Jackson P. Brown on Urban Fantasy, London Magic, and the Black Girl Writers Mentoring Programme
Jackson P. Brown is a writer from London, an anime and manga enthusiast, and the founder of Black Girl Writers — a mentoring programme for aspiring Black writers.
After winning Penguin Random House’s #WriteNow competition in 2020, she signed a 3-book deal with Del Rey UK for her debut adult fantasy series, GETHSEMANE.
Listen to the episode Read Short Author Spotlight Author Links:
Website: jacksonpbrown.com
Instagram: @_JackPBrown
TikTok: @jackpbrownauthor
PREORDER FOR 10 JULY 2025 FROM DRYAD BOOKS:
https://www.dryad-books.co.uk/product-page/the-reaper-by-jackson-p-brown
Pre-order your copy from Dryad Books (UK) to receive: A bookplate signed by Jackson P. Brown
An A5 print featuring Gerald, one of the main characters, by Jess
@thejessc0de Introduction
CMR: Welcome back to Eldritch Girl, and I have Jackson P. Brown with me. Jackson, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?
JPB: Hi, yeah, I’m Jackson, I’m the debut author of The Reaper and that comes out this summer, July, and it’s an urban fantasy set in London.
CMR: I’m so excited for it, I literally found your TikTok and was like, I need to interview you.
[Laughter]
CMR: I’m really excited. I’ve already pre -ordered.
JPB: Oh, thank you. Yeah.
CMR: And so you’re going to read an extract from The Reaper for us.
JPB: Yes.
CMR: When you’re ready, would you like to just say a little bit about the extract for people who obviously don’t know what your book is about yet, then you can launch into it?
JPB: Sure. So this is actually from the prologue and it is the main character is going through his awakening on his birthday for his powers.
So this is The Awakening.
Extract from The Reaper
Preorder:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455385/the-reaper-by-brown-jackson-p/9781529907193 Impatience had brought him to Camden Town. He should have stayed at home. Slipping away from the high street, he found a hiding place between the crevices of an end of terrace alley. Unfocused shapes reached towards him from the sky in soupy ribbons like membranes of pale star matter, and he pressed his back against the cold brick wall, his breath becoming haggard and raw in his throat.
The ribbons grew thicker, pulsing and growing until the deluge surrounded him, congealing over his body making it difficult to move. He inhaled deeply, letting the air out in quick, measured gasps. When he was covered completely, the outside world faded to nothing, and his awakening began.
His ancestors brushed against him, their touch filled with understanding and tender warmth. When they offered their energy and power, he grasped it firmly. As it seeped into his flesh, every fibre of his body began to change. Their power caressed his skin, his bones, his marrow and joints, and as it sank deeper and deeper into his flesh, it pushed him across the border of his previous existence.
When he finally opened his eyes, the entrails of the galaxy had vanished, leaving the horizon clear once more. He let out a deep breath, revelling in the feel of his new self. Now he could finally step into his rightful place as heir. Now he could finally be who he was destined to be. But the stars maintained their watch.
Interview Transcript
CMR: I love the entrails of the galaxy. Oh my God.
JPB: Thank you.
CMR: That’s such a powerful image.
JPB: Do you know, I was really proud of myself when I wrote that.
CMR: So would you like to tell us who that main character is and a little bit about him?
JPB: Yes, so that is the main character, Gerald Reaper. He is the actual Grim Reaper. That’s what the story is about. And he hails from an ancient tribe of supernatural assassins who travel around the Sahara. And because they are all born with this killing curse, for millennia, they’ve been hired as secret assassins. And so each of them are sent out.
One is in New York, one’s in London, one’s in Paris, and they’re stationed there. And they’re hired by the world’s elite to basically assassinate each other’s enemies and and rivals and things like that, and so the humans don’t
know about them, they just know the legends of the grim reaper, but this is actually the origin story of them, in this, in my story, so um yeah, that’s who he is, and on his 27th birthday he comes into the full fullness of his powers.
And I chose 27 because it’s like a little reference to the 27 club, um I just thought it would just be kind of a cool little — not cool, but it’s like a little reference, you know, a morbid reference to that, so um so that’s what’s happened in this 27th birthday.
CMR: I love that though as well because that is a really good morbid reference but also I think like having a 27 year old protagonist is like, it’s really good isn’t it because they’ve got more life experience and you can kind of… so it’s not, it’s not… is it YA or it’s new adult?
JPB: What they call it is crossover. I think sometimes New Adult sometimes implies a bit of spice. This book has steam, but it’s not spicy. It’s not spicy.
CMR: And what about your other character, your other main character?
JPB: Yes, so that’s Amy St. Clair. So she’s not an ordinary woman. She’s an empath and she hails from a long line of empaths from Jamaica originally. It’s her grandma who was like her mentor. But by the time the story begins, her grandma has passed away. And so Amy has been living by herself in South London.
And it’s only after her grandma passed away did she realise that all of the little silly little stories telling her about how… ghosts exist and there’s really weird things in this city, that’s when Amy realizes that she can feel them as well. And so her empath abilities allows her to feel the presences and the auras of non-human entities as well, but because she’s so isolated and lonely she doesn’t have anyone to talk to about these powers so she spends most of her evenings after work she works in the library just trawling around London at night just observing these creatures without them knowing and she writes little notes. It’s almost like she’s writing notes to her grandma beyond the grave and telling her all the stuff that she can see and the things that she wishes she could tell her grandma, you know, that she’s passed away.
And that’s when she, on the same night of Gerald’s awakening, she actually feels it happening. She feels his awakening and she tries to meet him. And she goes on a little hunting journey, trying to track him down and think, what on earth did I just feel in the atmosphere right now? So that’s Amy.
CMR: Oh, I love that. I also love the fact that she felt something that was like the entrails of the universe, and went, I want to know what that is.
JPB: She’s very curious. She’s very curious.
CMR: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that’s really cool. And I also love that it’s — so it’s an urban fantasy. It’s set in London, where you are from, obviously. And yeah, and I was just really interested about where did you get the ideas for this book from, and why you set it in your home city?
JPB: Yeah, it’s actually interesting. So when I was a teenager, I had like various different mental health traumas and issues. And so I had to attend these outpatient appointments in central London. and so every day when I had to — not every day, every week — I had to attend these really long boring outpatients appointments, and on the way there, I had to pass under this little um, a bridge, to get to the hospital entrance, and I just used to have a daydream of like pressing a brick in the wall and disappearing into this city underground London, where there’s all these magical creatures just like Alice in Wonderland like, I have fun and just forget my life, and so that’s kind of how
the concept of this idea of just this community existing alongside London came from.
And I kept an obsession over it you know as the years went on, thinking about it, and thinking about the politics of this community in this strange, like you know… Who is in charge of all the supernatural creatures, and what do they do and what are the neighbourhoods like in this weird town?
And so as I was developing that, the character for Gerald, he kind of came to me first before Amy, Amy was a very late addition. And so I had him, and he lived in St Pancras station, in the clock tower, so yeah that’s just how it all came to be.
CMR: That’s really cool. Do you think your own experiences of living in London really helped kind of shape the politics of the undercity and all of that kind of stuff, because like I know a lot of urban fantasies tend to set things in kind of metropolises, like big… you know… and London is a very popular one as well, like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London is one of them, and then you have quite a lot set in New York obviously, and other big American cities. Were you tempted at any point to set it somewhere else or was it always like this is a very London book for you?
JPB: Yeah I think to me it’s always just such a London book because as I thought more of the characters, I just couldn’t help but associate them with parts of London. So like, Amy’s from Streatham and then Gerald, he lives in King’s Cross, so I just had all these…. I had it all just mapped out about where everybody is and where all of the characters would like to hang out, and it’s just… To me, I just thought it was really interesting. And what if you just went somewhere like you went to Tesco? And you didn’t know that the person behind the till was like a witch or something?
You know, so those are the things that was always in my head and I thought it would be kind of fun, so there’s so many references to London places in the books that I think some of the reviews, I think one person said that it was so weird reading it because she goes to some of the places that are mentioned in the book, so it’s like, that’s what I wanted people to be like, “oh I know that place”, and look at it differently when they’re out and about.
And for me that’s how I thought about it, because London is, it’s just so much, you know, it’s the only place I’ve really lived to be honest with you. I’ve lived a couple of places in the UK, but it’s always been London. So even when I’m traveling and I see a place and I think, oh that looks like a weird little, weird shop, I wonder if that could be a story there, some, you know, witch or warlock or something lives in there, or something. So yeah, it always had to be London.
CMR: I know a lot of books set in London use stereotypes of the city, and I was wondering how you felt about that as well as a Londoner, like, reading books where you have like stereotypes of London or Londoners, or everyone’s kind of homogenized, so yeah so how did you work with your characters and your setting to try and avoid that and bring people a taste of like the real London, or the real fantasy London I guess?
JPB: Yeah, yeah, I… Do you know it was more all the time I was facing it, a lot of my own experiences I think even being in London and sometimes hearing about how London is portrayed in the news, for example, you know; it’s just either this really really rich place that everyone lives in like Notting Hill, and everyone’s at the cafes, or it’s just like everyone’s just stabbing each other, and
it’s just a terrible terrible place, so it’s like, you can never really get a nice in between.
And so I was very conscious to ensure that a whole range of Londoners was portrayed, so there are rich people in the books, but they’re the ones that are more corrupt, so they’re the ones that start working behind the scenes to like, you know get back at their enemies and things and yeah it does highlight about the class issues in the city as well.
And so I just wanted to portray that from my experience being like a working class Black person living in London, and seeing how sometimes it could be portrayed in a very negative light depending on who is kind of telling the story in the media and how as you said how it is portrayed by people outside
of London.
I think it’s only in recent years I think that people have even understood just how ethnically diverse London is, and how there’s so many different things you could do, and how many things, just what is here, um and I do think there has been like some good recent portrayals, some interesting portrayals of London from Londoners, and from people that’s from here, to give it a bit more of a realistic picture.
And I like to hope that The Reaper can be added to that type of media as well as something that’s accurate and a nice portrayal of the city, yeah.
CMR: Yeah my friend lived in Stonebridge Park and so like not the nice bit of like yeah so I used to know that little bit, and I’m like, I could see it, I can see there being a fantasy kind of you know, like you get on the train I’m like, I don’t think some of the people are on this planet.
[Laughter]
JPB: I mean, I think a big part of it is, I think when I first read Rivers of London, because I read that when it, that first book, when it first came out, which was quite a few years ago now, I remember just being so inspired at the time, because I was, at the time, I was kind of drafting up ideas for, you know, this series, and I just thought, oh, this is exactly what I like, it’s very witty, and it’s fun, and it gives you, like, a nice upbeat version of the city that you know, but it gives a bit of a twist to it, so, yeah.
I was touched but also really intimidated when like the publisher as they’re going around doing the promo they say for fans of Ben Aaronovitch, because I’m just thinking oh my gosh, like but yeah.
CMR: I was thinking as well about the the kinds of magic that you’ve created
for the fantasy London, because from the sound of it, it’s also just as diverse as the demographic of London so you have like the ancestral magic and the Saharan, African feel to Gerald’s powers, yeah, and then you have Amy who’s British Jamaican and you have like her heritage I suppose?
JPB: Mm, it’s inherited.
CMR: because it’s kind of inherited as well, coming through, and what other kinds of things did you play with? I’m really interested [in] how you developed this and how you decided what those powers were going to be, and yeah, tell me a bit about your world building!
JPB: Yeah, yeah, so um, so alongside you know, you have the human world upstairs, there’s a city underneath, downstairs, it’s like this weird warped version of London, and I really did think about what kind of things did I…. what books do I like, and what mythical creatures do I like, so yeah.
We have witches and warlocks, [they] are separated in terms of like the type of things that they can do. So with witches they more do like herbal kind of magic and they use the natural remedies of the earth, whereas warlocks, they do the same thing but they will crush their magic into powder and put it in little jars and then that’s where they store their spells, so just to make it a bit funny. And mages who had their staffs.
So I was just thinking all the creatures that I like, so witches, warlocks, mages, vampires, werewolves, we’ve got paranormal stuff in there, but I thought how to make it be interesting?
So the werewolves in this story, they obviously they transform with the full moon and things, but before and after, they get their own version of like um premenstrual sickness, almost. So in the lead up to the full moon they get really sick and they have fevers and they’re not really… they’re unwell, and then after, immediately after, it’s the same thing.
And with the vampires as well, same thing, they can’t go out in the sunlight, and then they drink human blood but the blood that they favor the most is from humans that share the blood type that they had when they were human before they were turned into vampires.
So it’s those little things that I just tried to put a little twist on. We have so many things there. And so what I did, I pictured the city and I thought, OK, where would the witches live? So the witches, they live in this place called Willow Drive. And then the warlocks, they live in their own opposite city or their own opposite town.
And I tried to think about what would happen in terms of like their class system.
So the witches, some of them are more middle class then, or the more middle class side, and that. We have that kind of tension there, and a lot of the warlocks are seen as more working class.
And they have a whole hierarchy of the families who founded the city in the first place, and they kind of lord over everybody.
So yeah, there’s just a lot of that stuff I tried to weave in even though they are all ethically diverse, I think the community of that city, like the magic city, is more plagued by class issues, and the founders of the city and who has the the strong lineage and things like that. So that’s what I was trying to play with in terms of the conflicts between each of the different magic communities.
CMR: I love that. So when Amy, who is an empath, comes into the magic city, where does she fit in the class system of downstairs?
JPB: Yes, so she is actually treated quite poorly by everybody because she’s a human. She doesn’t have, you know, magic blood. She just has a magic power, and she doesn’t know about this city. And so when Gerald introduces her to people, they’re very wary of her because they’ve all thought, well, even though we’re all messed up in this city, we’re still better than humans because we are witches, we’re warlocks, we’re mages. We can do things that humans can’t even imagine.
And so it takes a little while for them to warm to her but because she’s so resilient and she comes from a background where even though she had a lot of love from her grandma, her mother didn’t get the empath powers and that always caused a massive tension between them, and so she’s estranged from her mum and her father and so she’s had to… she’s already had those experiences of being treated in a strange way because of her powers and because she’s a bit special, but she’s still a human, so she does kind of deal in her own Amy way, she just, you know, she can be a bit stubborn and she’ll she can give what’s, what she’s taken as well, she’s fine to cuss back, so um that’s how she is, and because Gerald is protective of her, he will always like back her up and say right, don’t talk to her like that, you know.
CMR: I’m so excited about the dynamic between Gerald and Amy as well, because they come from very different like social backgrounds as well, don’t they, so yeah, yeah, how are you playing with with that?
And I think like, some listeners may not understand British class system. I have talked about it a little bit on this podcast before with Sab who’s S.R. Severn who is also a London British author who writes steampunk pirate romance, and we were talking about the class system with her a bit because she also plays, funnily enough, with class, in her fantasy world. I think that’s just something if you’re British you just can’t get away from.
JPB: No.
CMR: If you live here, it’s just deeply ingrained.
JPB: Of course, yeah.
CMR: But yeah, just to say like I think for people here, the class system is about how you’re born, and it’s not about how much money you have.
JPB: Yes.
CMR: It’s about how you are — also, how you present as well.
JPB: Yes.
CMR: So you can aspire to be middle class if you’re working class, so that’s the working class people who do not have a lot of money but always act like they do, they try and be better than everybody else around them by comparison, so there’s that element to it, like the nuances.
JPB: Yeah!
CMR: And it’s also not… I don’t know, like it’s not a homogenous thing, like every class layer has its own nuances and has its own kind of things going on inside it.
JBP: Yes, yeah.
CMR: And so you can be from the same class background but you can have different like stuff going on. This is very different to American class, right, so if you suddenly win the lottery, or if you’re a Russian oligarch or something, or you’re a footballer, or you’re making millions, you’re not actually upper class, you are middle class but super rich, and the super rich is like a whole new category that we had to invent because middle class people and working class people suddenly got too much money. And I think that’s what people don’t wrap their heads around. Like, no, no, you’re still working class, even if you won the lottery and you’re now a millionaire. Like, that doesn’t matter.
JPB: It’s so bizarre, isn’t it? Because it’s like when people talk about someone like the Beckhams, they will see them… They’re so rich that they’re literally hanging around with the princes and royalty, but people will never see them as anything more than working class, because that’s where… you know that’s where he’s from, he’s from a working class background, and that’s just how they will view someone like that which is so strange. So maybe not Victoria, but yeah.
CMR: I feel like the Beckhams now have more social currency than they did when they started out right? It’s not because of their money necessarily, it’s because of how they present themselves?
JPB: Yes!
CMR: And how they’ve continuously moved in those circles and they kind of — yeah, and they’re also quite beloved, and they haven’t had a serious scandal that they haven’t weathered and I think because they’re celebrities in the public eye that’s really helped, and so people kind of go to the Beckhams if they want street cred or social cred.
JPB: Yeah, yeah.
CMR: But yeah you’re right, like he’s still just a working class football guy like he’s not…
JPB: It’s so weird isn’t it?
CMR: It’s weird yeah and like I guess middle class now at best right but even though he’s working class background but they’re now kind of upper middle class, yeah super rich, yeah. The British class system is bonkers.
JPB: Yeah no it is it is because I remember trying to… I think the first time I ever really learned about it properly was when I was in secondary school, and our teacher was saying to us look, your class goes down to even the newspapers you read, you know? If you seem to read The Guardian or The Times it means one thing, if you read The Sun it means another thing, like even from your newspapers and your, your names.
Like, you know, what names people will give their children kind of indicates what class they’re probably part of, and it’s just really really bizarre isn’t it?
CMR: Yeah and like the more I think about it I’ve never met a middle class person called Liam or like Kieran or Kyle.
JPB: No, no. It’s so bizarre because some of their names are really unusual. I’m really like, I didn’t know there was a name, but you know.
CMR: Evian.
[Laughter]
CMR: Do you know the comedian Daniel Foxx? Because he does a skit on that.
JPB: Really? No.
CMR: Yeah. And it’s like ‘bedtime stories for privileged children’ and they’re all called things like Chlamydia. Like, Tarquin. Tarquin and Hugo.
JPB: Yeah that’s right actually, the names is what I play around the most because of like Gerald he’s an assassin so what normally happens is a name is assigned to his book that’s his target for that time and I think it has to be someone who’s really rich someone who another like elite person would want to have killed, and so I literally have, I’ve gone through…. Arlo, I’ve gone through… I think I have a Tarquin somewhere and I’ve had like had to really like honestly the poshest names possible, so I’d like to think that somebody I think someone from the UK would get it, when they’re thinking these names are crazy because I’ve tried to think of the poshest or ridiculous names that would be like a politician’s son or, you know, someone who’s from like a peerage or, you know, something like that.
CMR: Yeah. And it’s either that or it’s just like they’re named after some kings. It’s like William, Richard.
JPB: Yes.
CMR: Not usually a John. And it’s always like, call me Will. You know, they’re trying to be…
JPB: Yeah, like down with the people.
CMR: So where does Gerald fit in in the class system and the downstairs?
JPB: Yeah, so he would actually be like upper class, because he’s from Africa and he knows his actual lineage, and like Amy who’s from a Jamaican family, which means that she would have been of like a… an enslaved heritage from Jamaica, so he knows his lineage he knows his background he knows where his people are from and they’ve been this ancient family that’s been getting all that all of the money for like millennia from all these, you know, other elites who use them.
He lives in the Renaissance Hotel in St Pancras right in the clock tower, and so there’s so many things that he doesn’t really understand, so even though he’s 27. He knows so much of the world, but there’s some parts he just doesn’t really clock.
So downstairs, there is like a really impoverished town. It’s like a huge estate, sprawling estate, where all of the poorest of the magic community live. And one of his targets in this book originates from that town downstairs. And so, yeah, Gerald makes an offhand comment like, gosh, you know, with his talent as a warlock, he shouldn’t have been doing all this nonsense that I have to assassinate him.
Then Amy has to say… Well, yeah, because when you come from his background, you’re more likely to do those things. You know, you wouldn’t know, because you’re basically royalty.
And he’s like, OK, you know, it’s not something that he’s ever experienced, because she’s from Streatham, which is like, you know, a working class area of South London. So she’s seen that all the time. You know what happens when you’re in a poor place and how crime is normally high in those places. So even their friendship is him learning how much he doesn’t actually know about the world.
He knows so much, but he knows so so little and even when there is a point where they have to meet a Viscount who’s one of their little informants for some information, and as soon as Amy gets into the room she can feel in the air through the auras in the air that the Viscount actually is a bit racist, but it’s not it’s something that Gerald never noticed because he’s saying we’re both of the same social class, you’ve been polite to me, I’ve been polite to you, and Amy’s feeling, thinking, no, this guy doesn’t like you. He’s quite perturbed. He doesn’t understand how you are the same class, because that’s not what he’s used to as a human, he’s used to just having white people around him.
So it’s even those little things that you have to teach him about the nuances that even if you are both of the same social class, even that can still exist, even within those areas, so yeah, I think their dynamic is really interesting in terms of what she teaches him and what he teaches her. They both get something out of it in terms of, he reveals to her the whole world of you know, downstairs, and magic, and all these crazy things, and she’s showing him more of the social side, and why people might do the things that they do, and what’s actually behind their little polite smiles and their little ways of working that he can’t feel because he’s not an empath, and she can feel it.
CMR: I love that yeah, and I was like, what would they talk about? Like coming from two completely different backgrounds. I love it. Like, yeah, I really love the working class versus upper class [thing]. I was thinking where I’ve seen that dynamic before. And I think like the best one is the Inspector Lynley mysteries.
JPB: It’s so true though.
CMR: I do love that dynamic. Where she’s basically telling him not to be a twat every single episode. I think that works really well. And so this is going to
be like in a series, right? How do you — are you allowed to say how you think their dynamic is going to develop?
JPB: No, I definitely can say, because I did put little subtle hints throughout the book. They will turn into something a little bit more. It’s difficult because the whole point of Gerald is that he’s cursed. And so he will never be able to touch her because the curse is in his hands. So when he removes his gloves, he
can’t actually physically touch anyone because that’s how they die. It’s a major issue between them.
And also there’s that whole like, it’s almost forbidden because he’s thinking, this is actually quite a dangerous relationship to have. I’m an assassin, I’m like extremely powerful, I don’t want to ever hurt her or put her in anything that is not right, and she’s also thinking, gosh, is this wise? Am I supposed to do something like this?
So yeah, I just finished the manuscript for book two and I gave it to my editor last month and so I’m waiting to hear back from them to see what they think about it, but it’s much more angsty in that area with their little thing, trying to understand what what are we right now, and so then we come to conclusion in the next book.
But yeah, as the books go on they’ll work it out, yeah.
CMR: I do like angst but presumably there must be a way around it otherwise they wouldn’t have other little reaper children?
JPB: Yes, yeah, it is literally they have to wear special gloves on their hands yeah literally.
CMR: Oh God.
JPB: Yeah, it’s really sad. I don’t want to spoil too much because it does — there is a part right in the epilogue that explains how a reaper is born and what happens to their hands yeah at a point.
CMR: Oh all right, okay I’ll leave it there but like, super intrigued. So you’re also, apart from being an author, you’re also the founder of the Black Girl Writers Mentoring Programme. Would you want to tell us about that?
Because some of that I think is like how you got published and stuff. Was that through a mentoring? You won a competition, right? And then you got…
JPB: Yes.
CMR: Yeah. Tell us about that.
Black Girl Writers Mentoring Programme
Blackgirlwriters.org Email: info [at] blackgirlwriters [dot] org
Twitter: @BlkGirlWriters
IG: @BlackGirlWriters
Founder: Jackson P. Brown
Communications Lead: Moyette Gibbons
The aim of Black Girl Writers is to connect professional mentors with aspiring writers who identify as Black women for free. Black in this sense includes women of African, Caribbean, Afro-Latin, African-American, and Bi-racial heritage. Women includes cis, trans, and non-binary. We are based in the UK, but accept applications internationally.
These mentors are a mixture of editors, writers, and literary agents.
We will forward your details to your chosen mentor (subject to availability). After an introductory email, you and your mentor will then organise weekly, fortnightly, or monthly sessions together. Monthly mentorships should last between 2-4 months unless your mentor decides to keep you on for longer.
We are currently running on a first come, first served basis, which means mentor spaces get filled very quickly. If your chosen mentor is no longer available, we will work with you to arrange a session with our 1:1 standalone mentors as an alternative.
On rare occasions, we will be unable to find a suitable mentor for your application, but in such cases, we aim to organise a private, tailor-made group session to give unmatched mentees the opportunity to speak to an industry professional in a safe and confidential environment.
Due to increasing demand, we will periodically close our applications. Application windows will generally run from late April-May, and then late October-November. We will close submissions once we reach 30 applications.
We also organise free writing events with publishing professionals throughout the year. These are a great opportunity to network and ask your burning questions to literary agents, editors, authors, and directors. We always announce our events on the news page.
Future plans of Black Girl Writers include regular meetups to discuss our WIPs, offer support, and collaborate on anthology projects. All of these things will be achieved by potential lottery funding. Please watch this space for future announcements!
JPB: So I’d written one book and it didn’t really do well. So I was querying it, and it didn’t do well. And then I wrote another book. and I queried that as well and it didn’t really go anywhere, and then in 2020, just before lockdown, I think Kit De Waal tweeted about this programme called Penguin Write Now and it was my friend who… she messaged me, and said, oh you should enter the book into Penguin Write Now.
So I did, not knowing that because it was lockdown everyone in the country who had a book written or half written spent that time to finish their books, so they all entered it. I think almost 4 ,000 of us applied that year, and I had no idea. If I knew the stakes of that, I would never even tried, but I did, and so [there were] several different rounds, and finally I got onto the programme.
It’s just like, you spend a year with an editor, they help you with your manuscript and then at the end of it they see if you can take it up to acquisitions. It just so happened that a few different editors at Penguin got The Reaper so at this point I had changed and I resubmitted The Reaper to the programme, and then two different imprints wanted it, so it had to go to auction. I had no agent so I had to find one to help me broker the deal in the auction, so that’s how The Reaper got published.
But with Black Girl Writers, it actually… I founded it around the same time in 2020, so I had just once again just before lockdown because I didn’t know what was happening in my book and why I was getting so many rejections, so I entered like a master class course that helps you with your book and you get feedback from an agent, and maybe at the end you get to pitch it to like another really big agent and it was really expensive, I think it was almost two grand [£2,000.00] and I was paying in like instalments.
Yeah, it was kind of funny because only when I left, because the big thing why I didn’t want to leave and pull out is because of that pitching session with a big agent, this huge agency. I didn’t realize until I actually looked more closely, that agency didn’t even represent Science Fiction or Fantasy. So I didn’t have a chance of ever being by them in any way. So it was a bit ridiculous really.
But what I think tipped me over the edge is the, yeah, the leader, the course leader, she didn’t seem to be very impressed by my work. She liked my writing, but she didn’t like the subject matter. So at the time, this was a race-based dystopia set in London, and I could tell that she was uncomfortable with the content, and basically she just had an issue as like as a white woman she just felt like you know it wasn’t right what I was saying, and she said that I’m gonna have to try really hard to convince the reader that such racism could happen in London, and she was saying that like you know you can’t do a book that has both class and race in it, you have to try to separate them and everything.
CMR: What??
JPB: So I thought okay… I know, it was really bizarre. And in the end I just thought I’m gonna have to withdraw, so I withdrew, and said oh I can’t afford it anyway, I’m really sorry, and then I would go politely. But I was so frustrated. I thought, gosh, I wish I had had some sort of programme like that to go to where there’s like a big agent, that kind of industry connection that you just never get to have. And I thought, what can I do about this?
I want to know why I can’t get published, or what I’m doing wrong with my books that I can try to publish. And so, yeah, like in like a few days, I just set up a website and I just started tagging loads of different publishers. At the time — I know now Twitter’s a bit of like a bit of a weird place, but at the time all of the agents were on Twitter, always tweeting, so I just tagged loads of them… does anyone want to be a mentor for this programme, I’ve just set it up.
And it just so happened this was just on the cusp of a lot of the protests that was happening around that time for the Black Lives Matter [movement], and so a lot of them was really keen to like to join in and take part, so by the time summer had ended, I had like, gosh, I had people from Harper Collins and from Penguin Random House and Hatchette, and like some of the big, big literary agencies were involved. And it’s just continued to grow from there really, which I’m really happy about.
So yeah, this is our fifth year. We’re going to try to do something special because it’s like our five year anniversary.
And yeah, I’m really happy with it. We have had quite a few people that’s got signed to agents and… I think in our first year, somebody got a book deal, a two book deal with Virago at Little Brown. Yeah. Yeah. And we just we did an open submission day with Simon and Schuster this year. And it looks like one of the people that they’re going to get, they might get published, because they’re just currently working with one of the editors now, Simon and Schuster with their book.
So, yeah, like I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. And yeah.
CMR: That’s amazing! Oh congratulations and I hope that the fifth anniversary goes really well whatever you choose to do for its special event! Yay! I was just…. race and class don’t go together [makes “what the fuck” face].
JPB: I know. It was really bizarre, yeah.
CMR: In London.
[disbelieving laughter]
JPB: She kept on saying it, and she kept on trying to like make me separate it into two different books but I thought like I thought it just went I just thought it made sense but
she just didn’t like it.
CMR: So as somebody who grew up in a very working class area in South Wales where it is literally 98% white, race and class absolutely do go together.
JPB: Every time I tell it, because I thought it was me that had the problem, but when I tell the story, people… they’re just like no.
CMR: No it’s that… it is not you, you do not have a problem, like no, bizarre. Anyway I’m so glad that um the mentoring scheme really picked up and everything and that it’s still going strong after five years, yes amazing.
JPB: Thank you.
CMR: So I really hope that more people get success stories and publishing deals and various [things] from it because that’s really cool.
And before we run out of time, I would like to give you space, would you like to plug anything that is happening for the next year or coming year for you?
JPB: Well yeah I do have um at the moment, we do have a bit of a pre-order campaign that’s happening at the moment with Dryad bookshop. We’re giving away a free print and a free bookplate if you pre-order before the 10th of July.
They’re a really lovely, lovely bookshop and they’re like a local indie science fiction and fantasy bookshop. So they were nice to collab with me to do this art print and book plate giveaway.
Also, the second thing is at the moment I’m still writing. Hopefully my agent and I will be able to sell something that I’m writing at the moment, which is a… very dark kind of horror-based two book series that I’ve been writing in the meantime, in between the edits for The Reaper.
CMR: Thank you ever so much for coming on the podcast, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk about The Reaper and hear about all of the things that
you’ve got going on, especially your mentoring programme, and yeah I wish you all the best for your book launch in July.
JPB: Thanks so much Mel, thank you.
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Andy P
cmrosens
Tiffany E. Taylor
