Exposures, originally published in 1990, was our first joint effort. It was written before Waiting to Exhale paved the way for contemporary African American fiction—and the characters in Exposures are not Black. However, we think you'll find that while our style has matured, our characters are drawn with the same care and attention to detail we became known for in Tryin' to Sleep in the BedYou Made, and our other, later books.

We also wrote under another name back then—not because we were hiding. At the time publisher didn’t think readers would ‘get’a novel written by two people, so our pen name was Marie Joyce—for Donna Marie and Virginia Joyce (pretty good use for middle names). Exposures was a Popular Library Lovestruck paperback original and had moderate success—but we didn’t really get a name for ourselves until Tryin’ came out in 1997.

After reacquiring our rights were-published the book in 2005 through iUniverse’s Back-in-Print program for members of the Authors Guild.  Now we have decided to give Exposures yet another life and it’s now available as an e-book for Kindle or Nook.Even though it was originally written as a romance, it’s not a traditional one. And what’s even more interesting to us are the themes that were present in our work even then (before we had any “work”)—the most evident among them being the importance of true friendship. So, even as the romance ebbs and flows, the friendship of Brett Larsen and Lizzie Powell remains central to the story.