Author Interview - Diamond Life Series

How did you come up with the concept for the Diamond Life Series?

Like so many novels, this series began as a short story for a fiction writing class that was actually quite autobiographical in nature. I was writing about an altercation that I was having with my boyfriend on the night of my prom. While my boyfriend from high school wasn’t exactly a thug, he had a lot of thuggish tendencies, and along with that came a mildly abusive demeanor. But I was no Lacey. Being such a strong personality myself, my boyfriend and I used to butt heads like to warring rams. Neither he, nor I was willing to yield on anything. Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last. But since I was supposed to be writing fiction, I asked the question, “What If?”

Every fiction story begins with that question. And so I asked myself, what if, instead of being a mildly abusive thuggish kind of guy, my boyfriend had been an all out, drug-dealing, gun-toting, pimp-slapping kind of thug? And what if, instead of being the extremely strong willed and fiercely independent young woman that I was, I was a more mild-mannered, quiet and submissive kind of girl? What would happen if those two people were in a relationship? That was how I came up with Michael and Lacey. What shocked me is that when I rewrote the story and work shopped it in my class, so many young women (ages eighteen to twenty-five) told me that they could really relate to the character Lacey Lane and all felt like they had been in similar situations with their significant others. It was shocking to me that so many young women could identify with Lacey and could see themselves in- what was clearly to me- an unhealthy and abusive relationship! I was shocked that they could not identify Michael for what he was, a cold and calculated abuser, and that they all sought advice on how to deal with an abusive partner. Those young women were so engaged with the character Lacey that they encouraged me to write an entire novel about her. They all were anxious to know what would ultimately happen to Lacey and Michael. It is because of those young women that I pursued the development of this first novel, and then once I began writing the novel I quickly realized that I would need to do a series to fully explore the severity of domestic violence and its affect on families.

Why are there two names for the series and how is the Forbes Family Series different from the Diamond Life series?

The two series are basically the same and the only difference is semantics. The Forbes family series is basically a PG rated version of the Diamond Life series. It doesn’t contain as much profanity, the sex scenes are less explicit and the violence is glossed over more quickly. You might be wondering why I would write a book, with drugs, violence, gratuitous sex and what some would consider excessive amounts of profanity and offensive language. I wrote the Diamond Life series this way because I wanted it to be real. When you’re growing up in the hood, hanging out with drug dealers and local thugs, you are exposed to a lot of violence, vulgar language, and even explicit sexual activity. I grew up in inner city Cleveland, during the eighties when crack cocaine hit and the thug types basically went wild. I heard a lot of things and saw a lot of things that a good Christian girl like myself was never supposed to see. I was raised in a very strict Christian family, and despite the fact that there was a lot of violence and profanity, occurring inside of my home, I was raised with the idea that that type of behavior and that type of language was much better avoided. But probably because of the insanity of my home. I found the grittiness, the vulgarity, the realness of everything going down in the hood, mildly fascinating. I knew one day I’d write about it; and so I have.

The dialogue that comes out of the mouths of my Diamond Life characters is very real. The things that they say, they’ve been said before. They speak in a way that is very familiar to me, and only mildly offensive, because I grew up listening to these kinds of dialogues. However, if you did not grow up in inner city Cleveland (during the eighties when crack cocaine hit), you might find the language these characters use extremely offensive; and so the purpose of the Forbes family series is to make these characters more palatable to a wider audience.

Is the character Lacey Lane based on anyone that you know?

No not really. As I explained before, Lacey was basically created when I asked myself “what if?” But after I created that character, I realized that she seems to speak to a lot of people. Many real people feel like they can relate to the plight of Lacey Lane. In some, ways Lacey reminds me of my mother, in that Lacey, like my mother, got involved with a very dangerous and extreme personality and was just completely overpowered by him. She didn’t know what to do in her relationship with Michael. In the same way, my mother had no idea what to do about my crazy father. As this series shows, the costs for that were high. I should know I paid the costs, just as Lacey’s children will pay the costs.

The character Michael Forbes, is so cold, calculating and quite honestly, diabolical. How did you come up with this character?

Michael Jacen Forbes the Third is actually based on a few of people whom I really have known in my life. In creating this character, I relied upon what I knew of drug-dealing thugs from the hood and CEOs and executives I knew in corporate America. Based on my experiences I came to see that there really isn’t all that much differences between the two groups of people, shocking as that may seem.

One of the things that I found fascinating about my career in employment law was my exposure to the antics of high powered people when they were at their worst. When they were, for example, deeply entangled in a really ugly sexual harassment law suit. I was able to see that thugs, CEOs and executives, have a lot in common in terms of the way they relate to people, often times by trying to control and intimidate them. The similarities between street corner thugs and the power players at the most respected corporations in America are something that most probably have not had the chance to observe. But I have, and again, I wanted to write about it.

One of your goals for this series is for people to become informed and better educated about domestic violence, what do you want people to take from the first book in the series?

In this first book I want young women to become aware of the warning signs. I want them to see how a dysfunctional relationship starts, and for them to be able to identify unhealthy behaviors as soon as they surface. When Michael will not allow Lacey to roll down the window inside of his truck- it’s a warning sign. This very early warning sign indicates that Michael is someone with an abusive personality, who will only become ever more abusive as the relationship progresses. When he rapes her, it should be clear to everyone that Michael will only harm Lacey in this relationship; but surprisingly, people who find themselves in similar situations, are so hurt and confused that they often blame themselves, and fall victim to even further abuse because of their confusion and shame. I want people to confront difficult issues like date rape honestly, and hopefully in all of this, young women will become more informed and better able to protect themselves if ever they should find themselves dealing with these issues. I purposefully made Lacey’s case a worse case scenario. I created this scenario so that we could all learn from it.