Jayne Allen, BLACK GIRLS MUST DIE EXHAUSTED: A Novel

[1:17]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Jane Allen is the author of Black Girls Must Die Exhausted. Jane Allen is the pen name of Janique Seeley, a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School. An avid traveler, she speaks three languages and has visited five continents. Drawing from her unique experiences as an attorney and entrepreneur, she crafts transcultural stories that touch upon contemporary women's issues such as workplace and career dynamics, race, fertility, modern relationships, and mental health awareness. Her writing echoes her desire to bring both multiculturalism and multidimensionality to a rich and colorful cast of characters inspired by the magic uncovered in everyday life. Black Girls Must Die Exhausted is her first novel, which she calls the epitaph of my thirties. It's part of a three book deal, and also was just chosen as the inaugural book club pick for the Target Diverse Voices Book Club, which is so exciting. A proud native of Detroit, she currently lives in Los Angeles. And by the way, if you have heard about Zibby Books, my new publishing company, she is our VP of Strategy and Community and is helping us build up that business. So I have a vested interest in Jane's success, I adore her. Welcome, Jane. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thank you for having me. This is so exciting. Your book was amazing. You have such a backstory. I inhaled the whole thing. It's called Black Girls Must Die Exhausted. And it's part of three, right? Yes. It's a planned trilogy. Wow. Yeah. So tell listeners what this part one is about and how this whole series came to be. Okay,

[3:27]Jayne Allen: so this is Tammy Walker's story and she's 33 years old. She finds out that she has premature ovarian failure. Like, we meet her on her worst day, okay, at her most vulnerable. She thought her life was going according to plan. She had it all figured out. Excellent job of her dream. She's a local reporter in LA, a coveted position. She has, you know, the boyfriend that she thinks she wants to be with, the partner that she wants to have. And she just she just thinks she's doing it. And then she has this news all of a sudden that just kind of tears everything apart. And she has to reconfigure her whole life from there. And in the process, she finds out that she's been living a word, you know? And I think so many of us kind of sleepwalk, we think, oh, we've done our checklist, we've got it figured out. And we don't really realize that in the midst of all this, we're living, there's a word we're living, you know? And so this is this woman at this young age, 33, her opportunity to figure out, oh my gosh, the word I've been living is exhausted. And that's not the word that she wants for herself. So we go through this story, and I'm I'm so excited that it's a trilogy because I really get to spend time with her and in her life and meeting her friends and family as she tries to reconstruct or redefine that word for herself and really find happiness. So there's a lot of layers in that, in her story, being a professional woman, being a contemporary woman in contemporary relationship space, also the layer of race. She's a black woman, or living the experience of blackness in America, and her grandmother is a white woman who's her closest relative. She's a complex family dynamic. So there's it's just an opportunity to examine relationships and this woman's journey of defining herself in the midst of challenges, everyday life challenges. And the exciting part of the story was to find the magic and the courage and that journey, almost that fantastic hero's journey in the context of an everyday life. Wow. And so you wrote all three at once? I didn't. So I let them kind of evolve individually. Okay. So I'm now currently, as we're releasing this first book, I'm writing book three. It's I know I've written the last words of book three already. I know where it was. I'm so excited. But this in this journey, this is kind of where she first sets off on her adventure to kind of redefine her life and sets off in this undefined space. And I knew that I want that it would be a trilogy kind of a three part journey.

[6:05]Zibby Owens: And so it was it's it's great to have that space to let the story just breathe and evolve and you get to really get to know her. Wow. And she's got really colorful friends and family. I feel like I already know her really well. Yeah. I'm like, what's gonna happen to everybody in the next couple? Right? I mean, because you really like, we and you do it kind of slowly. Right? Yes. And not very obviously. Right? Like, you just, like, scatter in all the facts as we go about, you know, her dad and how her dad I mean, don't I now I never know what to give away on You can give away the I mean, the first part of it. Yeah, it's Okay. And how her dad had left her mom, but her dad's mother was white. Her mother was black. But then the dad leaves the black mother to then have a second family with a white mother. Then, of course, the daughter feel like highly conflicted about everything and the mother and my gosh. So you have like all this stuff and you have like relationship like cop relationship issues That built part of that. And promotion issues and like affirmative action ish type questions. Questions. They come up. Why is this happening? And infertility and relation. I mean, it's like you fit everything in and yet it was so paced, like at a fun It still came off as like a fun

[7:19]Jayne Allen: read almost, even though it had such deep issues. I well, that's life. Right? So I wanted it to feel like you just met the best friend that you never knew you had and to have this vulnerability with a person that you haven't earned yet. So as a reader, that's what we get. Right? So that was what I wanted to give the reader, sort of this this friendship and vulnerability with the protagonist Tabby that you really haven't earned, you know, you but you get it. Yeah. And then you get to have the experiences of the lessons that she learns and this kind of voyeuristic bird's eye view as her her life has all of these, you know, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes just like, what just happened moments. But you get to learn along with Tabby. So I just I wanted to write that because that was what I wanted to read. You know, that would be a book that I would finish. And so that was what I wanted to give readers. Well, that's like all you can do as an author. Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, you have to just write there's no other way to do it. Like, you have to amuse yourself or make yourself laugh or like, nope. You know, it's possible nobody ever reads what you get, what you write. Exactly. If you're not amusing yourself, forget it. Oh my gosh. When I was writing, I could not wait to finish. I sometimes I would read back what I wrote in a day or there were scenes I couldn't wait to write. There's a scene where Tavy, who's black and her grandmother who's white, talk to each other about what does it feel like to be the racist. Yes, I wanted to bring that up. I'm glad you mentioned that. That was the hardest scene. I couldn't wait to write that scene. I couldn't because I had the characters. I knew the characters. I knew their voice to put them in that moment and to see what they were gonna say because I've never seen that in life. Yeah. So I just wanted to see what that was gonna be and I couldn't wait to read it. So and I couldn't wait to write it just so I could read it. But it was it that's what writing it felt like for me. And so it was it was challenging, but it's The heartbreaking part really about that scene was when the grandmother is like crying because

[9:18]Zibby Owens: Tabby asks her like, What would you get? Would you how would you feel if you had gone through life black? And she was like, Well, first of all, I probably wouldn't even still be here. Yeah. And second of all, like, No, I don't think I would choose that for myself. Yeah. She said it to her granddaughter. Right. And that's a lot. That's heavy.

[9:33]Jayne Allen: Yeah. It was a it was a deep scene to write and and to really try to put myself in those characters and even thinking about it as an author, you know, you can't answer that for everybody. So it had to just be really, really true for those characters. It's such a deep question, and we don't have a lot of reference points for it in our everyday lives. So yeah, it was it was just it was such a beautiful space

[9:59]Zibby Owens: to watch them interact from. And, yeah, I I just I love both of them so much. Even though they don't exist. Me too. No. I felt like you did. And I'm glad you even used the word scene because that's how it came across. Like, it was a very visual book that, like, here I am in the car with her. Like, here I am at work as she's just getting in there and like looking a little frazzled. Like, you know, here I am at the hair salon with her friend. Like, everything had such a sense of place. Yeah. And like, you could just see it, which I love because that's like the key to emergent, I feel like. It's like putting yourself in those in her shoes, literally.

[10:34]Jayne Allen: Yeah. Tried to do that. I mean, I do think in terms of scenes and I write in terms of scenes. So I have an outline and then I think about the scenes that this person's gonna go through that make up the story. So I do

[10:49]Zibby Owens: I just think that way. So I actually I'm glad I came I no. I've just wrote this memoir. It's coming out next July. And I literally with my editor at the beginning, I was like, I have to do this in scenes. That's the only way I can think about it. Oh my God. It's crazy, Yeah, but understand. Yeah, and then literally yesterday, this friend of my husband's was asking me, he's like, Wow, a whole book. Doesn't that seem overwhelming? And I'm like, Well, you have to break it down. What if you had 100 scenes? What if you had 60 scenes? You could write a scene, right? Yeah, exactly. And then just keep doing that. Yep. That's exactly what I do. And then I sew it together like a quilt. Yeah. The good thing is, too, is that sometimes, like a lot of books, even the more literary, right, they just they play with time so much. Yeah. It's a scene. You don't even have to stitch. Right. Exactly. You could just like throw them like little Frisbees Exactly. Where they

[11:37]Jayne Allen: Exactly. Yeah. So funny. And I couldn't tell if I was rooting for her and Mark, for Tabby and Mark. I just couldn't tell. I'm like, do I want them to end up together? Do I not want them? Did you have a view on this? I yes and no. Like, I really just wanted to be authentic. I think we don't often see these complex male characters or who also are struggling with who they are and and how they wanna show up in a relationship or how they're or being challenged with how they are showing up and having that unpacked for the reader. You know, let's think that a lot of the times we just get this sort of leading male who's, you know, supposed to be this romantic interest, but it's so complicated. And then like in life, it's so complicated. So it was really fun. I didn't know where it was gonna go. And for that relationship, I just wanted to be authentic. And I knew readers were gonna have an opinion one way or another. So, you know, I'm always I'm rooting for Mark just as a human being. Yes. Like, be a better man. Especially when you, like, showed us his backstory and, like, why he's having commitment issues. Like, Then you

[12:39]Zibby Owens: empathize and you're like, Exactly. But still. But now that I know there are two more books, I'm like, Well, maybe he reads tears. You never know. Look, there's always hope.

[12:52]Jayne Allen: You're controlling the entire narrative. We're like hoping And for this guy. But you know, you're the anyways hope. Well, mean, you know, my characters, I really do, I love character development, that's my favorite thing. And I really try to so like stitch in the texture of reality. And so I try to give them autonomy even though I'm, I guess, the puppeteer, but I don't wanna feel like the puppeteer. I want my characters to be so strongly developed that they can literally dictate who they are in a scene or in a narrative. So I'm setting the scene, I'm putting them into, you know, positions or in the story, but I do feel like my characters are setting their own direction or it's their words, it's their persona. So, you know, for Mark, like, I don't know where he's going to go. Want him to be a better man, you know, but we're

[13:44]Zibby Owens: going to see. We'll see where he goes. Well, there was also a lot I feel like one of the themes was sort of infidelity, right? And whether or not you can stay committed and from the friends, from the family, like it kept popping up. I was like, Are you trying to figure something? Are you like playing with this? Like, are you working through? Like, how do we feel about it? Like, what causes this? And what are the impacts? And all of that. I just felt like that was another pervasive.

[14:08]Jayne Allen: Yeah. That that's interesting. It probably I feel like as a writer, your characters can't learn lessons that you as a writer haven't already learned, you know? And that you can put them on a journey and then maybe you guys learn together or you watch this character go into this space. And I think where we are right now in society even, and we're reconfiguring and examining everything. So I guess relationships, they're not as defined and they're not as absolute as they used to be. So I guess maybe that is a theme. I've tried to make it a novel about contemporary times And the issues that women and particular Tabby is the vehicle for this, face that have, that we have to answer questions we do have to answer, especially as we look for fulfillment, which I think all, it's a human compulsion, we want to have fulfillment. And what does that look like? And that was also why I wanted to have her grandmother and then Ms. Gretchen, that older generational perspective, I think it's kind of important. We don't see it a lot in novels about younger women, but I wanted to add that layer because I do think as we try to figure out fulfillment, life is finite and what's gonna matter? That fact that it's finite makes the things in it matter.

[15:30]Zibby Owens: You're like preaching to the choir. This is like amazing. Yes. And when you get that sense in fiction that everything becomes like crystallized. Yeah. Everything is like sharpened. Yeah. It's like you're taking it off portrait mode or something, right? And going right into the Amen. So we were talking earlier, first of all, that Jane is not your real name. Yes. So I don't even know who you are. No, I'm kidding. I know you have a different name, which now I can't even What is it? Janique. Janique. Janique. So why? Why do you use a pen name? Because when so this is my first fiction foray

[16:04]Jayne Allen: and I was petrified. To be honest, I just was petrified in all respects. I was petrified in moving forward with a novel. I'd never written fiction before. I was petrified calling it Black Girls Must Die Exhausted. I was like, oh my god, it's so provocative. It's you know, I just was I like I I don't but I felt like it needed to be done. And the only way I could do it and at the time, I was working in an executive, very demanding position. Go back to your career because I still don't understand how this even came up. But and I I just didn't wanna let fear govern what I was gonna do. So I said, if you need to, when I first came to LA, I took a few acting classes, I took improv and I took a acting class just because I wanted as a lawyer, I was working as a lawyer and I wanted to get more connected to myself. And so I did this. And in one of the classes, the instructor told me, Richard Lawson's name, sometimes you have to change your name. And so a lot of times, actors will have screen names and whatnot, and that gives them the courage to go forth and take these roles and be somebody else that they have to to get it done. And I just had that in the back of my mind. So when I was afraid about doing Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, I just remembered that, like, sometimes you have to change your name. And so I did. I gave myself a name that was close to mine. Mean, people call me Jay and, you know, so Jane is a name that it feels me and Aileen is my middle name, it's my grandmother's first name. That's where I got that concept from. So Jane Allen is a version of me that it allowed me to move forward in spite of being afraid. I love it.

[17:50]Zibby Owens: So you we were talking about your background. You went to Duke and Harvard Law School. You started in the music industry. Next thing you know, you're working with Lady Gaga and Prince and Stevie Wonder and like ridiculous. Then you ended up at Universal Music Group. Yes. Yes. Where did the writing piece come in? You know what? I've always

[18:10]Jayne Allen: written. And you don't know what you're calling or your passion because sometimes we're not conditioned to pay attention to ourselves. And I know from even being a kid, in my spare moment, would write. When I was in law school and I was bored in class, I would write song lyrics. I would write, I'd be writing, I always write. If I have something I need to figure out, I'll write a list. You know, I've always been writing. And even when I was working in the music industry, which felt like my dream career,

[18:41]Zibby Owens: in meetings, I would write. In my office, I would write. And so at one point, I remind me never to be in a meeting with you. I know. It would be like writing a short story on the side.

[18:51]Jayne Allen: I know. Be forewarned everybody. I know. If you see me writing, I'm probably writing. You're not taking that. I'm not taking that. I know. I shouldn't tell people, but yes. At some point I started paying attention because I didn't believe I could do it. It hadn't been presented to me in that way and I hadn't been focused on it. But it just wouldn't go away. Even in spite of all this, of all, you know, what I thought I was living my dream and I did, I lived several dreams. But this wouldn't go away. And so finally, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it. And I think what for black girls, what really made it happen was that I felt I saw a need and I wanted to make a change. I wanted to do something meaningful. And it was the best gift I could offer of myself. I always thought that people put the best part of themselves in books. And so that's how I always viewed it. That was my

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[21:34]Jayne Allen: had moved on to I was working in a startup and it was very demanding. It was 150 miles a year, 150,000 miles a year of travel and eighty hour weeks and all kinds of stuff. But I started thinking, gosh, I don't have time to read. And so I was like, well, if I'm gonna write a book, I want it to be something that I would read even in spite of this feeling of not having time. So it has to be meaningful. It has to be entertaining in a way that is really gonna make you invest and enjoy, but also not like you lost hours at the end of it that you gain something. That's why I say I want to stick to your bones or you gain a lesson out of it that gives you a way of understanding the life that we're all living. Know, that's what I was hoping for. And I think with my work, that's what I'm going keep doing, trying to answer tough questions and explore what the society and life that we're living. So are you still at the startup? No. Okay. Do this full time? Yes, I do this full time. Okay. Awesome.

[22:43]Zibby Owens: So when you wrote it, did you squeeze it in around everything else? Like in the mornings and late at night and all that? Weekends?

[22:50]Jayne Allen: I wrote at 03:00 in the morning. I would wake up, but it was like it would wake me up. I'd be so excited to write a scene. I couldn't wait to see what it was gonna look like at the end. So it would be hard for me to sleep past 3AM because I just, I would wake, I'd write after work, maybe starting at nine or 10:00 till literally I'd fall asleep with my computer, like my eyes would close. And then I would sleep just long enough that my eyes didn't hurt. So I would wake up at like three. I couldn't wait to see You got like four hours of sleep? During that time I did. Wow. I did. But I just kept a schedule. I tried to write, I look at it as one to two scenes a day, sometimes three if I was off schedule. But one to two scenes a day and just plotting along consistently, I got my drafting done. And I didn't even know I could do it, but I did it. And it was just exhilarating, and I had an outline. So the outline helped pull me through, I knew what I was writing toward and I knew what

[23:55]Zibby Owens: it was gonna be more or less. So it kept me engaged. And did you show anybody or did you like you didn't have a deal at first, right? You have to write it. I didn't have to even tell. Have to self publish at the beginning. You know, I was going to say that, but I was like, I must have remembered that wrong because it said in one excerpt somewhere that originally it was self published. But I was like, that can't be because it's coming out. Yes. Yes. It's a long story. But

[24:20]Jayne Allen: I originally finished the manuscript. And when is this now? This is 2018. Okay. So I gave this to and I came up with the idea in 2016, amidst a very And vitriolic as a woman and as a black woman, these are just things that in layers. There's a lot to carry and experience. So I wanted to write a story that was going to examine the layers of experience and celebrate that you still have joy in spite of all of this. And so, I wrote it and I gave the manuscript to my friends and family, my close friends, my friends from law school, my dad, who definitely is not trying to finish a book. Really, really busy and wouldn't necessarily read women's contemporary fiction, but it was his feedback that made me He's like, yeah, this is really good. And he would not, he doesn't meant words. He's the doctor. Yes. Yes. And so he made me realize, okay, maybe I should try to approach agents and see what's going happen. And when I first did that, the feedback I got overwhelmingly was they felt like Tabby Walker wasn't going to be relatable and wasn't relatable. And I was like, Oh my gosh, what do you mean? Like, Of course she's a relate What do you So I didn't want that to be the last word. And I thought the only way that this wouldn't be the last word is if I just put it out and give it to readers because I knew readers were ready for this. And readers of all backgrounds, I knew it. I just believed it. And I think of it as like doing a trust fall into a crowd surfing into what wound up being basically Lakers Stadium because in the self published version, it sold almost 20,000 copies on its own. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Good for you. That's awesome. Yeah. And while I was doing it part time, but I just, it was such a validation knowing that yes, the market's ready for this, readers are ready for this. And it was like that trust fall into just hands holding up this project and pushing it forward. And eventually it came to HarperCollins and they were like, yes, we believe in this and HarperPerennial team, they've been amazing. We want to amplify this and we want to get it into the hands of everybody who should read this. And so that's been It gives me incredible chills, gives me goosebumps. That's so exciting. It's been such an incredible journey. And the beautiful part is that it's been readers, we're doing something different together. It's a community effort, we're making a change. This is very different. It doesn't usually happen that a book like this or even a book that's been previously published is now getting the amplification in a large traditional platform. So I'm just really excited about that part of the story, even beyond the book. Wow.

[27:13]Zibby Owens: Yeah. That is so cool. This whole thing is just the coolest. I'm so excited. And then talk a little bit about all of your involvement, helping other authors and helping Oh yeah. I mean, with all the stuff you're giving back and even like how to write a review that is so smart, like on your website, like not just, would you please write a review, but here's how you do it. Go off and do it now. And all of your involvement. So tell me about that piece. Yeah. Write

[27:37]Jayne Allen: with the reader in mind. I have a marketing background and what that means to me is just being an empath. Just thinking about other people first. Think even as a writer, what is the reader experience gonna be? And I think, okay, now what if I'm gonna ask when you write a review, well, why would a person not write a review? Well, maybe they're just intimidated or they don't know how, I've never written a review before, but I really need you to do it. So let me help you do it and it helps you and it helps me. And for change, I want there to be diversity in publishing, more diversity. And I think to myself, well, what's the problem? Why are there not as many writers? I reference my own experience and I can understand it's a chilling kind of experience. And if you don't have the wherewithal, like thankfully I knew how to do marketing enough to get my book out and have it find its own audience to make its way to where it is now, but a lot of people don't have that. So I realized if I really want change, I have to participate more. I can't just write books and sit back and look, okay, I have to really do the work. So I teach people marketing, I teach other authors marketing, I teach writing as much as I can. And I'm trying to help build out the base of people telling their stories, so that now there's more stories for us to pick from as readers. So I just think that's my job as a citizen in this literary space, to help amplify voices of other people who wouldn't necessarily rise above the fray and encourage others to tell their story and let them know, there's an avenue for you. It's worth it.

[29:18]Zibby Owens: So yeah, it's just part of it to me. That's what I want to see happen. Wow, we have so much to discuss. We're gonna have to take this offline. This is very exciting. Do you have advice for aspiring authors aside from sort of the perseverance that you were alluding to with finding the right avenue and everything? Yeah, I do. I would say number one, take your ideas seriously.

[29:40]Jayne Allen: They're not just it's not some happenstance that it happened to you. It's for you. And if somebody told me that, you know, and I really believe them, I think I would have started writing earlier because I had so many ideas. And I just thought, oh, that's wasting time. It's daydreaming. It's, you know, it's not real, but it is. Those ideas are real. It's up to you to make them real and they have a journey of their own. So trust those ideas and follow through on them. And I think the other thing I would say is get somebody to read your work who loves it. And that encouragement will keep you going. Interesting.

[30:16]Zibby Owens: Also, tell everybody how you got the title.

[30:19]Jayne Allen: So when I, in the time I got the idea for the book, I had to think about what was the truth in 2016. We all remember that. Just we thought it couldn't get worse than 2020 happened. But 2016, I had to ask myself, what was the truth and reality that I was feeling? And the word that just kept coming up was exhausting. And so what I wanted to do was take that word in a journey and start it as an acknowledgment, and then celebration, and then a call to inspiration. So really change the meaning of the word. And I feel like in the book, hopefully, that word and the phrase black girls must die exhausted is an examination of life. And it changes, the meaning changes as you go through the book. So it ends on a very hopefully inspirational note. Wow. So exciting. Last question. What are some books you like to read when you do find the time? So I love contemporary fiction, but I've been reading a lot of other books from other authors now. So that's part of the author job that I'm learning. I'm such a newbie to this, but now so you so I've read some really cool things. I read it's a book called What Passes Is Love. It's by Tricia R. Thomas. Okay. And it's a historical fiction novel about a woman who was born a slave, but she's actually she winds up passing as a white woman in her life. And it's like the journey of her life, it totally changes. And she's got this dual perspective that's amazing. And there's a a person that was born with her, a man who was born with her bow, when she was born a slave, they were childhood friends. He winds up following her in her journey, and they reconnect later in life. But now she's a white woman and he still is like, it's really good. Woah. So yeah, I'm like, I don't normally read a story But about that I was like, oh yeah, I'm sure. It should be. So that's coming out, I think in November. I am reading The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren. That's my kind of contemporary fiction book. And I just read Seven Days in June. Oh, T Williams. Oh my God, love the book. I love complex romances. So that's a whole another story of why my personal butt. But

[32:30]Zibby Owens: I love stories of complex romance. So that was excellent. I loved her. She was on the podcast too. Oh, I love yeah. I love that too. And I said that she recommended your book. Yeah. For Reese and everything. Yeah.

[32:41]Jayne Allen: I was so excited. She's been amazing, but we met in book land. So she's awesome. I love her work. I think this is great. That's awesome. Well, congratulations. Can't wait for parts two and three. Is this going to be a movie? Have you had an option yet? We're having conversations. I'm praying. I do want that. So there've

[33:00]Zibby Owens: been some conversations, but nothing. I have a good feeling about it. You do? Yeah. Okay, me too. Thank you. Okay. Well, thanks so much for coming on and Thanks for having me. So exciting. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.