Vivian Stephens-Part one

This episode of The Black Romance Podcast is brought to you by The Center for Black Despera at The Paul University. Hi, welcome to The Black Romance Podcast. This is The Podcast, where I talk to black popular romance writers, industry experts, and romance scholars. I'm your host, Julie Moody Freeman. Thanks so much for joining me. My guest this week is Vivian Stevens, a trailblazing editor, and one of the founders of The Romance Writer of America. She was one of the first black editors at Del Publishing who then went on to become an editor at Harlequin, and then to represent writers as an agent. Stevens herself has written and published two popular romance fiction, Final Summer, and Second Act, which she wrote as part of the Sadima Group, in this first installment of my two-part interview with her. Vivian Stevens recounts experiences as an editor at Del Publishing, and she talks about how RWA was founded. I am so excited to share this history with you. Stay tuned. I have Vivian Stevens here with me. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Oh, thank you, Julie. I'm very happy to accommodate you. All right, so I want to start to go all the way back to you as a reader. Could you talk a little about when you started reading romance, or some of your favorite writers? Okay, well, I actually started as a young woman, probably in my teens, because I used to read the fiction in Women's Magazines, like Red Book, Lady's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, and my favorite author then was a woman called Faith Bolton. And I don't know this year, but wrote a heart cover book, but she did write for Women's Magazines in the '40s and early '50s. And then I read all of the girl books that you find in the libraries of Nancy Drew, and of course the classics, Little Women. And in my late teens, I read the same grade of all people. Girl of the Blount & Pines was one of my favorite girl of the Limba Loth, those books and then in college. For some reason, I read Westerns, but I had a girlfriend in college in high school, and we had a little loan bet between us as to who could read the most books in the library. So that was really, really fun. I really didn't start reading romance novels, those little books known as romance novels, until I was in my late '30s, and I just happened to have found books when I was in Massachusetts taking a class in tapestry weaving. And I was in a little town, and I went into the local bookstore. It was a youth bookstore. And after looking around, I was leaving, and at the exit door, there was a barrel filled with paperback books, and the books were like Tincent. And on my way out, I happened to see one with a ballet dancer on the cover. And as a young person, my sister and I used to take dance lessons, and I was just intrigued, and I bought it, took it home, read it, and then went back the next day and bought three, and then in the next week I bought five, and I was just intrigued. These were all Harley Quinn's, but they were from Milton Boone in England. So all of the characters were British, but I found that the heroines were always in love with foreigners, so the tall dark and handsome men, and they were used to Spanish or Egyptian or Italian. And the girls were younger. They were like 1920, maybe 21. And by the time they were 23 or 24, they were all made. And the heroes were always very rich, and at least 35, so they were very sophisticated, worldly men. So that intrigued me, and then I always read the book sections of the papers. At that time I was living in New York, and I was working for time-in-life books as a professional researcher. And so after reading classic books, I was really intrigued by the little books that you bought in the supermarket and in drug stores. And those were not always the Harley Quinn's, but they were usually the mid-list books of the little books that the publishers published that were not by the main writers. So I was interested in that. And those were my first ones that sort of drew me to what you would now call commercial women's fiction. So that was really in the late 70s, early 80s. I see. So how did you get into the romance publishing industry? Well, as I said, I fell in love with reading these books. And then one day in summer, I was reading the New York Times, and they were talking about a woman named Charlotte Vale Allen. Now, she did not write romance, and she wrote women's fiction. And in all of the books that I read, it was the first time I actually picked up the book that they were talking about. They were reviewing a latest book that was in paperback. And in the review, they were saying that it was one of the first times that the hero was bold, and that the sex was rather explicit. And that had never been done in a paperback book on the masses. That was just regular women's fiction. So I was intrigued with that because I was sort of tuned in without even knowing I was tuned in to what the populace read, because I consider myself one of the masses reading what is available to the masses. And I was intrigued with it, and the book was published by Warner Books. And I just decided on a whim that I would like to really work in fiction. I had never done it before. And I thought, well, the best thing to do would be to just send in an application and be hired as a secretary. And I thought, if I'm hired as a secretary to an editor, then I would be able to read the manuscripts when they first came in. I wouldn't have to wait until the book was really published. So that was really my interest, and I actually did it. I didn't know anybody in publishing. So I called Warner Books, and they were at Rockefeller Center, and I lived in Manhattan. So I called and got the name of the woman in charge of hiring. And I thought I would just send her a letter, a letter, with a resume. So I did. And I can't remember whether I got an answer on that. No, no, no, no. I'll take it back. I did not send it. I thought I would take it by. I thought I was in between jobs because I had worked for time in life books for five years. They had moved the book section to Virginia, and I did not choose to go there. So I was between jobs, and I thought this would be a perfect thing not only to change directions of my interest, but to just try that. So one hot summer day in August, I took myself to Warner's and went up to the department and said I was there to drop off my resume. And since I had the woman's name, I actually lied. I said that I had a friend who knew her, and that he said that if I was ever in the area, I should stop and say hello. So I left my resume at the desk, and she was very, the receptionist was there, and she said, well, she's out the lunch right now. So if you'll sit down, she'll be back soon, and you can hand her your resume yourself. So I'm sitting there waiting for this lady to show up. And as I'm sitting there, you know, you have to lie to what are you going to do when you see her face to face. So I lost my nerve, and I went to the receptionist, and I said, look, I have another appointment so I will see her later. So she said, well, she has your resume now. She's back, and she will. called you in a few minutes. So I thought, well, what the hell? So, he did call me in. She was a very nice woman sitting there in her dark glasses with her legs crossed. And the first thing that she said is, "Who do you know that I'm supposed to know?" So I picked the name out of the air with a friend and she said, "And how do I know her?" And I said, "You met her at a cocktail party and time in life books." And she said, "Probably so. Sit down. How may I help you?" So, she was very nice and she went on to ask me about my background and I told her. And I told her why I was there because of Charlotte Villalan's book. She said, "Look, that attitude is not going to hire you." She said, "Because we are not hiring now." And she went on to say, "Well, you have worked as a teacher. Why don't you do that?" And I said, "Well, that door is closed." And she said, "Why don't you become a writer?" And I said, "Because that's not by aim." And she said, "Well, if you're really interested in working in this field, she picked up a book." And I don't know to this day what book that was. But it listed all of the publishers. And so she started just kind of going down the list. You know, she went to Avon and Bantam and Dell. And she said, "Dell, I remember that I used to read those little western books that were published by Dell." And so I remember that. She wished me luck and I left. So when I went home, I repeated the same thing I called Dell as who was head of personnel. Got that woman's name, wrote her a letter, sent her my resume, and I felt like I had accomplished something. But what was interesting is that I got a letter back saying that there were no jobs available. But if I was interested to call for an open interview. So I called, went on it, and she said, "I'm intrigued by the resume and the person who goes with it." So we talked, and we talked for probably half an hour. And she said, "Well, what are you interested in?" And I didn't know that Dell did all kinds of paperback books. They did puzzle books and baby name books. Along with reprints from major houses because Dell was an imprint of double day, double day books. So they did the reprints on the hard covers. So I had a second to really tell her if I was intellectually inclined or that I was really interested in commercial fiction, specifically women's fiction. So she said, "You really like to escape?" And I said, "Yes, I do." So she said, "I don't have anything for you now. I wouldn't even know where to put you. But I will keep you in mind." And that was in August, and fast forward to October, I get a call, and this woman's name was Jean Anderson. I will never forget her. And she called, and she announced herself, and I kept going, "Oh, and she said, "I'm at Dell, and you were here in August, and I think I have a job that will round out your resume." And those were very important words, and most interesting words. And she said, "We have an attitude that's just come back from England." And she's going to be in charge of some books, but you'll have to interview with her. Excuse me, and the Editors' Chief. And so, we said an appointment, and the editor's name was Kate Duffy. She was young, she was 26. But when we were to have the interview, someone had robbed our apartment, so she didn't show up. So, I interviewed with her secretary that had just been hired at a college. The girl had just been, and she was 23. So, she didn't know anything about time and life books. She was really not interested. And she was a little arrogant, and so she just said, "Well, you'll have to talk to Kate." But in the meantime, she gave me a couple of books that were candlelights, and Dell had published candlelights from the mid-60s. I had never read a candlelight. I did not even know that Dell did books that were sort of akin to the Horner Plants. So, I took the book home and read it, and it was a very sweet book, very American, and I'm still waiting to hear from Kate. So, in the meantime, Kate called me. I had not met her. She called and she wanted to know. She had looked at my resume, and she said, "Well, what salary are you looking for?" and I told her. And she said, "Well, you won't get that, because that's what I make." So, I thought that that was quite interesting. And so, I just picked a number out of the air, and I said, "Do you think I can get this?" And she said, "Probably so." So, a couple of days passed, and then I heard from Jean Anderson again, and said, "I understand you've spoken with Kate, and that this is a salary that you would be agreeable to." And I said, "Yes." And she said, "Well, you still have to interview with the Edison Chief." And a couple of days passed again. Never heard from the Edison Chief, and then Jean Anderson called until we'd like to offer you the job. And the job was associate editor. Now, I did not even know what that meant, because I thought I would just be an assistant secretary. And so, I just agreed. So, my first day on the job, there was really not an office, and my office turned out to be a storeroom. It was the largest storeroom. There were no books, there were no candlelights, and what they had was just a lot of manuscripts, manuscripts were just piled on the floor. So, Kate said to me, "You're going to do five books a month." And I said, "Why five?" And she said, "I came in May, and May is the fifth month, and I just picked a number out of the air." So, it was just that therapeutic. So, I said, "Okay." So, she said, "I don't have five. Two are going to be romances. One is going to be the little agency books. And then the others will be the imprints coming from double day, that were usually romantic intrigues." So, I said, "Okay." And she said, "And Ellen will be your secretary, because Julie, I couldn't type." I really couldn't type at all. So, I was really happy to have this person who was going to do this. So, what I did was just to organize the office the way I wanted it. And I first thing that I said to Ellen, "Who was my assistant, Ellen Edwards, who became a very fine editor in the years to come?" I said, "We have to find hanging folders so that we can put these writers, you know, we can separate them, because everything was just on the floor mixed up." So, my first job was to really, I mean, my first inclination was to read the manuscripts. And that's what I started doing. They were just in piles. And most of them came from an agency called Donald McCamble, and that was his specialty. To just feed into the industry, writers who only wrote light fiction, that was called "Category." And "Category" romances are those little books that have numbers on them. You know, every month, the numbers will go up. And of course, I started with number 500. So, after a couple of months, no, perhaps weeks, I didn't know how to buy a manuscript. I didn't know anything I had never really dealt with agents before. And I was honest enough to tell Kate this. So, one day, after lunch, she said, "I'm going to buy a several books this afternoon." So, I said, "May I listen to you buy a book?" And she said, "Yes." So, I did. And I had a manuscript that I liked. And so, I went back to my office. And I called Donald McCamble. It got the agent on the phone, and told her I would like to buy, and I went on to tell her who, and what. And after we finished, I said, "Have I said everything that I'm supposed to say?" And she said, "Yes." And it was just sort of that easy. So, in reading all of the manuscripts, and people don't really realize this, and no one really likes to say it. But the genre, the romance genre, for category books, it really is the because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a linear plot. You have a limited characters because in a story that brief, you cannot really have a lot of people because it will really disturb the reader. So, and the interest, the point of interest is romance. So, the books were usually written by teachers who wrote the books and sum up when they were on vacations and airline studicists who were traveling too far and lens because the, the prototype of the novel was usually the harnacans are the mils and boon books because a lot of the American readers actually subscribe to the mils and boon books that had to be sent over from England. Now, commercially, when they're done, there's a company in Canada, they were in Canada at the time who bought the mils and boon books and then just changed the name to Harlequin, which was their brand name because Harlequin was really owned by a conglomerate. And that was just the publishing arm of the conglomerate. So, those were, that was my first experience in buying books and really knowing what the American books were like at the time and I'm speaking of 1978, '79, '70, '80. Okay, yes. So, this was good. I'm glad you gave me that date because this leads me to something that I saw in the New York Times in the July 13, 1980 edition of the New York Times Rewaltors wrote, I'm quoting him, "The ethnic romance is the invention of the editor of Candle Light Remances, Vivian Stevens." So, what made you use the term ethnic romance? Well, I didn't really coin that phrase. I just accepted it because what had happened is that I had a friend who worked for Life Magazine and she had, she was then working for Newsweek. She later worked for Newsweek. She was going to England for the holiday. She was going to England just before Christmas and she'd come back to have lunch with me at my office at Dell. And she didn't have contempt for the books, but she was a serious, she was a serious literary person. And so, she was asking, "Why don't you come with me to England because we can do this? This is not to look. I just had this job." But while you're in England, why don't you come up with a plot for one of these little books. And as a side, she said, "Okay, I just might do that." So, she did. And she came back and she had this wonderful story. She had another friend who had worked for a large corporation in New York that had to do with oil. So, she drew on characters and information that she knew that black people did. And so, when she turned the book into me, when she actually wrote it and turned it in, I liked it. And so, but something just said to me, you know, that I should really speak to my editor-in-chief, who was a wonderful woman, who I think had been one of the first women to finish in modern times. She finished Harvard. And so, she was up for, and she was Daniel Steele's editor. So, I went to her and just said, her name's Linda Gray. And I said, "I have a book, a little romance, with all black characters." And I just want to tell you that I have it. And I'm putting it in the line and she said, "Well, I'm not the person to speak to. You should speak to the head of sales." So, I went down to the sales department and I said to the guy in charge, you know, that I had this book. And because I was the only black editor that they had. And so, people, I don't know that they were kept towing around me, but in those days, the candle lights were at the bottom of the barrel. You know, no one paid too much attention to them. I realized that I was really kind of hired to sort of take care of what nobody else wanted to do because the secretaries, they used to do maybe one book every two months, every three months. And so, when I was hired, the secretaries used to have to just put the books through, put the manuscripts through production. And they did very light editing. And it was like, it was like a chore. So, the last secretaries said to me, "I'm so glad that you're hired because I don't want to have to do this anymore." So, when I went down to the sales department to say that I had this book where all the characters were black, he just said, "Well, the pilot went half one." And I said, "No, he should be in. Let's do it." It was just like that. And so, the public relations department, the PR department of Del, used to have to send out every month to the major newspapers. What was new in the house for that month that they wanted to really promote? So, that was the most interesting thing. And I think Ray Walters, who wrote the piece, he's the one that made it epic. And I don't think it was done on purpose, but it was just done to really distinguish that book from the other book. It's to just let people know. And it was new because it was the first time that it had ever been done in commercial publishing for category books. And you're talking about Rosalyn Wells in Twine Destiny? Yes. Yes, it was the first time, and since he was doing the news of Del for that particular month, then that was perhaps the most leading thing. And because I never spoke to him, I have no idea what he sounds like, or what he looks like. So, he took everything just from the public relations department, and I had said to him that I was going to buy other books. So, and I can't even remember how I got the word out, but I think when Elsa's book came out in 1980, simply because she had worked for Life Magazine, and Life Magazine had a lot of other magazines. They had People Magazine, they had Money Magazine, Fortune Magazine. Well, she had a friend who worked at People, and People Magazine reviewed her book in that particular week's issue. So, and it had a wonderful cover, because I met with the, it was going to be my first book with black characters. I went to the art department, and I asked to speak to the artist that was assigned to that particular book, because the candle lights were always freelanceed out. They were never considered important enough. And so, artists who were in commercial work would call in to really see if there was any freelance work for those little books. And I have no idea how much it paid, but I'm sure it didn't pay the kind of money that the mainstream books were being paid. So, I did speak to the artist, and I wanted to make sure that the characters did not look like the prototype of what people thought that black people looked like. I didn't want the main character to look like a pimp. And so, he said to me, "Oh, okay. All right. He said I will hire a fashion model." And he did, and I saw the sketches, and the cover turned out to be wonderful. So, that was how that started, but the ethnic, I realized was the proper word to use, because after that, I bought a book where the characters were Native American. And what I insisted on is that the writers be of that particular ethnic group, because otherwise, I felt that if the story was written by someone who was not of that group, that without, and maybe sometimes knowing it, there would be, the derogatory terms used, or statements used that they didn't realize were not the right thing to say. Because, after all, when you're reading one of these books, to me, and I made this a point, it said you were never too afraid. The books are to make you feel happy, and uplifting. It's to me, the whole sound is a book of their stories. of hope. They are fantasies within the realm of possibility, are fantasies within the realm of reality, so you're not going to say anything negative about anything, at least under my watch. I have read books later on where I didn't know whether the writer was doing it on purpose or he just didn't know any better. But in my books, I always, if I self, because you know, sometimes people can use derogatory terms and you can become so desensitized that you don't catch it right away. But I had readers, because I would get so many manuscripts. I am the course of, of any time that I was working, I never had less than 200 manuscripts in my office. So I had readers, I had five people who just read for me and did a little report on whether the story stayed within the guidelines of the genre, and I did have a tip sheet that said what everything should be. Did you create that tip sheet? Yes. Oh, do you remember some of the things you had up there? Oh, sure, sure. I mean, the heroin had to be American. She had to be at least between 21 and 25. She had to have a job. She didn't have to, she didn't have to be a virgin. She didn't have to have finished college, but she had to be upwardly mobile. She had to have ambition for herself. And the hero could be, he had to be of any nationality, but preferably American because I'm appealing to an American audience. And he had to be successful, attractive enough to appeal to the heroine. I said whatever band cement that would depend on the writer, but it had to be appealing, that they had to be engaged in jobs that were upwardly mobile because after all you want to inspire the reader, that they had to be set, the books had to be set within the United States or its territories because the average American woman in her daydreaming could, she could daydream about going to someplace that she could recognize rather than going to Europe, you see, because an American setting would be more accessible to her. I finally said to a reader, to a writer once, where her people were going to go on a little holiday. And I said, in your town, when you read the society page on Sunday and you read about where the young married are going on the honeymoon, where are those places closest to you? And she named a place that was really within reach of our home. And she said, that's where I would really want to go after then. That's what you aim for. I wanted people to aim for things that were accessible to them. And then on the tip sheet also, we talked about locals, we talked about jobs, we talked about how the books had to embrace the 5 senses. So, you know, you're talking about music and food and all of the senses about senses. And in doing so, I wanted them to be in touch with things that they could try to identify because this also had to do with their vocabulary and how the vocabulary had to really be able to express the emotions. And that's the hardest thing for a writer to be able to put into words is to attach words to a feeling. So we talked about how silk felt, how perfumes smelled on the skin. What food was like? What food like to look at? To really taste what music was like to hear. And then the main thing is how the characters touched each other. I had a tagline that was always attached to me because I would always say in my workshop that I wanted longing to look at how longing I wanted tender touches. I wanted him to touch her tenderly. I now wanted hugs and kisses. Because basically, when a woman is day dreaming, that's what she's interested in more than the physical act of sex itself. It's the fourth play, it's the after play. It's how how did the kisses make her feel? And also, I insisted that the characters that the hero, especially, call her the endearments were fine. But I never just referred to her as baby. I could call her by her name. Say her name tenderly. Say it in a whisper. Because these are the things that women like, you know, because what I wanted, and I think that this really did happen, is when a reader because you always to satisfy, you're writing the books because you like the books, but you also want your writing read. So I would always want and say to the writer when I did workshops, what you really want is for the reader to finish your book and go, ah, yes. I want another one. Right. I said, that's why women, and see, that actually happened because in the early 80s, women would go to the bookstore. They wouldn't buy one. They were like me when I first read these books in North Adams, Massachusetts. And about one, I went back to the next day, and about three, and the next day, the next week, about five. And so when the books really took off, they always bought all the books. They bought six. Yes. So you want her to finish the book and just go off. Because the reader has been rooting for the hero in heroin, you see, that they had gone, because it's always the pull and push, the pull and push, come here, come here, go away, go away, because it was always a little, um, you know, disagreement. And as an English editor said to me once, she said, you know, if they got rid of the disagreement, the books would be five pages long. So you had to really draw that out. And so you're drawing it out with the reader. And the reader is really rooting for them. Right. So at the end is that they've gone the whole distance, and they've won each other. Yeah. I wanted to ask about the feedback from maybe black readers. Did you get any feedback from black readers about entwined destinies? No, I really didn't. I really didn't other than, other than, uh, I got a lot of positive information and the press. And I think because the candle lights were never advertised, I think that the book had to find its own seat. But I never got anything negative. I never got anything negative about, uh, about her book at all. And then the next book that I did was Native American. I never got anything negative about that one. And the next one was, um, was Hispanic, because the writer was a Mexican teacher in San Antonio, and she did a wonderful little book. And I didn't get anything negative. If I did, I never knew it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. And, and yet the reason that I know that I didn't is because usually when the books came out on the Monday morning after the after the books were out, and readers had bought them, I would get phone calls. And see, in those days, you could just go through the receptionist. And, you know, the person would say, I want to speak to the editor of the candle lights, and she would just put the call through. Whoa. And, and so on the Monday morning, I would get calls from readers, but what they would want. They would tell me about the book that they had just read. Whoa. Over the weekend. And usually they had read it twice. And they wanted to know when was, when was the love letter writer going to have another book out? Whoa. And so, and so, or even they would complain about something in the book, but it was never about the characters or the ethnicity of any of the characters at all. So how do you remember the sales on those once you came to Dell and you sort of transformed candle light ecstasy? What were your sales like? Well, when I got there, simply because the books had not been consistently done. I, I didn't have, you know, the books were so insignificant that there were no numbers. I didn't have anything. I was just left on my own. So one, one day before Thanksgiving, I knew that because it was going to be a four day holiday and I was basing it on myself is that If you didn't have plans or if you wouldn't have to take the train and go someplace, you know for your Thanksgiving dinner, you still wanted something to read. If you were a reader, and I always took the, I always put myself in the mind of a reader. So on that particular Wednesday, I took myself to the largest Woolworths in Manhattan, which was not too far from my office, and I went and launched time because I knew that women would probably be buying books, and I just went to really look and that particular store had a whole wall of just paperback books, just rack after rack after rack. And the hardware salesman had just stocked his bin the day before. So the sales were full of new books, so I stood there and I watched women come in and buy books, and no one touched my candlelight. I only had a few out and they were books that I had not bought, so they were books that had been bought before I started. So when I didn't see anybody pick up any books, I went over and talked to a couple of women who were in the process of reading the back cover copy to see what they wanted, and these were the harlequins, and I asked them, I identified myself, I said, I was the editor of a candlelight, and excuse me, did they ever buy any? Did they ever buy any candlelight from answers? And several of them shook their heads and just walked away. There was one woman who bought frequencies, and she said that she never bought a contemporary candlelight because the harrowins were too young and too insipid, and I can't stand that. And she was buying frequencies because the region just had to stay true to the period. So you cannot really go off kilter with them. So she was buying, I asked her what she did, she worked on Wall Street, and then she was in school, she was at NYU, studying Russian, so she was just not an average person. So she was buying frequencies for her lawyer, she said, and I understood that, she said, I'm not going to read it right away, and she said, but when I needed, I wanted there. So she bought books for her inventory because a lot of women buy books according to their mood, I mean they read books according to their mood, so she was buying books for that. So what I decided that I would do in doing the tipsheet is that, and in the long run I had to do two tipsheet, but actually I did three, I did one for frequencies, I did one for the contemporaries, I did one for intrigues, and then I did one for the ecstasy, as I gradually moved from, you know, one category to enough, I actually decided what I had to do was to let the reader and the writer know that the books had to become more American. And in the culture, in our culture itself at the time we were going through the women's movement, and the women were lying for better jobs, they wanted, there were people, women in New York who were on strike, you know, because I remember them being on strike I think at life are at times, and it was the period of the power suit, you know, so I had to really say, I have to really show the culture in the books, so that's why I said in the tipsheet that the women had to be older, they had to be more interesting, and that getting the guy, getting the hero was the icing on the cake, it was not the cake itself, that if she did not get the, she was okay, she was alright by herself, it was interesting enough, she was enough, and that the guy just added to it, that was fantasy within the realm of possibility, so I came up with that myself, I didn't ask anybody that, and that I knew that women and men went to bed together without the benefit of clergy, and that that could be in the books also, because that was a part of reality, it didn't have to be, and you didn't have to really, really expand on it, you know, because it made it more acceptable to the reader, and it was more real, so that was how, that was how that happened, those were the two major things, is that she'd be American, that the settings be in America, and to reflect American life, yes, and how society was transforming in women's roles in society, exactly, because women were on the move, and also it was the time of the sexual revolutions, yes, so it didn't have to be reflected in great detail, but it could not be ignored in fiction, can you talk about your role in the funding of RWA, it was the tradition at all of the houses, all of the publishing houses, that they send someone to conferences that would be right of conferences across the country, Southwestern, right of the conference was a big conference, and usually somebody had to go, and so my editor-chief came to me and said, "Look, you need to go to this," and I said, "Well, why?" and they said, "Well, you're here, and these are your books, and since you've a last one hired, you have to go." And it was, the conference was here in Houston, just happened to be in Houston, because they held everywhere, and so I thought, "Well, I can go home and visit my parents while I'm at this conference," so I did come, and to Houston, to do the conference, which is usually about four days, and so on the day an editor from all over the country came, and in the way of editors, everybody was a little smug, a little arrogant, and not happy to be at one of those conferences, and so since we were all introduced like at the morning assembly, so when it was my time, I didn't know the etiquette, so when it was my time to be introduced, I went to the podium and told them my name, what I did, what I was looking for, I gave them a lot of information, so in the audience were these women who were interested in romance, so when it was time for us to have our individual classes, I had a room full of women who were interested in writing romance novels, so that was the first inkling of the interest, and I was happy about that, because I needed a lot of writers since I was doing five books a month, so at the end of the conference, at the banquet, you know, when we all were introduced and people were thanking us, the "Mrs. Ceremonies" was thanking all the editors and they called us by name, and when my name was called, I had this standing ovation, I mean the women, you know, were pounding their hands together and their feet together, and it was fun, and so afterwards when I went back to New York, I started getting telephone calls, you know, "Can you remind us of how many words you're looking for?" and I got a lot of manuscripts from Texas, and so the next year, when the conference was given in another city, these women went and they called me up to say, "You were not there, we were not able to ask for questions that we wanted, but nobody was really interested." After about five calls, I said, "From five different people," I said, "You know, what do people need is your own conference. You need your own romance conference, and then you can ask all the questions that you want that pertain to the show, or that you're writing in." And this particular person just said, "We're just waiting for you to come and organize us," and she was calling from Houston, and I said, "I'm coming to visit my parents at Christmas, and if you can find a few people together, you know, we can meet." And that was the only thing I was looking for. You know, it's like you have a club in high school. And so they did find a place, and I came, and there was 40 women, and it was from Grant, and I had a TIP secretary at the time after we had organized, and I went back and told the PR department, and they said, "You need a name." And I had a TIP, a guy, and I said, "You know, I have no idea what to name this group," [BLANK_AUDIO] He was a member of the History Writers of America and he said, "Well, why don't you just call on it romance writers of America and it was just as simple?" And so I told the PR department because they were going to write a press release and they just said, "You know that I started this organization and then the group here in Houston said that they wanted their own conference and I said, "Well, we're just fine to place. You know, just find a place, remember that you're romance writers and you want an attractive place and you know, put the word out. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't take part in it, you know, in trying to organize it. They did it themselves and when it became a big thing, they would call me like every month to tell me what they had done and how much money was going to cost. I just left it up to them, so when it became a real thing, then people started calling me saying, "Do you mean I want to go to this thing?" So the press release that Delston out, just said it was open to all of the houses, you know that anybody who was interested in writers writing romance, that this was available to them. So it got to the place where the networks, you know, the cameras came from ABC and BC, CBS and then newspapers from across the country showed up because it was 800 women showed up at this conference. So it was the beginning and I did nothing. I did nothing but just people would call me and I would just say, "Come, I encourage all of my writers to come," I said to your organization because during what I wanted them to do, I wanted them to understand how their manuscripts became books. I had also asked the Editing Chief if he would allow someone who did copy editing, someone who did proofreading to come, to really talk to the groups to say, "When you send in your manuscript and it goes through, I wanted them to understand all of the processes that their manuscripts went through after the initial editing." And so, you know how the books became from your typewriter because they were using type writers at the time from how, from you buying your ring of paper sitting at your kitchen table, typing your story until when you can go into a bookstore and pick up your book. There has a cover and a price on it as a dollar twenty-five because that's how much the books cost then. And so that was it. So everybody showed up and then the other thing is agents showed up because agents wanted the 10% of whatever the writer was making and of course the writer wanted to be professional because most of them were not professional people but that put them in another whole category. See, I didn't really realize until a long time later what it did for their own psyche and for their emotional health because it put them, it took them from just being someone to mother and someone to wife to their own identity as a writer. So later on in my career, I had women when they would see me to come up to me and say, "One woman is on a sidle up to me once and I cannot even remember her." But she said, "You called me one morning when I was desperate, I needed money and you called with an offer and I wanted you to know how you saved me that morning." And I just said, "You saved yourself." You had a manuscript that I liked and I was happy to buy it from you. And then another time I was doing a workshop at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma and a woman that I bought at Harlequin came up to me and she said, "Oh, Vivian, I'm so happy to see you and at the time I paid $6,000 for a manuscript." So she said, "You will never know what you did for me." And she said, "You gave me the courage to leave my husband and I thought this is far reaching." She said, "I needed a confidence, she said I had been wanting to do it for years and you gave me the confidence." I said, "Please don't tell me that, but it was a confidence that she could write something that was still under her own name, under her own skin." That would give her the confidence that she could go on with the rest of her life. So you never know what a simple something like a little candlelight romance can do for person. If you have enjoyed part one of my conversation with Vivian Stevens, join me next week for part two. This is your host Julie Moody Freeman. I appreciate you listening to The Black Romance Podcast. And please hit that subscribe button.