‘I just want people to feel happy’ — romance author Talia Hibbert on self publishing and writing intersectional characters
Talia Hibbert has something in common with Chloe Brown — the character she created for the first book in her best selling Brown Sisters series. They both have a chronic illness. Fibromyalgia to be specific, “It was quite helpful for me to use some of my own experiences for writing hers. But we’re not the same character, that would be a bit weird,” she chuckles.
A 24 year old Black best selling author from Nottingham, Talia dropped out of university at the age of 21 because it simply wasn’t for her. Then she went on to self publish her first nine books — all in one year — with the money she inherited from her grandmother. And now, with 17 books under her belt, and the title of New York Times bestselling author attached to her name, the only way for her is up. She writes romance stories about intersectional characters that do not get enough mainstream representation and dedicates a huge chunk of her time to make sure these characters get the happy endings they deserve.
On her decision to self publish, she says it was something she had always wanted to do after having read so many self-published authors, “It took me a long time to figure out that they were self-published and what that meant but once I figured it out I was like, “Oh! So…anyone…can do this? Because I’m anyone, and I’d like to do this.””
Another major contributing factor to this decision was the fact that she had disabilities that would make working for someone else extremely difficult. Her at that time undiagnosed chronic illness of fibromyalgia and the fact that she was on the spectrum basically sealed the deal for her, “I knew that I wanted to try my best and make a job out of it because at that point I was coming to realise that if I didn’t find a job where I can work for myself and be flexible, I was really going to struggle because of the disabilities that I have and people just not wanting to employ me. So I really just researched as much as I could and it was just trial and error, working really hard, testing things. And every time I failed I was like, “Okay, change it, do it again.” And that is how I learned as I went, and things got better every time.”
Almost every book she has written is a step towards breaking stereotypes and giving happy endings to people you don’t normally see in the romance world. In her book Get a Life, Chloe Brown, the main character Chloe is a Black plus sized woman with fibromyalgia. In Take a Hint, Dani Brown, Dani is a Black woman falling in love with a Brown Muslim man. And the final instalment of the series, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, is the story of an autistic Black girl falling in love with an autistic man.
People of different colours, body types, sexual orientations and disabilities are all at the forefront of her stories. The reason? She just wants to see more people like her get the representation they deserved, “I haven’t always felt super represented. And when I did find books where I was, or even books where maybe I wasn’t personally the focus but I could recognise people from my own life who weren’t always represented, it meant a lot to me. And I wanted to add to that and recreate that feeling with my own books.”
As someone who has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, she knows first hand about the struggles neuroatypical people face everyday. And she is tired of seeing inaccurate portrayals of people on the spectrum — of what is supposed to be a reflection of herself. And she hopes that by incorporating her own experiences into her works, she will add on to the literature that people like her can one day read and relate to.
Over the years in her self publishing journey, Talia befriended a few fellow romance authors who she credits to helping her in every step of the way. One such romance author, KJ Charles, put her in touch with her now agent Courtney Miller-Callihan, who convinced her that she could write a trilogy with her bag of disabled characters. That trilogy ended up becoming the Brown Sisters series, which was the first set of books she published under a publishing house in 2019. It garnered a lot of critical acclaim, with the final instalment, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, cementing her as a New York Times bestselling author. The reason it took so long for her to start publishing under a house is because she didn’t believe any publishing body would want to buy her books because of her skin colour. She acknowledges that there have definitely been positive changes on that front in the publishing world, but the work is not done yet.
“On the one hand that is definitely changing, mostly because there have been so many people working so hard for so long to shift the market inch by inch. And I feel really lucky, timing-wise, to be writing in a time when so much of that work has already been done and I’m able to come in a much easier place. But the fact is that Black authors are still really underrepresented and I definitely still feel the weight of that. For example, right now, interracial romance is a very big boom but Black romance, for example, isn’t being picked up as much. And the implications of that are pretty obvious and I definitely feel the weight of that.”
Besides simply wanting to see more representation for people like her, another reason why Talia writes intersectional characters is because she wants to break the negative racist stereotypes on what is considered beautiful, “There have been times where I’ve seen people talk about my books in a way that…are obviously informed by offensive stereotypes. For example, one of my heroines is described as really attractive in my book. But then I heard someone say, “Well, she looks like this so she’s not really beautiful.” And the things that they listed as reasons for her not being beautiful were basically just her being Black and her being plus-sized.”
In the end, she just wants her readers to be able to find a safe space in her words and stories, “The main inspiration behind my writing is just that I’m super soft for people in love. So I want my readers to feel comforted and safe, but also kind of giddy with how fun something is, and that it makes you giggle. I just want people to feel happy,” she smiles.
And given the enormous amount of love and support her plethora of diverse characters and books have received, she seems to have achieved exactly that.
