Does Kennedy Ryan like making her readers cry?
Technically, yes, she says.
The bestselling author, who’s celebrating the rerelease of her novel “Reel,” loves writing emotionally charged journeys.
“I like creating stories where people are going to feel things deeply. Writing is not just vocational. I see it as a calling,” Ryan tells TODAY.com. “I see my purpose for being here on Earth to write stories that crater in people’s hearts. And when something has that kind of emotional impact, it lasts.”
“Reel,” which was self-published by Ryan in 2021, is the first book in her “Hollywood Renaissance” series. It follows Broadway actor Neevah Saint and director Canon Holt as they film a biopic of fictional Harlem Renaissance entertainer Dessi Blue. During production, the two begin to fall in love and must navigate the adversities that arise when their professional and personal relationships intertwine.
The book is a fan-favorite in the romance space, and in 2022, Ryan and her narrators became the first Black recipients of the romance category Audie, a prestigious award in audio publishing.
Now, the book is being republished (with a brand new cover and epilogue!) by the Hachette Book Group’s Forever imprint — part of Ryan’s efforts to take her stories centering Black and brown women “as far as they possibly could,” Ryan says.
‘Reel’ is a love letter to the Harlem Renaissance — and Black creatives
Ryan remembers the exact moment she was inspired to write most of her books. But for “Reel,” it was just there, she says.
“‘Reel’ is the only book I can’t remember how I decided to write it. And I think that’s part of why it was so special,” she says.
The Harlem Renaissance, a period from the 1910s to mid-1930s that saw the meteoric rise of Black artistry, inspired much of “Reel” and the character of Dessi Blue.
“My favorite people to write about are creatives, so this series is like a playground for me,” Ryan says.
The 1999 biopic “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,” starring Halle Berry, was the catalyst for Dessi Blue’s character. Dandridge, who was an actor and singer, was the first African American woman to be nominated for best actress at the Academy Awards for her role in 1954’s “Carmen Jones.” (Berry would go on to win the award for her role in 2001’s “Monster’s Ball” and remains the only Black woman to have done so.)
Ryan notes that before that film, many people weren’t familiar with Dandridge, inspiring her to explore the unsung accomplishments of Black creatives through Dessi’s biopic.
“That’s how I started contextualizing ‘Reel’ as a love letter to Black creatives who, not just during the Harlem Renaissance, but throughout history, have done so much and contributed so much and not been acknowledged,” Ryan says. “Black music, I would hazard to say, is the most influential in culture. We wouldn’t have most of the music that we have in this country without Black creatives, so I wanted to lean into that excellence.”
Dessi Blue is inspired by an amalgamation of artists from the Harlem Renaissance, such as Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. And though her character is fictional, Ryan says she does receive messages from fans saying they’ve tried to look up Dessi Blue.
“(Dessi’s story) is just their real experiences fictionalized,” Ryan says. “Even the fact that she’s bisexual. That was something that some of those women navigated during that time, and I wanted that representation as a part of her story as well.”
Kennedy Ryan’s road to traditional publication
“Reel” is just one of Ryan’s many books to be picked up for distribution from a traditional publisher.
“You know, a lot of people don’t realize that I had a four-book series that I published traditionally. That was my debut series,” she says.
But when self-publishing was starting to flourish, Ryan, who describes herself as a go-getter, decided to try her hand at it because she wanted creative control of her work.
“I wanted the autonomy to build my own brand based on my values, aesthetically and just what I wanted it to be,” she says.
“When you’re a self-published author, you do (almost) everything,” she adds. “You are responsible for everything. It’s a business and that really tapped into something that I love.”
Traditional publishers were knocking on Ryan’s door for years before she decided to return, she says. She knew she wanted her stories that center around Black and brown women to reach a wide audience and saw traditional publishing as a path to accomplishing that goal.
“I knew that the brand that I was building was centering Black and brown women very explicitly. I wanted to see them on shelves at Target. I wanted to see them at Barnes & Noble. I wanted to see them at indie bookstores. I wanted to see them on billboards,” she says. “These Black women with these big afros, just unapologetically gorgeous, because that’s something that defies what culture tells us about ourselves. I wanted those stories to go as far as they possibly could.”
Kennedy Ryan always wants to get it right
Like her character Canon in “Reel,” Ryan is an obsessive creative and tends to get lost in studying. She says that about 60% of her creative process is just made up of research, and when she’s writing one book, she’s usually reading five or six more around the same time. To make “Reel” feel as authentic as possible, Ryan went on a deep dive on all things movie-making.
“I blocked off maybe a month to five weeks where I did nothing but watch MasterClasses,” she says, referring to the online learning streaming platform. “I just subscribed, and I watched all the greats who have MasterClasses: directors, cinematographers, writers, actors. I just consumed that world.”
Ryan’s books often contain elements that do not come from her lived experiences. So she makes it a point to conduct thorough interviews and deep conversations with individuals who have had those experiences, she says. In addition, she says she involves sensitivity readers throughout the writing process.
It’s part of her personal “Hippocratic Oath” of writing: “If you’re writing a great book, but you’re harming a community that’s vulnerable, that’s marginalized, that’s not your lived experience in the process — I don’t want it. That’s my philosophy,” she says.
In “Reel,” Ryan’s character Neevah lives with lupus, an autoimmune disease that involves the body’s immune system attacking healthy tissue and organs. Ryan says she conducted multiple interviews with people who have lupus to develop a complete understanding of what it’s like to live with the chronic disease.
She also wanted to ensure women like Neevah felt seen.
“I wanted women who are living with chronic illness, specifically lupus, to feel beautiful, to feel loved, to feel like they weren’t too much,” she says.
This is particularly highlighted in what Ryan calls “the hottest scene in the book” — the bathtub scene.
“I wanted women who are navigating that to know you’re still beautiful, you’re still sexy… there’s still someone who is completely drawn to you no matter what,” she says.
Having hard and honest conversations – via romance
It’s no secret that the romance genre has been historically looked down upon. Ryan believes animosity toward the romance genre is rooted in patriarchy and misogyny.
“It’s rooted in the resistance of anything that centers women’s pleasure, that centers our agency, that esteems our wishes, anything that is counter cultural. There is a broader cultural resistance to what we’re doing,” she says.
Ryan also believes that people underestimate what romance is capable of. She describes her books as “Trojan horses” to “smuggle in discourse” and start difficult conversations readers may not usually have.
“The reason I say that (romance) is the safest place to have hard discussions is because you know you’re going to get a happily ever after. We might unpack some really hard things, but it’s going to be OK in the end,” she says.
She says she strives for her books to be both “trauma-informed” and “trauma-responsive.”
“And what that means is there’s a path that’s laid for healing,” she says. “When you approach writing difficult circumstances that way, it’s a safer space to have those discussions, and it can be really healing for readers, especially who have experienced some of those things.”
What’s next for the Hollywood Renaissance series?
Just a few months after the rerelease of “Reel,” Ryan will publish the third and final book in her “Skyland” series, “Can’t Get Enough,” out May 2025. That series kicked off with “Before I Let Go” in 2022.
After wrapping “Skyland,” Ryan says she will be focusing on the next installment in the “Hollywood Renaissance” series, “Score.” “Score” will be a second-chance romance that focuses on the film’s music supervisor and screenwriter, Monk and Verity.
“It is a book that I have wanted to write for about three years, you know? When I wrote ‘Reel’ originally, I was going to go right into writing ‘Score,’ but then I got a book deal to write the ‘Skyland’ series. So I’ve been in ‘Skyland’ for three years, and I’m really just itching to write Monk and Verity’s story,” Ryan says.
“They have a very complex history, and I look forward to unpacking how complex and angsty it is,” she adds.
As for any adaptations on the horizon? While “Before I Let Go” is currently being adapted for television, she’s also hoping to find a production partner who shares her vision and wants to bring “Reel” to the big screen.
“When people ask me, ‘Which of your books do you most want to see on screen?’ I always say ‘Reel.’ It’s the book that so many readers ask me for on screen,” Ryan says. “So I’m working on it. Fingers crossed.”
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