King, Joy 1978- (Deja King, Joy Ann King, Katina King)

PERSONAL:

Born April 20, 1978, in Toledo, OH; children: Logan. Education: Attended North Carolina Central University, Pace University, and the Lee Strasburg Theater Institute. Hobbies and other interests: Swimming and dancing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Fort Lee, NJ. E-mail—jk@joykingonline.com; dk@dejaking.com.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, producer, publisher, and music industry executive. Click Radio, director of Hip Hop Artist Relations. Young Diamond Books, cofounder, publisher, and owner.

WRITINGS:

(Under name Deja King) Bitch, Triple Crown Publications (Columbus, OH), 2004.

Dirty Little Secrets, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 2006.

(Under name Katina King) Ride wit' Me, Young Diamond Books, 2006.

(Under name Deja King) Bitch Reloaded, Triple Crown Publications (Columbus, OH), 2007.

Hooker to Housewife, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to anthologies, including Mr. Satisfaction, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 2005; and These Are My Confessions, edited by May Chen, Avon Red (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Novelist Joy King is a music and entertainment veteran. While employed with the Terrie Williams Agency, a public relations and communications organization, King worked with prominent celebrities and music industry executives, and participated in numerous entertainment industry events, including the Essence Awards, noted an interviewer on the Urban Reviews Web site. In her position as director of Hip Hop Artist Relations at the Internet radio station Click Radio, she made it her mission to improve and expand the position of rap and hip hop in the online world.

King's fiction represents "a new genre of young, hip, and sexy novels that take readers behind the velvet rope of the glamorous but often shady relationships in the entertainment industry," commented an interviewer on the Urban Reviews Web site. She writes under her own name as well as under the pseudonyms Katina King and Deja King. Her first novel, Bitch, a work written as Deja King, tells the story of Precious Cummings, an ambitious young woman who is not above using her natural beauty, physical charms, and street-honed intelligence to improve her status. Born into poverty, Precious is determined to use her natural talents and physical gifts to rise to the top. When she meets Nico Carter, she knows that her talents, combined with his power and influence, will propel her to success. Once she achieves her goals, however, Precious finds them more difficult to hold on to. She is determined to keep what she has earned, even if doing so means that she must betray Nico, the man who made her success possible.

In her novel Dirty Little Secrets, King tells a story that has many resonances in her own life. King told the Urban Reviews Web site interviewer that as much as eighty-five percent of the book's content was derived from her own experiences. "All of the characters are based on real people that have been in my life at some point and time," King stated. "I've changed around a few of the incidents and added different scenarios for storyline purposes. But because Tyler Blake's story reflects so many of my own trials and tribulations this novel is extremely personal to me." As a young girl, Tyler Blake's life is disrupted when her mother leaves her father and marries a more affluent man. Though now surrounded with luxury, Tyler's new family is seriously dysfunctional. At age six, Tyler is assaulted by her teenaged stepbrother, and she repeatedly witnesses her mother being abused by her new husband. These traumatic events lead to considerable difficulty with men and relationships as Tyler grows older. Her first boyfriend rapes her; her next boyfriend threatens her with a gun; another relationship ends with a devastating abortion. Moving to New York, Tyler goes to college and takes up acting. There, the stunningly gorgeous Tyler learns to manipulate men in order to get them to take care of her. Involvement with a basketball star and a record producer leads to violence. When Tyler falls for Brian, another record producer, she believes she's finally found the man who can provide for her financially and emotionally. She is so confident in Brian that she decides to have a child with him. However, soon after she becomes pregnant, their relationship falls apart, and the turmoil of the ensuing custody battle makes Tyler seriously question her choices. In the end, a new relationship with an actor seems to have offered Tyler a chance to redeem herself. Booklist reviewer Lillian Lewis called the novel an "absorbing tale."

Ride wit' Me, written under the pseudonym of Katina King, was published under King's own entrepreneurial imprint of Young Diamond Books. This novel and other planned offerings feature street fiction with a lighter approach. King told the Urban Reviews Web site reviewer that "there won't be any curse words or explicit sex scenes in the books. It will be entertaining for the teenagers and their parents won't mind them reading it." Title character Mercedes is a sixteen-year-old African American girl whose father is very rich. She spends her summers in the family's opulent mansion in Chicago, where her father deflects her questions about the source of his income. Turmoil erupts when Mercedes falls in love with seventeen-year-old Dalvin, the son of one of her father's business associates. When her father forbids the two from dating, Mercedes finally discovers that her wealth originates in criminal activity involving her father and Dalvin's father. With violence and crime in the background, Mercedes and Dalvin struggle to maintain their forbidden relationship. "A fast read, the story might appeal to fans of Deja King's adult books," observed Amy S. Pattee in School Library Journal.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2006, Lillian Lewis, review of Dirty Little Secrets, p. 23.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2006, review of Dirty Little Secrets, p. 430.

School Library Journal, December, 2006, Amy S. Pattee, review of Ride wit' Me, p. 146.

ONLINE

C&B Books Distribution Web site,http://www.cbbooksdistribution.com/ (January 8, 2008), review of Bitch Reloaded.

Deja King Home Page,http://www.dejaking.com (January 8, 2007).

Joy King Home Page,http://www.joykingonline.com (January 8, 2008).

Joy King MySpace Profile,http://www.myspace.com/ joyking (January 8, 2008).

Romance in Color,http://www.romanceincolor.com/ (January 17, 2006), Betty Dowdell, review of Mr. Satisfaction.

Romantic Times,http://www.romantictimes.com/ (January 8, 2008), Kristi Ahlers, review of These Are My Confessions; T.L. Burton, review of Mr. Satisfaction; Belinda Williams, review of Hooker to Housewife.

Streetfiction,http://www.streetfiction.org/ (September 24, 2007), review of Bitch.

Urban Reviews,http://www.urban-reviews.com/ (January 8, 2008), interview with Joy King.