Roslyn Romances Readers

 The story begins with an eight year old aspiring author Roslyn, a favourite Enid Blyton book and a nod towards plagiarism. Fast-forward to 1996 when she starts writing her first novels, a romance and a work of literary fiction. Serious about her foray into the world of writing, she applies for and is awarded a fellowship at Yaddo, a prestigious artist’s colony in New York that provides on the sprawl of its forty acres, a place for its artists to immerse themselves in creativity and work without interruption. There she finishes her first two novels and in 1999 they are published.

“For a year or two I believed I was immortal,” she says of the experience of getting her work sold. “God had something great for me to write, so I was guaranteed not to get bumped off in an accident before my purpose was fulfilled.”

            Let’s pause here for a moment and return to the initial question. Do you know this woman? This Trini-born, Trini-raised, still-here-in-Trini woman? It seems odd that you don’t, doesn’t it what with all the talk of colonies, publication and immortality. It’s 2006 and the time has come for a group introduction. Trinbago, say hello to Roslyn. Roslyn, give a howdee to Trinbago.

Carrington’s critically acclaimed debut novel of contemporary women’s fiction, A Thirst For Rain, is set in Port of Spain and follows the intertwined lives of a barrack-yard’s denizens. Its sequel, Every Bitter Thing Sweet allowed entranced fans back into the lives of what will be two of her most enduring characters. These fans who clamoured for a sequel are, in great majority, American. On amazon.com, every one of her three works of women’s fiction has been awarded an average of four and a half out of five stars and the reader reviews that adjoin the ratings are all impressive and mostly from international readers. This is a good thing. No, this is a great thing. Her novels reaching a Trinbagonian readership wider than family, friends and the accidental browser, would be the cherry on top.

            She dismisses any need for the fanfare that typifies the marketing of many West Indian literary authors and states emphatically, “I’d be happy if they’d just sell my books! I produce what they sell, and it would be lovely if we had a more symbiotic relationship.” When asked about her positioning in the literary arena she speaks with the conviction of a woman who has steered clear of fatal accidents over the course of her writing career. “At first, I fancied myself to be a Jamaica Kincaid in training” she says, “But it’s true that I don’t see my writing as similar to the major West Indian writers, maybe to my own detriment as far as sales are concerned.  But I just couldn’t bear to imitate others for the sake of it.  As Popeye says, ‘I yam who I yam’.  My style works for me, and that’s all I need to know.  My niche might be a tiny one, but it’s comfy.”

            All this talk of literary fiction could make you forget she’s a bestselling author of six romance titles, under the pen name of Simona Taylor; and for many, the fact that she is critically acclaimed in the more reputable arena of literary fiction would preclude her being so prolific in what she calls the “the retarded stepchild of the literary sorority”, the romance genre. But, “whatever”, she says, “I like doing it, and that’s all I care about.” She recalls moments when people close to her would attempt to rationalise what they would see as the seamy underbelly of her proclivities by clarifying that romance writing was just her hobby or that she was doing it for the money. Well, is she doing it for the money? Hardly. “You know that saying ‘don’t give up your day job’? They say it for a reason. If you do, you’ll probably starve.”

            Keeping Carrington from the breadline is a job that requires her to design and produce educational material for children. “I’ve done a comic book, an activity book, two games, two CD roms and a bunch of stuff like that. It’s wonderful. To do it successfully, you have to think like a child, so I get to be a total moron and get paid for it.” Like many authors, Carrington views becoming a full time writer as a dream very few manage to accomplish given the financial dynamics of the book industry but she gains positive rewards from all aspects of her current job. “As far as it benefits my fiction, you need to be around people in order to stay creative.  People stimulate the imagination.  I wrote an entire novel over a single sentence I heard my girlfriend say to someone else.”

            The characters that populate Carrington’s novels are as vibrant as the woman herself and with a Trinbagonian backdrop gracing many of her pages, she says, “I do my best to correct stereotypes, because they annoy me.  I hate the swinging-in-trees idea that people have of us.  So I make them aware that we are well developed, industrialized, educated people.  I even set one novel on a Methanol plant on the Point Lisas Industrial Estate.”

This strong sense of self can only have helped to create stories set apart from the average romance novel, a feat difficult to accomplish given the sometimes artistically restrictive guidelines of industry publishers. An author, if she hopes to get sold under a particular publisher’s imprint, would need to ensure, for example, that the heroine be only emotionally involved with another man and not sexually involved but that the hero may be sexually involved with another woman, but not emotionally involved. Carrington is not impressed and states as her personal favourite the requirement that all unmarried couples use condoms. “Now,” she explains, “I understand it’s done out of a sense of social responsibility but as a writer, it narrows your plotting options drastically.  I mean, suppose they are on a desert island?” Undoubtedly it must be difficult for anyone whose passion is the creation of worlds through the use of language, to bow to the political exigencies of corporate suits.

Carrington recognises the limitations of a career in the romance industry but admits that, along with a greater understanding of the business, and the loss of the bloom off the just-published rose, she may have also lost her brazen edge. Her twenty and thirty-something self didn’t care who she shocked and wrote what she pleased. Now she says, “Sometimes I hesitate to write something, or delete it if I do, if I think my readers might misinterpret it or be offended. Which makes me a coward.” These Super types beat themselves up over everything.

However, one issue Carrington will never spend time deliberating is whether to introduce her children to Mummy’s work. “I can’t wait to show both of them what I’ve done!  But they’ll probably be as unimpressed by me as most children are by their parents.  They’ll probably beg me to hide my framed book covers when their friends come over.”

Now that Trinidad and Tobago has had a speedy overview of the past seven years of publishing achievements, what can the prospective reader and the long-time fan look forward to from Roslyn and Simona? Out in June and set partly in the South of France and her favourite city, Barcelona is May Summer Never End. Still in a fragile, developmental stage, she confesses that another work of literary fiction is brewing and is currently, at least in her head, set in the Santa Cruz of the 70s and 80s. She is tight lipped after giving the fans something to look forward to, but open to conversation on the women’s fiction industry on a whole.

Sandra Kitt she emphatically states is her favourite romance author and she joins with many who describe her as the hero to all black romance writers. “Twenty years ago, when we were persona non grata in the romance business, she wrote as a white woman for a decade, until romance lines for black women hit the stands in the 1990s.  Without her, I wouldn’t be here.”

Next up for her preferred romance reading is Linda Howard, an author whose sex scenes she claims could melt the fillings in your teeth. “Her heroes are all ex-navy seals and anti-terrorist operatives on a mission, and the couple get to go galumphing all over the Middle East and have sex in tents or under sand dunes.” Terry McMillan as the benchmark for many black women’s fiction writers comes in third.

Carrington also enjoys reading titles under the commonly called ‘chick lit’ genre and finds them more liberating than conventional romance saying, “Your heroine gets to have more sex - possibly with multiple men - without being shunned!  And you get to explore the relationships between women more thoroughly, and not be confined to the relationship between a man and a woman”. She leaves the door open to the possibility that she may try her hand at liberating her heroines in the future.

Within the women’s publishing industry, there has been heated discussion as to the popularity of erotic fiction novels. They go by many names, from ‘literary pornography’ to ‘romantica’. Carrington won’t be among those creating a bonfire out of their pages. “I don’t consider it pornography because of the cerebral element; there is always a level of mental stimulation involved.  At the end of the encounter, the characters have been touched by each other on an emotional as well as a physical level.  It doesn’t have to end in happy-ever-after with kids and a station wagon for the encounter to have value.”

On the just as controversial topic of the classification of African-American novels – whether literary, romance or otherwise – in a separate and race-specific part of the bookstore, she is frank. “When I was first published in 1999, and I went on my first and only book tour, I was shocked to see books being shelved according to the race of the writer.  I couldn’t fathom it, not having come from a society that is so blatant about racial distinctions. But now, as I have come to understand the market and the industry better, I realize that that is the way the black buyer wants it; it isn’t a case of prejudice or segregation on the part of the bookseller.  They want to see themselves and read about themselves, and this classification technique allows them to do it.” She accepts the anomaly but admits its drawback in terms of the sales of her novels. “Most white readers wouldn’t venture into that area of the store, and would miss out on good books that they otherwise would have tried, had they been shelved in ‘general population’ so to speak.”

It’s a tough question to answer, and many authors, readers and industry insiders alike, straddle the ideological fence. Despite being from the Caribbean, Carrington must deal with the issues that face each African-American author in an industry where, if African-American commercial fiction is marginalised, Caribbean commercial fiction is understandably, non-existent. She does not however, allow herself to be bogged down by the negatives and is optimistic about the future of fair minority representation in the American market. She is a woman who prefers to set her sights on the silver lining as opposed to the storm cloud and in that vein, you can only hope that Trinbagonian readers will soon have the opportunity to enter a local bookstore and read about their country and their people, from their countrywoman.

by Dalia King

Published in the Sunday Guardian on 24th June 2006

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