We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Beverly L. Anderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Beverly L. below.

Hi Beverly L. , thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with important influences in our lives. Is there a historical figure you look up to?

T. S. Elliot is someone that I’ve always been fascinated with. The Waste Land and other poems heavily influenced my early poetry and essays he wrote. I connected with his modernist style; his phrasing was unique among his peers. He was born in St. Louis, which I thought was incredibly interesting as I’ve lived there during my lifetime. His work was avant garde for the time, and the entire modernism movement shaped much of what we do today. I think his influence and his perseverence—with the help of Ezra Pound—made a real difference in the world of his time, and I think it echoes through to today’s world. I spent a lot of time learning philosophy, and he of course, did as well. I felt like the use of philosophy and psychology in my writing made it connect to a lot of what he had done. Even today, I love to write very surreal poetry with a strong message just under the surface. T. S. Elliot’s life was inspiring, and he did so much with his time, and created iconic and beautiful poetry creations. The biggest lesson I take from T. S. Elliot is that perseverence and being a unique voice in the world can lead to amazing things. I take that to heart as I write stories that empower queer communities and spread the word that we’re a part of the world, too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started writing around eleven years of age. I put together my first story in some old notebooks, and it was about a kidnapping. As a child, I loved Barbies, and while other children were playing husband and wife in the dream house, I was orchestrating intricate kidnappings and rescues with Barbie and GI Joe. Then, as an adult I became fascinated with two areas: psychology and philosophy. My college classes reflected that, and I spent a lot of time learning both fields. My work explores trauma, its impact, and recovery. While I do depict traumatic experiences, I do so not to shock the reader, but to instead inform them of the emotions and thoughts that can invade a person’s mind during trauma, not just afterward. The more important part is the healing of someone, and especially focused on the fact there’s no magic cure for these things. Of course, my stories focus on queer protagonists, and the reason I use them is because they are so rarely seen in media in the way I’ve chosen to depict them. Trauma and their queerness shape their paths, yet healing remains possible. I feel like it’s a reflection of the very real world we live in, facing bigotry, hate, and everything around us, and acknowledging that is an important part of what I write about. I also put queer characters at the forefront to show them living, falling in love, and at the end, becoming happy.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Back before I published, I posted one of my books online. I had been a fanfiction author for a while, and enjoyed the feedback from the community, so I decided to try to do so with my original fantasy novel I had been working many years with. After a while, I got a comment, that someone was selling my book as their own on Amazon. I could not believe that someone would just copy my work and try to sell it. Many others were included in this person’s list of works, all stolen from the same site mine had been taken from. Each of us, of course, reported it. The process is incredibly frustrating to deal with on the part of anyone, but even worse is Amazon’s reaction to it. I had to buy the book to “prove” that it was mine all the way through. Then, once I wrote back, saying yes, this is my work, I was informed that the person posting it would be allowed to come back and argue if they wanted to. They would accept no proof that the work was mine, which since it was unfinished had no official copyright at that time. I had the clear date the work was posted online, something that stamped the story as mine, and no one would consider that enough evidence. After a couple of weeks, the story was taken down and yet the person who posted all these plagiarized books was allowed to stay on Amazon. Their account was perfectly safe, it seemed.

After this, I could have given up on the whole writing thing, and I thought of it. Why continue if there were such awful people in the writing world just looking to jump and grab someone’s hard work? Why work so hard if someone could just take it and no one would even look at the proof? I thought a lot about that, but instead, I decided, that no, I was not going to give up, because then people like that would be the victors. I needed to go forward and I ended up self-publishing my book to start with until I later found a publisher. I could have given up, and I’m sure other people might have, but I chose to go forward and live the dream I always wanted to live of being a published author.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think my goal is simply to make the world see queer people, in particular non binary people, as real people with legitimate existences that are not up for debate. I write fantasy, science fiction, contemporary dark romance, and paranormal romance, and in each of these, queer characters are the champions and the leaders. Even though there are many types of people in the stories, the major part is that the queer characters just exist like everyone else. There’s no “token queer” in the books, they’re all fleshed out, detailed, and purpose driven characters, that I want people to see for who they are. I want people to know what it is like to live in the skin of a queer person, if only for a hundred thousand words. I want people to feel the hurt and pain with us, and know that even though there is hurt and pain, there is also much healing to be had. From stories of unsupporting parents, to the ones who have unconditional support, there are millions of stories to be told. I think my overall goal is to show that non binary people and queer people in general can exist in any of the genres and be the hero when the time comes. I want to show that we can live, hurt, love, and more just like cisgender/heterosexual people who are typically at the forefront in media. I want to show these queer characters in spicy scenes, in romantic scenes, in action scenes, and in every scene. Most of all, I want everyone who reads the book to come along their journey, no matter where it leads.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beverlylanderson.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beverlylynnanderson/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beverlylynnanderson
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverlylanderson
• Twitter: https://x.com/bevlynnanderson
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beverlylanderson
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/beverlylanderson.bsky.social
  Tomebooks: https://tomebooks.com/user/beverlylanderson
  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beverlylynnanderson

Image Credits

Phoenix Voices Publishing
Brenda Hale