Watch this exclusive Mr. Media interview with Rolonda Watts by clicking on the video player above!
Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience full of white, Southern sheriffs whose first thought upon encountering a beautiful African-American woman on the beach these days may not always be the prospect of an illicit affair — unfortunately… in the NEW new media capital of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida!
If you’re in the public eye, folks love to read deeper meaning or intent into everything you do or say.
That’s why I’m betting that Rolonda Watts never seriously considering writing a romance novel during the years she was best known as the host of the Emmy Award-nominated, syndicated daytime TV talk show cleverly dubbed “Rolonda.”
ROLONDA WATTS podcast excerpt: “Once you give your characters flesh and bone and little tics and blonde hair, they become real! I had a lady one time at a a book signing say, ‘I got everything you were telling us about writing, but when you got to the part about the characters talking to you, you lost me!'”
Her millions of viewers might have looked at her a little differently if she wrote the following paragraph back then:
Garrett gently kisses me on my forehead, my eyelids, my temples, and my cheeks. He caressses my hair and begins to press his strong hard body against mine. He becomes aroused, his muscular thigh rubbing in between mine.
First of all, they’d wonder: “Why does Garrett only have one muscular thigh? What’s wrong with the other one? Or—is he an amputee? Not that there is anything wrong with that – it’s probably a genre of its own!”
But, I digress:
He dives his hot tongue into my mouth, and I am so hungry for his kiss that I nearly swallow it…
So you get the idea. That would likely become a little distracting from the day’s talk show topic, whether, “Where Are All the Good Black Men?” or “I’ve Been Stood Up 26 Times” or “Beauty and the Breasts.”
ROLONDA WATTS podcast excerpt: “Writing has been a hobby for me since I was a little girl. During my talk show, in 1996, Hurricane Bertha slammed Topsail Island, where ‘Destiny Lingers’ takes place, and I had a home there. Dumb me wanted to stay there and cover the story for ‘Inside Edition.’ By the time the TV production truck got to the island, it was too dangerous to let the truck on and too dangerous for me to get off. I was one of 11 stubborn stragglers left on the island. This is what started the story.”
Actually, maybe a romance novel would have been a perfect companion. Rolanda on TV was fearless and funny, sassy and a bit silly at times.
With Destiny Lingers, Rolonda Watts takes all that personality once squeezed into the tube and lets her love flow across 255 pages of fiction.
How much of it is romantic fiction and how much is real life?
We’ll find out next, on Rolonda!
Key interview moments:
• 4:55 TV talk show host turned romance novelist Rolonda Watts explains how Hurricane Bertha inspired her to write Destiny Lingers;
• 23:50 Fictional characters talk to Watts, believe it or not;
• 37:25 The day Bill Cosby was a guest on ‘Rolonda’–and what he apologized for.
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