Gillian Royes was born in Jamaica, gained a scholarship to the Colorado College and moved to the U.S. in 1966. Three degrees later, she began editing, writing and lecturing in Atlanta. In addition to running a craft distributing company, she published her first book, Business Is Good, a history of Trinidadian business. This was followed by Sexcess: The New Gender Rules at Work.
Royes's debut novel, The Goat Woman of Largo Bay (Atria, September 27, 2011), is the first of a planned 10-book series featuring amateur detective Shadrack Myers, who tends a cliffside bar in Largo Bay, Jamaica.
On your nightstand now:
Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea; Terry McMillan's Getting to Happy; Kathryn Stockett's The Help; Lorene Cary's If Sons, Then Heirs. I tend to skip around between books, but these four are keeping me happy.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Although it featured women who had little in common with me, I had a good imagination and could picture myself living in that two-story house in Massachusetts with the March sisters--maybe because I lived in a similar house with two sisters. I later visited that house and saw that it was almost exactly as I had imagined it! That says something about Alcott's power of description, even for a little West Indian girl.
Your top five authors:
Isabel Allende, Agatha Christie, Alexander McCall Smith, Jodi Picoult, V.S. Naipaul. As varied as the genres are, they seem to satisfy different parts of me.
Book you've faked reading:
Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It sounded too self-conscious to me, but everyone around me seemed to love it so I had it on my nightstand for a while--and then gave it away.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. It's helped me to learn the process of visualizing success: success in writing, success in publishing, success in relationships. I even include the philosophy in my second book!
Book you bought for the cover:
An interesting question, but I can't think of any. I'm probably too stingy to buy only for a cover! I always investigate a book over a cup of tea before buying.
Book that changed your life:
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra. He introduced me to the idea that I could decide the age I'd be when I died and I could live longer than the statistics gave me. I've set my final birthday at 104--at least!
Favorite line from a book:
"Happy families are all alike; unhappy families are unhappy in their own way." --Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
Since almost every family is dysfunctional, this quote makes us all feel special, doesn't it?
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
It was a long time ago now, and I'd love to feel that deliciously eerie again.
Why you started writing fiction:
I got bored with nonfiction, which I've written and edited for decades. I tend to like variety and challenges in everything, and one of the biggest challenges I could think of was learning to write fiction. Short stories don't hold me long enough, poetry frustrates me. Fiction it is-- and what joy! What torture!
Why you started a new career in your 60s:
Why not? If I'm going to live to 104, I've got to do something for the next 40 years, and I may as well have fun doing it.