Author, A. J. Llewellyn

By A.J. Llewellyn

If I had my way, my whole house would be books, books, books. My favorite bookstore in Ojai, CA – Bart’s Books – is located outdoors and even has shelves built into the trees. And I am all about recycling so I fully approve of this photo depicting a novel use for defunct telephone booths.

Having said that, sometimes, reaching back to the future as an author is an exciting prospect. To that end, I’ve talked with my publishers at Totally Bound and I am going to be revamping a couple of my very early books with them, such as “The Mediator” and “Paper Valentine.”

I think both these early efforts could use a little expanding, and new covers, too. I am excited to go back and rework these stories, which I still love, but see definite areas for improvement.

My work has changed a lot since I wrote these books and I still love the characters. So, while I won’t be moving them into a refurbished phone booth (especially the Victorian men from “Paper Valentine”) I do want to spruce ‘em up a bit. I am really happy to be able to do this.

When I looked over “The Mediator” recently, I could remember exactly what I was doing when I wrote it. I was still a boxing journalist and moving out of the sports arena and into writing romance novels full-time.

Ironically, I was in Las Vegas at the time and my boyfriend took me to the old Avenue D area, where in the 1940′s, African Americans were kept segregated from the white population. When Sammy Davis Jr. blew into town in the 50′s to perform on the Strip, he spent his nights in the awful Berkley Square section of West Las Vegas. This is a little-known, shameful chapter in American history, but on that fateful weekend in Vegas, I became absorbed in the area.

My boyfriend and I strolled the old neighborhood that consisted of 148 homes, a barber, a couple of grocery stores, and a shop-front dentist’s office.

It was as though time stood still that Saturday morning. I could feel the ghosts of those who’d lived there and my emotions ran deep. I shouldn’t have been surprised when boxing promoter Don King showed up in a limo armed with a crew of architects. He donated a huge amount of his own money to preserving Berkley Square, and invested in a park to memorialize the original residents.

In 2009, in no small part due to Mr. King, this area was placed on the National Historic Register. The area looks so different in so many ways because a whole new community has sprung up around it, but Berkley Square, the heart of this community, remains the same. This storyline played a strong part in “The Mediator” but just like the Square itself, the book’s integrity, its heart, will remain the same.

There will just be more. More sex, more love, more…mediation.
Aloha oe,

A.J