Romance novelist Brenda Jackson ran into constant heartache in her first efforts to find a publisher.

The problem wasn’t that her stories weren’t good, it was that the people in them were black.

She was rejected 28 times before Kensington Publishing took on her work.

“Publishers didn’t believe that a book with black people on the cover would sell,” said Mrs Jackson, 62. “They didn’t believe that black women read.”

The Jacksonville, Florida resident has more than proven that there’s a market since her first novel, Tonight and Forever, was released in 1995.

She’s here cruising on the Grandeur of the Seas with 200 of her readers and will sign copies of her 104th novel, A Lover’s Vow, today at the Bermuda National Library.

Her novels have been translated into 32 languages and have made frequent appearances on the New York Times and USA Today best-seller lists. She has won numerous awards including the Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Her many firsts as a black woman include winning the Romance Writers of America award, making it on the USA Today best-seller list and publishing more than 100 books.

Mrs Jackson starting writing as a teenager to amuse her friends.

“My characters were black because at the time you didn’t see people like me on the covers of books,” she said.

But writing was forgotten after she studied business administration in college and became an insurance company manager.

“I went to my ten-year high school reunion and my old friends were saying, ‘What about that book you were going to write?’ I told [them] ‘I’m a corporate girl now’.”

But when she went home, she thought about the book she never wrote. “I decided to write a book, just so I would be able to say I’d done it at my 15-year reunion,” she said.

She was so pleased with the resulting book she decided to publish it. After the second rejection, she was ready to give up, but her husband, Gerald, urged her to keep trying.

Gerald was the heartthrob that inspired her books.

“He died a few years ago after 42 years of marriage,” said Mrs Jackson. “There is a bit of Gerald in every single hero I create.”

They met as toddlers, and started dating as teenagers.

“He gave me a ‘going steady’ ring with two hearts when I was 15,” she said. “I still wear it to this day. I am a living witness that there is a soul mate for everyone.”

She described her novels as “hot and steamy” but not erotica.

“My novels always have a HEA,” she said. “That stands for happily ever after. In my books, people don’t have sex they make love.”

She’s received letters from women thanking her for her books and from men thanking her for inspiring their wives in the bedroom. A few readers, however, expressed some pent-up frustration.

“I got letters from older women, say in their 80s, asking if I could write books about women over 50,” she said. “They were tired of reading about women their grandchildren’s age; I got letters from plus-size women who never saw themselves represented.”

She started her own company, Madaris Publishing. It produces books for women who don’t fall into the usual reader demographics.

“It is about love,” she said, “not about your shape or age.”

She connects with her readers every other year on special fan trips such as this one to Bermuda. In 2017, she and a group will fly to an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. The trips include meet and greets, games and lots of giveaways and gifts. Sometimes she has as many as 400 readers accompany her.

The trips raise money for a scholarship fund she set up with her husband to help college students, The Josiephine Streater Threatt Scholarship Foundation. The scholarship is named for her late grandmother.

“We have two sons, Brandon and Gerald Jr,” she said. “They both went to Ivy League schools. One is now a film director and the other works with the State Department.

“When they were in college, they would often call home when they were short of funds [and so] we started to think about the other college students out there who couldn’t call home, who were living day to day and maybe didn’t have funds to buy books.”

So far, the foundation has raised $100,000 in scholarship money for students at Florida Memorial University.

• Mrs Jackson will be at the library from 12pm to 2pm.

• For more information see www.brendajackson.net.