Who are You?
One of the first questions we have to answer when we start to write is, “who is this story about?” For some stories, like What Doesn’t Kill You (just out in paperback), the character is someone we haven’t met before and we have to get to know her from scratch—where she’s from, how she speaks, what she likes, how she acts and who are her family and friends. We issue her a DeBerry & Grant birth certificate and fill in her history so we know where’s she’s been and how she got to where the story begins.
But when we started discussing Uptown, a story that centered around the 
development of real estate in Harlem and the family secrets, betrayals, and greed that plague the developer’s family, we realized we already “knew” those people. Dwight Dixon, a Councilman from a Harlem district with an eye toward running for Congress, courted and proposed to Jewell Prescott in Better Than I Know Myself. His father, King Dixon, owned a considerable amount of Harlem real estate—including the 110th Street building where Jewell, Regina and Carmen shared apartment 5D during college and beyond.
Father and son were a toxic twosome—King always demanding more of his son while managing to demean even his accomplishments, and Dwight, driven to prove himself to the man who would never be satisfied. We didn’t have a chance to explore how they got that way in Better, or to fully understand Dwight’s unusual. . .habits, but it could all come out in Uptown (we even get a chance to check in on Regina and Ty).
We already knew Dwight’s family house was on Striver’s Row, and that his favorite aunt, Forestina, lived down the block, so this gave us the chance to add leaves to the family tree, like his cousin, Avery Lyons. But if Dwight was
so close to Auntie Tina, how come he never mentioned Avery? Were they at odds, even as children? Was there some kind of rift? What has Avery been doing with her life, and what would happen if we reunited Dwight and Avery after decades apart? The more we explored, the juicier the story became. And the family saga of betrayal and forgiveness was a perfect accompaniment to the story of Dwight and the Dixon Group, doing whatever it takes to turn their stretch of tenements on 110th into the sparkling towers of Dixon Plaza, which Dwight envisions as the exclamation points at the top of Central Park.
As we write we have always found that fully knowing our characters gave us the key to how they would behave in any situation we put them in. It has also allowed readers to understand why characters act in certain ways, even when
you hope they don’t do it. And sometimes we find that although we thought we were done with a particular character in another book, sometimes they have more story to tell.
With five novels to their credit, Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, best friends for 25 years, have turned a friendship into the most successful and enduring writing collaboration in African American fiction.
Donna and Virginia first met as plus size models vying for the same assignments. They were both featured in catalogs, ads, magazines and made national television appearances. Their modeling careers led to the opportunity to launch Maxima, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women, where Virginia was editor-in-chief and Donna the managing editor. When publication of Maxima ceased, Virginia and Donna decided to try writing a book together. The result, Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made, was a critical success, an Essence Bestseller, as are all three of their books, and won the Merit Award for Fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, as well as the 1998 Book of the Year Award from the Blackboard Bestseller List/African American Booksellers Conference-Book Expo America.
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