S3 EP106: Terreece Clarke, International Bestselling Romance Author

Hello Happy People,

Today Dianne shares her chat with Terreece M. Clarke. It is impossible to spend time speaking with Terreece  and not come away in a better mood than when you started the conversation. With a ready smile and a kind word for everyone she meets, it is easy to see how her personality plays into her ability to connect so well with her followers. 

Terreece's Courageous Love Series is more proof of her ability to connect with others.  At the time of this writing, her first book in the series, Heartbeat, is sitting at number one and number two on two similar Amazon bestseller lists. While this book was released in 2022, it is still gaining traction in the romance reading community. It  continues to be mentioned on various romance review book sites as being one of the best books on the market today.

​According to several reviews listed on Amazon.com, Heartbeat is a well rounded story that makes the readers laugh out loud, cry, and  delivers engaging, sexy characters who readers love. From Terreece's website,  she is "passionate about representation, amplifying voices that are often muted, championing small businesses, highlighting workers who make a big business great, and taking on society’s tough topics. We have to model the change we want and share the megaphone so everyone is included."

It is obvious from her stellar reviews and her placement on bestseller lists that her readers appreciate her work and her storytelling. Which makes it all the more amazing that she was not always focused on becoming an author. Terreece started out her college career with the intention to be a broadcast journalist, but quickly found out that the stories she wanted to tell were not the ones she would be assigned. She took a leap of faith in herself and changed her career path. Listen now to hear her story.

​Please Note: Some of her books come with trigger warnings. Please visit her website for more information. 

Terreece's Website
Terreece on Facebook
Terreece on Instagram
Terreece on TikTok

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to BookBanter with me, your host, Diane Burkhart. I hope you will join me every Wednesday as we explore all things to do with, well, books. Let's get on with our show today. Hello, my happy people. Today is February 21st, 2024. And wow, I am really just cutting this right down to the wire. I have had so much fun listening to this interview again today that I just kind of get lost and forget that I'm editing and have to go back and go through it again. Because we just had so much fun having this interview, and it's it's seriously long. I'm still have a little bit of editing to do to try and cut it down for time. I'm gonna give you as much of it as I possibly can. I am saving the full interview and will set it back to air as a longer, uncut version between season three and season four. So be sure to mark your calendar for this because once you hear even just the edited down version, you're gonna want to hear the full version because we seriously just had so much fun. But because it is so long, I'm going to quit with all my blather. I will have a little bit more at the end. But for right now, please welcome to Book Banter with Diane Burkhart, Therese M. Clark. So thank you so much for being here. We've already had such a nice conversation off the radio, but now we're gonna come on and do this so that other people can hear. Please tell our listeners who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Well, thank you so much for having me. I am having already a really good time. So everyone has missed the fun so far. They're just gonna have to imagine how much fun we've been having. I am journalist and best-selling author Therese M. Clark, and I write heartfelt love stories about courageous women who are loved without hesitation or reservation.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

And I love one of the things that you say that you're actually very dedicated to including people who are from marginalized groups who rarely get representation in romance books.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I didn't start out trying to be a romance author. I'm a journalist, and that's my background, and it's very kind of fact-based, it's storytelling, but it's based in fact. And while I have always loved the romance genre, I didn't really see that avenue for me. But I started reading, I gotten out of it, gotten back into it. And everything that I read, good, bad, and and and ugly when it comes to the genre, you know, not every book's a good one. I could empathize and I could sympathize and put myself in the character's shoes, but I never saw any representation. And when I did, it was often really one-sided. And unfortunately, a lot of it was stereotypical, right? So I'm African American, and when I would see African-American characters, they were always side characters. They were there simply to move the protagonists along. And like I said, often presented, you know, really stereotypically, right? They always had like rough childhoods that they had to overcome and the rough streets of the ghetto, and they were sassy with big butts, and all of these just wild mischaracterizations that would take me out of the story. I'm like, I'm loving the story, and then you do this, and like I want to throw the book.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Um so there's a character guide somewhere that's like, okay, if you want to have a black plus size best friend, this is what she's like. And people just take that exactly and copy and paste and copy and paste.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Exactly. Exactly. And that character wouldn't have any depth. All the other best friends, you got their backstories, and you got their this, that, and the other. And she, the black character, is literally there to be sassy and girl, you need to do this and tell the truth and be that friend. But other than that, she exists only when she's there to support the main character. I always say she's like that you go girl cheerleader. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Or, you know, when it's time to have hard truths, or if it's on a romantic suspense side or there's some action, she's always, you know, ready and down to fight. Yeah. And I'm like, none of my girlfriends would be simply like, yeah, this is this is a lot, and I'm not equipped for this.

unknown 4:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

This is not my area of expertise. So I cannot imagine my lawyer best friend. So it it got frustrating, and I read one series that I really liked, but it still had a lot of stereotypical representation of both black men and black women. And I remember thinking, gosh, that was a great series, except, accept, except. Yeah. And I went to sleep, and these characters came to me and started talking and having these scenes and dramatic conversations and you know, hot butter sex, and like, what is going on? Okay, like that would be that would be a cool story. I wish somebody would write that, completely ignoring it. But it started happening more often. Same people, I'm in the shower, these characters are talking, woken up out of my sleep, literally by these conversations and scenarios. And I said, Okay, well, let's try something therapeutic. Let's go ahead and get a notebook and just write the words out of my head, right? Stop the voices. And about three months, I had six notebooks full. And I thought, okay, well, maybe we have something here. Like this is not what I do, but maybe maybe we have something. And so that's where it started, and it's been, it was like a fire to a certain extent, because I did sit on the book for about six years. So the passion to tell the story. Yeah, I was finished 2016, 2017. So I had passion for the story, and I had passion for bringing that representation, but I lacked the confidence to really put it out there. Because as you know, with journalism, you get your fair share of critiques or what have you. But as long as you're staying, right? Especially now, um, but as long as you're staying true to the truth of the story and the facts, people can debate whatever, but you've at least given that information, right? And it's kind of remote in a way because it is presenting facts, right? But when you write a you when you go into the creative side of things, these are people and places and scenarios that have come out of your own brain. You know, this it's almost feels like a part of you that you're taking out of yourself and putting in front of the world. And so the idea of that level of insight to me and the ability to, I don't know, critique, not even critique, criticize, I would say. Because critiques can be helpful, but criticize what I might put out there creatively gave me a lot of pause. And so I did a whole lot of, it's not ready, it's not ready, let me poke around and do, you know, just yeah, a lot of stalling.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I I can understand that because with me, it's like I had the same kind of reservations about how is this going to be received? Am I doing a good job of this? Exactly. I kind of did it the other way. What I did was I did a practice book series first and did it under a male pen name. I didn't want to sit it on the shelf. I wanted to do it, but I didn't want anybody to know I was doing it. So that was my my answer. But yeah, it's basically the same feelings that you were going through. We just think about it a different way.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, I hesitated like forever. Um but here's it. So when I look back, I think, gosh, I kind of really miss that golden era of Amazon KU and beginning of book talk, like when it really started moving. But I also realized in that time that I was kind of like waiting. I learned a lot of skills that help me now, like practical skills, because I also have a marketing background. So practical skills with marketing and had taken on some book clients and graphic design and that sort of thing. So that's really helped me in this book era, but also just I think a level of maturity that has allowed me to avoid a lot of pitfalls that authors find themselves in, whether it's severe reaction to negative reviews or there's always the authors behaving badly, where they're going after folks and having just doing naughty things.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

I I like to think that the encounters and some of the even the PR work that I've done for other authors once they've gotten themselves into some situations prepared me for this. So I'm okay where I'm at now.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

You know, and I want to back up a little bit here too, because we were talking earlier before we got on the air, that you and I both have sort of similar backgrounds, only a little switched. You're from journalism, you were planning to go into broadcast, but you ended up going into source chasing kind of journalism. Yes. Where I was planning on doing the source chasing kind of journalism and actually ended up in broadcast. Right. So, what exactly were you doing? I know that a lot of your work was actually noticed by places that people might recognize, like the New York Times and Disney.com and Jezebel.com. But what kind of stories were you chasing?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Funny thing is, is once I got into gumshoe journalism, right? Pounding the pavement, a lot of the places that I was working for locally wanted to pigeonhole me in specific areas. So a lot of crime and the stories that I wanted to tell, and the way that I wanted to tell the stories did not always align with the business model or perspective of those who were in charge of putting my stories out there. So whereas if it is crime and I'm knocking on your door after someone has passed away through gun violence, one that's just it's a gory thing, right? But I'm interested in capturing the entire person that that person was in that storytelling, who they were, what they leave behind, and how they'll be missed, because they're an entire person. Whereas I was more directed to, I would say, uh try to influence me to stick specifically to a basically a set of stereotypes. Yeah. You know, gang banger and poverty and this, that, and the other. And I'm like, but those are labels and again stereotypes. There's a whole other person, there's a family there. And that wasn't well received, and I got tired of beating my head against the wall. So I went freelance. I well, I went to corporate and I thought steady paycheck and no crime or violence. Yeah, this will be easy. The corporate world is horrible. Some people are made for it, ma'am. I am not. Yeah. So I was sitting there very young. I was 20, oh, 22, 23, and thinking to myself, gosh, is this it? Is this what I'm gonna do for like the next 40, 50 years and then retire and I'm I'm becoming bitter and like irritated with people. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, and my husband was like, you know, well, no, the irritated and bitter people that you're encountering, they have been doing this for 40 years, right? Yeah, you have the option to pivot still. So I was plus modeling at the time and friends with someone who ran a really well-respected website, and she asked me to write a column. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I went to school for journalism, we can do this. And wrote, she paid me, and I was like, ooh, hold on. So I literally ran to the bookstore and got freelance writing for was it for dummies or for idiots? It was the four idiots one, and sat there in the bookstore with you know, a little coffee, read through it because I didn't have enough money to even buy it. And was like, okay, I can do this. So I started to pursue the stories that I really wanted to talk about. So that focused on, you know, women, children, um a lot on the medical side and uh kind of encountering um or discovering and peeling back the layers of like racial bias and medicine, tech. So any place where looking back, I realized now any place where marginalized voices weren't being told and heard and elevated, I was attracted to those stories. No matter the field, that's who I was pursuing, and then making sure that I could be a megaphone for them.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Now, how do you make the transition from that to romance author?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Literally, the voices wouldn't shut up. They just would not stop. It just became so much fun. It was so much fun and that have vacillated over my career from I've always freelanced. That's never it, you know, stopped. Yeah. But I'll go back into corporate and freelance on the side. I'll leave corporate and pick up some clients and kind of do PR work or marketing work, still freelancing on the side. And when I started writing Heartbeat, I was in a period where I could not get hired anywhere and I could not get a client to save my life. It was during an economic downturn. It was it was strange because I had never gotten to that point before. So I had plenty of time and little ones. So once they went to bed at night, this is what I was doing. And I just had so much fun. It was such an outlet, you know, and I was really pleased at how it was turning out. And even though I sat on it all that time and still going back and forth, you know, trying to be practical, like, you know, putting out a book that's such a risky endeavor, you know, you always hear that, right? It's in restaurants and books, risky endeavors. And I have my husband and three babies. We need to make sure we have something steady. So as I kind of grappled with, am I gonna do this? I would read the book. I started reading it when I was in a reading slump. I would go back to the book. And so I had written the story as um, I want to say it was either Alice Walker or Tony Sin, Tony Morrison. I think it was Tony Morrison, who said, Write the story that you want to read. Yeah. I had written the story that I wanted to read. And when I finally started letting people peek at it, I didn't know it at the time because I hadn't done any research on actually publishing a book, I was having beta readers basically. So I would slide it to friends and people who I knew would be honest, even my brother-in-law. And he was like, I don't do romance, but you wrote it, and you're my sister, so I'm gonna that's nice. And I was like, okay. And I was like, he's never gonna read it. He actually read it, and all the feedback I was getting is was really, really good, you know, and constructive and hits and misses and and things that I hadn't seen. And I just had so much fun with the process. So fast forward, my husband got really, really ill. He has end-stage renal disease.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

And was hospitalized. Fellas, there are any guys listening, please get your blood work, go to the doctor regularly, which he did, but also get your blood work done so they can see changes in things. And make sure if they want to give you blood pressure medicine, just take the medicine. Yeah, yeah, you can work it out with diet and exercise. But while you're doing that, yeah, take the medicine. The alternative sucks. Hugely, hugely sucks. That's my little PSA. Um, but he was hospitalized for close for two close to two weeks, and it was very serious. And while they were, you know, very positive and upbeat with him, they were giving me that look, right? Yeah. So your world shifts because my husband was only 46 at the time. Oh wow. Very young. And your world and your worldview, and I think my understanding, because I have an issue with time anyway. I'm never on time. I'm always, you know. Me too. You know, when I and then when I'm into something, time passes, the sun will go down and come back up, and I'm still, you know, like into what I'm doing. Yes. So my concept of time shifted, and I realized, among many things, the shit you need to, oh, I score. The stuff you need to get together. Things you need to get together and stop playing around with, and you know, important things and documentation and all that other stuff, but also just like the overview of what the time you think you have, and you hear, yeah, nothing's guaranteed, yada yada yada. But you know, you're young and you're that doesn't apply to me. Well, looky lucky it does. So yeah. I was sitting there, we both were working for the same company, and he was home, he was laying on the couch, so he could still be around like the kids and everything in like a central space.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

As he recovered, and it was late at night, I could not sleep again, still. And I was thinking, what am I doing? Because I'm I'm up late, so I'm like, well, let me get some work done. And I'm filling out spreadsheets. I'm filling out spreadsheets. Like, is this what I w how did I get here? Like, my husband is lying here after this really traumatic thing, and I'm filling out spreadsheets. This is dumb. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And my book just kept coming back up. And I at that point I just started releasing chapters on Kendall Vela. Oh, yeah. Again, tiptoeing and testing the waters, you know, like how many times you're gonna tiptoe, how many times you're gonna test? Just do it. Stop being so timid, just jump. And I thought, okay, well, screw it. We're gonna finish releasing it on Vela, get that feedback, and that is enough. You have done enough testing. Put the dang book out because it is not guaranteed, and spreadsheets is not what you want to do for the rest of your life. And freelancing, it has this ebbs and flow. So that was the catalyst. And funny enough, I actually got downsized in May. I was putting the book out in June. I had planned on staying just long enough to get my bonus. Yeah. But you know how corporate is. Somehow it was time to do it right before the bonuses. Of course. Of course. So I was like, okay, well, whatever. I don't care. It was over Zoom. It was literally like three minutes. And as irritating as that was, the first thing I thought was, thank God. Yeah. Oh wow. That's telling. It is very telling. You have a sick husband, you have three children, and you just got your position just got eliminated. And the first thing that you think is, Thank God. Yeah. Like, dude. And I was like, Great, now I have more time to write. Yeah, exactly. That should be right there where your heart was. Exactly. Since he had gotten sick, I would be at work thinking, this is not what I want to do. And what I really want to be doing is writing. I've got this idea. I want to so I would have to, you know, stop what I was doing, jot the little idea down on a post-it, and then go back to putting numbers in a spreadsheet and sending out emails and all the things of the position.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

How long after you put out that first book did you get your first bestseller?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

So it was that book. It was Heartbeat. And Heartbeat was released in June. And I wanna say was it late August, early September? We got the little orange flag. And it was it was amazing. How did you find out that you had it? I was obsessively checking. Wake up, roll over, check to see. Wake up, roll over, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

So what did you do when you saw it?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I believe I I sat there in shock for for a good like 30 seconds, just like blinking and refreshing. Just making sure you saw what you thought you were wrong. Exactly. Like, am I hallucinating? It is early in the morning. And then, you know, I'm pretty expressive and loud for my family. I come from a loud family where everyone talks over top of each other. Yeah. Um, and you follow the conversations. It scares new people. Um, so I like woo-hooed and you know, ran around the house and I'm goofy and I'm always doing stuff like that. So kind of nobody really moved or bleak because, you know, oh, it's just mom being mom. It's too. Tuesday, she's running around the house. I told my husband, and we, you know, like giggled and geeked out or whatever. And I said, Ha, suck it to the company that just left.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

That was perfect.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Which was so childish. And I just, you know, I I reminded myself, just take it in. Take it in. Because my brain a lot of times shifts from one go to the next. Okay, that was awesome. Great. Now, what about X? You know, I I made myself stop and kind of inhale that moment. And then I I wanted to say within maybe two days, I started saying, okay, now what do we do right? And you know, what could we have done better? And let's document this. Let's let's get the stats on this. So a little marketing hat was going, right? And that was all I was on TikTok, but I wasn't on TikTok like I am now. And my kids are like, you gotta get on TikTok, mom. People are on TikTok with books. I'm like, yeah, probably dancing. I'm good. You know, I've done random people's social media. I'm kind of social media out. I'm just gonna hang with the four little things that I use. We're good. And it's to this day, I'm like, kids, you were right. You were right. So they really enjoy that. But yeah, it was the first book.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Now, Heartbeat is not the only book that you've had go number one.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

No, so the first book ever was Olivia's Potty Adventures, and that was 16 weeks as a number one new release, and then about 32 weeks, number one in this category, would like go back and forth between one and two towards the end there. And so that was about uh, I want to say 20. I'm getting my dates mixed up, but that was a little bit before I started writing Heartbeat. And I planned and still plan on doing. I'm actually working on the second book now after all this time. But a series, again, it was voices and people that I didn't see. So when my kids were young and we were going through potty training, you know, my husband and I are big dorks. We get the books for adults and read how to do this well and you know, positive and encourage children and all, you know, we need instructions. No one gives you instructions, yeah. And then we buy the books for the kids, so you can see people and children pottying. Well, there was nothing again at the time for kids of color, really. It was licensed characters and it was animals, and then blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies. Yeah, and I was like, somebody should do something about that. That was in passing, and I kept on going and had two more babies, and nothing had changed. I'm like, okay, this is stupid. Why isn't this changing? And then my husband, you know, he just like walks by and drops these nuggets of wisdom and then keeps on moving like he didn't just change your whole life, right? So he just bobbed on by. He was like, Well, why don't you write it? Do, do, do, do, and just wander. And you know, the first thing I said, well, I can't. Well, why can't I? Well, what if I did? And you know, just that note of encouragement was enough to kind of get that moving. So this was before the romance set popped off, and really even a thought in my brain. I was like, okay, well, I'll freelance and I'll do children's books. So again, when the idea for the romance novel came up, I'm like, but no, I'm a journalist and I write children's books. This is this is what I do. What are you doing, brain? We've decided this is what we're doing. Why are you changing the plan? So, and then you know, the other thing we hear all the time, right? Is that whole jack of all trades and don't try to do so many different things and you need to be focused in order to be successful. And the weird thing is that we believe it. But when I look back over my career, I did a multitude of things, but they all had a central focus, and they were all differently creative pursuits, and they were all differently successful. I mean, they were successful in that realm, but I fully embrace and acknowledge and am okay with the idea that I don't have to do something for forever, and it's not a failure when I stop.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Now, did you ever take any creative writing classes when you were in college? Or was it just journalism?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

It was just journalism. I took women's studies, so you know, there was a lot of novel reading there. I fell in love with Sandra DeCernos, House on Mango Street, and her storytelling, and how even though she had a Latin background, it was so similar to how I grew up and the lessons and and all of that. And I was like, gee, I would love to write something like that one day. You know, just like a kind of an aside. So it's always kind of been there. I just had to give myself permission for it, and give myself permission where I didn't necessarily see others doing it. Now, I'm not saying I'm the first one to do this, because I by no means Beverly Johnson and Brenda Jackson, and I mean, there's a ton of folks. Kennedy Ryan was, you know, writing well before me. And there's a ton of indie authors. It's just so we're out there, but I think on the mainstream space, it's not really pushed. But I've always looking back, I understand, I've always wrote creatively. Like in second grade, I wrote plays, and the nuns let me put them on for school. Nice. It was supportive, but also I'm writing about kidnapping. I've always been dramatic, I think.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

That's so funny. I'm trying to picture that, it's not working.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Oh, yes. It was car chases through the classroom and the coat room. It it was it was interesting, but they were supportive of it, and all I did was ask. And I credit that again with the ability to kind of see it and seek it out without even if you don't understand what it is that you're doing at the time.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

You know.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Well, I think you're ahead of the game just by the fact that you had the courage to ask. Most people wouldn't ask.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

That's true. That's true. And now, I mean, I I I've worked really hard with that. You know, I think as women, we really get into our head and in the opinions of others, start to take precedence over what we want when we if we allow it. So I run myself through a bunch of questions when opportunities present themselves or I have an idea for something and I reject it. Well, why? Why do I think I can't do this? List those barriers. And if those barriers are BS, I mean, it's plain as day to me. You know, are you just afraid, or is there an actual barrier? And then if there is, well, then you can figure out steps to overcome that. Yeah. Um so yeah, it's been um, it's been a fantastic journey so far. And I I am just I'm so blessed and so privileged to be able to do it. And I try to remind myself of that every day, especially if numbers are down on a particular day. I'm like, ooh, it's down, and then I'll be scrolling through book talk, and there's an author like, I made two suits today. And I'm like, ooh, yeah, okay, shut up, Therese. You're doing all right. You are doing okay. Stop discounting what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

How many books do you have out in your a courageous love series?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

We are at three now, and number four is coming out in May, May 1st. Oh, nice. So, yes. And then number five, which will be the final full-length book, is due for September, but I'm hoping we can get it a little bit earlier than that.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

I may have to be reminding my husband that my birthday is in September when your book comes out.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think I'm I have two novellas that have been dancing around in my head that I think will kind of space out in between those two.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Those are always nice to put out between like full-length novels, gives people like a little something to keep them going in the series.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Yes, not time-consuming. Right, exactly, exactly. And you know, some stories are just snippet stories, they're not a full-length novel. One of the novellas that I'm working on is with a character from the first. Well, he you see him throughout all of the books, but he's from the first book, and he's definitely a side character, but people are like in love with this man, and they want to know about him and his wife because there's snippets of some drama that happened with them that you find out. And I'm like, Well, he doesn't really speak a lot. Like, he literally, like when he said more than three words, our protagonist noticed, like, oh, he said a whole sentence. He's a very quiet guy. And I'm like, how can I write a book with someone who doesn't speak?

SPEAKER_01 31:05

See, but that's a great character to spend on a novella because whenever you have those side characters that people really love, you can give them a little novella about that, and it gives them a fuller picture of him, but then they get to say a side character in your main series.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Exactly. And so, like one day, I get all my best ideas in the shower. So one day I'm in the shower and that pops up in my head, and I'm like, how can you write a story with a man who doesn't really speak? And basically, he wrote letters to his wife. Oh, nice. That's how, and then he also shared the reason why he doesn't speak very much. And I'm like, Oh, that's breaking. They're gonna look like that. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Now, do you have a waterproof board in your shower to write notes on?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

No, and I need to get one.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

I need to get one because they have those.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

And at a minimum, the crayons, like bathtub crayons that my kids used to have. I need something. Yes. This is what usually happens is I get out of the shower and instead of moisturizing and going through my ritual, I can run, you know, straight to something where I can write it down. Yeah. And then I'm like, well, I'm in it now. And I see, you know, I'm dry haired, you know, my hair's dry and just crazy, and uh, my skin is dry. So I'm like, well, maybe I should get back in the shower. I might get another idea. So yes, I need one of those whiteboards.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah, they have like the waterproof boards for the shower.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

They actually have those. And something about the water, or maybe it's I don't know, just you're in a moment where you don't have any distractions. You know, you don't have your phone in there or anything like that, and your mind is kind of allowed to roam. But yeah, best ideas in my shower.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Okay, I'm kind of curious as to whether or not it's like the sound of the falling water.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I bet. I mean, it's great for meditation.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Yeah, it is such a relaxing sound. It's like we use water sounds to go to sleep too, because it is so relaxing. It's like, I kind of wonder if you had like a little water feature in your office where you write, if it would actually help with you coming up with ideas there. Look at you. It would be really interesting to test that out.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

I'm seriously gonna do that. And that way I'm not held to once, twice a day. Like Yeah. It would be really interesting if that how that affected you. Huh. See, now you're sending me to the webs. I'm telling me doing that.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Time to be ordering things.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I just wrote it down like, go get a waterfall and a dry erase board for the shower.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Both of those are helpful. So tell us what your writing process is like.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

For example, I don't write linearly, meaning I don't write once upon a time, and here's the middle. Yeah. And you know, and now we're at the end. I don't write that way. If I had to write that way, I probably wouldn't write again.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

What I do is I have an idea of the story and I kind of go through my head. Now, if I could get the movie that plays in my head to just download, I'd write a book a week. I write a book a week. So what happens is I go through the whole scenario, or at least enough of it where I feel like, okay, ooh, yeah, that would be good. And then this would happen. A lot of times I talk it out to my husband, David. Yeah. And then I jot all the scenes that I'm seeing at that point, or whenever I see new scenes, I jot it all down on post-its. I stick them up on the window in front of my desk. And when it's time for me, when I sit down to write, I look to see what has my interest. What am I excited to get into? And that's the scene that I write. And so I don't worry about this scene is at the end of the book. For heartbeat, I actually wrote the ending before I wrote anything else. And so I do that every day. I look and see, well, you know, what am I interested in? Well, what can I see? Well, okay, I have a song that reminds me of that. So let me play that song, and then I start to, you know, really kind of flesh it out in my brain. And that's what I write. And then at the end, once I've gotten all of the scenes, and maybe this is why it takes me a little longer to put out a book, but once I've gotten all the scenes, then I start moving them around to see how they fit and how they flow. And then I read through and then I see where, okay, I need a bit of a transition here, or we need to kind of tweak that there. And it's like a puzzle until it flows the way that feels good. And then, you know, we go through the editing process and all that other stuff. But if I had to sit down and like write in order, I wouldn't do it. Trying to make yourself write something when you're not in the mood to write it for me just does not work.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

And then, you know, you're staring at that blank screen with the blinking cursor for hours.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Do you think more authors today are trying to get away from all the traditional ways of producing books, not just in publishing, but in writing as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:59

We get on a new thing and we say, well, the old way of doing things is the terrible way of doing things. We don't do that anymore, as opposed to this is an another tool. So, like oral history and oral traditions are, and especially when oral history, specifically history itself, not just storytelling, but history itself is passed down, is often discounted because it's not written down. And so I think that kind of elitist mentality got in early with writing and novel writing, and it's it still persists because it's passed down. A story has to have this and it must be structured this way. And you talk about here in the States, the great American novelist, and you know what idea does that conjure up for you? For me, and it's always conjured up middle-aged white men. Yes. And it's like, are they really the only ones who can tell the great American story when you look at all of America?

SPEAKER_01 36:53

So you think of like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman and Hemingway.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Exactly. These stories where they are taking stock of themselves and their world, and this is the standard. Well, it's only the standard because you've decided that it is.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

So I, you know, even myself, I had to try to start training myself. Like when I think of the great American novelist, who am I thinking of now? I'm thinking of Alice Walker and the color purple and Tony Morrison and the bluest eye and these stories of America. Yeah. That not only are brilliantly put together stories, but capture true people as they lived, as they are in their culture and in their embodiment of Americanism with a wonderful combination of their humanity and quote unquote human condition that we can all understand and get behind. If I can, you know, in high school read about Holden and them, you know, and understand what it is that they're trying to say and their emotions and what they're going through and visualize that. You can do the same with my folks. It's not that hard. Yeah. There is it's humanity. And we all have some basic similarities. And then we have our differences that allow us, I think, to be more empathetic to people who are not like us. And you can sit in a place where you're comfortable, you're at home, you're in your car, you're wherever, right? Sometimes we think you got to have that direct confrontation and you have to, you know, just go into that community and sit and breathe and live. Not everybody's gonna be able to do that. And that's why we have books, right? That's why we have, you know, media and entertainment. You can go anywhere in the world and outside of the world, and you can be anything. And so I never understood, specifically with romance, and specifically with some romance readers who square up and down, they just can't identify. They just can't identify.

unknown 38:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

I'm like, what can't you identify with? They fall in love, they have hot sex, something happens, they either break up, whatever, whatever it is, whatever genre. And it's always a guaranteed happily ever after the end. What part of that don't you identify with? Yeah, I I don't understand that. It it always confuses me. It's even the downplaying of urban fiction, but the elevation of mafia stories. It's literally the same thing. Yeah. Different colored people. Yeah. That's it. And when you say that to people, they like pause. Like they're confused, like, oh wait a minute, what? It's the exact same thing. It's the same crime, it's the same drama, it's the same. He's the big head guy, everyone's afraid of him, but just collapses for her. Same thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Different colored people. If I made them blue, you would still you would be interested. You know what I mean? It would just be monster mafia.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Okay, I dare you to write that one. Monster Mafia with blue characters.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

I think I just started something.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

It was a little light bulb in the back of my brain went, Oh, wait a minute. Yes, those are human like a regular guy who's green with stripes. And but it's always the same points of tropes.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Yes, it's usually the difference between the alien and they're always humanoid.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Um, for the most part. Sometimes you get a little tentacle, you know, situation. But it's usually the difference between their size, they're always usually huge, yeah, and their equipment that they're working with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

They may have more than one.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And you can explore so many different issues. And again, it's in that safe space where you know at the end there's going to be a happily ever after. Yeah. The question is just how they're going to get there. So, yeah, I think as downplayed as romance is, which is always hilarious to me, considering is the genre keeping the publishing industry afloat. Oh, yeah. As downplayed as it is, it's remarkable in the ways that the people who read romance can explore and heal and like I said, give themselves permission to try do be more. You know what I mean? And then also just empathize and sympathize and explore. It's an amazing thing. But books are amazing. And if they weren't so powerful, people wouldn't be trying to ban them here. Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Okay, so now this is the point of the show where we like to do five quick questions that never turn out to be quick, but we will not give up. Are you ready? I am ready. The question one Knowing that you have been a plus size model, and I have seen the advertisement for Elaine Bryant. Very nice. Thank you. Has anyone ever recognized you on the street for either your modeling or for being an author?

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Mmm. On street for being an author. Yes. On the street for being an author. For being a model, not usually. It's kind of a they get a look like do I know? I feel like I know you. Where do I know you from? Yeah. Like you probably passed that big billboard over there.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

I okay. I have to say this though. Whenever I saw um a podcast interview that you did where they actually use video, you have got this incredible electric smile. I think people would only have to see you smile. They'd be like, oh, I remember seeing you. Because your smile is just dynamic. Oh, thank you so much. It actually makes me a little sad that we don't do video so that people can see you smiling and laughing. Because I swear it would just be captivating.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

I'm not sad because I did not have to get myself together.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

So I have that that is the bonus about doing it without video. Okay. Question two. I know that you like to volunteer at your kids' school. What do you usually do as a volunteer there?

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Um, usually nothing that has to do with anything I do in my professional life. So I don't do marketing, I don't do emails, I don't do any of that sort of thing. Um, it's usually kind of like if I can interact with the kids and and do fun stuff, is that's great. So for my son, they have uh rotating volunteers come in and help in the in the cafeteria. And my son goes to all boys' school. So it is quite hilarious to feed like 500 boys in two shifts. And the older boys are calm and collected, and then you know, they're doing their thing. And the freshmen and sophomores, you hear them coming because they're running. And it's slightly terrifying. And they're the poor things are always starved.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

And I was gonna say, I don't think we want to get between 13-year-old boys and food.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

No, so there's you know, it's the whole like the assembling line buffet type situation, and we're just we're just putting food in the containers and putting them up on top. Just that's what we do. And there is nothing left at the end. It looks like locus warm came through, but it they're so sweet, and they're so it's just it's hilarious. And then with my daughter's school, we've done things like beef form parents, which is like room parent, and we're in charge of kind of like doing some activities with the girls and getting parents together so you kind of get to know each other and kind of thing. So again, more like person-to-person interaction, which I don't get a lot since I work from home. Yeah. Anything that has nothing to do with what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Well, that was like you're getting a break from your normal stuff and doing something that feeds your creativity for the other.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

It does. And I didn't think it would. I just thought, you know, it's just helping out at the schools and, you know, making sure that you're in the know and what's going on and people see you. You know, I'm a firm believer in making sure, because my children go to predominantly white schools, you need to see me. You need to see me, you need to see my husband, you need to know that we're involved. And I feel like that adds a layer of protection to my kids, you know. So if there is an incident or if there is a problem, you're thinking about who we are as a family versus your personal biases. Right. And so we've always been, you know, really active, even when I don't want to be. Yeah. I'd rather be at home in my leggings. But um, yeah, it's giving me as much as I've given, if not more, because I do come back energized and like, I don't know, I think the energy that the kids give off is is transferable and kind of like invigorates you for the rest of the day. So I'm usually like, you know, really, really productive post that and definitely in in higher spirits.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah. Whenever I was living in the United States, I was often a reading tutor at a local grade school. And oh my God, just that interaction with kids all day long was so much fun. And it was just like you said, it was energizing. It's like they just gave me all of this energy from how excited they were to be learning how to read better. They were so happy when they made accomplishments and it just like fed me.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Right. When they make that light bulb connection, yes, and and they get so proud, and you're just like, Oh, if I could bottle that.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Yes. Yes, and your heart just melts. It's like, oh, so good. So now, question three. Whenever you're writing and you're deep in your story, do you need it to be quiet or do you need noise?

SPEAKER_00 46:52

It depends. I am pretty good at tuning stuff out. Repetitive sounds make their way through like my little barrier and can be like, but it really depends. When I am writing, I tend to listen to music. It depends on the scene. So some scenes require absolutely no words. Like I can't hear any other words. I gotta hear the words that are happening in my head for that particular scene. And then other scenes I'm I'm able to kind of block out, I think it's the type of music, more upbeat, like hip-hop, because of the way the rhymes flow and and that sort of thing. I think that interferes with my own. Yeah. And probably it's just because I just want to sing along and dance. But I use music a lot throughout my books. I have an entire playlist for each book. Um, it's usually chapter by chapter, has like a song that kind of sets the tone for particular scenes, and I have that innoted, you know, within the book. That's cool. But when people do that, it is, it's a pain in the butt formatting wise. Yeah, but it's so cool as a reader. Right, I know, but and then I since I did it with heartbeat, I'm committed to doing it for the all five books and the novella. So I'm like, ah, you know. Um, but I the feedback I get, people really enjoy it, so you you do it, but it's a pain in the butt. Yeah. I wanted to give people everything in that first book, not really thinking about any subsequent books. Yeah. So now that we're in the following books, I'm like, okay, well, I know next time. So it depends is my final answer.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Okay, question four. What is your favorite book or author from when you were a teenager?

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Oh, so you went you went sneaky there. Not as a kid, but as a teenager. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Oh, goodness. Gosh. For me, the book that has stuck with me the most was one that I read when I was about 16. And so I was just kind of wondering if there was one about that age for you, too.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Hmm. Teenage, I'm thinking in high school, one of the books that stood out, which I I want to say is probably I didn't well, I don't know the age group on this book, but um, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Oh, yeah. Out of all of the required reading, that book really just hit home. And that's again, that's the power of books, right? As I was able to read, love, and understand these kids growing up in this time before mine, yeah. Um, in Brooklyn. I had never been to New York. Um, you know what I mean? But it it really left an impression on me. And then if I'm cheating and going to older teens, which pushed me in college, it would be Mama Day. Oh gosh, I just forgot who that was by. But I go back and read it regularly. But it's a really cool book about a Gulla Geechee community, which is a traditional African-American community on the islands kind of off of South Carolina that has retained much of and developed, obviously, their own traditions and languages and practices, but they were able to retain a lot of things that they brought from Africa. There were a lot of plantations on those islands at the time. And then when Civil War and all that happened, because they were their own community, they were largely unaffected by like a lot of the Jim Crow South things because they're they were isolated, it was an island. There was literally no bridges to them or anything. That didn't pop up until like the 60s or 70s. Wow. Um, and now they've been dealing with a lot of like gentrification issues and land pirating. But anyway, Mama Day takes place there, and it's just uh wonderful story and that dialect and Gloria Naylor. Gloria Naylor wrote Mama Day, um, and it's just a phenomenal story, and people always talk, oh, it's so hard to read because of the dialect. But it takes like maybe two chapters, three chapters for you to really, and then you're in it.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

And if people can read Shakespeare, they can read that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Exactly. Yeah. And Gloria Naylor is just a phenomenal. Oh my gosh. Her stories are so layered and rich, and the descriptions, oh, I mean, you're you feel like you're right there. She did um Women of Brewster's Plays, too, which is another phenomenal book. Okay, that one I've heard of. I haven't heard it did Mama Day. And I think they're all somewhat connected, like they all have like a little thread or a character that crosses over from one to the other, but they're definitely standalone books. But she had for the Women of Brewster's place, they ended up doing a TV movie with that. It was like a mini-series, and it was such a big deal because it was first of all a female-driven story, right? Yeah, and it followed the lives of like three or four women, and it was black female-driven story, and it had Oprah, and then had Jack Kay from like 227, which was huge at the time, and Lynn Whitfield, who was just gorgeous. And and you saw all of these different types of black women in one story, and you got to follow their lives and how they were interconnected and how they were separate within this, you know, small community. So you got a lot of different themes, and it was, like I said, a huge deal at the time. One, because it was a cool miniseries, right? And that was back when everybody watched TV all at the same time. And it was showing us in the way that we knew us, which is you know, varied and from a variety of experiences and socioeconomic levels. And it was just, it is a phenomenal miniseries and it is a phenomenal book. So both of those I I wholeheartedly recommend. And those count because they were team ones.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Question five: Do you have any hidden talent that does no good for your writing? Um, let's see. Hidden talent? It's like for me, I can whistle really loud. When I was a kid, we lived on a ranch and our house was at one end of 10 acres, and the barn was at the other end of 10 acres. So we had to learn how to whistle really loud to get people's attention at the other end.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Oh wow, that is but that is an awesome skill. I can't whistle to save my butt. I can I can only whistle if I inhale. That's how bad that's um hen talents. Let's see. I am double jointed in my arms and two in my two index fingers. That has absolutely no help for anything important. But you can like bend in crazy ways. I can bend in crazy ways. Like my arm, when I have my palm down on the table, it can turn almost all the way around. Yeah, it's really weird.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Yeah, yeah, it's it's completely weird, has like no function that I've come across yet.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Umwhere in evolution, there has to have been a reason for that because so many people have it.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

But as far as writing goes, no help whatsoever. So now let's remind everybody again the first book in your courageous love series is Heartbeat. And give us a synopsis of that.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

Oh, this is my baby. So Heartbeat tells the story of Maya, who's an architect on the run. She is a woman who she's worked really hard to get where she is, and everything in her life is in place and going well. She's got a great job, great friends, a great life until someone tries to kill her. And so, realizing that she's no match for the person that's after her, she drops everything and takes off. She lands in a small, out-of-the-way Colorado mountain town where she thinks she can lay low, and she's sworn off three things. So she's got a new name, a new place, and no men. And she keeps that vow until she runs into the detective of that town who is returning back home to kind of settle some debts that he didn't create from his horrible family. So he's in this town where he's not really wanted. She's in this town trying to keep a low profile. And both of them, the last thing they need is love, yet they find each other. So it's awesome and suspenseful and full of gooey gooey romance and some hot buttle loving, as I like to say. I love that. And lots of plot twists. So I grew up on watching soap operas. So that's any indication. Now, where can people find you and your books? My books are everywhere. Anywhere good books are sold. You can if they're not in person, you can always order them. That's the physical books, the paperbacks. The ebooks are Amazon exclusive right now. I'm in contract with them. And if you're in a Kindle Unlimited country, it is in Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it free with your subscription. Best place to find me is on TikTok. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. Or you can just come hang out with me at my website and shoot me a message, which is my name, TereseClark.com, and my handles on all my social medias at Therese.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

And we're going to have all of the information with live links to your social media so people can just click and go and find you and your books very easily. And you are in our book banter magazine for the February-March issue, where we have our other Love Fest authors that will be available at Burkhartbooks.com. Yay! Thank you so much for doing this with me today. You are so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

That bit on the other side with some really just dead interviews. And you're like, come on, man, give me something.

SPEAKER_01 56:58

Oh, yeah, this is too fun.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

This has been great. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been really, really fun.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

So there you have it, folks. My interview with Therese M. Clark. Now here we are almost at an hour already. And if you can imagine, I probably cut about a good 25-30 minutes out of this interview. I swear we just, whenever we started talking, we could not stop. It was so much fun. Be sure to go check out BookBanter magazine issue for February and March and find out more about Therese M. Clark and her books. There are also live links so that you can go buy a copy for yourself. If you check in the description of today's podcast, you'll find her links to her social media so that you can find out more about her, because she is worth checking out. Now, as far as things going on for Burkhart Books, I am still working on free bad haircut with each craniotomy, my medical memoir. We are definitely looking at an October publication date to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my final brain surgery. So be sure to keep checking back to my social media at Burkhartbooks.com and listening to the podcast, of course, so that you can find out more as this book gets closer to publication. And if you haven't already done it, please go follow me at Facebook. You can follow me at DianeBurkhart.author. You can also find me all over social media at BurkhartBooks. So since we've already gone so long for today, I'm just going to give you one more bit of information to please, please go check out our GoFundMe page. You can find a link to it in the description of this podcast at the bottom. We are still raising money to help get Ashley, who is a single mother with two young daughters, were working to get them a new roof for their house. They have been dealing with this issue since 2018 when a hurricane came through Florida and practically destroyed their home. And then, unfortunately, the contractor that they hired made it worse. She has been battling with lawyers and trying to get help through social programs, and she is still dealing with this problem since 2018. If we can get this family a new roof, they can be back on their way to getting their lives back. You can find a video about this on my website, BurkhartBooks.com. You can also find it on our TikTok page at BurkhartBooks. If everyone who had seen my video on TikTok had just donated $5 to the fundraiser, we could have bought this family two new roofs. It doesn't take much when we have many people coming together. Please check this out. Donate just five dollars. That's less than a good coffee at Starbucks. But that five dollars could change this family's life and help this single mother who has no other help to get a new roof on this house, get it all back in healthy living condition for her daughters. If you have children, imagine that they have lived in a house since 2018 that you constantly have to be ripping out the sheetrock inside the house and taking out the insulation because the roof keeps leaking in every single time it rains and it starts growing mold in the ceiling and in the walls, and they all have to be removed and replaced. And that she's been able to keep up with. She's been able to afford to keep ripping this out and putting a new sheetrock because sheetrock isn't as expensive as a new roof. But the thing is, if we can get them a new roof, she can stop doing this and start putting money back for their programs, for their after school things, for the sports they want to play, the music they want to learn, the clubs they want to join, the college that they may want to go to one day. Instead, all of her money is going to pay her utility bills because every time she has to rip out all of the insulation in the walls and the ceiling, their utility bills go through the roof. Their house is freezing in winter and boiling hot in summer because they can't keep the air conditioning going constantly to keep it cool. There's no insulation in inside walls to help keep the cold air in. It just goes right outside of the house every time. And it's the same thing with the heat in the winter. Please check out our GoFundMe page and help us help this family. They deserve it. So that's it for today, folks. I hope you all go forth and have an absolutely fantastic Wednesday because I think you all deserve it too.