative nourishment and this is the best way to get it. Also, invest a few dollars in reference books like “Writers Market” and “Guide to Literary Agents.”
What are some of the obstacles you encountered when you began your writing career?
Getting an agent to represent me was a major obstacle. I didn’t think I needed one. I sent out hundreds of manuscripts over the years on my own then I sat back and waited to get paid. My manuscripts were returned unread. Finally, somebody at one of the publishing houses who’d rejected me several times already told me that the only way one of their editors would read my manuscript was if an agent sent it to them. When I tried to get an agent, they were only interested in authors with a publishing history. So it was a Catch-22 situation for me for years. Finally, after four years and a huge stack of rejection slips from agents, a new agent decided to give me a chance.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?
I would have listened to Ann Rice, Danielle Steel and Alice Walker. They had all told me that the first thing I needed to do was get an agent. Taking their advice would have saved me a lot of time and grief.
How do you develop your plots and characters? Do you use any set formula?
Since all of my stories are based on my own experiences or the experiences of people I know, I don’t have to develop plots and characters that much. My characters are so real that once I introduce them they pretty much tell the story.
How do you come up with the title for your books?
I always choose titles that are catchy and symbolic. So far, my publisher has changed only one of my titles. The original title for “In Sheep’s Clothing,” was “Masquerade.” My publisher decided that there were too many recent books already on the shelves with the same title or one close to it. However, I later found out the same was true of the title they did choose. But we decided to go with it anyway.
How much of your novels are realistic? Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?
All of my novels are biographical. All of my characters are composites of people I know.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I am not a preacher or a politician so I don’t purposely set out to deliver messages. All I want to do is write stories and hope that my readers will be entertained and enlightened on some level. However, a lot of people have told me that all of my stories have a ‘God don’t like ugly,’ message in them.
For what one accomplishment would you most like to be remembered?
My biggest accomplishment was getting that first book published. Everybody told me it would never happen…
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
My current work is “Deliver Me From Evil.” My tenth book “She Had It Coming,” will be released September 2008. The fourth book in my “God Don’t Like Ugly” series; “God Ain’t Blind,” is in the works and will be released September 2009. Three other new books are already on the table.
Where can readers go to learn more about Mary Monroe the author?
Please visit my Web site at www.Marymonroe.org
There are a lot of interviews and other information on-line that readers can locate through Yahoo or other search engines.
