 And thank you to the library for having me. Thank you for being here. Like, for real? Like, this is big. This is your first in-person event in a hot minute in the U.S., right? Then 2019, yeah. Yes. It's been a while. I am honored that you have graced us with your presence. Thank you. Thank you. And would you mind introducing when no one is watching to our lovely crowd? So when no one is watching is a thriller, a thriller about gentrification, the main protagonist is Sydney who has returned to her Brooklyn home after a messy divorce and said, oh my, a mask is crinkling. Sorry about that. I was like, people can see my mouth, but they can't see it. Anyway, sorry for the crinkling. And basically, she's returned to Brooklyn and noticed that her neighborhood has changed a lot and weird things are happening. More and more of her neighbors that she knew have just kind of been moving away, supposedly. And more and more new people have been moving to the neighborhood. The vibe is off. She decides to start doing a historical tour of her neighborhood. While she's doing the tour, she has a research assistant who is one of the new white guys who moved to the neighborhood. And they discover that history is not so, or as Faulkner would say, I guess the past isn't even in the past. And they discover something that may be a conspiracy or maybe she's losing her mind. Who knows? Maybe a bit of both. And that's what no one is watching. And there's some romance in there too. There are horror elements and it's basically about what happens when you're trying to reclaim your neighborhood against forces of capitalism and white supremacy. It's a solid radio. So my first question is, I was introduced to your works through your romance works. My first one was the first one that I read and then I backtracked to Radio Silent. And it seems like you've always been a little bit interested in writing thrillers. So what was it that pushed you to write this one? Well, most of my romances, even the royal romances have a little bit of mystery within them. Sometimes the mystery is lighter. Like who is the secret love child of the Duke or something like that. And other times the mystery, like in the Loyal League series, which is Civil War espionage is, you know, is he going to kill Jefferson Davis? Well, we know the answer is no, because it's not historical fantasy, but you know, there's the domestic espionage thriller aspects of that fighting a secret society fighting against the Confederacy. And in Radio Silent, in the Off the Grid series, which is a sci-fi, I call it Closie dystopian or Closie apocalypse. There are no zombies. It's kind of like what is causing the problem in the world. So I've always kind of really gravitated towards an underlying mystery. But for this one, but they usually so within romance, the, you know, the main aspect of genre romance is the relationship between the two people propels the story. And although there are a bunch of other things going on, and the ending is that the two people are together, there is much more going on than that, obviously. But that's like, for genre reasons, that's what the reader is looking for. And with this book, I actually started to kind of explore this. I wanted to explore this idea of gentrification due to, you know, things I was seeing in my own neighborhood and in my family's neighborhood. I was living in Brooklyn. My family was living in Jersey City. And if you read a Duke by default, which is the second book in the run, the reluctant royal series, it's in Scotland. But there are like, there are some like little weird, like people trying to buy property and stuff, but it kind of got lost in the sauce of the secret love child of a Duke and ADHD and everything else going on. That was like propelling the love story. So I thought that the idea of gentrification and kind of people, the world that you know changing around you felt kind of really horrifying, like when you really think about it. So I thought a thriller would be a really good way to explore this story that I had been wanting to tell for a while, with romance, of course, because I love romance. But the romance is like the secondary story to the plot of what is going on in the neighborhood. I do like the little romance and it is an adorably fun, dark twisted. Yeah. And I got to play around a little bit more than I would have within romance with characters that like made more morally grade decisions, although there are romances that deal with it, usually the ones I write don't. So it was fun to kind of have characters doing, you know, things that maybe a romance reader would be happy to read, but just wouldn't expect in a straightforward romance. Yeah. I do find like the history of how black and brown folks are moved from neighborhood to neighborhood and their whole entire cultures are shifted and destroyed and impacted so heavily to be such an interesting topic. Sydney's research for her walking tour was really impressive. And there's a San Francisco black history walking tour that's also really impressive and really interesting in seeing all the neighborhoods that have been destroyed. What was your research process like for this? Did you do walking tours? Did you just heavy archive it? I didn't do walking tours. A lot of the research came from the fact that I had written so many I had already written so many historical romances, a lot of which were set in most of like 99% of the numbers set in the US. A lot of them were in the Northeast or, you know, between Virginia and New York. And just a lot of the research I was doing, you know, I would always find these like horrible things, like as most people who are researching American history and black American history. And I'd be like, OK, all this can't go in the book, but this is really fucked up. So it's really messed up. And like, it was just kind of like a kind of like a pattern recognition thing of how my brain works. So over the years of reading all this stuff, I think it was kind of just accumulating there. And I thought the best and like thinking about how these things keep happening over and over and over again in different places and kind of how that would play out as a conspiracy theory, even though technically, like all of these things really like the majority of the things really do happen in some in some form or have happened, but kind of trying to translate that into a thriller that could be entertaining, draw people in because one of the reasons I like telling historical talking about real history in my books, even though they're romance or they're thrillers or they're, you know, sci-fi or kind of just I feel like it's much easier to digest than reading a textbook and most people they have the choice between picking up a genre novel fiction novel or a textbook. It's easier to pick up a fiction book. And so it's kind of like, I feel like it's a way of kind of translating all of these things that I'm learning. I'm not a historian or anything. And they're historians who do this as well in their own way. But I feel like for me, it's like it kind of started out as like anger. Why didn't I why wasn't I taught these things? Why didn't I learn these things in school? Why didn't I learn these things until I was like in my thirties? And then I thought, OK, well, I can find a way to process that, put it in books and sneakily share. Which is super dope because in the book club last night, someone did mention that they didn't know a lot about this. And this was their introduction into just how harmful gentrification can be and how true this history is. Yeah. And like even just the aspects of gentrification and kind of how it's tied into, you know, law codified by law and so many ways that we don't think about from highways constantly, you know, just by chance, being built through Black neighborhoods everywhere in the U.S. And, you know, down to the things like inheritance rights, like when they go to the museum and learn about the fact that Black people couldn't pass on their generational wealth, even if they accumulated wealth, which was a real law. So it was just kind of these things that basically I was pissed off about and I wanted to include in the book in some way to I honestly did not know how it was going to play out because I was like, this is just kind of an angry book. I tried to put humor. I mean, that's how I deal with anger anyway, like adding humor in and, you know, romance as well. And but I thought that, you know, for me, I felt like it was a great way of just taking all these things that I had learned of. I did a lot more research as I was writing the book and I actually did live in an area near Weeksville and didn't know that Weeksville existed. So like similar to Sydney. So I did go back and go visit it and check it out and do research about the specific, more about the specific neighborhood. But a lot of it was just like basically years of accumulated knowledge and then digging deeper into specific things for the book. It's an impressively researched book, by the way. My next thing is about conspiracy theories because it's a conspiracy that runs through pretty much the whole core of the book and working at a public library, we hear some conspiracy theories. We we hear them often. I do believe that some of them are true. There is one in particular that I've heard a lot about called MK Ultra. And in San Francisco, there was something called Operation Midnight Climax or something along those lines where they were drugging people with LSD and brothels. And these are declassified FBI files. Like I'm not this is not a rant. But it sounds like it sounds like I'm going somewhere. But this ends in a logical place. And medical conspiracy theories are such a huge thing. In this one, there is a very, very true medical conspiracy theory. And I'm wondering, where did you find the inspiration for that? For that, you know, it was just from the history of medicine in general, how African-Americans and I mean, honestly, everyone, I mean, white Americans as well, lower class white Americans. Anyone who is lower class and particularly black Americans would, you know, kind of not be even today. There are still issues of how black Americans are treated. Doctors believing that we have a lower threshold for pain. Things that affect like, you know, people being unable to get kidney transplants because of common knowledge that is actually incorrect. So even just like at a baseline, there's this starting point of if you went to the doctor and they said to your face, well, actually, you know, you feel you don't feel pain as much as a white person does. You would say, what are you talking about? But this is like what is taught in medical school, even if they don't say to you. And that would sound completely insane. But it's, you know, and that's just like, unfortunately, some of the more benign things. So a lot of what went into it was just, you know, thinking about experiences that my family has had, that people I know have had, things that I've seen in the news and that I've read about over the years. And honestly, some of the stuff I thought I was making up was not made up. Because people were like, oh, you were referring to this specific situation. And I'm like, actually, I wasn't. I really hope that was making that part up. But I unfortunately, it seems that I was not. So I think there's just been a long history in America and other places of using people considered less than as basically, you know, test cases. And that has unfortunate side effects, as we saw during the pandemic of people, you know, not wanting to participate in certain health care because of these past real scenarios that happen, influencing how medicine is seen today. Yes. And then my next question is about generational wealth. One of the things that I found myself deeply relating to is how Sydney is set up to inherit generational wealth and how pretty much every situation being thrown at her is an attempt to take that away from her. And this may sound like a ridiculously simple question. But why do you think it's black folks in America who aren't allowed to experience generational wealth in urban environments? I mean, it's white supremacy. I mean, it's definitely white supremacy. But it's one of the it's a really insidious thing because, you know, at the same time, every time you turn on the news or you see, you know, any politician talking, whether they mean it or not, they're saying, oh, well, we need to help these urban areas. We need to teach black people how to save money and how to do this and that. And then there will be like financial parity and equality. But the thing is, there are so many things in the system that are just set up against us. And and it's a fact, unfortunately, like even, for example, in selling a house. And there have been recent things in the news with families who had to take down all of their pictures. They, you know, got their house value and it was much lower than they expected. They took down all their family pictures and had a white friend pose as the homeowner for the next valuation. And it would increase by a lot. The value of the house increased by a lot. So part of the idea of generational wealth is that, like, if black people have it, then it isn't worth as much. And then that's like the base, you know, that's part of the baseline that then leads to and then there are, you know, law things that make it difficult for people to save money. There's how banks interact with black clientele versus white clientele as far as loans and loan forgiveness and interest rates and things going back to, like, you know, 2008 and the financial crisis, who was affected the most by the financial crisis. So I think there are so many things that are kind of just before even getting to conspiracy theory, just looking at how banks work, how, you know, going back to redlining, which wasn't that long ago. And then there was official redlining and then unofficial redlining of, well, no, I'm just not going to rent you this house or I'm just not going to sell you this house. So I think that so many things have been set up against it. And in a way, is that often the people who are perpetrating it aren't even aware that they're really doing it. Sorry to move closer to the mic. So they're not, it's not like they like have some plan, like I'm not going to sell to black people or I'm not going to do this. It's just kind of so ingrained in American society that they don't even really often understand when they're doing it. I mean, on some level, they understand, but it's not like a grand conspiracy to many of the people who are participating in it, which makes it harder to eradicate. Except that was one of like the true horror parts for me is even knowing that Sydney had a house that was hers. And I was like, oh, no, it's not going to stay with her. Like I'm already knowing this is going to be a horrible situation. So that it was a very interesting underlying horror right there, like right off the bat. Yeah. And there's like, you know, the idea of the American dream that was never really extended to everyone, but is considered the sign of success. But it's like much harder for some people to either achieve it or to hold on to it if they do achieve it because, you know, one of the aspects of gentrification is when the neighborhood starts to become more valuable, valuable property taxes rise and even something like that, which is not some horrible, you know, evil conspiracy is horrible. But it's not like always like some evil conspiracy. But even that is just like, OK, well, the people who live there can't afford to live there now, even if they own the house. Yeah. If they still have to pay property taxes, like in Jersey City, where my family is from the property taxes, jumped like an incredible amount to like tens of thousands of dollars and people just have to move. It's like, what are you going to do if the your property tax is how much money you make in a year? You have to sell. And sometimes it says. The evil aspect of it is as simple as that. And then touching on the American dream, because it seems like Theo has found the American dream of Miss Lululemon, because I cannot remember her name for the life of me. Um, Ken. Ken, thank you. That's how Sidney called her, and that's what I'm going to call her too. So it seems like Theo is willing to just kind of rock with him because he's fallen into this idea that this is the American dream that he should be striving for and going for. Yeah. And what Theo, I kind of wanted him to be the kind of person who has never given much thought to it because he thinks he's a good guy. I mean, even though he's doing a lot of things that are not good guy thing, he still thinks he's a good guy. And clearly he has, you know, some good parts that allow him to be, you know, involved in the better parts of being on the right side of trying to be on the right side of history, but he had never really even considered it. And I think that's something, um, you know, when we talk about white privilege, sometimes people think it's about money or which it can be. And it often is, but it's often things like, have you considered how you contribute to the oppression of other people? Um, and I mean, that's something that everyone has to think about in some ways, but sometimes people can just assume because he came from a hard background and he's like, no one ever gave me anything, but he still was able to do, get away with a lot of the things he was getting away with because no, because he just kind of fit the profile for a normal nice white guy. But then, you know, that also helped in the end with certain things. So, well, for sure. Because when he was like, I went because who would think that a white guy digging in a flower garden would be any kind of suspicion? I was like, ah, Theo, this is like many reparations right here. Bless his little soul. Speaking of Theo again. Um, Theo and Sydney are two such entirely different people. And one of the parts that got me is when Sydney's talking about like reasons to come in at night and she's all like, ooh, the night doctors, like that's why we came inside. And I don't know if you were referring to the night doctors of the Klan or a different night doctor situation. Um, and then Theo is like, oh, yeah, I remember the clowns in the van. And I was like, oh, dang it, Theo. I was like, what is happening here? And that was one of those more trials, like these are two such incredibly different, but almost similar people. With both of them, I kind of wanted there to be the dynamic of their both people who don't really know themselves, don't really know what they're looking for, um, and find something at least in this brief period of time in each other that helps them to both be able to do something, um, that they wouldn't have been able to do on their own. And also to understand for Sydney to understand, I mean, even outside of Theo that she, she had assumed she had to do everything on her own. And, um, Theo was kind of like a stepping stone because he wouldn't get out of the way, basically, to her understandings, um, because he had that particular persistence, uh, to helping for her being able to understand that she doesn't just have to rely on herself. And that doesn't mean she just have to rely on him, but that like her community was actually there waiting to help her the entire time. If she had been paying, been able to pay attention or been, been able to like get out of her head and, uh, see what was going on around her. Yeah. Just like the tiniest bit of attention and she would have been, she would have been golden y'all, which brings me to another interesting point is you write such strong female characters, like all of the female characters in this novel are strong either for good reasons or bad reasons. And I am talking about Ms. Lulu Lemon. So did you set out to write a strong cast of female characters? Um, I think that's just naturally what I gravitate towards. Um, but I do really, um, lean heavily into characterization. I really like pushing the story forward by, um, really understanding what each character would do in a situation. And I guess making it more interesting for the reader to, um, propel, to have the story of propelled forward that way. And, um, just because I like observing people, I like, well, I won't say I like it, but I guess it's just something that's like, I'm not like sitting around like watching people. But, um, yeah, I think part of it is because I'm neurodivergent and a lot of my formative years that until now has been like why do people do that? Why are you doing, like even for like simple things, I'm always like, why did they do that? What would make someone do that? And so then when I'm writing at that kind of apply in a way, it helps me to understand the characters more in the same way that I kind of have to try to understand why people are doing things in real life. Um, it helps me to build stronger characters because like, um, I really try to think about, like, you know, even most of the things that are not in the book, but that what would create this person who is here in this moment, in the moments that we're seeing in the book, um, and how they, how they got there and why they are there and what would they do in any given moment in the book? Well, I was reading this book. I was also reading, um, they were her property, which I for life, we can't remember the author. So I hope that ends up in the chat somewhere and it gets linked and all the good stuff. I'm forgetting the names too. But, um, and I think I often, um, I do try to include, include evil white women characters. And like this is, and it's part and part because of this book and like, um, not from before the book, but when I was researching civil war stuff, because there is the idea, um, and like, you know, in some of my books, they're evil black characters because, um, you know, there's no, no one is all good or all bad. But I do sometimes like to push back against the idea that the patriarchy is only men. Um, women also uphold the patriarchy and women who benefit from it uphold the patriarchy. So if you do, if you research like, you know, civil war stuff, um, I'm sure that book has many examples, but I would come across them as I was reading where, um, big, you know, the patriarchy was going strong at that time and women really didn't have many rights. White women didn't have many rights, but then that anger could not be channeled upward. So the, the anger would be channeled over to who they had power over. So some of that, um, well, I think it's still lingers today. It's something that we see, you know, the idea of Karen's, which is, I really don't like the word Karen because it's kind of waters down and actually serious thing of, um, and now it's been reduced to anyone who's like, you know, kind of being a jerk when, but I think at the basis of a lot of the Karen meltdown videos that we were seeing is this kernel of, uh, kind of not having their place in this hierarchy. And I don't think it's conscious. I don't think it's a conscious thing, which is why the reactions are so bizarre of like, I am supposed to have power in this situation and I do not, or I am trying to have power in this situation, which is why I'm going to threaten to call the police on you or, and a lot of the, like a lot of those things happened after the book was already written. I mean, they were happening all the time, obviously, but I was saying that like 2020 it was basically like the worst marketing campaign, the best and worst marketing campaign for this book because a lot of the stuff that I think people reading it might have said, well, this is unrealistic or this is over the top or, you know, this is doing too much. There were literally videos everywhere showing the exact situations that Sidney was experiencing and people in the neighborhood were experiencing in the book to be real experiences. And so I do think that they're part of the reason I talk about that in some of the books is that I do think it's something that we need to explore as a society in order to be able to understand it, like with all aspects of white supremacy and to help eradicate it. And then to go for a lighter question to shift to somewhere happy. This book feels like it would make the best movie and or TV show. And where where where was my little thing about who I wanted to play? Hold on, hold on. So in my head, I was imagining Theo as a younger Chris O'Dowd and then Sidney as a young Countess Vaughn and the mayor is either not the mayor mayor like there's a character called the mayor as either Danny Glover or Samuel L. Jackson. Do you have an ideal casting? I'm really bad at remembering actor's name. Oh yeah, I had to write them all down numerous times and many times. Someone who I thought would be a good Sidney is Nikki Bahari just because I think she would be good at anything, but I think she has and I love her. But just the I think she has the emotional range to go from comedy to teetering on the edge of a breakdown really well. So I liked her for in my head casting as Sidney. Theo actually was hard for me. I was like, I don't know. There was some guy in the haunting of Hill House. Oh, the tall one. Yeah. So descriptive. I think he was tall. Tall one with a jacket. But I was like, I think he would make a good Theo. But yeah, it was kind of hard for me to cast like because I could see the characters in my head and trying to find actors who I thought would do them well. Then I was like, maybe like Jake Gyllenhaal just because he's kind of out there. But yeah, I would love for it to be a movie. So fingers crossed and they're a movie or a cute little Netflix show like someone, please make it happen. The other thing I really enjoyed about this book were all of the little references to pop culture because I find that it's really hard to find books with characters that are in their I think Sidney's in her late 20s, late 20s, early 30s. That area where the pop culture references are actually relevant. So you have bed bugs, hitching rides on unwashed legs, which I chuckled far too hard at that one. You have, I don't feel too good, Mr. Star. Like these pop culture references are on point. What's your favorite pop culture thing right now? Right now. I have been really behind on deadline. So I have for the next really sad. I haven't been watching too much stuff. My favorite pop culture things. I mean, I guess it might be me like my favorite movies right now were everything everywhere all at once. And nope, were that my two favorite movies last year. Nope was a trippy one. Yeah, nope was watching my home girl. And they were like, we don't. I watched Noob in the movie theater and I talked to my friend, Rebecca Weatherspoon, who's also an author and she was like, it's not that scary. Cause I actually, I can't watch scary movies. What? Like I grew up reading horror and I do like reading it from time to time, but I don't like seeing visuals because then my brain's like, let's replay that. Oh yeah. Let's replay that whole murder scene. So I was watching it and I was like, okay, she was right, it wasn't that scary. And then like, you know, the scene happens and I was like, and I was like, oh, she has an entirely different threshold for what is scary. Cause she watches horror movies all the time. But it was worth it though. I really, really enjoyed that movie. Yeah, it was a real movie. I do notice like a similarity though. Like the pacing of Nope and the pacing of this novel, like out of at first you're like, oh, this is kind of cute and quaint. Like this is cool. Like the action hasn't popped off yet. And then before you know it, you're like, oh, what the heck? Where is we going? What is we doing? How did we get here? What are we doing? I really like reading. I mean, I'm not sure if all of my thrillers will be like that, but I like to kind of have like a meandering. You're getting to know the characters. You're getting to know the world. And then then it's on. And I think because for me, that's kind of scarier. And I feel like it's kind of how bad things happen in real life, which is you're going about your business. You don't know what's, it seems like a normal day. And then suddenly some, you know, knock on wood for everyone here, but something terrible can happen. And so I kind of, when I'm writing the books, it's kind of like getting to know these characters before just plunging them into like something so terrible. And that so that you can really care about whether they're going to get out of it or not. I do enjoy stories too that start off with the action, like in media res or, you know, getting right into the thick of it. But when I'm writing, I'm usually like kind of going along and then having an explosive ending. I feel like a lot of my books have explosives. Sometimes an explosion is what you need to do when you're taking on white supremacy. It's the only thing you do. I'm not promoting violence. I mean, no, no, no, no, no, no real explosions, please. Sorry, I'm like stuck thinking about like, it's how quick that story just pops up. Let me see here. Boop, boop, bop. Oh, I want to talk about Marcus right quick. His name is Marcus, right? The ex husband. Was there ever a situation in which Marcus was setting Sydney up to be this completely unreliable narrator and then just she goes back, he gets the house, it goes to the corporation, there's like some other weird stuff. Cause that was my inner conspiracy theory the whole time. No, I think that was just a bad relationship that my viewing has the needs that like she does have mental health issues. I like writing characters for mental health issues because I have mental health issues a lot of people do. And I like writing books where they are the heroes of the story despite having some issues instead of being the villains or being the victims of the story. So I didn't, I purposely didn't include that much about the relationship except like some brief flashbacks because although it did influence where she is when we meet her, it wasn't tied to what happened with the corporation. It was just kind of part of her pattern of depending, not depending on other people but I guess trying to be things for different people she wanted to be a certain person for her mom. She wanted to emulate her mom. She wanted to be a certain person for Andrea. She wanted to be a certain person for Marcus instead of just being herself and really knowing who she was and what she was capable of. Cause I do love that you write characters that have such vivid mental health issues cause I feel like sometimes they're skirted around like it's like a cute quirky thing that they have but your characters go through like some real shit. Like it's serious and it's legit. So I appreciate you for writing those. Thank you. And I think it's also for me an additional layer of like in the psychological thriller genre of like, okay when you do have like some mental health issues you do kind of have to be like, wait. Hold up. Is this a conspiracy or like, so kind of adding that layer playing around with that for me is interesting in the genre. I'm not running out of questions. It's just you're hitting on so many of the points that I wanted to talk about that I'm like, hold on. Hold on. All right. Is there gonna be a sequel? Because the way how this end, I imagine them going off on like a really cool buddy adventure in solving gentrification. There might be. I did leave it open in part because you can't solve gentrification but I left it open to, at the moment I don't have them planned. I'm not working on one, but I did leave it open for a sequel, road trip to a new town. I was like, they're gonna go on a road trip. And I do want to say like, so at the end of the book there's like this kind of forum where people are posting about the things happening in their town. And a lot of the mail and messages that I get from readers is frankly very similar to that. It's like, oh, in my city or in my town or my neighborhood, this happened. And not like to the point of what happens in the book but like the major gentrification shifts going on. So I did find it interesting that like this really is a widespread thing from people all over the US and outside of the US as well. So there are definitely many, many more stories to tell. Yeah, cause I loved when the, I call them the trinity of elders because it's the three of them. And I love when, oh, I can't remember anyone's name to say of my life. The auntie who wasn't out here poisoning people. Oh. I'm blanking, I'm blanking on her name right now too, even though I made her, but. When she mentions like, oh yeah, baby, this has been happening, we always handle it. I was like, oh, snap. Is there a backstory to? Yeah, there could be a backstory. There could be the prequel even. Oh man, a prequel. I would see this could be a whole universe. Like forget Marvel for a hot minute. Let's just do gentrification crushers. And I did throw in stuff about the blackout because that actually came from walking around Brooklyn with my parents and my dad was like telling his stories of what happened when he was in, they lived in the Bronx, but he was in Brooklyn with a friend when the blackout happened and had some interesting interactions with people. So I was like, that was something that was in the back of my head that I was like, oh, I think this would be a good. You know, something that could tie into everything going on now in the story. And then my next question is a spoiler. Are we okay with spoilers here? Not you, Elizabeth. I'm sorry. You'll guess it really quick. You're smart. Sydney's mom is dead. Yes. And that, whoa. I asked, I asked, and everyone had a chance to say their peace as a spoiler. And she, it goes deeper into the spoilers. And she bears her mom in the community garden. And I think that was the most, what in the flying world happened here since she was not ever read. And then she's not there. Yeah, so around this point, I was like, I can't do this. And then I was like, I'm gonna do it. But because to me, it really, I was like, what can show how desperate someone might be and how to preserve generational wealth, not like just for money, but just for, like her mom had done that, had, you know, had this house and really thought she was going to be providing for future generations. And it's kind of tricked out of it. And this is the real situation that happens to a lot of older people. And I just thought, like, what kind of desperation, what kind of desperate levels might someone reach to try to avoid this? And also, you know, maybe another parent might have said something like that to their kid and their kid would have just said. Yeah. But Sydney was like, all right, you know. Sydney was 10 toes down, like she was ready to go. So it was something that was like extreme, but I felt like for the story and for the characters and for kind of as a way of showing like what people might be willing to do or feel forced to do in a situation like that, even though it's not logical, not legal. And, you know, as I was writing it, I was thinking about like, some people might see it as a kind of desecration, but for her, she's doing what she thinks her mom would want. And so, that was a moment. It was so many moments. I think, do we have questions? Cause I could see you. I just wasn't, I wasn't sure. Psych. Oh dear. Who doesn't love a technical difficulty for a moment? I guess I should come up with another question, huh? Let's see. Testing one, two. Da, da, da. Testing one, two. Oh. Thank you. Here's one of our questions. The characters you create are so wonderful and lively or terrifying and horrible, but always distinct and memorable. Do you create characters first or plot first? How does character creation go for you? Where did Sydney come from? I love her so much. And how did you get Theo's terrible, terrible girlfriend? And how did it feel writing as each of the voices in your story? That's a great question. It's always hard to say where do characters come from. I honestly feel like in some ways, a lot of characters are just different facets of me, in a way. There are many writers who say like, my characters are not me at all. I don't know where they get their characters from either. But for me, like, they're not me. I'm not writing like my story, but like as I'm writing the book, I have to kind of inhabit who they are. And like I said before, like why they would do the things that they would do. So, and their voices do kind of change and shift from who I thought they would originally be. Like Theo wasn't who I originally thought he was going to be. Sydney is a bit harsher than I thought she was going to be when I first started writing. And Theo became a more kind of golden retriever type of energy than I thought he was going to be. And so, yeah, just kind of changes as it goes along. Like I have the basic idea and then as I'm writing them, like they don't like talk to me or something. But like I start to learn more about who they are and who they need to be in the story and kind of flesh it out. And then how they play off of one another and I'm writing Kim. Kim was like just an amalgamation of like a lot of, you know, unpleasant people that I've met but that a lot of people have met. And I kind of really made her, I don't want to say extreme, but she's like a lot of terrible traits rolled into one person just to kind of show those various different kinds of people but within this one character. And writing all of them was, it was pretty fun to be honest. I like telling stories from different POVs so I can get into different characters heads. In the thriller I'm working on now, this I'm writing the thriller I'm working on now is about a dissociative identity disorder system who are solving a mystery. It's not like a surprise. We didn't know we have this, like they know they have dissociative identity disorder but so that's like taking it to the next level of like really trying to make sure they're distinct voices and characters even if they inhabit the same body and trying to figure out how to display that differently in different ways throughout the story. So I think just really trying to understand the characters, think about, like I think about things like their background, where they grew up and stuff like that, but even like what is the regional slang? What is, what was on TV when they were going up? What is, what music did they listen to? Like what would be their pop culture references to go back to that? Because I feel like that's really an important part of people that gets overlooked a lot. And I think maybe I think about it a lot more because my husband is French and was like raised in a very kind of rural even for French people. Oh dang. And so I'll be like, oh like blah, blah, blah. You know, about some very common thing and I'll be like, what are you talking about? And so like things that, you know, within a certain group you can, or even a, you know, nationality or an age range you would think everyone knows, everyone doesn't know. So like what things are important to different people or common knowledge to different people is something that I think also helps building with characterization. Solid. Are there other questions? Yes, I have two more questions. Do you, did you like to write as a child and when did you start sharing your stories and do you have any advice for young writers? I did like to write as a child and I'm sorry to repeat this story for the million time for anyone who has heard it. But my mom says that even when I was like two I had a book that I had to, I couldn't write, of course, but I would draw little pictures to tell stories and that I needed to, I would refuse to go to bed until I was able to do my writing for the night, which is very cute. It's a mom's story though. I don't know how exaggerated it is because I'm like my work ethic was way better when I was two. This is now. But I did always love telling stories and drawing stories and then when I learned to write, like writing little fairy tales and stuff like that. And now I have a whole romance, royal fairy tale series. So I still like writing a lot of the same stuff that I did when I was a kid. And advice for young writers would be to, my advice is always to read a lot, to read as much as you can. And this is not so that you can copy the writers that you are reading, but it's because it's so you can internalize what a story feels like when you're reading it. Like when you're reading, you understand this, you're reading something, it's great, and then something happens and you're like, no, why did this happen? When you start to understand story or study story structure, you might have like an exact reason for why this particular thing didn't work in a story. But before you get to that point, when you read a lot of books, you can just kind of innately understand what a story feels like. And that is really, for me, the most helpful thing when writing is understanding when something just doesn't feel right. And that helps you in revisions to know what to take away, what to add, and what scenes need to be worked on. And also to not expect something that I've been seeing a lot more is that I think it's with social media. People have super high expectations of what will happen when they write their first story, when they write their first book, when they get their first book published. Publishing is a very difficult business. And a lot of people place all of their self-worth into, you know, once I get published, once I finish this book, once I get published, once I get this happened. And so you need to disconnect your self-worth from your writing. I mean, you can be a writer and love being a writer, but if you place all of your value in it, it is going to bite you in the butt eventually. So trying to maintain a love of writing and understanding that publishing is a business and a job, so that you don't internalize the things that happen at work as part of your persona as a writer. Cool, and this one's about the book. What was your process for writing the R-Hood posts? I found them to be such a cool way to add to the story and characters. I actually didn't really have that much of a process for it. I would just kind of think like, what could be fun to be here? What information do I need to share? And also like, how can I really show the personalities of all the people in the neighborhood? So I was just kind of figuring out where and who could be in each post and what kind of reaction each post would evoke from the people in the neighborhood and stuff like that. I will say that part. It was hilarious to me because I follow Next Door, which is our app. And I'm just like, I see some things on there. I'm just like, what is happening? I have more questions. Oh, yay. Having written historical romance and thrillers, what do you like about the different genre formulas and what parts do you like to break? So for the genre formulas, basically in a romance, the couple has to be together and alive at the end. In a thriller or mystery, they need to solve the mystery. And I mean, I just, I think all of most of genre fiction in some form is a happily ever after. In romance, we explicitly say happily ever after, even though that doesn't mean that everything is perfect for them. The happily ever after in a mystery is finding out who done it, the happily ever after in a horror is figuring out what the haunting is or defeating the bad guy. So I think within that, there's so much you can play around with. And I think romance really has a lot of similarities to mystery and to thrillers, just hitting different emotional notes because the thing that I always say is that when readers pick up a romance, they know the couple is going to be together at the end. And you have to spend the majority of the book making them think that the couple is not going to be together at the end of the book, even though they explicitly bought the book because they know the couple's going to be together at the end. So you have to know how to use, where to place clues to show that they're starting to fall for one another and I think there are many similarities that I enjoy playing with and that's probably also why I have a lot of mystery in my romances. And as far as breaking it, I think I just really like combining different genres like some of my romances that are not specifically sci-fi, do have sci-fi or tech elements in them that aren't mystery or specifically thrillers that have thriller or mystery elements. So I think it's less breaking and more like, or breaking the barriers between the genres is what I find really fun kind of having. Like I have one, it was supposed to be a romantic comedy called the AI Who Love Me and it's basically Ternitus sci-fi, rom-com dystopian action thriller that luckily seemed to work in the end but it was going to be a straightforward rom-com but with a robot, her neighbor, next to her neighbor turns out to be a hot, artificially intelligent robot. And then after I was writing it, then I was like, but what is this? And then by the end, there was like hard science stuff and dystopia and fighting robots and stuff like that. So I think, and a lot of it isn't necessarily, it just kind of happens as I'm writing this story that often isn't completely planned. I've got one more. How do you approach your history research process? Do you focus on certain libraries, archives, or websites? How much research do you typically like to include in your work? Because it really helps ground the story in reality. Research for me is, I don't differentiate between, in anything I'm writing, I'm going to be researching a lot. I put as much generally, I put as much research into writing a royal romance, contemporary royal romance as I do into writing a historical romance, probably because I have ADHD. I just like going down rabbit holes of information that could be relevant to the story, that might not be relevant to the story at all, but then suddenly it's very relevant to the story. As far as what I use, libraries of course, because I don't live in the US, I often am using online resources from libraries, Google books, looking at things, seeing what pops up in Google books, using the bibliographies from those books to see what other books might have information, and when possible, physical libraries and collections that you have to go to the library to access. But I feel like you can find movies, documentaries, YouTube, there are so many different places you can do research from home as well if you're not able to physically access the library, and that can lead you in unexpected places of historical knowledge. And I think that, so I don't know about right this moment, but like social media was a good spot because people, accounts that like to share historical tidbits that could lead you to articles and books, and deeper research. And were there any questions in the chat or all good? Oh, we're actually a wee bit over time, but actually, I have one more question because my brain cannot function in a straight line and I forgot about this one. It's an interracial romance, and I'm not mad about an interracial romance because I am the product of an, I wouldn't call it a romance. I'm a product of an interracial, no shade to my parents, okay? They liked each other in the moment. Dang, I'm sorry, dad, if you're watching. Anywho, what was it like working with Sydney to get for her to fall in love with Theo who represents so much of what is wrong and happening and it's like laying down with the enemy a little bit? It is, I mean, I'm married to a white prince band, but with Sydney, so I do wanna address this because a lot of times I get asked about my interracial romances. I write all kinds of romances with all kinds of character. I write black romance, I write multicultural romance, I write interracial romance, and that's not just, I'm just saying that because I've been asked a few times lately and sometimes I'm like, I write a lot of, I write a lot of different couple pairings. So there actually aren't that many white guys in my romances. But in this particular book with Sydney and Theo, I think it wasn't that big of a deal, like it was, but it's also Brooklyn in 2020. I think for her it was, she wasn't really that into it, she wasn't really that interested in it, but it was also a situation where he was the right guy for her at that moment. Sometimes people have asked like, did you consider making him black? Yes, I did. I considered making him all different kinds of characters because I was trying to think of all of the different ways the story could have played out. And I still think about it now, like, especially like, if it does get made into a movie, the different ways that it could play out. And I think in this, for this particular story, he was kind of an entry point to see what was going on with the white people moving into the neighborhood, but without him being super, being involved in the bad stuff going on. But for her, it was kind of like, she wasn't into it until she was, until suddenly she was like, yes. She went, all right, it's time, let's go. She was like, this sounds like familiar story. So I don't want to keep y'all away from your homes any longer than I have. There is a special prize underneath these chairs. If you look under your seat and there's a card under there, I don't know why you're looking. Did anyone? Yes, you're our grand prize winner. You get a library tote bag, I believe. You get a copy of the book for freezes to keep forever. I forgot what the third prize is, unfortunately, but we'll hand it to you. And I'm 125% sure that's all the time I can take from everyone in this room. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone. Thank you.