Joins us as we chat with E. N. Joy, author of She Who Finds A Husband and one of Sexy Ebony Book Club's March 2010 Featured Authors. Please feel free to comment on the interview. And don't forget to visit the Sexy Ebony BBW African American Book Club website for a chance to win a copy of E. N. Joy's book. Contest ends April 3, 2010.Sexy Ebony Featured Author Presentation
1) Tell us about yourself? I’m a former Essence Magazine bestselling secular writer who wrote under the names Joylynn M. Jossel and JOY. I am now a bonafide Christian Fiction and children’s book author. I’m blessed to be an employee of Urban Books as both an author and the acquisition editor for their Urban Christian imprint.
2) How long have you been writing? What drove you to pick up that pen for the first time? I have been writing since the days of elementary school journals and rainy day writings. I started out just writing poems, then short stories. My first self-published book, Please Tell Me If the Grass Is Greener, was a mixture of poetry and short stories. Well, actually it’s poetic short stories; short stories told in a rhythmic flow. Kind of like a Dr. Seuss book for Grown-ups. I love La La Land. Growing up, my escape from reality was the La La Land I invented with the pen and paper. So, I guess that is truly what drove me to pick up the pen for the first time. It was an escape. Some people use drugs, some people use alcohol, some people use sex while other people use guns. I used a pen.
3) What genre(s) do you typically write in? I only write Christian fiction and children’s books. I have a three book young adult series I’m working on titled The Soul Sisters, but no more street lit, chick lit or erotic writings for me. If it’s not something I can hand over to Jesus to read without cringing, then I’m not writing it.
4) How did you get your first publishing deal? Like I mentioned before, I self-published my first book. I also self-published my second book as well, which is a book of poetry titled World On My Shoulders. Eventually I grew out of my fear of thinking I was too short winded to write a full-length novel and I wrote and self-published my first novel, The Root of All Evil. I wrote that manuscript with the intentions of eventually selling it to a major publishing house. So, while it was in manuscript form I sent it off (un-agented) to a major publisher for publication consideration. But in the meantime I sent the manuscript off to a printer. I received a rejection letter from the publisher before the books even came off the printer. But that didn’t stop me. I simply sold copies from my trunk in hopes of creating a buzz. Well, the buzz was created. I got an agent and the agent submitted the manuscript to a major publishing house that did end up giving me a three book deal. Ironically, the same publishing house who sent me my very first rejection letter was the same major publisher who ended up giving my very first book deal. The Root of All Evil was re-released under the contract. But while it was going through the editing process, I wrote a book titled Dollar Bill for Triple Crown Publications.
5)Me, Myself and Him was your debut Christian Fiction novel written under the pen name E.N. Joy. But you previously wrote as Joylynn Jossel. What prompted the change? Has Joylynn retired for good? Are Joylynn Jossel books available to anyone looking for some of your other work? When I dedicated my life to Christ, a great deal of things changed in my life. I couldn’t do some of the things I used to do. I couldn’t say some of the things I used to say and I couldn’t go some of the places I used to go. Well, I soon found that I couldn’t write some of the things I used to write. That’s what prompted the change. Joylynn M. Jossel the author is retired for good. Are the Joylynn M. Jossel and JOY books still available? Yes, they are. They can still be found and ordered in bookstores and are on pretty much every online bookstore.
6)The E.N. Joy Prize Packet will include a copy of She Who Finds A Husband. Please tell us a little about this novel. Why should readers pick up a copy of your book? She Who Finds A Husband is book one of a five book series titled “The New Day Divas.” I like to refer to it as a soap opera in print. It’s character driven, plot driven, emotionally driven. If there were to ever be Christian soap operas, this would be the number one most watched. It touches upon every subject matter imaginable, even those thought to be taboo in the black community. I just can’t imagine a person reading this book and putting it down without being able to find themselves somewhere within the pages. People are going to be talking about this series. Readers don’t want to sleep on book one, She Who Finds A Husband, and get left behind and have to play catch up. If readers want to be able to join in on the conversations at the beauty shop and the water cooler, then they better pick up the book now.
7) Under the pen name N. Joy you wrote the children’s book The Secret Olivia Told Me which, received a Coretta Scott King Honors Award from the American Library Association in 2008. Tell us about The Secret Olivia Told Me. Why did you decide to venture into the world of children's books? Is there another children's book in the works? The book is a little life lesson for both little people and big people. It’s about secrets and what can happen when a secret is told. I wrote The Secret Olivia Told Me over fifteen years ago. My son, who was around seven years old back then, was my sounding board. He enjoyed the writing process just as much as I did. As a treat to him, on his birthday his teachers would allow me to read it to the class before we had birthday cake. The children would always fall in love with the book and have so many questions about it. But back then it was just something personal that I enjoyed doing for my son. I never imagined children all over the world would one day be so blessed by it. Needless to say, my son and I worked on several other books that I hope to one day pull out of the time capsule and have published as well.
8) The Sinners anthology series edited by E.N. Joy includes stories by some of today's top Urban writers. How did you become involved in this project? When will the third book in the series be released? As a former Urban writer, we used to get a lot of slack as far as the art of literature. Because of the type of genre that we chose to pen, we were stigmatized and rumored unable to create literature without glorifying a trigger happy, drug dealing thug, or a burgundy micro braid wearing, gum poppin’, promiscuous gold digger, or a television stealing crack head (in addition to at least two curse words per paragraph). I know that writing (great writing) is a God given talent. I wanted to prove the nay-sayers wrong by providing these authors a platform to do just that. These authors brought out their A game and penned stories that didn’t include explicit language or graphic sex scenes, while at the same time giving honor to the one who gave them their gift in the first place. The third and final book of the series, Even Sinners STILL Have Souls, is slated for November 2010 while both Even Sinners Have Souls and Even Sinners Have Souls TOO are available now.
9) How long do we have to wait for the next E.N. Joy novel to hit bookstores? Can we get a preview? The next E. N. Joy novel is book two of “The New Day Divas” series. It’s titled Been There, Prayed That and will be released June 2010. In book two, Mother Doreen has left New Day Temple of Faith in Malvonia, Ohio and moved to Kentucky to help her diabetic sister. Her sister’s husband, a truck driver, pretty much lives on the road. Mother Doreen feels in her spirit that she’s needed to intervene on her sister’s behalf, especially when the assistant pastor of her sister’s church seems to be there just a little bit too much. Her suspicions really grow when her sister’s belly does too. Is it Mother Doreen’s spirit of discernment warning her that things in her sister’s home and church aren’t what they seem, or is Mother Doreen just a busybody church mother sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong? Back in Malvonia, Tamarra and Maeyl’s relationship is moving along nicely. She even has a feeling that the man she knows God placed in her life is going to propose to her. But suspicions arise when someone from Maeyl’s past shows up at New Day Temple of Faith, unexpected and unwelcome. Will their relationship be able to withstand the strain?
10) What is the biggest challenge you have faced as a writer? Now, as a Christian Fiction author, my biggest challenge is pleasing both the readers and God. I’m not just doing writing anymore, I’m doing ministry. So whatever I do has to please God while at the same time send His message to His people and, of course, entertain them and keep them engaged. And boy, oh boy, have I learned that the life of Christian folk and church folk is beyond engaging and entertaining.
11) Where do you see yourself a year from now? A year from now, and I’m speaking prophetically, I see myself on the New York Times Bestsellers List. That’s around the time the fourth installment of the series will be released. By the fourth and fifth installment, folks are going to be camping out waiting on their release. I’m thinking, dreaming and believing big. I want to be the best at what I’m doing. If ever anyone does anything without truly wanting to be the best at it, then they should reconsider why they’re doing it in the first place.
12) What are you reading now? Who are your favorite authors? Well, write now I’m reading Silver Lining by Urban Christian author, Wanda B. Campbell. Of course, as editor of the imprint, when I’m not writing my own novels, I’m reading my authors’. I don’t get much time to read outside of my Urban Christian authors’ works. But the last book I did read that was outside of the imprint was titled The Power of A Praying Wife.
13) Tell us about the online and offline personal appearances you have planned over the next couple of months. Where can readers connect with you up close and personal? I plan to attend the Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention April 28-May 2, 2010. I will also be at the National Black Book Festival in Houston, Texas. I’ll be on the Publisher’s Panel at the Literary Breakthrough Conference portion of the event being held on Friday, May 21, 2010. I’ll also be at the Faith and Fiction Retreat being held in Atlanta, GA June 18-21, 2010. In addition to those personal appearance, I have plenty of online and Internet radio interviews with http://www.sormag.com/, http://www.artistfirst.com/, Black Author Network Radio with Ella Curry and much more. So I’d love for readers to Google me to learn more about me and my literary plight.
14) How can readers get in contact with you? Do you have a website? I would love for readers to visit either my http://www.enjoywrites.com/ or my http://www.joylynnjossel.com/ websites. I can be reached out to via email at enjoywrites@aol.com.
15) What is the one thing you would like all of your readers to know about you? That I live breathe, eat and sleep (well, not much sleep) this literary thing. It’s real. It’s not a hobby. It’s not something I do on the side. It’s my life. I take it serious. It’s my craft, my career, my first love and now it’s my ministry. With that being said, readers need to know that when I put something out for them, I’m truly giving them my all. And if I fall short of their expectations, I’ll do everything I can to try to do a better job next time in order to earn and keep their readership.
About E. N. Joy: E.N. Joy is the author of Me, Myself and Him, which was her debut work into the Christian Fiction genre. Formerly an Essence Magazine Bestselling secular author writing under the names Joylynn M. Jossel and JOY, when she decided to fully dedicate her life to Christ, that meant she had to fully dedicate her work as well. She made a conscious decision that whatever she penned from that point on had to glorify God and His kingdom.
E. N. Joy currently resides in Reynoldsburg, Ohio where she is currently working on her New Day Divas series. She’s also working on the final anthology in the “Sinners Series” titled Even Sinners Still Have Souls.
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