Author’s Spotlight: MY MAN’S BEST FRIEND

by K. Elle Collier

 Interview by Ife Thomas

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Would you ever cheat on your man with his best friend? Wait, before you answer that let’s repose the question with a twist to the heightened stakes and heat up the room:  What if his best friend was a woman? For all of you that secretly answered yes, author K. Elle Collier deftly explores this touchy terrain with honesty, humor and down to earth wit in her debut novel, “My Man’s Best Friend.” A former writer on sitcom’s favorite “Girlfriends,” the south side Chicago native is a graduate of such esteems writing programs as The Bill Cosby Writing Workshop and The Walt Disney Writing Fellowship.  K. Elle spoke with BLACK  GIRLS  RULE!  about Black folks with money, addiction, girl-on-girl action and the twists and turns of the tale set in her hometown.    

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Ife:  Since you’re from Chicago, did that make the book’s setting your first choice?

 

K. Elle: Well, you know what’s so funny? I was going to make it set in New York only because when I think of novels I think of New York.  But, when I started writing she (main character Kai) was based out of Brooklyn.  Then I thought I didn’t know the city well enough and I wanted to give the authenticity of people knowing the city, the streets, and the restaurants and I didn’t know enough. So I switched halfway through the writing to Chicago because that’s what I know and it made it so much easier.

 

I: One thing that you and main character in the book Kai Edwards have in common is, that you both are twins!  Is there anything else about her that’s like you?

 

K: I think that Kai is definitely separate from me, but our similarities are our independence, drive and creativity.  I pull from all areas of my life, but I do pull from myself a little bit…it helps.

 

I:  Can you talk a little about the class and family choices or rather, issues with the characters?  For example, Todd, Kai’s boyfriend is a lawyer who’s doing well and Kai’s sister and mother are very well to do.  Was it a conscious choice to make them B.A.P.S? Everyone’s a B.A.P.! (laughs)

 

K: I don’t because I think that I grew up on the south side of Chicago which is middle-class. I didn’t grow up on the west side.  My Dad was an architectural engineer, so we kind of grew up in an area where all of my friends and their parents were successful—that’s what I know.  It wasn’t a conscious thing, it was unconscious and it just led me there.  I wanted to add the drug addiction to kind of give a contrast and ask, how would a high society family deal with a son on drugs?  Because everything in their life is supposed to seem perfect, then that’s when it hit me that I’m going to make Kai’s family a little uppity just to mix it up a bit.

 

I:  So the juicy topic at hand here is the cheating, more so the twist on the best friend– hence the title.  Were you hesitant about making the best friend be a woman?

 

K:  Not at all.  I think that’s what makes the book different.  When I started doing the research on novels, I went to the bookstore and I just kept picking up novels and they were all the same: boy meets girl, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy have problems and then they break up. So what better way to add a twist them to have the girl have an affair with her man’s best friend?

 

I:  How have gay readers reacted so far?

 

K: I’ve actually gotten a lot of positive feedback and they like it. But let me back up and say that at first I was concerned about how lesbians were going to read and perceive it because of Kai being in a bisexual relationship.  But as one lesbian reader told me, they just like books with good relationships and they looked at both of the (heterosexual and bisexual) relationships in the book as just loving relationships. 

 

I: What has been the reaction from male readers of the stuff that could be perceived as male bashing?

 

K:  Well, the men that have read it so far love the girl-on-girl action.  They think it’s hot, and that is an actual quote from a friend! (laughs)  But, I find that they like it because it doesn’t feel like there’s any male bashing and that it feels very universal…not a chick book.  Plus it’s a fast read and that they want to see it as a movie.

 

I:  So was it also a choice to have the whole cast be African-American? Was that what you had in mind?

 

K: Yeah, I wanted to first write what I know.  I’ve written screenplays where I’ve gone outside of race, but with this I wanted to write characters that are people that I know.  I draw from everybody, so I just wanted to keep it simple.  Maybe next time I’ll venture out…

 

I: There’s also a running thread of addiction throughout the novel that connects almost all of the characters.  Why explore that topic?

 

K:  First, I needed something to tie the whole story together.  I was reading a lot of Eric Jerome Dickey books and he always has some type of common theme that pulls the whole story together.  Whenever I read a book and it has that, it makes it a little more fulfilling, and pulls it all together from all these directions into one, and while writing it the one thing that came to me was addiction.  So I pretty much used that to direct my story.

 

I:  Ok…so what can we expect from the sequel?  Any juicy tidbits we get to know beforehand?  I know how I would like it go, but…(laughter).

 

K:  Hmmm, what can I say that won’t give anything away? I’m going to introduce a couple new characters.  I will say that Kai does move to Brooklyn.  I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing, but it works.  I don’t want to give anything away, but I hope to have lots of twists and turns…that’s what I love to put in my books.  I don’t want them to be predictable.

 

More on My Man’s Best Friend at: www.kellecollier.com