 I'll start in with the library announcements and we wanna thank you all again for joining us. This is our final Pride event, but we celebrate Pride all year long because we are the queerest library ever. So we love our mystery panel. It's become now a regular thing. We love it, we try and throw them in. And I don't know, we're going on like seven times a month almost. And then of course, we love Michael Nava who just brings it all the time. And we should mind, we'll just put them on payroll one of these days. All right, we also want to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Rami Tushaloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. And as uninvited guests, we are from their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Rami Tush community. And we're going to throw a link in the chat box that has a great reading list and some great websites, mainly Bay Area focused, but one to check out is Segorte Land Trust. And they're all women led organization coming out of the East Bay working to save some land that's being held by the city of Berkeley, but also all over and just making folks aware of land rights and land back movement. And this is part of our summer stride, summer stride, read your 20 hours of books, come to activities like this, fill out your tracker, turn it in and get your iconic San Francisco tote bag. This here tonight makes you one hour into your 20 hours. So only 19 left to go. And those tote bags really are iconic. We've been doing them for years now. So many people have one from every single year. Get yours. Tomorrow, not tomorrow, Saturday, the new farm out in Bayview by Heron's Head Park, the library and the new farm together, weirdos unite at the new farm, music, chickens, goats, bookmobile and free books, come get them. On the same page is a campaign by SFPL where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same books, same time. It's a bi-monthly read and we just finished celebrating last night at Telegraph Club, amazing San Francisco book, amazing history. And Melinda Lowe was just in conversation yesterday and you can still catch that on our YouTube channel for up to 30 days. So July 30th and that conversation will be gone. And then we go into our July, August selection who is romance author, Beverly Jenkins, Wild Rain. And I do the quotes because this just isn't a typical romance Bodice River to me. It's got some feminism. It's got some family planning and it's just a fierce kind of historical fiction, great character. So check that out. It'll be on all the shelves at all the library locations. I'm gonna say by Monday, you will be able to pick it up at all of your locations. And one last July 30th, we have a screening of AIDS Diva, the legend of Connie Norman who was the self-appointed AIDS Diva and masterful spokesperson for Act Up Los Angeles in the late 80s and early 90s. There will be a panel discussion and a director talk following the film. Seating is first come, first serve Saturday, July 30th. And then with that, I am going to turn it over to Michael Nava and remind folks that this program is in partnership with the mystery writers of America, NorCal Chapter. And I'm looking very forward to this conversation. Michael, take it away please. Okay. Am I, I don't see myself on the screen. So, can you hear me all? Yeah, okay. So I invited these three wonderful writers, excellent human beings to be part of this panel. Rather than discuss our own work, I asked them to choose a writer who influenced them, who they admired or who they wanted to talk about. And to talk about that writer to read a little from that writer's work and about that writer's impact on their own work. So I will introduce our panelists. The order will be Cheryl, John, Ellen and then me. And so let me read briefly a little introduction about each of our writers. Cheryl Ahead writes the award winning Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, a next generation indie book award finalist and winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society's and Ballant Popular Choice Award. In 2022, she was awarded the LSB Readers Appreciation Medal and her books are included in the special collections of the state of Michigan Library. Time's Undoing, a crime fiction novel based on her family's personal tragedy will be published by Dutton in March, 2023. She lives in DC with her partner Teresa and canine supervisors, Abby and Frisbee. John Copenhaver's historical novel Dodging and Burning published by Pegasus won the 2019 McCavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered nominations from the Anthony Strand, Barry and Lambda Literary Award. John writes a crime fiction review for Lambda Literary called Backlight Co-hosts on the House of District Radio Show and is a six-time recipient of the artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He's a faculty member at the University of Nebraska's Low Residency MFA program and he lives in Richmond, Virginia where he teaches fiction and literature at Virginia and Commonwealth University. The Savage Kind, his second novel, recently won the 2002 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery Beating Out My Book, among others. So good on you, John. Ellen Hart is the author of 35 crime novels. Obviously, she never sleeps. She is a six-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery and a four-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction. In 2010, she received the GCLS Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement in the field of lesbian literature. In 2017, she became the first openly LGBTQ author to be named a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, an award that represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writers, one that was established to acknowledge important contributions to the genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality and all of those things are certainly true. She lives in Minnesota with her partner of 44 years. I'm going to refer to myself in the third person now. Michael Nava is the author of a series of eight novels featuring Gay Latino criminal defense lawyer, Henry Rios, who the New Yorker called a detective, unlike any previous protagonist in American War. War, he is the recipient of seven Lambda Literary Awards. Take that, Ellen. In the Gay Mystery category. And the Bill Whitehead Awards for Lifetime Achievement in LGBTQ Literature. His most recent Rios novels, Lies with Man, was published in April by Amber Press, a queer press of which she is also managing editor, The Washington Post Review of the Nava Called Nava, a master of the genre. So Cheryl, who did you choose? Why and tell us about it. Okay, well, okay. You get right to the point. I chose an author named Nikki Baker. It's her pen name. I became familiar with Nikki's work in probably 1993, when I picked up her second book. I was in Provincetown for Women's Week, which is a pretty white space, you know, but I was with a bunch of lesbians, so it was all good. I'm in the bookstore there and I look across the room and I literally see this cover here in the circular rotating wire stand. So I look and I'm like this and I literally run over to the thing, snatch this book out of the rack because it's the first time I've seen a book in that space in a while with a black woman on the cover. Pick it up, I start thumbing through it. This is the second book in her series of books. She has four books, I read three of them. And it was like a trifecta for me, a young African-American queer person to find a book by a lesbian, a black lesbian, a black lesbian writing murder mystery. So I was going like, this is a trifecta, you know? So I snatched up the book. I think I read it during that weekend when I was staying with friends. It's the second book in the series. The first book is in the game. I've brought all my books from that era. And then the third book is Long Goodbyes. I've written the foreword for this book in the reprinting of that book, Long Goodbyes by Requared Tales last year. I was very proud to do so because it's a book that kind of, the series changed my life, it gave me a sense of who I could be as a writer. You know, when you're a young person, you're always looking for yourself in the pages of books or in any kind of media. And I've been reading some great lesbian work like Catherine Forrest's Murder at Nightwood Bar. I love that book, I read Curious Wine and Lots of the Romances. But I hadn't seen a black lesbian in the covers of those books. And so I was enthralled, excited and thus began my ability to kind of see myself as a person who could write mysteries. I was reading a lot of straight mysteries too, you know, Sue Grafton and others. I was reading the Blanche series that I really admire but to find a book that really spoke to my lifestyle and spoke to me as a person was just amazing. I'm gonna, I didn't remember what we're gonna read. So I'm gonna read something really short from the beginning of the first book in the series in the game. I'll tell you why I think these books stand out. First of all, we weren't seeing a lot of black people in the covers of books. It was almost, you know, we're hearing publishers say, you know, the books won't sell if they're black people. So in the nineties, this is 1991 to have a black woman on the cover 1992 to have a black woman on the cover in 1993 to have these three covers featuring black women was really outstanding at the time. And secondly, the writing is really intelligent. Nikki Baker is the pen name for a woman who has a really private life, doesn't really put herself out in the literature world. But this woman is an engineer, a financial analyst as an MBA and you can see her intelligence pouring through the pages of this book. So it's a really unique read. It's a really thoughtful read. Catherine Forrest edited all of these books. So it's, you know, it's smart editing. The plotting is really strong. The word wizardry is amazing. This is the prologue in book one of Nikki Baker series, the Virginia Kelly mysteries. It's called In the Game, one page prologue, very short. I won't tell you that Mary Talley's scheme was ethical. But when I looked at her, I saw myself in different circumstances. I saw a woman with some brains in a country where women are valued for her bodies. I saw a black face where blackness is valued not at all. I could not judge her. We had come from different places to arrive this moment at the same place. And with her story, she was telling me the secret, letting me in on something in case I didn't know it already. So I didn't jump up and bite me in my college educated ass someday when I was unprepared. And she smiled a little when she saw I took her meaning the way people smile at a small town scandal. In the back of my mind, along with the fear of the dark I thought I'd outgrown, there was her smile and the words of Ralph Ellison's nightmare. To whom it may concern, keep this black boy running. And the sound of it was the sound of my own voice. So that's it. Recommend these books highly. So who was your, was Diat the original publisher? Yes, Niat was the original publisher. Katherine edited all three books. I remember I had been reading probably lesbian work for 15 years or 20 years prior to getting these books sometimes delivered day that a lot of mail order business delivered in brown paper packages. I literally remember that coming to my house within these brown packages. But this series just maybe two years before Penny Nickelberry started writing were the first to feature a black lesbian sleuth. Now, my book is the first to feature a black lesbian private detective a professional private detective because Virginia Kelly in this books is an amateur sleuth. But this is a book that a book of firsts in my opinion. What is, how does Virginia Kelly get involved in sleuthing? What is her, what's her job? Her job is a financial analyst. She's on vacation. And the first in the book I read the lavender house murder, she's on vacation in Provincetown and comes across a dead body. And because of her curiosity about the world because of her analytical thinking because of her sense of right and wrong she takes it on to find out how this woman was killed in Provincetown. And it's really filled with wonderful complications some wonderful characters, lots of lesbian experience and you really recognize the lesbian culture at Provincetown have been the women's week a lot. It has been a wild weekend. And it really speaks truly to kind of the experience of Provincetown and women's week. And then she, you know, she almost doesn't talk about race very much in the books at all but you're always aware that she's presenting as an African-American woman. I want to invite John and Ellen to join the conversation. If you have, I mean, this is a conversation among us. So if you have questions about the books or comments about the please just break in. So that I was about to ask you whether to what extent blackness was a part of the work or is it more skewed toward talking about her experience as a lesbian woman? It's, I would say a little bit more her as a lesbian woman because there's certainly romantic episodes in the books always sexual liaisons and that kind of thing. In the book, I wrote the foreword for long goodbyes. She goes home for the first time which is kind of a rural space in Ohio. And she goes back to visit her family home. And I remember thinking as she described walking in the door of her parents' house similar and sounded to the way my parents' house looked or my grandparents' house look. You know, she described the furniture with the plastic covering on it. And you know, the kind of pictures that you see on the walls. And it all seemed so authentic to my experience. I think she does a good job of navigating both the raisins and gender. They weren't talking so directly about gender back in those days, you know people kind of had roles that they played. But I think she does a good job of kind of scrambling the line where you always feel like it's authentic information you're getting. Do you have any sense of how the books were received when they were published? I think they were well received. At least that's what I hear from the people from NIAID, people who worked around NIAID in the early days. I didn't have a lot of friends that I talked to about my books, you know I was kind of on the down low. So I wasn't going like, wow, I found this great book, you know, that kind of thing. But I know that I've talked to Penny about it. And I know lots of people knew of her work and enjoyed her work. And then she kind of fell out of view for a while few years after the third book wrote a fourth book which is the last book in this series. And I've talked to other black lesbian writers about her and what became of her. And I'd love to be able to meet her someday and thank her for her contribution. But people get to be private and they get to live their lives the way they want to live and maybe to change careers. And I think Nikki has decided she wants to do something different although she was an exceptional writer. That's interesting that she would just choose to go in another direction. Yeah, it is interesting. And you know, I'm a mystery writer and I could track her down if I wanted to but then I thought, you know, I should let her have the privacy that she wants. Well, if Rick Cleer had published her first book they must have had some contact with her. She must have authorized the republication. They did, when I asked about it they said that she was still very private but wanted to come back and at least introduce these books again to a new generation of readers which I thought was fabulous. Did you have something, John? Oh, no, I just, I'm just listening. I think it's fascinating about the desire for privacy. Like, is it feel like we have so little of that these days? It's interesting. It's interesting. You know, I've been doing all this posting on social media. I'm like, I feel like the least private person in the world but I can really understand why people cherish it. Anyway, that was a sort of reminder. And if you go online, you can see her real name online on her Wikipedia page but I feel like I didn't want to say it. Yeah, no. Who was her first book published? 1991, Ellen, in the game. Yeah. Here's after Catherine's Kate Dellafield mysteries but still before Penny and all the rest of us. Ellen, were you publishing at that point? You were, weren't you? Yeah, 89. 89. Yeah, your first book? Yeah. I think it'd be really fascinating if she came back, if Niki came back and wrote a book now. Yeah. It would be. She must be, I'm guessing she's older. Aren't we all? Yeah. You know, to take the character now that it's, you know, you make a good point because, because she's a financial analyst, she actually in one of these books invokes Donald Trump's name in a negative way. And I'm thinking, wow, how prescient. Wow. Wow. Wow, and you come back now and deal with the crazy things. Yeah. Do you think that her books had any direct impact on your own writing? Or was she just more of a load star that you could see? I'd say more of the load star. I don't think I could ever imitate her style. It's really very fluid. She has a really good sense. She writes long passages that are descriptive. I rarely do that, I mean, so I really admire being able to do that. I tell you how it reads. It reads, when I was reading some of it this morning, in my mind's ear, I could hear Philip Marlowe talking. You know, so it's that kind of very kind of first person internal voice rumination over the situation that they're in or that they're thinking about. It's really lovely writing. Thank you, and we'll probably circle back. I just wanna, so John, tell us about Patricia Heisman. Yes. Problematic, a little problematic. Yeah, she's problematic. And, but, I mean, the invitation here was to talk about someone who influenced me greatly. And I would be lying if I didn't talk about Patricia Heisman. And I think she's probably influenced, I know she's influenced a lot of other crime writers. And I've done a lot of thinking about her work. I've taught several of her books. And, you know, I wrestled with her personality and it's complicated. But I wanna talk about her first as a writer, then perhaps mention sort of who she was as a person. I kind of kind of talked through several books and I think maybe sort of as a means of suggesting them and talking about why she affected me as a writer. I think she certainly is someone who's writing kind of in contrast to Cheryl. I didn't really reach out to Patricia Heisman as an example of, or some of that I sort of saw myself in, at least I hope not. But more I felt just kind of pulled into her and I felt so puzzled by her writing and how it affected me that I think I wanted to emulate. It's like she posed a question to me. And I think the thing that she does really well is she manages to create, start, she managed to unsettle like with the first few pages of her book, you're already unsettled. And she gradually cranks it up to like from being unsettled to the sort of like incredibly compelling tension. And you just, it grips you but you're not even sure at sometimes why you're gripped. And I think it's cause she's always posing a question about the psychology of her characters. A lot of people consider her sort of the inventor of this sort of psychological thriller. I'm not sure that's 100% true but I think that certainly in sort of a modern sense perhaps she is. Anyway, so books that I think are important of hers that of course I think her best is The Talented Mr. Ripley, which you can see how much I've taught this one and gone through it. You know, this book is about, I think a lot of people know this book already because of the movie. Actually, there's a couple of movie versions of this book but I think the most famous one I think it was nominated for a few awards. But anyway, this was a few years ago with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. And anyway, I mean, it does have a central gay character. I mean, he is a psychopath. I think it's hard not to read this book and see that he is gay. Although it's not overtly stated, you have to read into it. The movie version does make it pretty clear that he is. But I think it's a great, it's when she's at her master of making you feel uneasy, getting you to align with that pretty despicable character but root for that character. And then just the plot works really well, which I admire too to have such psychological density and then a great plot as an achievement. I think her first book, which is Strangers on a Train, was also very famous, Hitchcock film. The film's great, the book's great, book's very different from the film. So I definitely recommend it. It's much creepier and the film's pretty creepy. I mean, this was just like a killer concept, right? Like two guys meet on their train and one of them, the one that's a psychopath, convinces the other one to swap murders. It's like kind of the perfect murder. And so, I think the book, where the film doesn't do this, the book does, it really, the guy, which his name is Guy, Guy Haynes, the guy that sort of gets sort of seduced into swapping murders, carries out his murder. And that I think comes very close to carrying out his murder. And so I think that sort of, that unease, that normal guy could sort of slip into this sort of, I do this horrible thing, it's pretty compelling. Let's see, my favorite book is actually not a thriller per se, and that's The Price of Saul. And she originally wrote this in 1954, excuse me, wrong, 52. And under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. And in terms of, those of you who don't know, it's a lesbian classic, was made recently into a film called Carol. And it's just, I think, in a really real and compelling way, describes these two lovers trying to live their life authentically in a time which really did not want that to happen. And they have to break a lot of rules and make hard choices. It's still kind of a happy story, or at least sort of an ambiguous story. But I think what I love about it, it's just so beautifully written. And there's passages in it. I was searching for this one, and I'm gonna pull up a quote instead of reading a whole passage. But the main character, who is also the narrator, Tres, this is while they're making love. And she imagines herself as an arrow that seemed to cross in a possibly wide abyss with ease. Seemed to arc on and on in space, and not quite stop. And all the way through this, like this idea of sex and obsession and love all being wrapped up in violence, like comparing herself to a weapon while they're having sex, it sounds like noirish, and it does have tinges of that, but it's also like a really compelling character study as well. And I think that it just rides that tension and it feels just for me, really authentic. A lesser known, this is my last recommendation, I guess, was Edith's Diary, which is written in the 70s. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but the savage kind is a series of diary entries and Edith's Diary is about this woman who has all this horrible stuff going on in her life, but in her diaries, she writes the life she wished she had. So you've got this weird contrast between all this horrible twisted stuff in her life and then her fantasy. And it just felt, it's like one of those books that feels like it's really speaking to now, all the posting we do on Instagram and all the sort of crafting of our image versus the reality that's going on. And I think that idea of sort of even trying to convince yourself that you might live out a more happier life in your writing or a more interesting life in your writing was initially appealing to me and interesting. I think that kind of leads me to say something about her as a human being. So, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, Patricia Ismith wasn't a nice person. She was racist, she was anti-Semitic. She was kind of a misanthrope honestly. I mean, she just kind of hated people. She preferred animals. She used to carry her favorite animal or snails because she thought animals deserved more rights than humans or were more worthy of rights than humans. So, the way that she sort of interacted with animals was really interesting. I think that there's a lot of, you know, and no one wants to sort of try to psychoanalyze or diagnose, but I think there's definitely some mental health issues that were undiagnosed and often treated with a lot of alcohol and a lot of alcohol. And I think all those things, not to excuse her opinions and or anything, but that was, you know, I think really coming together to create a nasty mixture in this person. The interesting thing with all that being said, she was incredibly confident about her sexuality during a time period when that was not, you know, acceptable whatsoever, you know, and it's sort of common in the general world more in sort of art scene that she was part of. So that, I sort of interesting to have all these hangups and all this stuff, but then to be very kind of out and frank about her sexuality. Once again, lots of contradictions. So it's like her books present a puzzle and she kind of presents this puzzle like how do you deal with this person? On a writing level, I think she's, I don't think anyone argues that she's, you know, a great writer and she wrote a slew of books. So there's a lot to sort of go through and think about with her. So just to demonstrate again, how few degrees of separation there are between writers, queer writers. The price of salt went out of print. First of all, her publisher as Patricia Heist refused to publish that book. So it was published by someone else and she publishes Claire Morgan. It went out of print and then it was brought back into print by Barbara Brear, who ran NIA, who published Dicky Baker's books. Right. Barbara not only persuaded Patricia Heismuth to let her release the book under her own name, but I think Heismuth contributed a forward to that edition of the book. I've been told it's hard to say no to Barbara Brear. That's what I've heard over and over again. Oh honey, I knew Barbara Brear. I knew Barbara Brear. And Catherine, Catherine Forrest has stories. Barbara Brear was a, she was a force of nature. Oh yeah, you didn't say no to her. She just ignored it. She fucking used it. So you said, yeah. But the other thing I want to say about Heismuth is you mentioned that she was very confident in her own sexuality. But that being true, she's still lived in a time that was so massively oppressive to queer folk. I'm thinking of a contemporary of her as Gore Vidal, who was, who published that pioneering book, City and the Pillar, and was also really a guy, but also very unpleasant. And I just think we can't underestimate the extent to which their lives were deformed and misshapen by the times that they lived in, and which certain members of the Supreme Court would like to see us return to. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. Yeah, I think absolutely. I think her, I think her time period, I think there's gotta be something in her upbringing. We don't, it's a little puzzling. So Patricia Heismuth capped a lot of diaries for herself, but there's a lot like Edith and her, a lot to think that maybe her diaries weren't 100% like true. I mean, I don't mean just like, we all have sort of our, we reflect and we have our sort of opinions and they're colored by our experience. I mean, I think she made up stuff in her diaries as a way of sort of trying to rethink or almost live a fantasy life. And so, you know, there's just gotta be something there. I know at the same time, it's really hard to excuse some of the things that she said in depth. So it's just, I mean, a lot, I think we just have to wrestle with it, you know? And I think it's interesting because a lot of the stuff that goes into her books is that we are often presented with characters who feel very familiar. We feel very connected to, and they slowly start to do things that are really, you know, not so great. And we're like, we go along a little bit. And, you know, when I teach a talent to Mr. Ripley, I always ask him, it's just like, what's the point when you stopped going along with him, you know, or did you go all the way to then? Like, what was the moment when you're like, in this guy, you know, but she gets us all the way, sort of, she gets us really into that perspective. So for lack of a better or there's sort of a charm or a sort of, you know, charisma that she just brings to it. And I think that's true for her in life too. I think people, she went through so many relationships and people were brought in quickly. And then the whole relationship would blow up and she'd move on and it would just kept happening over and over again. So, you know, I think it's like, in her book, there's, you know, if you know something about her life, there's another story going on underneath the surface. That's not to say we shouldn't read and enjoy her books because I think there's a lot or be unsettled by her books because I think there's something good about being unsettled by a book. I would argue. Thanks, John. So Ellen, I was so happy you chose Jean Redman because among other things, she has some of the best titles. And I think- Doesn't she? Oh, yeah. One of my favorite titles ever is her 1995 novel, The Intersection of Law and Desire. Is that great? Great, yeah. And there are two streets in New Orleans. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah. So tell us about Jean or J.M. Can I just mention something to John? I've read Michael's books, obviously I've read Cheryl, but I'd never read your books. And I'm remedying that right now because I'm reading the one that just won the Lambie. But I've always understood that you can create tension by asking a question and not immediately answering it. But I'd never heard anybody say that you can create tension by with a character, setting a character and then not immediately answering that character question. And man, do you do that in that book? I mean, the first chapter is like the, it just blew me away. I thought I was incredible. So- Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, unease. I mean, I think there's something about mysteries that, and like exploration of difficult territory for questions that kind of fit interestingly together, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. It's just, I guess something I'm interested in. I don't know. I'll be psychoanalyzing me in a few years. I don't know. One kid hope. Okay. Let me talk a little bit about Jam Redman. Her name is Jean Redman. And she's written 10 mysteries, Mickey Knight mysteries. First one was out in 1990, I believe. She has another series, which I have not. Oh, I've read the first one. In one incarnation. I think it's Nell McGraw under the name Arjean Reed. Reed, yes. Yeah, R-E-I-D, I believe it is. She, you know, here's the thing. When Michael initially broached this and said, you know, a writer that has inspired you or, I've always thought that there are a lot of levels to that question. And number one is what were the writers who made you wanna read as a kid? And, you know, I've had conversations with other writers about this, that you go back and you look at those books now and they're terribly written. They're just awful. But somehow they grabbed you, I'm thinking specifically of Nancy Drew when I was, you know, I suppose I started reading them about 10 years old. I love those books. I, my daughter had those books. It was, you know, I mean, so there are those books. Then there are the books that you read close at a time. Perhaps you start writing. And I think for me it was, there were a couple of writers that were extremely pivotal in, for me, as a writer, as a mystery writer. But then I think as you go along, and as you realize what a tough thing it is to sustain a career as a writer to continue to write. And for me, writing a book, I was writing a book a year. I had two presses in New York that each wanted a book a year. And I couldn't write that fast. So I always felt like I was writing with a gun to my head. You are looking for other writers who are doing the same thing you are. And they're doing it so well that they inspire you. And there are a couple of writers that come to mind. And Gene is one of those. I first met Michael when we were on a book tour, the Valentine's Sanison. The, a couple of years later, Valentine set Sonderscop, Tony and I to the East Coast. And I remember, is it Lambda Rising? It was at the name of the bookstore in DC? Yeah. Okay, so I remember going into Lambda Rising on that tour. And there was this table of books. And I knew Gene, I mean, I knew J.M. Redmond because I had seen her books, I had not read them. And here was this book, this big book, beautifully published by, I believe it was Norton. And I thought, wow, she's got a, and I didn't have a mainstream publisher. I mean, for, for a paperback reprints, I did. But I just thought, wow, this is incredible. So I bought the book and I took it home and I started reading it. And I was absolutely blown away. I, it, you know, if I may read this here, this comes very close to the beginning. I just love the way she writes. The strong light of the afternoon had dimmed to midnight blue. The precision and clarity of the day was lost. The possibilities of night encroached. Violence, love, traces dark and light, entice and repel. Night is always ambiguous. I read that and I thought, oh my God. So I, you know, I made it a point to, to get to know her and to then continue to read her books. I just, I reread The Intersection of Law and Desire, which I think is a phenomenal book. I, it won the Lamy. And I also had not read her last book. Talk about great titles. I thought Death of a Dying Man. I thought that was a great title. Her last book, I think is the best title ever. And it's, it's not dead enough. I just love that. I love the way she writes. I love the way she thinks. They're gritty. They're nothing at all like I write. Her books are, they really give you a sense of the gritty side of New Orleans. She knows that city so well. And Mickey Knight, the main character is a, she's a true private eye. The books, I don't know if you would classify them as noir, but they have some noir elements. I mean, there's a lot of darkness. There's a lot of people who are sort of bitter, who have seen it all, that sort of thing. The plots are, they're intricately done. But to me, it's the writing and the Mickey Knight character that is so compelling. Mickey Knight is somebody who spent a lot of her youth going from bed to bed to bed to bed, doing a lot of drinking. And when I came upon her in Intersection of Law and Desire, she was, she was trying to change her life. She'd stopped drinking. She'd found a woman, but that she loved. But she has these, I mean, it's the character is so incredibly well motivated. You start to understand where she came from and why she acts the way she acts. And honestly, there are times in that book where if I were her lover, Cordelia, I would have run away screaming because this woman is prickly and difficult. And she has triggers that you don't even know that you're triggering them. And then she just blows up. But in all of that, she has this incredible integrity. And ethically and morally, she has, she's just a knight. She's a hero. And she does the kind of thing I would never have the guts to do. And maybe Jean wouldn't have the guts to do them either. But we're so willing to follow that character. And I would encourage you to, if you have not read her, her book should be so much better known than they are. And I guess not only that, but she's spent time you know, there was, to me, at least early on when I started publishing, it felt to me like there was sort of a small press, people that had sort of a small press attitude or almost a small press chip on your shoulder where we can't possibly be published by New York. They don't like us. So we're not gonna like them. And I, Jean is the kind of person who just does not feel that way. She was on the board of Mystery Writers of America for many years. I find that incredible. I find that wonderful. And knowing Jean, she was not at all in the closet. She was upfront about what she thought. Greg Herron, same way. He's on the board now. And I think he's vice president. Vice chair, yeah. Vice chair, yeah. I mean, these are important things. And the fact that Jean did that, and I was, I'm better amazed by her just as a person as well as a writer. Anyway, I encourage you to read Jean Redmond's books, J.M. Redmond. Thank you. I mean, that passage you read, stunning. That passage you read was stunning. Isn't it? But there's so many. I mean, here's one. Just, I just pulled this out. Cold anger is much more dangerous than hot anger. It has time to think. Isn't that wonderful? Her books are just peppered with these things. I love, I love her writing. It's such a joy to hear you, John, and Cheryl talk. Not as writers, but as passionate readers. Because that's what we were before. Before any of us ever said the first word to paper, we were passionate readers. Right. That was the beginning of our misfortunes. Yes. Yes. That's where it all started, the slide. It was all damn y'all up there. So I'm going to talk briefly about Joseph Hansen, who was the writer I chose, who was not only inspiration, but also someone who I knew rather well when I lived in Los Angeles. His books after being out of print for many years are being re-issued by San Luis Syndicate. Of the first book is called Fade Out, which was originally published in 1971 by Henry Holt. And as re-queered with Cheryl, I was asked to write the introduction to Fade Out. So I'm actually going to read a couple of pages from the introduction because I said, what I have to say about Joe much more articulately there, like I could say here. And then I'll talk briefly about his influence on me. Fade Out originally published in 1970, introduced Dave Branstetter, an insurance investigator based in Los Angeles. In the first in the series of 12 crime novels, the Los Angeles Times would hail as Groundbreaking in its 2004 obituary of the author, Joseph Hansen. Why groundbreaking? They were beautifully written and dexterously plotted, but that wasn't the reason. Branstetter himself, rich, white and blessed with movie star good looks, didn't seem at first glance to be much of a groundbreaking. But the adjective is justified because Branstetter is by nature, what Philip Marlowe was not. An outsider and in the context of the time, ultimate outsider. Branstetter you see is a homosexual, the word Hansen used in preference to gay, a word he despised. A smart, masculine, competent, unapologetic homosexual, an ace private investigator in an America where 49 of 50 states criminalized gay sex between consenting adults and the American Psychiatric Association deemed homosexuality a mental disorder. Simply by the reason of his existence, Branstetter was a potential felon and a candidate for the loony then. You can't get much more outsider than that. And groundbreaking in 1970, that was an understatement. Fader however, was not a novelty act, nor was Hansen a crude gay propagandist. At the time of his publication, he was an accomplished literary artist who'd been writing unnoticed for decades. As he said in his own introduction to the 2004 edition of Fader, he was 46 years old when Harper and Rowe accepted the book for publication. And quote, I've been writing all my life. The New Yorker and other good magazines had printed a few of my poems, but that was it so far as big time publishing went, end quote. The poems he mentions were published in the early 1940s when he who was born in 23 was still a kid. Between those early successes and the publication of Fader in 1971 were years in the literary desert where he was reduced to writing pulp gay fiction for fly-by-night small presses under the name James Colton. His failure to achieve the early critical success the brands that are novels would bring him was due to his lifelong insistence on writing openly and honestly about his experience as a gay man. The times were simply not ready for him. Those years in the desert were not however wasted. He honed his craft bringing into his prose the precision and economy of a poet. Another didact of the highest order he consumed serious literature and learned from the masters how to write transparently to practice as the same goes the art that conceals art. Fader was a big risk for its publisher but it paid off. The book launched hands on his long career as a successful writer of private fiction. Soon he would be garnering the kind of reviews for which most of us writers would kill the family dog. The Los Angeles Times called him the most exciting and effective writer of the classic private eye novel working today. The New Yorker, an excellent craftsman, a compelling writer. The New York Times, Hanson knows how to tell a tough unsentimental fast moving story in an exceptionally urban style. The national review of all places. After Ross McDonald, what? The smart money is now on Joseph Hanson. And yet Joe never achieved the commercial success of say his contemporary Tony Hillerman, though to my mind he was a better and braver writer. And his books never won any of the big mystery awards, the Edgar or the Anthony, for instance, though certainly they would have been eligible. There's no great mystery why. At the time of Hanson's death in 2004, only a bare majority of Americans believed gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be legal. 52% said yes, 46% said no, according to Gallup. And 60% 2004, adamantly opposed same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Institute poll. This demonstrates the deep and abiding bias against gay men often expressed as a crude and visceral disgust that prevailed during Hanson's years as an active writer. The fact is that many straight readers would simply have refused to consider reading a book by a homosexuality no matter what the critics said about it. The same bias continues to affect Joe's critical reputation. If you type into your browser greatest war mystery novels, you'll get lots of lists, but not a single one of them includes the works of Joseph Hanson. That's inexcusable. Joseph Hanson is not only one of Americans best mystery writers, he is a great American writer, period full stop. In a better world, one liberated from its idiotic prejudices, he would be recognized as such. So I'm going to read a paragraph or two from actually his last book, which was called A Country of Old Men. And I'll tell you why I'm reading this particular passage after I finish. See if you can guess, I'll give you a hint. The characters name and Joe have the same initials. The man at the door had a white mustache and goatee. His tweed jacket looked new, but it wouldn't button over his big belly. He wore a red striped cotton shirt, new blue denim, crepe sole shoes, and one of those shapeless canvas hats sold in drug stores. Cheek, so that if you lost it on a trip, you wouldn't mind so much. Dave didn't know him. Do something for you, he said. It's Helmers. The voice was rumbling brass. He held out a thick, liver-spotted hand. Been that long has it. Dave shook the hand amazed. The man had changed beyond recognition. Jack, he said, come in. He stepped back, motioning at the long, raptured room. Helmers came in heavy, slow and old bear, his breathing audible. 20 years, I guess. Dave let the door stand open. Though it wasn't yet noon and the place was shaded by big untrimmed trees that gathered heat. The windows and the skylight over the sleeping loft stood open, but there was a faint smell of horse, the place had once been a stable. Let me take that jacket. Helmers let him take it. Dave carried it up and the hat down the room to a hat rack and hung him up. He called, sit down, I bet you'd like a beer. You're on, Helmers said, and dropped with a sigh into a wing chair by a broad fireplace. Sorry to come unannounced, but your telephone's always busy. Unplugged, Dave bent to take brown bottles and go a second case from a small refrigerator back of the bar. I retired, but the world doesn't wanna accept that. And I got fed up with explaining. He brought back the dewy bottles and a pair of tall glasses, provided Helmers with one of them and sat on the bricks surrounded and sat on the bricks surround of the raised heart. How's Catherine these days? Dead, cancer, four years ago. So this Jack Helmers character, the description of him, the old guy with the goatee, the striped shirt between, that's Joe. It's a self-portrait that he snuck into his last book and it has nothing to do with the mystery plot. But in the books, Helmers is a novelist who wanted to be the great American novelist who ends up being known for mystery novels. He ruminates about his career and it's just very interesting because it's the only thing Joe had to say about being a mystery writer. So we're almost out of time. And I'll just say briefly that Joseph Hansen gave me permission to create Henry Rios. I started reading Joe's books in the late 70s. Just as Cheryl said about Nicky Baker, I was just astounded that here was a gay man who was being portrayed as a competent, professional, unapologetic about his homosexuality, dealing largely with a heterosexual world. Because at that point, I was at Stanford Law School preparing to become a lawyer. And that was going to be the life I led. And there were many gay books in the late 80s but most of them came out of New York and they were about these drug dad dancing queens. And while some of them were quite interesting, I had no sense of identification with them whatsoever. I identified with Brian Stetter and when I came several years later to start writing my first novel, Joe was my inspiration. I was published by a very small publisher. My first book was published by Allison Publisher who's a very small gay publisher. This was 1986. Sasha Allison sent the book to Joe Hanson for a blurb. Joe blurbed it. Gave me a incredibly generous blurb and when later he and I became friends and would have lunch occasionally, just a wonderful man, you know, one of the great American writers. I think that's it, right? Are we done, Lisa, Anisa? You tell us. Well, I mean, are there any questions in the chat box? There's no questions in the chat box at this moment. There's lots of like, you know, chat. You gave us a lot more to add to our reading list for sure. And you know, this is just such a great community that you bring with you whenever we have one of these. So the chat is always active and always like on top of it. So also throwing down links in the chat. So make sure you check that out. And everyone is saying thank you. So I think this is a good time to call it. Any last words from Cheryl Ellen John? Only to say it's nice that we had two really nice writers that we liked. We had one ambiguous kind of mysterious writer, Nikki Baker, and then one, we don't like it all. It's still a good writer. Yeah, loved to hate, gotcha. I would think so. We've talked about Catherine B. Forrest, who's a writer we all know and love. She just finished, she just, in April she published the latest or perhaps the last in her Della Field mystery series, just called Della Field. I've written a review for the Los Angeles Review of Books, which will go live tomorrow morning. Oh, okay. So if you go into the Los Angeles Review of Books, you will find my review of Catherine's latest mystery. Fabulous. Great. And it's such a joy to see the three of you. Nice to see you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. So why are you all? Yes, I do too. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you all and thank you library community, mystery writers community, mystery reader community. You always bring it. Thank you so much. Have a good night. Always good to see you. Thank you, Michael. Bye guys. Take care. Bye John. Bye bye. Thank you, Ellen.