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Featured Author Interview
A POT OF GOLD FOR RAINBOW
When you meet Oakland self-published author Renay Jackson for the first time you may assume that this black leather jacket clad and sunglass wearing man with the neatly trimmed mustache and serious stare is in the game, a flamboyant player not unlike some of his male characters featured in his four books set in the rough and tumble Oakland neighbors. Yet Renay is nothing like Shakey Jones, Buckey, Ed Tatum, Slack or even Rainbow Jordan, in fact, Renay Jackson is quite an enigma.
Renay has written five books in six years, publishing four of the five books himself. He recently signed an impressive five book publishing contract with North Atlantic Books. North Atlantic has agreed to re-release Renay’s first four books Oaktown Devil, Shakey’s Loose, Turf War and Peanut’s Revenge and his fifth book, Crackhead which will be released in the fall of 2005.
Renay is already on chapter seven of his sixth book, Sweet Peas’s Secret. There is no shortage of material or imagination for Renay who did not read his first book until he was sixteen years old. That first book by Donald Goins introduced him to the world of mysteries and crime fiction and he has been entertaining himself with his own tales of sex, drugs and murder in the grimy urban ghetto. That first Donald Goins paperback wetted his appetite and within a month Renay had read everything written by Donald Goins. Renay then turned his voracious appetite to Chester Himes quickly devouring the Himes library before turning to other crime authors like Raymond Chandler and Ellery Queen. Inspired by these authors, Renay joined his high school newspaper and was assigned to edit the paper’s sports page when he was a sophomore. The next year he transferred to Fremont High School and in addition to editing the sport’s page, Renay was responsible for page 2, and two regular columns: Where Are they Now? and Whose Dating Who? These two columns were very creative and students anxiously looked forward to each new installment.
Discouraged by the overt racist he encountered in college, Renay interrupted his college education and started working full time as a custodian for the City of Oakland. Renay eventually returned to earn a degree from Laney College. One of the first classes he tried to enroll in was an English 101 class taught by Audrey Guess-Knight. The class was very popular so during the first class Ms. Knight made students write for 45 minutes about being homeless. The best story would entitled the student to a place in the class. Renay’s story evoked clear visual images of someone whose home is constructed out of a discarded appliance box located in an unswept back alley or a bottle cluttered urban park and whose possessions are stored in a shopping cart with a wobbly front wheel. The story was replete with extensive descriptive phrases that impressed Ms. Knight and Renay was rewarded with a seat in the class. Ms. Knight encouraged Renay to write and told him he should write short stories for Reader’s Digest. Despite Ms. Knight’s encouragement, Renay did not consider himself a writer and he did not focus on his writing, he had other priorities, he had to work to support his family and he has worked as a custodian in every City facility including the Oakland Police Department since 1988.
Responding to a challenge from his friends, in 1982, Renay wrote a rap song that reflected his world at the time, work and work and more work. Eventually he recorded the single entitled “The Job is a Mother” and developed his own label Plug It Records, to produce the song. Soon Renay explored the world of record producing and he learned the fundamentals of the industry which he then shared with other young rap performers breaking into the industry after him. Renay created the tag name Rainbow and began rappin’ in clubs and working parties as a DJ. Soon, Renay became a local icon in the rap industry not only for his rhymes but for his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise with others. Even today, Renay shares his experience and knowledge with wannabe writers regularly holding free writing seminars and self-publishing workshops.
Renay now realizes he was always a writer. He has so many stories within him that writing is a form of entertainment for him and not work. The characters in his books have simply walked into his life and tapped him on the shoulder eager to tell their story.
One afternoon while trying to help his daughter understand descriptive writing Rainbow Jordan and Cassandra Jones tapped him on the shoulder and began to tell Renay their story. It started with a simple story about washing a car and long after his daughter was gone and her homework assignment completed, Renay was still telling a story that eventually included some bad guys, some sex, murder and drugs. He found himself laughing and the laughter kept him writing.
By the time Renay had written four chapters he realized he could write a book and he did write a book, Oaktown Devil. When he finished Oaktown Devil in 1998, Renay knew he had more to say about Rainbow, Cassandra, and Slack and he realized that had to explore the relationship between one of the victims in Oaktown Devil and one of the minor characters who appeared towards the end of the story. Renay knew there was another story waiting to be exposed and he immediately began writing Shakey’s Loose.
Following in the tradition of Donald Goins, Renay has found that his writing flows easily from his imagination when he writes three stories about his main characters as one story by trying to have all of his characters meet up at the end. This strategy has worked and each time at the end he finds there is another story to tell. Renay hopes that his stories will encouraged more teens to read, just as Donald Goins stories inspired him to read when he was 16. Goins is the ‘old school’ legend and Renay sees himself as the new legend.
When Renay finished Oaktown Devil in 1998 he had no money to publish the book and could not find anyone willing to invest in him not even his girlfriend at the time. She constantly told him he was wasting his time because nobody cared about his characters or his book and that without money he would never be able to turn his story of ghetto life into a book. Little did he know that she was using all of their limited disposable household income to purchase every QVC deal of the day. Renay soon realized that QVC and this shopaholic were standing in his way and the only thing preventing him from becoming a published author.
After he removed this albatross from his life, a new door opened when he gave a few chapters of the book to an old friend April Jean Laday. Like so many others whom he had shared chapters of the book with, she wanted to read more and she wanted to help him realize his dream. April Jean invested in Renay and in 1999 they formed LaDay Publishing.
Three months later, LaDay Publishing produced its first book Oaktown Devil by Renay Jackson, layout by April Jean. Renay started selling the book to local independent book stores and to his friends. At the time, Renay was a custodian with the Oakland Unified School District and he also shared some of the books with the teachers he knew and they started using the book in their classes. Renay and April Jean repeated this collaboration three more times taking copies of the books to book fairs, book signings, libraries and street fairs.
By 2000, Renay and the Friends of Chester Himes had found each other, with the help of FOCH member Altenier Cook, and in 2002, FOCH gave Renay the Chester Himes Black Mystery Writer of the Year award. Renay contends that the biggest boost in his career came when he started attending the annual Chester Himes Black Mystery Writers Conferences and met such authors as Robert Greer, Terris Grimes, the late Hugh Holton and Gary Phillips. Meeting and talking to these authors at the Conference was the highlight of his year. Every time he saw one of their books on a shelf in a bookstore, Renay hustled a little more selling his books on the side at book signings and other events and also directly to the bookstores. Renay is proud of his Chester Himes award and believes he has probably celebrated this award more than any other recipient. After receiving the award, he began receiving more and more attention as a writer. It was clearly the springboard to all that has followed.
In October 2003, a reporter with San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Renay for an article she was planning on self-published authors and independent bookstores. However, after Renay told her about the racism in the book industry and showed her how bookstores failed to provide adequate shelf space for African American mystery writers, the focus and placement of the article changed. What was originally supposed to be a page 2 of Friday’s Bay Area section story about self-published authors and independent bookstores became a front page story about Renay in Sunday’s paper. The next day Renay received hundreds of calls from publishing companies offering him book deals and the McNeil Lehrer News Hour program called to request a televised interview about Renay, his books and the streets of Oakland. This special segment eventually aired in December 2003. The next call Renay received was from ICM Talent, a literary agency in Beverly Hills. ICM invited Renay to turn one of his books into a screenplay for a movie. ICM sent Renay copies of The Sopranos, The Shield and The Wire and instructed him to purchase a copy of Final Draft software so he could write his own screenplay and thus receive screen writing credit as well as story credit. After reading the scripts ICM sent and watching the programs, Renay was convinced he would not be able to turn his books into screenplays. However, when one of his daughters told him that he should at least try especially in view of the amount of money he was being offered, Renay sat down and soon realized that writing a script was easier than writing a book, so he wrote two, one for Oaktown Devil and one for Shakey’s Loose.
One would think Renay must be constantly writing, how else can you explain six books in six years? Especially since the first four books were self-published and required all of his entrepreneurial and selling skills to gain shelf space in book stores and garner the national attention he has received during the past year. Especially since he has raised his three daughters as a single father for the past nine years. But writing is only one aspect of Renay’s life, he only spends an hour a day actually writing. The remainder of his time is spent on a wide variety of other interests. Renay works, he cooks, he spends time with his daughters, he spends time with his grandchildren, he spends time tinkering on his guitar. By the time he sits down for that hour to write, he knows what he is going to say, he knows what is coming next for his characters. As a result he rarely gets writer’s block and on those very few occasions when he hits a temporary roadblock, Renay merely backs up to a previous chapter with familiar characters and lets them tell him which way he should turn. Renay confesses that even if he had more time to write he probably would not write anymore than he does now.
Renay explains his success as a combination of careful planning and luck. When he was approached by various publishing companies he did not hire an agent but instead structured his own deal, thus holding on to the 15% commission that would have automatically gone to an agent. Renay also insisted that the five year contract with North Atlantic include his first four books as opposed to five new books. He wanted to see how North Atlantic would handle his established body of work before allowing them to tamper with his new work. If they handle his children right than it will be all good. Staying in control of his career is very important to Renay because he does not want to loose sight of all he has sacrificed and all he has learned on his own during the past six years. In fact if he had to do it all over again he would not change a thing. Everything has worked out just fine. Writing is still just a hobby that is now starting to pay, and it still keeps him laughing when he sits down at the computer. Laughing? Renay Jackson laughing, not what you would expect from this black leather jacket clad, dark sunglass wearing neatly trimmed mustachioed man with the death cold stare of a flamboyant player in the game; but after you have spent some time with Renay Jackson you know that he is nothing like this description, you know that he is nothing like the persona of his characters, you know that he laughs a lot and that his laughter is contagious. Yes, he may be an enigma but in the end you know he will surely find his pot of gold.
