 Hello everyone, I'm Rachel, a librarian here at SFPL and today I have the honor of being in conversation with Beverly Jenkins about her novel, Wildering. Before we get into the conversation, we are going to pair respects to the Ramatush Ohlone peoples with a land acknowledgement. We are broadcasting from the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unseated ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramatush Ohlone have never seated, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatush Ohlone peoples. Just some quick library announcements. Our next on the same page selection for September, October is going to be Roberto Lovato's Unforgiving. It's a memoir that jumps around in time and geography, taking place largely in El Salvador and here in San Francisco with recognizable settings near the 27th Street Bart Station, local restaurants and cafes and even the Randall Museum. Now, for the book that we are all here and very excited to discuss, Wild Rain. Wild Rain follows the story of a black female rancher spring in Wyoming after the Civil War. Spring has triumphed over a turbulent past, but now spring owns her own ranch, whereas Jeansonson addresses and is not looking for love. Then in walks Garrett McCray, an escaped slave now reporter in Washington who has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his black newspaper. Garrett thinks Dr. Colton Lee will be an interesting subject until he meets Dr. Lee's sister spring. As their attraction grows, spring is reluctant to give in to someone like Garrett, who makes her question her decision to avoid love. Garrett, however, is certain that spring is the most fascinating woman he has ever met, and certain she feels the passion that is blazing between them. But when a dark cloud from spring's past returns, her ranch, her well-being and fierce love are on the line. Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Historical Romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature, was featured both in the documentary Love Between the Covers, and on CBS Sunday Morning. Since the publication of Night Song in 1994, she has been leading the charge for multicultural romance and has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and peers alike. Garnering accolades for her work from the likes of the Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, and NPR. Thank you so incredibly much for joining us today, Beverly, and it is such an honor to have you here in our virtual library. Thank you so much for having me. I have been looking forward to this. It's late here, it's 10 o'clock, but I'm a night owl, so I'm good, I'm good. So thank you. So you guys did Wild Rain, huh? We did Wild Rain. We did it. So before I even get into these questions, I have to warn everyone watching that this is a huge, a huge fan, woman, a fan, girl, whatever you want to call it moment for me. So the words, amazing, awesome, mind blowing and love will be said over and over and over again, and I sincerely mean all of those words. Okay, okay. You've all been warned. I'm honored. My first question also starts with a little bit of praise. I just want to say that your books are the whole reason why I'm in a healthy and stable marriage today, why I stopped settling for nonsense, and how I became a better romantic communicator, and that people seriously need to stop sleeping on romance novels like they got to get with it. When you first started writing, was romance your first genre or did you just kind of fall into it? A little bit of both. I'd always loved a great love story. But growing up in the, you know, early 60s, late 50s, the only examples, you didn't see any examples on in mass market TV or books or whatever. Well, but you know, you saw it in your families, you saw it at church, you know, you saw it at your neighbors. So I knew that the love existed. And the book that eventually turned out to be night song was just something I was doing after work, because I was working in the library do it. And coming home and working on this book for me. Because the market was basically closed to African American mass market writers back then. So I was working at another library. That's what we call back then a special library is for one of the big pharma companies. And one of my colleagues had just gotten published with a sweet romance. One of you who don't know what a sweet romance is is a fade to black sort of like a Barbara Cartland kind of thing. There's no love scenes on the page. And she wanted and I told her about my little manuscript. So she wanted to see it and I brought it in. And she said I needed to get it published. And this was mid mid late 80s. And I was like, well, where is like I said the market was closed. But I told people she harassed me every day about getting an agent finding somebody to, you know, so just to make her shut up I just sort of looked around and some kind of way found Vivian Stevens, who was the American American editor at Dell, who basically invented American romance with her candlelight series. And she had gotten out of editorial work and she had a small literary agency and I to this day don't know how I found her address. No guy works on mysterious ways. So my son of my little raggedy manuscript. She called me as at the reference desk. She called me at the desk. Oh, I don't know, a week later. And since you wanted to represent me so and night song was purchased by a by books on June 3 1993, which was my late husband's birthday. And so now 28 years later. I am. And people asked me well why romance and I tell them I was the first thing so. So, and I knew that we had a history that would be deep enough and rich enough to be the underpinning underpinnings of a great love story so here we are. Now, the research that you put into all of your books, it astounds me because I have learned so much about black and African American history by reading your novels and I love that you have a bibliography in the back for pretty much all of them. Can you tell us a little bit about your research process. I grew up with African American history in my home. And then, when I worked in Michigan State University library. They had a complete set of the general Negro history. Which was started by Carter Woodson, who started black history week. So on my lunch out. I would take those. This was mid 70s. I would take them out with a river that runs through campus. I take them out to the river, eat my lunch, look through. And little did I know that a lot of the articles that were in those volumes wound up being some of the research that I used, especially for the early books. And then the night song. One of my local libraries in epsilon in Michigan, which is where Eastern Michigan University is had a fabulous African American collection reference collection. So use those books. Did a lot of in library loans for articles. And then over the years I started amassing my own library I've got a huge African American library here at the house now. But I'm learning in the early books I was learning right along with my readers. And then I would put the bib list in the back to number one answer the critics who didn't think that African Americans had such a history that you know did we do this did we. Or really in Wyoming, you know those kinds of questions. And also to make it easy for my readers to find out more about whatever subject peaks their interest in the book so that it wouldn't wonder what I wonder where she got this, or, because you know they were passing that information along to the kids to the grandkids. And I had one woman who told me her grandson did a black history project. Because you know, the schools teachers only five people black history, black history month. And I don't remember what he, I don't know if he'd done the buffalo soldiers or or Bass Reeves or somebody but anyway, he did the report. And the teacher was amazed. And she said, Well, where'd you get this information. And he said, from my grandma's misbed books. You know, so. When you educate a woman you educate a race. So, making this information easy to find. Knowledge is power but if you don't share it, you're the only person with the knowledge so I'm just trying to do my job. You are killing it at your job that like it is where I felt which way through to my husband I was like oh you have to read topaz like you got to read this like for the history and he was like a romance book and I'm like just read it just read it if you got this relationship. Yeah, yeah, you know and in the early days a lot of, and I'm assuming they still doing that now, but a lot of couples at the beginning read the stories together. One woman said her and her husband use it for cuddle time before they went to sleep, you know one night he read a chapter the next night she'd read a chapter. Yeah, I mean everybody can, can learn something from, at least from you know those of us who write the stories. It's not always about the sex. There's a story there also. So, yeah. You know, Wild Rain is such an amazing story and spring is such a kick ass woman. When I first met her character in Tempest, I believe. Yeah, yeah, I was keeping my fingers and toes crossed that she'd get her own story, because I was like I need to know more I need about her journey is so intense and so beautiful even in its most heart wrenching moments, who are what was the inspiration for her character. She was, you know, it's when she showed up, I'm a pancer, which means I write by the seat of my pants, and I do very much outline and I don't do very much. Prethinking. And my characters just sort of show up. And it's up to me to listen. And up to me to let them lead me and tell me their story. So when she showed up in Tempest, I was intrigued as well. When I went when I did promo for that. Everybody had the same question when is she going to get her story. And so I wanted to know her story also. So when I did while rain I knew what she had shared with us from Tempest, you know how she, what she had to give up in order to, to be able to tend to herself. And that she raised hogs. And she didn't put up with a whole lot of nonsense. And basically, you know, that was it. But as I began writing her story. More and more of her story came through to the point where I knew she could hold a book on her own. So started writing. She's a great character. She's a great one of the toughest heroines. I think I've written her and Billy from Destiny's surrender are sort of in the same stable that this what you want to call it the same role with same house with their kick assness. But I, you know, and I sort of knew from Tempest that she wasn't going to have children. She sort of, you know, sort of let that sort of slip out. So I became one of the, not a main focus, but a focus of her character. Because, you know, there's a lot of women in a romance, like every genre has its, you know, tropes and, you know, foundations and all of that. And most romances, especially for historicals, is you have a wedding at the end, you have up a lot with babies, you have, and spring won't have a none of that. And there's a large demographic of women who re-romance, who don't want to have children, you know, not the women who are medically unable. That's a different thing. These are women who have chosen to be child free. And nobody or very rarely do we see those women reflected in the pages of romance. And this was my dedication to them because representation matters. Regardless of, you know, what you're representing, you want to see yourself on the page. So the book is dedicated to those women. And spring is a dedication to them. Because there's some women that don't need children to make themselves complete. And that's some women that's got kids that don't want kids. You know, it's like, I don't want these kids. You know, so this was my stroke to them. And I think Billy, or Billy, I think Rain is a good representation of them for them. Definitely. Because when I read the scene where Garrett and Springer are talking about like, oh, this is going to be the first free born baby in my family. Like, this is going to be great. And she's like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, player like, no, we're not doing this. We're not doing it. I was like, oh, yeah. You know, and I did that. I think, you know, also with chasing Nate, chasing Nate chase and Suman, Carol Lee, God trying to keep these characters straight, y'all. 50 bucks. I'm too old for this. In Night Song. Because her baby was going to be his first free born. handled that in a different way. And yes, it meant a lot to him and to his father to be able to have that child. But like his mother said, do you want her or not? If he wants somebody to give you a baby, then you stay on the train. If not, get off the train and go get your woman. So he made the decision for himself as to what he valued more. His mom says, do you want a brood mare or do you want a sprain? Because I think that was one of his strengths is that he knew that he wasn't supposed to change her. He loved her for who she was. You see relationships throughout time where women want to change the men and men want to change the women. It was sand and paint, she liked you a house or a wall at a house or whatever. She wasn't gonna stand for that and he knew that. So if he loved her, he had to love her for who she was at that point in time. Some people say, well, did she change her mind? I said, probably not. That's not who she was. She had little Anna and the baby the nephew for her kids. She wanted a kid, she had her horses. That was enough for her, especially that Palomino that was eating the house. Oh yeah. So she didn't want a kid, she didn't eat kids. Yeah, she didn't want a kid. That horse is one of my favorite characters too. So I'm like, let's get a little horse romance in here. And I have never been around horses at all, ever. People say, well, you ride horses, I've never been seen a live horse. But that's the beauty of working in a library. You can find whatever you want, you know how to research. You know, I didn't know horses had personalities until I started doing the research and looked at it. You know, YouTube stuff and stuff on Google and finding out these quote unquote testimonies from people who have horses and the crazy stuff that they were going through with some of these horses. I'm like, oh, so you take that research and you put it in your story. Because I never would have known. I was like, oh, she must have been a ranch hand and like a past chunk of life or something because everyone here knows horses. Nope, nope, nope. Never been on a horse, never rode a horse, never been. I've never even been around a horse. I don't think so. You're not missing much. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. Oh, let's see. Garrett is so different from your usual in-your-face confident, hockey, beautifully arrogant heroes that I- He is not an alpha. I was like, he's so sweet. He's a cinnamon roll. He's a cinnamon roll. He is a cinnamon roll. How did he come about for spring? Well, I figured if I had somebody who was as arrogant as say Galen or one of the Lavex, you know, they would do nothing but fight the whole time. Because she's strong willed, they're strong willed and think that they're supposed to rule. And so he wouldn't have to, we had nothing but people fight. So I think he was a, one of them needed to be the adult in a room. And I think he was a good, he balanced her very well. She got him to not be as cinnamon rolly. And he got her to be who she was. He loved it from who she was. So I think it was a good balance. He was such a nerd. I mean, every time you saw him, he had a book in his hand. One of the things I didn't even give him was glasses, you know, there's that stereotype, right? But he's my first cinnamon roll. I don't know. I think the guy in the new book is sort of a cinnamon roll, but not as much as Garrett. So I don't know if I write any more though. I like my men would, I like the swagger and alphas because I like having them get cut off by the knees, cut off by the knees by the ladies of their lives. They were fine to write. And he also represented the African-American sailors in the war, which I have not, you know, not touched on with any great depth until the spoke. So yeah. Yeah, that was something that I had never known beforehand until I read this. And I was like, the Navy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There are so many amazing scenes and moments in this novel, but one of the ones that really, really stuck with me is how much you put value on consent before any and any sexy, steamy moment. And something that like hit me hard in the feels is when Garrett and spring are about to get it on for the first time. And he tells her, you can still change your mind. Yeah. We ain't got to do this. And I was like, oh, oh, I had like little tears in my eyes. And I was like, oh, spring's been through so much. Consent is sexy. Yeah. Consent is very sexy. In the olden days, back when the earth was cool and then romance was just starting. You had these, what we call alphals and consent was not a big thing. But romance has evolved just like the world has evolved. And now consent is all, consent is it. Consent is sexy. It's all about consent. I had a teacher a couple of days ago on Twitter said I should put consent is sexy on the laws of all the high schools. And I'm like, okay, that's not my job. That's y'all job. Y'all take care of that. I'll take care of my stuff. But, you know, feel free, but romance is about consent. Because if you don't have consent, what do you have? You know, it's not an equal relationship. So, yeah, consent is sexy. I've always appreciated that your novels veer away from the Gothic romance tradition of kind of, I don't wanna say forbidden temptation, but what is it called? Where they have sex and it's such an unequal relationship. Yeah. Not consensual. Yeah. Not consensual. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that used to be, that used to be the formula. You know, where the guy was, you know, they were so rapey. You know, the books were so rapey back then. I'll rape you when you'll love me. No. No. No. No. No. You know, now it's different as it should be. It should be different. Where the woman has as much say in what's going on as the guy, you know, so, yeah. Consent for the win. Consent for the win, yes. Win-win. For everyone involved. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Back to Garrett's nerdiness. Yes. There is another scene where Garrett's father is meeting Spring and the rest of the town at the same time and he sees Ed, who is a member of the Bannock tribe, and he just straight up scoffs and says, oh, he can't be an engineer because he's a Native American. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was the fiance for his sister. And his dad, yeah. Yeah, and Garrett had this quick response of like, hey, folks, view us that way. Is that true? I don't think so. Yeah. It reminded me of how important it is that everyone has a job and a responsibility to check bigotry. Like anyone can be a bigot. Anyone should get checked on it. How important to you was it to highlight that possibility when you wrote the scene or was it just like a happy accident? No, I mean, it's all about recognition because, you know, the Native communities were treated awfully. And America's had everybody a color in a box. And, you know, we've been in the box. Native communities were in the box. Chinese communities have been in the box. And it's everybody's job to check that, you know. And a lot of times, we grow up with those same uneducated, bigoted opinions about each other. So it's, you know, I can use my books to either, you know, just tell sexy stories and, you know, with no depth and all of that. Or I can use them as a way to educate. And I try to do the education thing without making you realize that you're being educated. And it's an easy way to make people think because that little snippet on that page made a lot of people go, wow, yeah, that's true. You know, because like I said, you know, back east, nobody thought much of the Native communities, you know, regardless of the color. You know, because you're going by what people are telling you in a newspaper, just like today. So, because you don't get that personal interaction. And I think the more we know about each other, the better off we all would be. But, and a lot of times too, because I'm a fan, I'm just writing down what the people telling me to say. You know, I'm just writing down what they telling me to type. And I've been amazed at what I've typed sometimes. And one of my readers told me that the people in my books actually lived at some point in time. And a lot of times I believe that because I'm like, who wrote this? You know why? So I amaze myself sometimes at what is on the page. And that was one of those instances. So, yeah. It was a strong one, because it caught me. And I was like, oh, oh, oh. Yeah. I'll forget them. That's what it should. As well, it should. Yeah. For the majority of the book, I was imagining Garrett in spring in a predominantly black slash native town. So I was a little bit shook when it turned out to be a predominantly white town. And while topics of race are always woven into your stories, I've always appreciated that your books aren't entirely rooted in racial trauma. And this might sound a little messed up, but your characters are allowed to have other traumas beyond racial traumas. I always make the argument that your books are some of the best examples of black joy and literature and black endurance and black love throughout history. Have you always managed to make that a pivotal component of your body of work? How have you always managed? Well, you know, if you look at our history, we didn't spend our whole time bemoaning the fact that we were black. We didn't spend our whole time hiding, you know, from, you know, lynch mobs and even though that was a part of our history. We managed to take the lemons that this country has given us and continues to give us and make the sweetest lemonade we can. You know, we, you know, we built colleges, we married, we had birthday parties, we had christenings, we had, you know, whole families move from the east and the south to the west or in the great exodus of 1879, looking for a place to live that you could be free and breathe. And we get so little of that. In the literature, literature is very, very focused on the pain. And yes, the pain is there. But we use that pain not to define our lives. We use that pain to make us stronger, make us more clever, to make us have the strength to endure. I know that there's a bunch of races that cannot believe we're still here after all of the stuff they have thrown at us. And we are still here because we are clever and we're smart and we're intelligent. And we don't give a fuck about what you don't, you know, want us to be. We know who we are. And we're passing that around to our children to be strong and to know that you have a history here that is beyond slavery. When you look at the movies and that's all they really wanna talk about, the slavery. Nobody wants to talk about the inventors. Nobody wants to talk about the black guy and I think it's Indiana who had one of the first car companies. They wanna talk about the 19th century female black doctors who I paid tribute to with Vivid, my second book. They don't wanna talk about basheries who many people think they based a long range on. You know, it's like we have a history here. We'd have not a country without us. I mean, the 1619 project is not lying. So, this is a good way using the books. It's a good way to solidify that knowledge and that history in a form that many of the bigots never even thought to look at. I'm on my fourth generation of readers and I bet, you know, and what I write I think is contrary to what, you know, this whole CRT thing. They don't know this stuff is in a romance novel. You know, they're so busy banning other books. I'm sure they're coming up for romance. They think of it at some point, but it's too late. The information is already out there. And if I, you know, can publish, you know, we'll put it on the drum. I'll put it on a old school copy machine and pass it out on a corner or, you know, whatever. But, you know, it's a, I think it's a mark of our cleverness and our inventiveness to be able to tell our history in this format in a way that educates and elevates and uplifts. But that's just me, I don't know. I don't know, maybe, I don't know, you know. But I'm very, very proud of what I write. I'm very proud to be a romance writer because there are people who don't think we love. And I really don't care whether they have learned that or not. We know we do. So this is for us and everybody else who wants to come along. But, you know, this is our affirmations. This is our testimony. This is our song, you know. Yes, that's all of the yes, chills, chills. And one of the other things that I love, like I said, almost they love like a million times in this discussion is how you have built this huge romance world. And even in the Blessing series, we get little peek-throughs of all of the other historical romance players. And I just, ah, that connection is so beautiful. Yeah, you know, when we first started the discussion about the Blessing series, I had no idea who would be the players. But the more I thought about, you know, I was like, why would I reinvent the wheel? I have two really strong all-black talents. And the more I thought about it, the more Julys came to the table. So if we're gonna do the Julys, then we gotta do Henry Adams. And since you're a reader, you know that all of my contemporary characters are descendants of my historical characters. Because we as a race passed down. So why wouldn't I pass down my historical stuff to their descendants? So you get little peeks of the history from, you know, the 19th century into the 22nd century because of the foundation that the Dusters left, the foundation that Olivia July left and Neil and Theresa. But it wasn't something I planned. It was like something that they said, okay, girl, this is what you're gonna do. And I'm like, okay, let me type. Let me just keep up, you know? This has been an amazing journey. Now this whole writing thing is, sometimes I'm like, whoa, where'd that come from? I don't know, I don't know. My imagination, I guess. It's the ancestors. They are speaking through, yeah. I think so too. Because I don't know what these stories come up from. I mean, any author, if you talk to authors, they would tell you, they have no idea where the stories come from. You know, it's like I'm channeling whatever, you know, the big librarian in the sky. And the kids say the library. And the big librarian in the sky wants to, wants on the shelves. But I'm having a good time. I'm having a good time. It shows, it shows beautifully. Thank you. So your next novel in the Woman Who Dared series, to catch a raven, hit the shelves today. Yay, today. We've been having a ball, we've been having a ball on Twitter too, and on Facebook, yeah. Yeah, it's a good time. I've been hiding from Twitter because I already know I'm gonna get spoiled. It's always in the cards for me. Nobody has spoilers though, you know, and I don't wanna allow spoilers on my page. So they, like I said, they have their own room vacant. It's called a spoiler room, they go in it and spoil with each other yet. You know, those are already ready, but I'm not seeing, not seeing any spoilers so far. So far. So, yeah. I'm still hiding out, I'm still. I don't blame you. I don't blame you, I don't blame you. Could you tell us a little bit about to catch a raven? Okay, she is from a family of grifters. And the reason they are grifters is explained to you. But I'm not gonna explain it to you because it's a spoiler. And she's basically blackmailed by a Pinkerton who made an appearance in one of the earlier books. And this was my way, because I didn't have closure on that at all. The way that Pinkerton screwed up. And then my readers were like, well, Ms. Bebby need to be forgiven. Well, I decided to be paid. And I brought her back. So she could get her comeuppance. But anyway, and so raven mom and our hero Braxton, the parents had a thing back in the day. So we have their romance, we have Braxton and Raven's romance. We have a little girl with sight. We have, I did this on Twitter. I said, okay, this is like, scavenger hunt. Write all this stuff down. So we have a little girl with sight. We have an older romance. We have three mice in a bag. We have a fish sandwich with a side of seduction. We have fake marriage. We got one bed, auto tropes. They could cut off the tropes. One bed, fake marriage, a fake Montgomery Ward salesman. We have, what else do we have? We have a bigot. We have a stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. We have, what else do we have? We have nuns, black nuns. We have a whole lot of stuff. And we have a revenge and a surprise appearance by a well-loved matriarch from a family that you all love. So I had everybody write all this stuff down across what obviously came up in the story. Cause I'm silly. So lots of stuff going on. Oh, and a confederate money with the face of a woman on it. And then one of the things that I learned after the book went into publication, there is a specific rose that grows in South Carolina. And it was bred by the mixed race sons of a prominent botanist in South Carolina. Now I put that rose in the story. Not knowing it was bred by some mixed race people. So this was an instance of the ancestors writing part of the story and not telling me about it, which happens a lot. So when you see, yeah, so rose scented soap. So, yeah, interesting. So all of that stuff goes into how to catch a rapist. Dang, dang. It's going to be tropes bingo. It's going to be my- Yeah, tropes bingo. Yeah, you need a bingo card. Oh yeah. All that stuff. It's going to be a whole new drinking game. Like this is going to be great. Oh, when did you find this? Did you find that? Did you find this? Yeah. And don't forget the three mice in a bag. That's a trope, too. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a silly girl. Oh my goodness. I hope it's here. So I have two quick questions before we get into some Q and A. My first foray into your novels was Forbidden. And for the readers who are just getting into your work, which one of your books would you say is an excellent place to start? I tell them to start at the beginning. Of the night song. That way, when you weave your way through, you don't miss anything because people start jumping around it and they say, oh, I should have read this first, yes. Or maybe I should have read. So there's a list on my website. My website is sort of under construction, but the lists and all of that are there. And my assistant has them broken down into series. Nothing was written in series. Everything was written as a standalone in the beginning. But if you don't want to start at the beginning, I always recommend Topaz because it's fun. That's a lot of history. And who doesn't like a wagon train full of black women who are male order brides born across the country on their own. So yes, it's a great book. And it's funny. It's Lap Out Love. Funny. Topaz. Oh, yeah. And then my second, hopefully quick, brief question is the covers of your books are always stunning. I have been collecting your coverage covers. And of course, I also got Topaz. Oh, OK, yeah. Now that's there's another edition to that. Oh, there's a 15 year anniversary edition that has bonus material in the bag. So you want to get the other one instead of that one if you are new so that you don't miss the bonus stuff. Oh, yeah. How much say do you have in cover design? I didn't at first because the guy who did the covers was such a wonderful guy, except for the 10 pounds are here. There was no product back then. So and now I guess I've been around been around long enough where they will send me stuff and say, well, do you like this? Do you like that? You know, who do you want to cover that kind of thing? So I do get approval, approval now, which is wonderful. So, yeah, because the cover for Rebel has got the guy who, yeah, Travis Pure is in the movie from Deadly Sexy. And when I met him on the set, I asked him if he would do the cover for Rebel. He'd never done a story before, cover before. So he agreed. Oh, yeah, it is an angel. The young woman has been a few of my books because girlfriend can look like anybody and she's very, very good at what she does. So she sort of led him through the whole process. And it came out really well, came out really, really well. So I do have a level of yes or no now where I didn't have in the beginning. But Tom Egner was the former art director at Avon killed it. I mean, I have not seen anything better than that. My God, the midnight cover is great. But Avon is known for its beautiful covers. So I'm real happy with them. Yeah, those covers there. I'm still hunting down an indigo cover. So yeah, they got a few of them out there. You know, for a while, they were going for like over a thousand dollars. But I'm like, don't even pay that. What is wrong with y'all? I don't know when that stimulus check hit. I was like, well, maybe. Yeah, eight books has a few. Somebody was looking for something recently. There's one in my basement. I'm telling my daughter when I go to the big library in the sky. She can decide what she wants to do with it. But I need to find it out in there first with the basement somewhere. It has been in there since 1994, so still brand new. Oh, my goodness. All right, so I've asked enough questions. I could ask questions all day, all night. And I could be here till Tuesday. It's no problem. Let's open it up to some audience Q&A. OK. I know that I saw one. Are they in the chat? Are they in the Q&A? It looks like they're in the app, seeing them mostly in the chat. Yeah, there was one that was. They'd love to hear about your work life in libraries. Oh, I started out as a student working in the Emission Library, Mission State Works Library. And I worked for circulation and I was a claims return student, which means for those who don't know what a library does. Claims return is when they said, I return that book. What's sending me bills? I don't know. I don't find me. I return that book. So they'll send little people like me up into the stacks to see if they actually return it. And a lot of times they did. It was just shelving the wrong place or stuck on the shelves after it was due and didn't go through the regular process because they didn't want to pay to find. So I started out that way. And then when I was my junior year, the job for head clerk of one of the clerk jobs because circulation opened up. And I didn't even take my finals because nobody went to class in the 70s. I was an English major. What was I going to do with that? And we were too busy getting high and taking over buildings and stuff. So. So I didn't take. I'm sorry. I didn't take my finals. My mother was not happy. Neither was my dad. You OK over there, sis? OK. I didn't take my finals. I got the job and suddenly I was in charge of three floors of the Graduate Library and 150 students. And oh, my God, it was crazy. It was crazy. So we did the shelving. We built the shelving. And I worked that job for from 74 until I pregnant with my daughter and 80. So I've done. Binding. And after my daughter was born, they moved me to the reference desk. And I did the reference desk and I did special events at the reference desk. Was at the information desk, which was different from the reference desk. This reference librarian did not want to be able to tell you who was singing at the concert venue because it wasn't their job. So we had to have an information desk. So we're there for a while. And then my husband got a fantastic, you know, he was a printer while we were in school. And so we got a really great job. We moved and we were the only. Black professional couple in the county. Yeah. And there was a bookstore and the guy told me he couldn't hire me until he got his wife's approval, which meant he didn't hire me. And I told my husband's secretary, I was so mad. I said, OK, this building's going to burn out. And a year and a half after we left down, the building did burn down. So we moved down here back down here to civilization. And I started working at the big pharma library. And then that's when I went from there to to being an author. Crazy story. I've had a crazy life. Great life, great life. All right, next question. I think that was enough question. Enough of an answer for that question. Let's see the next one. Any discussion about your books becoming films? Yeah, we thought we had to deal when we did have a deal with Sony and we had a green light and then the pandemic. Yeah, this was for a bit for forbidden. The young ladies at. Um. The robotics had a first look agreement with Sony. And one of the first books that they recommended was forbidden. And I will always be grateful to them for that. So we had a script and we had people interested. And then the pandemic hit and the people who were interested just sort of scattered to the to the four winds. And so now it's back out back to us. Sony has sort of given up on it and that's OK. The blessing series has been optioned by Al Roker. But we have not heard anything from his group in quite some time, so we're not really sure where that stands. We're hoping and praying that is going to go through. So when I know you guys will know. OK. But yeah, I would like to see everything. I want to see Topa on on on the screen and I definitely and I would love to see Jesse Rose on the screen because I want to rise to play Jesse Rose. Yes, as I can see her and open a scene with her when she's up on that roof in the middle of the night with the moon behind her and a rifle in her hand going, what are you doing on my land? I think she would be a fabulous Jesse Rose. So yes, so all the people out there in California can make that happen, please. Called to Raji and tell her I have a perfect venue. Perfect, perfect article for her. So OK. That's all we got so far from this. Like I would I would love to see everything on TV. I'm like, forget the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Let's do the Beverly Jenkins universe. Oh, it's happening. Yeah, the B.J. verse. Yes, I would love it. We have the the. The scripts and the stories Hollywood. Call us get it together. Come on, come on. I know. I know. Yeah. But you know what, if it doesn't get any better than this. It's OK. I'm going to keep riding, I'm going to keep riding. I hope so. Yeah, I'm going to keep riding. So we'll see what happens. OK, what else you got? All right, I think we've got time for one more. OK, let's see. What are you looking forward to writing next? We're trying to figure out what we're going to do next. The this is the last book on the contract for women who dare. So I am looking forward to finally getting this last blessings book out. I'm working on that. It's been two years delayed. Book 11 Christmas to remember. It's due to my editor next month. And it will be out in October of twenty three. And then we have one more book on that contract. So I don't know. We'll have to wait and see what we're going to do. And I want to do dragons, but we'll see. OK, there is one more. What are you reading right now? Right now, I'm not supposed to be reading. I'm supposed to be working. But I'm reading. I'm a fit, excuse me. I'm a fantasy reader. So I'm reading a city of brass. And then last night, when all these great books dropped, Patricia Briggs, Marcy Thompson series. Dropped, so waiting on that. I need to finish these books that I'm supposed to be writing so that I can take some of the weight off of my kindle. Well, right now I need to go to the gym. I've got some books inside of it and barely move. It's waddling around going home, girl. So we'll see. And I think we've actually gone over time, which is a beautiful thing, I think. I think so, too. Like I said, we could be able to stay. I don't know. Don't I never. I have never met a microphone. I have. I do not like everybody knows that. But I appreciate you having me. Oh, I we all appreciate you so much for coming through. Like, this means the world to me. I'm pretty sure it means the world to some other folks in this chat. Like, yeah, tomorrow, where I'm with. Rebecca, weather spoon down at the red bodice tomorrow. So you can look on their website. You hear me talk more craziness was me and Rebecca going to have a good time. That'll be tomorrow. And then Thursday. I'm doing a zoom with school shooters books. So you can look on the website and join us for that, too. So. Thank you. San Francisco Public Library. Thank you, Rachel. Lisa and Lisa, everybody I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks. And thanks to everybody who showed up. All you twenty two people who are out there. All right, it's 10 o'clock. It's 11 o'clock. Oh, it's like mama's leaving. I see y'all later. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. At a great time.