Tanya R Chambers Interview Published on: 20, Mar 2025

Growing up in the environment that I did, I struggled to verbalized my thoughts, coherently. As children we were expected to be seen, but not heard, so I became a silent observer, listening and absorbing everything. It was easy to go under the bed to escape into my books, or into my imaginary world filled with trees and angels, when there was nothing at school for me to do. This kind of observation allowed me to see more than others. I hope it is translates in my storytelling.

I wasn't really thinking of these fields when I was writing, I just wanted to get rid of the hopelessness in my life, and the thoughts from my head that's why I started writing. I discovered the more I wrote the better I began to feel, so I just continued to write. This I learned in psychology, that the more you write down your feelings the better it makes you feel…transferal.

In THE JAMAICAN, the different steps to self actualization was also incidental, but the moment I realized the theme, I continue with that pattern. In THOUGHTS OF HANOVER, the storyline focused on one set of family, but it hinted at the Jamaican female populous who were head of household…some of these thoughts echoed my learning in global gender studies.

I started traveling around Jamaica because wanted to experience other people's lives. Mine wasn't great so I wanted to see and learn about the people in the country that birth me. But then I started interacting with other countries people's and I became curious about their cultures as well. This you can clearly see in YARDIE AND THE ALIENS where we have the protagonists coming from all over the world and even out of space where I’ve traveled in my mind many times.

I want my characters to be of certain personalities, so when I start traveling I began to pay keen attention to people and their culture-ism, and my place in their space. But for most part, my main protagonists always seem to embodied my Jamaican-ism.

When I was growing, up the thought would briefly dashed through my mind, but get discarded quickly. However, it was after I started going to university when I truly started thinking seriously of becoming an author. There was a Women black Author’s course that I took in global gender studies that solidify the idea of becoming an author. But I wasn’t confident in my ability to express myself, I think that’s why I went to Asia to teach English. When I return from living in Asia for more than seven years and couldn't fit in anywhere, imposter syndrome and hopelessness took over. That's when I started to write.

My first attempt at writing was after I left university. I had 249 pages of my first draft on a USB flash drive, and it got lost between Malaysia and Singapore. I was devastated. I thought that was my que for ‘don’t even start.’ However, I suffered the worst case of hopelessness an impostor syndrome attack, it kept sending me back to the first 23 years of my life...the poverty, the degradation, the sexual abuse, the psychological abuse, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse and the mental abuse...along with the failed relationship that had me feeling like I was living the life of my mother, something I promised myself never to do. I needed to get out of my head. After a very failed foolish decision, I started writing LIVING WITH IDIOTISM. It was my first self-published book on Amazon.

Jamaican females tend to have very strong persona. I think I have a very strong persona...when I'm not feeling sorry for myself. Most of my characters that are Jamaicans, have the Jamaican personification of strength and no nonsense. In YARDIE AND THE ALIENS you can see my Jamaican culture captured in every aspect of the narratives in many of the chapters, from the very beginning to the end. You see it with Netty, Klam who transformed into Roboliac, Granny who transformed into Jalaniac, Swofiyah who later became Earth, the most powerful being in the book, kept her Jamaican-ism, and Marshane who was Jamaican true and true, until she emerged into her true self. In THE JAMAICAN: SOUL IN DARKNESS you can also see the Jamaican reflectiveness in some of the characters. It's what makes my books so funny and serious at the same time.

I’ve read so many books over the years, but the ones I kept going back to are some of Anne Rice's books. I think she's such a profound fantasy writer who wasn't afraid to lose her soul in her writing. I want my writing to embodied that kind of authenticity. I suppose, once I stop my worrying about my everyday and relax, then my superpower will truly manifest itself in my writing. I’ve always loved Maya Angelou who’s writing embodied a different kind of reflective in her narrative that only a certain kind of reader can clearly see. I love President Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World To First, the honesty, thoughtfulness and inclusivity he exercised during his rule made me want to imagine what he would do if he was the president of America right now.

I do take notes, but I found that I do better if I use what I have been thinking about and expound on that. I have a set routine, though I'm not sticking to it at the moment, but time spontaneity, I find, yields the best writing outcome for me.

My biggest challenge is getting my books in front of the right readers, but I found a group, who I'm teaming up with, to help me promote my books.

All my books stem from real life inspiration. THOUGHTS OF HANOVER: THE PARENTS WE CHOOSE is a Memoir that replicate life in Jamaica. Many people see Jamaica as just a tourist destination, without bothering to form an interest in the everyday lives of the locals. The suffering we endured due to lack. The sperm donors whose job it is to get females pregnant and leave them to struggle. The joblessness due to lack of education, forcing women to do what they have to, to survive.

In YARDIE AND THE ALIENS, and THE JAMAICAN: SOUL IN DARKNESS, every chapter from beginning to end is interwoven with real-life experiences mixed with fantasy, fiction. This includes the others that I haven’t mentioned.

That people can be kind and mean, but free will gives us the choice to choose which one we want to be.

In THEY CAME, THEY COUGHED AND THEY LEFT, we see the protagonist questioning religion based on the experiences she had with the church family. She was questioning her religiosity as she was becoming more spiritually aware, but she didn’t know, because she was too focused on what was transpiring around her.

That’s a good question. I'm not sure if there's a balance. For example; in THE JAMAICAN: SOUL IN DARKNESS, chapter two when Rena heard a little boy screaming from a room in the same hallway where she was locate in the hotel, she immediately knew what was happening, although she had ignored the cat who had given her the signal, earlier. She then went to her tree friends to ask them for help, thinking that they had the power to help her, but they just stood their looking at her, unmoving, until she was forced to go to SOURCE. The moment she called upon SOURCE was the moment the little boy’s screaming came to an end…How do you balance that?

One day of every year in Mexico, women go on protest to stop child sex slavery, abuse against women and children, and equal rights for all. In my own little way, I’m giving a voice to child abuse through my writing. But balance, I don’t know if I have that.

Chapter one of YARDIE AND THE ALIENS reveals Netty's anger as she attacked Klam, her daughter because she (Netty) didn’t buy the Lotto numbers she thought she had won. However, Klam didn’t feel the beating because Roboliac had jumped out of the body before Netty could strike her. I suppose this is more irony than balance.

They play a huge role as you can see in THE JAMAICAN and YARDIE AND THE ALIENS. The moment my characters accept self is the moment they became empowered, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I’m currently working on two books, but the process is slow.

I love that I don't have to post on Twitter, because you're doing it for me. I absolutely love the mock-ups you sent every week, those made my life easier, the wonderful blurbs that I didn't realize I needed, and I get to meet amazing authors like myself. There are so many positive things about AllAuthor.