MyWeku

MyWeku: How difficult was it to leave a successful professional career for the literary world?

TH: While there are a lot of trade offs when making the decision to leave Corporate America for the life of a writer ( two of the most important ones are steady income and benefits), my passion for writing and living my life in the most full-filled manner superceded those concerns. I was acutely aware that my income would drop significantly until I was able to build a fan base, but I was ok with that. At some point most of us have to make a choice between more quantity of money or better quality of life; for me the choice was easy, because I love what I do now.

MyWeku: How would you describe any of your 6 books, including “Gold Diggers” and “Never Kiss and Tell”, to somebody who has not read any of your books?

TH: My novels drop the reader into the lives of upwardly mobile, outwardly successful, usually sophisticated African American characters, and then drops the characters into situations that test their fortitude, character and integrity. I am always striving to highlight the fact that people are not simply black and white in their characterizations. Good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, just as in life. On the more literal side, I also illustrate that racially, black vs. white isn’t always noteworthy. Given what they do and aspire to, my characters could easily be any color under the sun; they just happen to be black.

MyWeku: What are you reading right now? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

TH: I am currently enjoying Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi. I love the raw elegance of the story and the writing. As a teen, I read a lot of the glamour stories written by Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz and Joan Collins, and as an adult I read lots of E. Lynn Harris, combined with authors across many divergent genres, but I am most influenced by E. Lynn and Sidney Sheldon; an interesting combination!

MyWeku:What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

TH: I love to travel, particularly throughout Africa. I’ve visited Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Johannesburgh, Durban, and Cape Town. I also love The South of France and Italy. While traveling I enjoy good food, great wine, meeting people, and learning and immersing myself in the local culture. I also enjoy golf, gardening, sharing a meal with friends, and of course, reading!
MyWeku: Your books are very generally heavily influenced by African American characters both in their settings and language. I know that your books have been pretty successful in America, do you have plans to include some continental African characters?

TH: My characters are African American, but there experiences and language usage are pretty ‘American.’ Interestingly, I have began to slowly  integrate my experiences in Africa within the stories. In Gold Diggers I have a character, Giddeon who is a documentarian-styled photographer, and I use him to describe parts of the African experience, and in Friends & Fauxs, he and his girlfriend are hanging out in Cape Town, and I describe a bit of the beauty. I spent nine weeks earlier this year in West Africa and one day I plan to write much more extensively about the continent, but perhaps not in the realm of fiction.

MyWeku:Do you have any suggestions to help aspiring writers?

TH: I would suggest that all aspiring writers do one thing first and foremost: WRITE! Whether in a journal or a blog or by starting a novel, it’s important to become comfortable with forming and expressing thoughts. The other suggestion for those wanting to write a book is don’t start until you instead are saying, ‘I want to write about (FILL IN THE BLANK).’ The goal of just ‘writing a book’ is not enough to inspire good work, but when you are yearning to tell a particular story, that is!

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