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https://madamenoire.com/1230399/tia-williams-seven-days-in-june/
Source: Hatchette Publishing/Pauline St. Denis / Hatchette Publishing/Pauline St. Denis
If you were to try to build a solid relationship with your first, teenage love, do you think it would work now that you’re both adults? That’s the question author Tia Williams tackles in her latest book ‘Seven Days in June.’
Williams, the Brooklyn-based author and journalist, enjoyed much success with the release of her last novel ‘The Perfect Find,’ which has been adapted into a Netflix film starring Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers.
While ‘The Perfect Find’ was described as a beach read, Williams’ latest work deals with weightier topics like a fractured mother-daughter relationship, addiction and chronic pain.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Williams recently about her latest novel. See what she had to say in the interview below.
MadameNoire: What inspired the idea for this book?
Tia Williams: I was watching Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, as one does. And I got to the end of it and obviously, Romeo and Juliet die. And I had this thought, ‘What if they hadn’t died?’ What if they went their separate ways and grew up? They shared this teenage connection, didn’t talk and then met again when they were functioning grown ups? What would that be like? Do soul mates have an expiration date? Would it be the same? Would they remember everything the same? Were they victims of timing? Would it work this time?
We all have these passionate moments as teenagers and you look back and you’re like, ‘Was that something or was I just hormonal?’ So I wanted to deal with a second chance love story and see what I could make of it. So I think I built a case for Eva and Shane being soulmates and not just being teenage fixations.
MN: Why was it important for you to include the aspect of chronic pain in this novel? I know you personally suffer from migraines. Why did you decide to detail this in this story?
Tia: Just like Eva, I’ve dealt with them since I was a little girl. I’m in pain everyday. I wake up in pain everyday. And it’s really affected every aspect of my life. It’s touched every relationship I’ve had, whether platonic or someone I’m dating. It’s something that’s always there. And I can’t escape it. I’ve always wanted to write about it but it’s kind of a painful thing to unpack. Also, in the genre I write in, there’s nothing sexy, funny or light about a chronic illness. And so I was always like, ‘Where does this fit in?’
Because it’s so loud in my personal life, it’s impossible to get around it completely so I’ve always had moments in different novels where someone is rubbing their temples because their head is hurting. There’ve been these little pieces. But I’ve never tackled it in the way that I’m writing a character that has the disease on the same level that I do. It was a challenge for me to work this very real, pretty sad element of a character into a book and still have it be fun and real.
MN: I also think there’s something interesting about talking about a Black woman who is in pain, when so often our pain—whether psychological, emotional and physical—is just ignored.
Tia: Oh yeah! Totally. And mine was forever. The migraine thing is tough anyway because mostly women have it. And women in general aren’t really believed in the medical profession and then Black women are definitely not believed. Doctors will say things like, ‘You’re just stressed out.’ ‘Maybe you should go for a walk, have some water.’
My friend recently took her daughter, who is 15, to a neurologist because she’s been suffering from these blackout migraines. And the neurologist told her she should loosen the straps on her backpack.
There’s definitely an element of that as well. So I wanted to talk about being a Black woman walking around with this stuff. And she was self-medicating for so long because she didn’t have any help.
MN: In your process, what do you find more difficult? Is it the writing itself, the marketing, the waiting for the reception from readers?
Tia: Actually none of those things. It’s finding the time to write. It’s so hard. I have a full time job. I have 12-year-old daughter. I’ve been married for five months but before that I was a single mom doing all of this and with a chronic illness. Finding the perfect time to do it and it has to be a time where my pain is managed. Now we’re talking about 2-3 times a week that I can sit down and write. And there’s so much pressure to get as much done as I can in those windows because my health is so unpredictable, who knows when it’s going to strike again.
Then also as a mom, your time is not really your own. So it’s finding time. If I had unlimited time, if I didn’t have a job, if my head never hurt, I would be on my thirteenth novel.
MN: Why did you say you believed you would never finish this novel?
Tia: Did I say I believed I would never finish this novel?
MN: You posted something you wrote in 2017…
Tia: Oh! Because it was terrible. That’s easy. I don’t know if you’ve ever written long form fiction before but more often than not you gas yourself out, like, ‘Was there more I wanted to write?’ How does the rest of this go? There’s different types of writers. They’re called pantszers which is short for flying by the seat of your pants. A pantszer doesn’t have an online. They just sit h and go. I am not a pantszer, I’m an outliner. But even when you outline, you can’t account for everything that’s going to happen and there’s going to be blank spaces in between all of your plot points. And you’re looking around like, ‘Who’s going to tell me what goes here?’
You get those points and you’re like, ‘Okay, this is stupid. I should just stop. There’s no way I can move forward. I don’t have a thought in my head. Everything I’m writing has been written before. There is nothing new here. I’m a cliché. Why did I ever start writing?’
If you follow any fiction writers on any social media platform you will see the same language pop up, ever 3-4 months. ‘Why did I ever pick up a pen?!’ It’s hard! It’s hard because you’re not doing it for anyone else. You’re doing it for yourself and you have to be the boss and the taskmaster and if you’re tired or struggling or have writer’s block, it’s very hard to stay on top of your schedule to meet your goals.
MN: A lot of people are calling this your second book but you’ve written books before The Perfect Find. What would you say you’ve learned about yourself as a writer?
Tia: Yeah, I’m annoyed by that second book thing. This is my sixth book. I wrote a lot of YA so that’s probably where that comes from. But this is my third adult novel. Anyway, I think the thing that I’ve learned the most is that I don’t always have to write exactly about what I know. Until this book, I didn’t have to research anything ever because all of the characters came from different experiences I’ve had in my life. But this was the first one where I truly had completely made up people.
The skeleton of Eva comes from me: Black, Brooklyn, author, with a 12-year-old daughter, living in Park Slope, with a Creole mother and migraines. That’s all me. But her very traumatic past, her very problematic mother, their matrilineal identity—all of that is totally made up.
Shane is totally made up, with some inspiration by my husband. But in terms of the backstory and the addiction problems, I had to research all of that. So I’ve learned that you can step outside of what you know as long as your research is thorough enough.
MN: How do you know when your research is thorough enough?
Tia: Because you’ve done enough that you’ve absorbed it all so when you sit down to write it comes out of you like you always knew it.
MN: Do you feel like there’s a lack of respect for romance authors? Have you experienced that in your own career?
Tia: Yeah! It’s annoying. It’s weird because the romance category, I don’t really fit in. It’s really contemporary fiction with a love story. The romance category is very rigid in terms of what makes up the genre and if you don’t have a happy ending, it isn’t a romance. There’s all these different rules, which is interesting.
But yeah, it’s annoying. I hear it all the time like, ‘Wow, I was really surprised at how well written this was.’ Or ‘How three dimensional your characters are.’ ‘I got swept away in the story and I usually hate romance.’ And I’m like, You know what, you don’t hate it then. And people think that—it’s like the Nathaniel Hawthorne quote, “Easy reading is damned hard writing.’ And it’s true. Just because it goes down easy doesn’t mean it isn’t excruciating to write. It takes a lot to make a story that palatable.
Seven Days in June is out now and available for purchase, wherever books are sold.
Author Tia Williams On Writing, Black Women Living With Chronic Pain & Whether Teenage Love Can Last
Source: Hatchette Publishing/Pauline St. Denis / Hatchette Publishing/Pauline St. Denis
If you were to try to build a solid relationship with your first, teenage love, do you think it would work now that you’re both adults? That’s the question author Tia Williams tackles in her latest book ‘Seven Days in June.’
Williams, the Brooklyn-based author and journalist, enjoyed much success with the release of her last novel ‘The Perfect Find,’ which has been adapted into a Netflix film starring Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers.
While ‘The Perfect Find’ was described as a beach read, Williams’ latest work deals with weightier topics like a fractured mother-daughter relationship, addiction and chronic pain.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Williams recently about her latest novel. See what she had to say in the interview below.
MadameNoire: What inspired the idea for this book?
Tia Williams: I was watching Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, as one does. And I got to the end of it and obviously, Romeo and Juliet die. And I had this thought, ‘What if they hadn’t died?’ What if they went their separate ways and grew up? They shared this teenage connection, didn’t talk and then met again when they were functioning grown ups? What would that be like? Do soul mates have an expiration date? Would it be the same? Would they remember everything the same? Were they victims of timing? Would it work this time?
We all have these passionate moments as teenagers and you look back and you’re like, ‘Was that something or was I just hormonal?’ So I wanted to deal with a second chance love story and see what I could make of it. So I think I built a case for Eva and Shane being soulmates and not just being teenage fixations.
MN: Why was it important for you to include the aspect of chronic pain in this novel? I know you personally suffer from migraines. Why did you decide to detail this in this story?
Tia: Just like Eva, I’ve dealt with them since I was a little girl. I’m in pain everyday. I wake up in pain everyday. And it’s really affected every aspect of my life. It’s touched every relationship I’ve had, whether platonic or someone I’m dating. It’s something that’s always there. And I can’t escape it. I’ve always wanted to write about it but it’s kind of a painful thing to unpack. Also, in the genre I write in, there’s nothing sexy, funny or light about a chronic illness. And so I was always like, ‘Where does this fit in?’
Because it’s so loud in my personal life, it’s impossible to get around it completely so I’ve always had moments in different novels where someone is rubbing their temples because their head is hurting. There’ve been these little pieces. But I’ve never tackled it in the way that I’m writing a character that has the disease on the same level that I do. It was a challenge for me to work this very real, pretty sad element of a character into a book and still have it be fun and real.
MN: I also think there’s something interesting about talking about a Black woman who is in pain, when so often our pain—whether psychological, emotional and physical—is just ignored.
Tia: Oh yeah! Totally. And mine was forever. The migraine thing is tough anyway because mostly women have it. And women in general aren’t really believed in the medical profession and then Black women are definitely not believed. Doctors will say things like, ‘You’re just stressed out.’ ‘Maybe you should go for a walk, have some water.’
My friend recently took her daughter, who is 15, to a neurologist because she’s been suffering from these blackout migraines. And the neurologist told her she should loosen the straps on her backpack.
There’s definitely an element of that as well. So I wanted to talk about being a Black woman walking around with this stuff. And she was self-medicating for so long because she didn’t have any help.
MN: In your process, what do you find more difficult? Is it the writing itself, the marketing, the waiting for the reception from readers?
Tia: Actually none of those things. It’s finding the time to write. It’s so hard. I have a full time job. I have 12-year-old daughter. I’ve been married for five months but before that I was a single mom doing all of this and with a chronic illness. Finding the perfect time to do it and it has to be a time where my pain is managed. Now we’re talking about 2-3 times a week that I can sit down and write. And there’s so much pressure to get as much done as I can in those windows because my health is so unpredictable, who knows when it’s going to strike again.
Then also as a mom, your time is not really your own. So it’s finding time. If I had unlimited time, if I didn’t have a job, if my head never hurt, I would be on my thirteenth novel.
MN: Why did you say you believed you would never finish this novel?
Tia: Did I say I believed I would never finish this novel?
MN: You posted something you wrote in 2017…
Tia: Oh! Because it was terrible. That’s easy. I don’t know if you’ve ever written long form fiction before but more often than not you gas yourself out, like, ‘Was there more I wanted to write?’ How does the rest of this go? There’s different types of writers. They’re called pantszers which is short for flying by the seat of your pants. A pantszer doesn’t have an online. They just sit h and go. I am not a pantszer, I’m an outliner. But even when you outline, you can’t account for everything that’s going to happen and there’s going to be blank spaces in between all of your plot points. And you’re looking around like, ‘Who’s going to tell me what goes here?’
You get those points and you’re like, ‘Okay, this is stupid. I should just stop. There’s no way I can move forward. I don’t have a thought in my head. Everything I’m writing has been written before. There is nothing new here. I’m a cliché. Why did I ever start writing?’
If you follow any fiction writers on any social media platform you will see the same language pop up, ever 3-4 months. ‘Why did I ever pick up a pen?!’ It’s hard! It’s hard because you’re not doing it for anyone else. You’re doing it for yourself and you have to be the boss and the taskmaster and if you’re tired or struggling or have writer’s block, it’s very hard to stay on top of your schedule to meet your goals.
MN: A lot of people are calling this your second book but you’ve written books before The Perfect Find. What would you say you’ve learned about yourself as a writer?
Tia: Yeah, I’m annoyed by that second book thing. This is my sixth book. I wrote a lot of YA so that’s probably where that comes from. But this is my third adult novel. Anyway, I think the thing that I’ve learned the most is that I don’t always have to write exactly about what I know. Until this book, I didn’t have to research anything ever because all of the characters came from different experiences I’ve had in my life. But this was the first one where I truly had completely made up people.
The skeleton of Eva comes from me: Black, Brooklyn, author, with a 12-year-old daughter, living in Park Slope, with a Creole mother and migraines. That’s all me. But her very traumatic past, her very problematic mother, their matrilineal identity—all of that is totally made up.
Shane is totally made up, with some inspiration by my husband. But in terms of the backstory and the addiction problems, I had to research all of that. So I’ve learned that you can step outside of what you know as long as your research is thorough enough.
MN: How do you know when your research is thorough enough?
Tia: Because you’ve done enough that you’ve absorbed it all so when you sit down to write it comes out of you like you always knew it.
MN: Do you feel like there’s a lack of respect for romance authors? Have you experienced that in your own career?
Tia: Yeah! It’s annoying. It’s weird because the romance category, I don’t really fit in. It’s really contemporary fiction with a love story. The romance category is very rigid in terms of what makes up the genre and if you don’t have a happy ending, it isn’t a romance. There’s all these different rules, which is interesting.
But yeah, it’s annoying. I hear it all the time like, ‘Wow, I was really surprised at how well written this was.’ Or ‘How three dimensional your characters are.’ ‘I got swept away in the story and I usually hate romance.’ And I’m like, You know what, you don’t hate it then. And people think that—it’s like the Nathaniel Hawthorne quote, “Easy reading is damned hard writing.’ And it’s true. Just because it goes down easy doesn’t mean it isn’t excruciating to write. It takes a lot to make a story that palatable.
Seven Days in June is out now and available for purchase, wherever books are sold.
One of the reasons why I look forward to Pride Month is because I know that artists are going to take to social media and gift us with lots and lots of queer art. This Pride Month is no exception, and it’s very easy to spend the day scrolling through my feed, liking as much art as I can, and, much to my wallet’s dismay, seeing who’s got a shop I can buy from. The art I’ve come across is an absolute celebration of every single aspect of the community, but this particular piece I’m sharing with you all really struck a chord with me.
You are valid, whether you are out or not. pic.twitter.com/igoJz91Ew6
— Kieran (but extra gay) (@Smatterbrain) June 2, 2019
Digital artist Syd Moncrief illustrated an image of a rainbow-colored turtle still inside of a gray shell. Posted back in 2019, the Pride Turtle (named Hue) made the Twitter rounds again this year (and last year, too), the shy little animal quietly looking out at us with the following message:
It’s OK if you’re not ready yet.
Moncrief would go on to make queer variants of Hue.
Some more pride turtles! pic.twitter.com/jpat5zAX4T
— Kieran (but extra gay) (@Smatterbrain) June 3, 2019
Last batch of pride turtles!!! pic.twitter.com/EKdGLv7Slr
— Kieran (but extra gay) (@Smatterbrain) June 4, 2019
When we talk about queer celebration, the focus is usually on those of us who are already out followed by lots of encouragement for others to come out and join the community. The truth is, not everyone is ready to come out yet, furthermore, not everyone is in a position where they can come out safely, so while it’s important to inspire people to come out, it’s also important to reassure the ones who aren’t ready (or can’t) that they matter, too.
Coming out is a major step that’s an ongoing process. After coming out to myself and my girl crush, I came out to my online community, my college roommates, my classmates, my mother, my friends back at home, my father, my girlfriend’s family, my extended family … the list goes on and is still going on today with differing responses depending on the person.
From a personal standpoint, when I first came out it was only to a handful of people. Outside of my small, trusted circle, everyone thought I was a heterosexual girl with an ex-boyfriend I was trying to get over. Truthfully, I had gotten over him and had started a new relationship, but outside of my circle, that girl I was messaging every night was just a friend. It took years for that circle to disappear into a full-fledged declaration of “I’m bi, deal with it,” and there were even times when I had to go back into the closet because I didn’t trust the space I was about to enter (or, in Moncrief’s case, I had to go back inside my shell).
It can feel like a bit of a downer that you aren’t out here celebrating with everyone else, or it can feel like you don’t get to call yourself queer because you haven’t announced it yet. Moncrief’s art is a warm reminder that you are very much a part of this community even if you aren’t out yet. Those of us who are out are very much celebrating you, too, we’ll just celebrate AGAIN when you are ready to take that step.
You are a part of Pride, too, even if you’re a gentle turtle in a shell.
You can check out more of Moncrief’s art over on her Twitter. You can also check her out over on Instagram.
Hello! I see that Hue, my pride turtle is making his rounds again on the Internet, and I’m glad that my message has touched so many. If you wish to repost, please use this picture! Thank you and all of you are valid, whether you are out or not. You have all my love! pic.twitter.com/WCjJUBH1B7
— Kieran (but extra gay) (@Smatterbrain) June 5, 2020
(Image: Syd Moncrief)
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The post “Hue the Pride Turtle” Is a Gentle Reminder to Celebrate Those Who Aren’t Ready to Come Out Yet first appeared on The Mary Sue.