Interview with author Valencia Williams

10) Your books are very street oriented, obviously you didn’t grow up on a farm.  Where are you from?

V) Detroit, Michigan, born and raised , baby!

10) I know often times life inspires art.  What is it about your life that inspired you to start writing ?

V) To be honest with you, I started writing before I caught a case.  That’s right, I was down in the feds for 4 years.  Before I went I wrote a book called “ How to Fall Out of Love,” but when I went to prison and had all that time to sit down and really focus, I got the job done.  For once in my life I completed something, it’s just sad to say it happened when I was incarcerated.

10) I guess that would give you a lot of time  to think.  How many books have you written and what are the titles?

V)That’s pretty tough to answer because I’m still putting titles together to most of the manuscripts I’ve written.  I’ve got a total of 13 but the two that are out art “The Hottest Summer Ever Known” and “ Vindictive Wo-Men.”

10) I Enjoyed both books. I noticed that in both books, the characters were in situations where they had to deal with the possibility of having contracted the AIDS virus.  Besides the entertainment value, is there something else you are trying to accomplish with your books?

V) To be honest with you I’m trying to accomplish helping a lot of people out here in the world with overcoming their fear and facing the truth about the reality of any situation, you’ve got a lot of people out here that are afraid to get tested for HIV for whatever reason, some people just don’t want to know the truth because they’re scared they’re going to die or whatever  the answer would be, negative or positive just pretty much so trying to educate people in that fashion.

10) What’s next on the horizon for you?

V)Well, I’m in the process, I’m trying to make a movie.  I would like to do a movie off the “Vindictive Wo-Men” book which entails 9 different stories.  I would like to focus the movie of 4 stories out of 9 which are pretty powerful and as a matter of fact are winning in votes.  When I wrote the book of 9 different short stories, I asked my audience  or my readers to email me on the stories they liked out of the 9.  4 out of the 9 and I’m really getting an overwhelming response from all of the stories because they’re all so good  we’re having a problem picking .  We’ve pretty much got the 4 we’re going to use narrowed down. 

10) If someone wants to get in contact with you or buy a book, what do they need to do?

V) Well the best thing to do right about now is to go through Jones and Williams Publications LLC. What that is , is the new publisher I’m with now on these two projects.  And what they could do is if they want to contact me direct and get an autographed copy they can contact me at (248) 200-0618, that’s my office line, they can leave a message and let me know they’d like a copy of the book.  That’s the best way to contact me at this time. 

10) I had your book at my house and I noticed that when females saw it they knew what it was.  The books seem to be really moving.  What’s up with that ?

V)Well, I’ve been dominating Detroit with my book for the last year.  My book came out September 2004, “ The Hottest Summer Ever Know,” the first book that I released and that book has been pretty much dominating the world right now on such a massive scale.  I’ve been in Sister 2 Sister Magazine.  I’ve been on Fox 2 News, WJLB with Chris Kelly, I’ve just been everywhere as far as the marketing and promotions part of it and some of everybody has their hands on it now.  It’s a very popular book.  I’m surprised to say that there are still many that haven’t acquired a copy of the books just yet. So we still have a long way to go.

10) Is there anything else you’d like to say to the public?

V) Yeah, I want to let them know that right now I’m in the process of helping people publish their books.  What it is is that I have a 45 day program that I help them with.  Whether it’s a thought or a dream or passion they’ve always had or wanted to do.  I can help.  I’m just enjoying helping authors that have the goal of putting out a book and have help put out a few books now.  I’m just helping people become entrepreneurs and achieve their dreams and goals of becoming an author and get books on the shelves.  That’s what I do in my spare time. 

10) Thanks for your time