Hi friends! I hope you’ve been following along with the Decades series we’ve had every month so far this year. I’m loving it, and have discovered not only many new to me authors, but wonderful stories as well. Today we welcome Wayne Jordan, who came up with this entire wonderful project of these ~connected books. You might have noticed that usually the posts are scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month, but for June we pushed it back a week to line the post up with Juneteenth! 😀

Decades: A Journey of African American Romance
Guest Author Wayne Jordan Shares an Excerpt and Inspiration for His Journey

Note: Promise Me A Dream by Wayne Jordan is the seventh book in the Decades: A Journey of African American Romance series. This series consists of 12 books, each set in one of 12 decades between 1900 and 2010. Each story focuses on the romance between African American protagonists, but also embraces the African American experience within that decade. Join the journey on our ,

When I conceived the Decades: A Journey of African American Romance series, I wanted to do two things. I wanted to give readers 12 love stories with main characters of color, but I also wanted to explore the African America experience in each of the 12 decades. I’ve read all the stories which preceded mine and I feel a sense of pride and achievement that each one was exactly what I wanted it to be.

The main action of my story, Promise Me a Dream, takes place in New York in March and April of 1968. I wanted my story to be about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King died on April 4, 1968, so my story will touch on the impact of his death. Along with that, my story is about the world of the theater. My heroine wants to be an actress, and as an immigrant, she discovers the harsh reality of New York and the theater world. When she meets the hero, Joel Donovan, she invites him into her world and he discovers that there is much more to life that the privileged world and life he has been living.

So why the 1960s? Not only was I born in the 1960s, but the Civil Rights Movement is the one definitive event that impacted me when I was a teenager. While I did not recognize its impact until I was in my late teens, I remember my heart breaking, bit by bit, when I discovered what blacks in the United States had continued to endure and suffer during that decade, despite the abolition of slavery. Most of all, I lauded the courage of those individuals who fought for respect, equality and justice.

So why would I want to set a romance against this background of ugliness? It was the decade in which unity and love were important; the decade in which strong men and women needed love the most…because it was love that kept them focused on the fight without losing their sanity.Promise Me a Dream is set in the 1960s, but I am so fascinated by the decade, I will definitely write more against that background. Continue reading →