National bestselling author, Eric Jerome Dickey sits down with TaNisha Webb, publisher of Book Club 101 Magazine, to talk about his new book, An Accidental Affair and so much more that we had to break the interview up in two parts! Here’s a portion of our interview with Eric. Be sure to order a copy of the magazine to read part 1 of the entire interview!
BCU101Mag - Can you tell us about your new book, An Accidental Affair?
EJD – Well my next book An Accidental Affair comes out in April of 2012. It’s a stand alone, meaning it’s not a sequel or anything but I do include a couple of characters from previous novels in small, big roles. Wow it’s not about any one thing; it’s about love, marriage, celebrity obsession, and social media. It covers a lot. The main character, James Thicke, is a ‘well to do’ business man and he’s married to the most successful woman inHollywoodwho accidently creates a sex tape with a co-worker, with another actor. And it’s about how society reacts; how Facebook blows up; how Twitter blows up; how the paparazzi’s stalking. In one moment being a celebrity you want the paparazzi around and then when they turn on you just can’t escape them. It’s almost like you’re so large, such a large shark, that you can’t escape anything that you do, from anything that you create and at the same time trying to keep it as a very human story. It’s still about a man and a woman, a boy and a girl, and their problems but taking a lot of stuff from theHollywoodlifestyle and everything that comes with it.
BC101Mag - So the storyline kinda fits into today’s society where we see a lot of that going on with even private people lives becoming just as public as a celebrity’s life.
EJD – Yeah it amazes me. A lot of celebrities that we have now are celebrities that are famous for doing nothing. You have a lot of self made celebrities. A lot of it is thanks to modern technological advances, social media and all of that. Nothing is new. There were people that did things in the 70’s and 80’s where you heard about something happening or you heard about a tape or a VHS tape. It wasn’t widely circulated and if it was by the time someone saw it, it was the 7th, 8th or 9th generation so it was just a big blur on the screen. I did a book signing, I don’t do many book signings; I don’t get out as much. I remember that by the time I got home, everything from the book signing was already posted by someone else. I was like oh that’s me twenty minutes go. Damn. I didn’t get a chance to post my own stuff. You know what I mean? It’s being posted as you do it. That’s kind of what happened in the novel. Something gets posted and you’re the last one to see it. By the time you hear bout about it, a million people have heard about it before you because your phone as been off and you’re walking around in Whole Foods buying groceries and will be, “Like, what!?” By the time you get to the car the paparazzi is there following you around. How do you deal with that?
I know for a lot of us that had books come out in the early 90’s we’re used to people bringing a camera with them and then a week or a couple of weeks later they may email you a photo. And [now] you even have the bloggers that are streaming live and you can’t even tell who’s doing what. Everyone that has a phone, generally inAmerica, has a camera and a video camera. Before is someone had a video camera it was a big ass thing sitting on their shoulder that you could see. “He’s recording, get him!” I guess l lot of things that I talk about; I include what’s happening then into the novel.
I was just thinking back when I wrote Cheaters that came out in 1998 and at the time, I did the same exact thing but back then people had the peepers and were emailing. Compared to then it seemed so advanced. But now it seems so old school.
Everyone has a phone and then withReginashe’s supposed to be on a closed set, so nothing is supposed to get out. Things always get out. The main character James is the rich but not famous one in the relationship. So what do you do? All of this is just hits you all of a sudden. He doesn’t know how to respond or act, or what! So it’s that and me trying to build a solid story.
BCU101Mag - Do you think that’s what draws in the readers to your books, because you are staying within the times? Because when I started reading your novels I had first read Friends and Loves and then went back and read Sister, Sister. Each of those books had characters in them that I could relate to.
EJD – Okay, everything that I write for the most part is contemporary, which is contemporary for the time that it came out. Often times we remember what we were doing by the book that we were working on. I guess that’s kind of like how a woman remembers, “Yeah I was pregnant with my third child…” So all of the news stuff like politics, that’s of the moment. As I was working on one of the Gideon books inArgentina, I was walking around and the locals were in a protest and I was trying to understand what was going on so I can write three or four lines and include it in the story so it would have that texture. So it would feel that it took place inArgentinaand so when you read it, it should feel likeArgentina. Just like when you write something inMiami, it has to feel like, “Oh yeah I’m inMiami.”
Read the entire part 1 of our interview with Eric Jerome Dickey in the Spring Edition of Book Club 101 Magazine! Part 2 is coming up in our Summer Edition!
TaNisha Webb is the Publisher and Editor in Chief for Book Club 101 Magazine and the author of The Ultimate Book Club Experience. Connect with TaNisha tanishaw@bookclub101mag.com
@twebbonline @BCUniversity101
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