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SISTERSPEAK EXCLUSIVE!

Author Sherry Lucille Chats About Her Debut Title Love Changes

by Lisa Peyton-Caire

Greetings SisterSpeak readers & welcome to the Author's Forum! We're proud to present to you our exclusive interview with debut author Sherry Lucille, Chicago native and current resident of Madison, WI. Sherry has penned a must read novel, Love Changes, that we're sure you'll want to add to your book collection. It's hard to believe that Love Changes is Sherry's first work. The story pulls you in almost immediately and reads more like the work of a veteran author. Sherry sent me a copy earlier this year and I simply could not put it down. I hope you find it as intriguing as I did. Congratulations to Sherry also for her recent feature at the Wisconsin Book Festival! A counselor and educator by day, Sherry completed her B.A. in Communications in 1982 and her M.S. in Counselor Education in 1988. She currently works as a school counselor. We look forward to more from Sherry as her writing career blossoms! Enjoy!   --Lisa

SS: Greetings Sherry and welcome to SisterSpeak! I'd first like to thank you for taking the time to sit with us today and talk to us about your book Love Changes! Let me first say that Love Changes is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Once I started reading it, I simply could not put it down, and I don’t say that about many books. Could you give our readers a quick introduction to what Love Changes is about and what inspired you to write this book?

Sherry:  Thank you, Lisa, for inviting me to do this interview.  Love Changes is simply about love in all its facets.  It takes place on the south side of Chicago primarily during the 1950s and 60s.  A Negro family—as they would have been called back then—Mama Rose and her granddaughter, Shelly, move in next door to Jacob Schultz (a white man) and his young son, Mark.  Shelly and Mark become friends, then more. I was inspired to write this book by a few factors.  I was reading lots of love stories and romance novels at the time and thought ‘I can write one of these’.  So I did.  I wanted to write the story I wanted to read, real issues, real love, a bit sassy and not shying away from issues of faith.  In fact, I had a dream about two of the characters.  After that, the scenes of the story just came to me.

SS:  Wow…that must explain why the characters in Love Changes are so real and so well developed. In fact, the characters have so much depth that it’s hard not to believe that your story isn’t autobiographical in some way, or at the least, a story that you have experienced in some way in your life or those close to you. What can you tell us about that?

Sherry:   This story is only autobiographical in that it takes from me and people I’ve known.  Grandma Rose is a compilation of Grandmother figures in my life: my own mother Mabel, and my husband’s grandmothers, Rose and Mother Evans. Shelly is like me--in some ways quiet but spirited when something matters.  I’ve dated interracially and internationally so I’ve dealt with some of the issues associated with that first hand.  And I am a Christian.  I’ve seen Christianity inside and out and in many of its various forms.  So I’d say these elements reflect but don’t actually mirror my life.

SS:   Sherry, the story you weave through every chapter is so engrossing mainly, again, because your characters are so real. In reading each chapter you feel more and more like you are peering into the lives of real people rather than constructed characters, which is really the hallmark of a great novel. We can all identify a Momma Rose in our family, or can relate personally to Shelly and Mark; and even to Jake Schultz. Tell us more about your inspiration for these characters.

Sherry: Well, as I said earlier I had a dream about two of the characters: Jake and Shelly.  One night I dreamed that a young black girl, around six years old, was dropped off at the home of a white man and his family.  There was some unknown relationship between them.  When she, the young girl, arrived everything changed in Jake’s home.  He changed everything for her.  Also in this dream, the young girl went on a walk by herself in this all-white neighborhood.  While she was walking, some of the neighbor boys started to chase her, throw rocks at her, and call her racist names.  This is the only scene from the initial dream that is included in the novel. In my reading of love stories, the male was always the same man.  Mark embodied my version of that man.  He had all of the characteristics that I loved, plus a few more.

SS:   Love Changes is obviously a love story and on many different levels of love; the innocent love of young children, parental-child love, intimate-romantic love, and even spiritual-agape love that transcends race, space, and time. Tell us about love and the role it plays in the story. What overall message are you trying to convey through the story and through the book’s title?

Sherry:  I love the title of this novel, Love Changes.  I wanted it to be both a verb and a noun sequence.  People are always talking about the changes that love puts you through.  Usually they mean this in a negative way, but I wanted to flip that.  I wanted these Love Changes—noun—to be real, substantial and good.  As an action or verb, real love actively changes who you are.    It transforms you into who you were meant to be.  For me that can only happen through relationship with God—your creator—so I could not neglect to express this most important aspect in my novel.

SS: Sherry, your story deals with interracial love which we know remains a sensitive issue. But it deals with it from a very organic place of a little black girl and little white boy whose love begins in childhood and continues through the years, though certainly impacted by the outside world. Why did you choose this story and this coupling which is different from the image of interracial love that we are generally exposed to in popular media?

Sherry:  I wanted to create the story I wanted to read and I wanted to read something different.  Honestly, I have heard many Black women talk about how hard it is to find a good man.  And I think to myself, have you looked everywhere?  Before I go on, a bit of personal disclosure:  my man is Black, African American, Negro a Bro and he is all that and a bag of chips; and for the record, I know that there are wonderful Black men everywhere, we just don’t always see them.  With that being said, and truthfully I might add, I’ve often wondered why sisters don’t broaden their nets and try some additional flavors.  After all, in the final analysis it’s just pigment (or it can be if there is love).

SS: What do you want readers to take away from the Shelly and Mark’s experience?

Sherry:  That’s simple--let God define you.

SS: Sherry, I understand that it took you six years to pen Love Changes. For all of our aspiring writers out there, tell us how you began your journey? What did the process look like for you? How long did it take you to move from the idea, to the drafts, to the finished product, and finally to publishing?

Sherry:  Six long years!  The hardest part was getting over me and my insecurities.  God had to tell me not to waste my gifts for me to stop being fearful.  Because Love Changes does not fit neatly into Christian fiction (it has a swear word or two (in context) and the romantic scenes have some steam) or into secular fiction, I wasn’t sure how to classify it. I wondered where it did fit and since it was such a reflection of me, I wondered where I fit.  Anyway through much travail my third baby, Love Changes, was born and I’m now pleased and proud.

When I began I didn’t know how to write; I simply knew that I had a story to tell.  I loved it and I wanted the whole world to have a chance to love it too.  I knew I couldn’t let a little thing like lack of know-how stop me.  I enrolled in some University extension courses and learned how to write.  As I was learning, I wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote some more (smile).  I must have gone through at least sixty edits and seven or eight versions.  

Initially, I sent portions of my manuscript to royalty publishers.  I received some positive feedback but no offers to publish.  After about four or five tries, I decided to go with a local publisher at my expense.  Listen, if you don’t invest in yourself who else is going to. 

SS: Absolutely!

Sherry: You have to be your own cheerleader and if you can finance your own dream, you should.  Every successful business venture begins with an idea and a belief that it was worthwhile.  After I got over myself——the insecurities that I spoke of earlier—I decided to be my own backer.   Honestly, I’d say that 98% of the people who have read my novel (the ones I’ve had the opportunity to speak with) have loved it.  The other two percent have not volunteered any feedback.  Oh well, you can’t please everybody.

SS: No you can’t, and neither should you try to. I’ve learned this as well through SisterSpeak. You have to stick with your fans and supporters and appeal first to them--and leave the naysayers behind.

Sherry: Exactly. Currently, Love Changes is being looked at by an agent.  We’ll see if she wants to represent it and try to get it re-published by one of the major houses.  I can do that because I own the rights to it.  If I can negotiate a contract that I am comfortable with and that doesn’t require me to make substantial changes to the original, I’ll go with it.  If it doesn’t work out, I will continue to promote my work.  I believe in it and many doors have opened for me as a result of it.  I’m having a blast.  Nothing’s going to change that.

SS: Well, we certainly wish you good fortune in that and let me add for the record that SisterSpeak believes in Love Changes. It’s a great work and a great story. Sherry, I imagine it took great discipline to stay committed to the work for six years, and to write a story that spans several decades. Tell us about this.

Sherry:  I wrote over the summers when I was off and on the days that I didn’t work my other job.  Sometimes, I would write for eight hours straight and sometimes it seemed like days on end.  Along the line, I was told that a legitimate novel was 100,000 words.  My novel was about ten thousand at the time.  I had some work to do, so every time I clicked off another ten thousand or so, I’d have a mini-mind celebration, just me, myself, and I.  Well that’s not exactly true, sometimes I’d tell my husband and he’d cheer me on and I’d thank God.

It wasn’t that hard to write more.  Since this was a learning process, I was always learning some new convention that I needed to go back and include or correct for, and there was scene work that I needed to do so that readers could actually experience what was happening in the story.  And let us not forget historical accuracy; I had to do lots of research and incorporate it into the story so that it looked and felt authentic.

SS:  Well my hat goes off to you and all published and aspiring writers out there who persevere through this process which is really a test of the will and the spirit.  Sherry, you’ve set the bar very high for yourself as a writer with your debut work. What can readers anticipate from you in the future?

Sherry:  First I want to say thank you.  I am always honored and awed when people share my love for this work.  Now, what to expect…hopefully a faster rate between idea and product (lol). I am working on two new novels simultaneously.  The working titles are, Awaken Love and Believe Love.  Like Love Changes, they are set in Chicago in the late 1960’s and yes, they will deal with interracial love with a twist: my current signature.   I call this my Trilogy of Love Series.  And I hope you and your readers will travel this journey with me.  It promises to be quite the ride.

Lisa: Well, there you have it. Sherry Lucille, we thank you so very much for spending time with us today and allowing us to share your story. Readers, you can get a copy of Sherry’s book, Love Changes from her website at www.sherrylucille.com or at Amazon.com. 

Thank you Sherry... 

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