 Thank you all for coming today. It's lovely to have Keckler here, because she's such a wonderful kind face, and I'm so happy she's in our community. She's presented at Bear Pond previously, but this is her first book launch for a season of Sticks Malone. I do hope you all saw the cake before we dive into it, because this beautiful illustration is on the cake. This is Vanessa Brantley-Newton. I don't know if any of you know her, but she's a wonderful illustrator. Most of the picture books, I think. Yeah, I think mostly the picture books, yeah, and probably other cover art books. But I love it. So for those of you, most of you are probably familiar with Keckler's books. There are so many, very many of them, and a lot of them have won heavy metal acts. It was the NAACP Image Award. And Rock in the River is NAACP. Is it Honor? It was the Crows Cracking Steptoe, which was the new talent award. And it was also the NAACP Image Award nominee. And we're going to launch into, I think, right? Yeah, so it's my first book. Shadows of Sherwood, that trilogy was on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher list. So so many, very many Vermont kids have already enjoyed that and read that. And we all owe the Mystery Book Club here at Bear Pond read this and loved this. And I think you came and spoke with the book. I did, yes. Yes, so very well loved books. And I'm so happy you're here. You teach at Vermont College, as most of you know. Sticks Malone is a buoyant, fun-loving, and big-hearted story of boys striving, fronting, plotting, strutting, but mostly learning how to navigate friendship, brotherhood, and their arrival into a bigger, more complex world. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's season of Sticks Malone. I'm very excited to have the book come out. Yeah, I have, I don't know, way more excited about this book than, I don't know, than my recent ones. And I don't know why. I think just because it was the Robin Hood book and so it was the same, it felt like the same book coming out for three years. So this is new and exciting. It's also middle grade. So it's about these three boys, Caleb and Bobby Jean and Sticks Malone, who are, they live in a small town in Indiana. I actually grew up in Indiana. So it's not based on my hometown or anything. I grew up in Fort Wayne, which is a pretty big city in Indiana. But it's based on other small towns that I spent time in. And it's Sutton, Indiana, which is totally fictional because I wanted it to be closer to Indianapolis than any of the towns that I actually know, well enough to base a book on. And people notice, if you set a book in their small town and you don't get the details right. So I made up my own small town for these boys to live in. And Caleb and Bobby Jean have never really been outside of Sutton. Their dad is very protective and wants them to stay close to home. Sticks has been everywhere, of course, not really, but he's seen it that way to them. So, it's my book. I thought I could read a little bit from the beginning. So you get a sense of it. I just wanna read maybe the first few pages, first chapter or so, so you get a flavor. And then, because I know this is sort of part of the educator series, I have a Readers Theater scene, which is from a little bit later in the book, which would require a few volunteers from the audience to read with me if you are willing. So I'm just gonna plant that in your mind now. And I love Readers Theater because sometimes it's more fun to have other people read the book with me and sort of bring it to life a little bit than just reading from the book myself. But I do wanna give you a little flavor of the very beginning and the Readers Theater comes from a bit later. So I'll read and then we'll do Readers Theater, then we'll put questions and then we will eat cake. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, the season of Sticks Malone. Hey, this is an autographed copy. I will also say, cover design. The cover design people gave me a beautiful page to sign. I can put my name here again, sign a little personal note here. This is very special for an author to have a nice cover page titled page. Sometimes they give you, you know, they fill it with all sorts of beautiful pictures but you don't have room to sign. All right, chapter one, Extraordinary. Sticks Malone didn't believe in miracles but he was one. Until he came along, there was nothing very special about life and sudden Indiana. Sticks came to us like magic, the really, really powerful kind. There was no grand puff of smoke or anything but he appeared as if from nowhere right in our very own woods. Maybe we summoned him like a superhero responding to a beacon in the night. Maybe we just plain wanted everything he offered, adventure, excitement, the biggest trouble we've ever gotten into in our lives we got into with Sticks Malone. It wasn't Sticks' fault entirely and usually I'd be quick to blame a mess like this on Bobby Jean but no matter how you slice it this one circled back to me. It all started the moment I broke the cardinal rule of the Franklin household, leave well enough alone. It was Independence Day which might have had something to do with it. I woke up with a sunrise like usual, stretched my hands and feet from my top bunk to the ceiling like usual. I touched each of the familiar pictures taped there, the Grand Canyon, the Milky Way, Victoria Falls, Table Mountain. Then I rolled onto my belly, dropped my face over the side of the upper bunk and blurred it out to Bobby Jean. I don't care what dad says, I don't want to be ordinary. What, he said? I knew he was awake. His eyes were open and blinking up at me. He had his covers pushed down and his socks balled up in his fist. He must have heard me. I said, I don't want to be ordinary. I want to be the other thing. What other thing, Bobby Jean said. I rolled onto my back, nevermind. I didn't really know what I meant, but it was on my mind because of what happened last night at dinnertime. Dad got home from his shift at the factory around six, which was normal. He turned on the television piping through the house the sound of news reports about things that were happening so far from here that they barely seemed real. The reporters were always blabbing on about economics and politics and the constant breaking news. But every once in a while, I would see something that made me want to reach through the screen and touch it for him just to get closer to it or make it a little bit real. There was a story about dolphins one time and a feature about a group of kids who sailed a boat around the world, special things, things you'd never find in the sun. The problem was, dad was always talking about us being ordinary folks about how ordinary folks like this and ordinary folks need that. He usually said all this to the TV, but our house isn't that big and his voice is pretty loud so you can always hear him. Ordinary folks just need to be able to fill the gas tank without it breaking them. Ordinary folks go to church on Sundays. Ordinary folks don't care who you've been stepping out with just past the dang laws. A lot of times he said it more colorful than that but I'm not allowed to repeat that kind of language. That night in particular, he was getting all hot and bothered as mom would say. He was ranting at the TV and Bobby Jean and I were playing battleship behind the couch. Sneaking back there was a tight fit for us but we needed to practice undercover operations. Our ongoing spy game was the best thing we'd come up with for summer entertainment thus far. If I could sink deep enough into the game it felt like I could take on the whole world. Caleb Franklin, international man of mystery. A trench coat, a passport, dark sunglasses and a briefcase of world saving secrets. An important handoff, codeword clearance. Yatsy, Bobby Jean yelled. Which was what he yelled whenever he wanted anything. My spy bubble burst. The secret safe house dissolved. My shoulder ached for being squeezed into the couch wall gap. I didn't have a passport. I had never so much as crossed with sudden town limits. When the news went to commercial, the ad jingle was a piece of classical music. I popped my head up over the back of a couch. I know that song. We played it in band. It's Tarantell. Dinner, mom called. Dad turned off the TV. Hey dad said to me. You got that from just a few notes? I shrugged. I like that music. That's because your extraordinary dad said, patting the shoulder. Let's eat. My heart plummeted. I knew dad thought he was paying me a compliment since he loves to have ordinary this and ordinary that. Still, my heart sank. Extraordinary? Like so plain and normal that it was something to be proud of? I hated this. Hated, hated, hated it. Which is why I thought about it all night and into the morning. And I vowed that no matter what it took, I was not gonna be so ordinary. Dad took us to his union hall that night for the 4th of July picnic. Mom had to work so it was dad and the three of us kids, Bobby Jean, me and our little sister Susie. Susie's only one year old and dad wanted to be able to talk to his buddies freely and play cards. So he put Bobby Jean and me in charge of her. That was dad's first mistake. His second mistake was not forbidding us to play with the fireworks the other boys had brought the way mom would have done. And which of course was all we wanted to do. Bobby Jean carried Susie out into the hall's backyard. We weren't concerned about her cramping our style. We could always find some girls to fuss over her and take her off our hands. But what we found in the backyard was not normal. What we found was mind-blowing. Cory Cormier stood on one of the picnic tables alongside the largest gunny sack I had ever seen. It could have held my entire body, maybe even Bobby Jean's. Everyone, literally every kid in attendance, 20 or 30 of them was gathered around shouting and bidding on the goods inside. I'll loan you my bike for the week. I have 20 allowance dollars coming to me. I'll open the back door of the movie theater for you. Twice, three times. I didn't even know what was in the bag, but I began salivating. Bobby Jean said, what the? We'd never seen anything like it. You'll have to do better than that, Cory chortled from on high. Maybe I'll just have to sell one to each of you. No, the crowd roared. Cory reached into the bag and extracted a rocket-style firework the size of his forearm. He held it aloft. Are you sure? The other kids screamed with excitement. Let's get in there, Bobby Jean exclaimed. We were already running. Nevermind, but Cory Cormier was one of Bobby Jean's least favorite people. Nevermind that he was known as a big, bad bully who could beat up anyone, anywhere, anytime, and enjoy it. Nevermind that a deal struck with Cory would probably have major strings attached. It was awe-inspiring. Cory was 11, the same age as Bobby Jean and one year older than me. And yet, the boy on the table in the bag and his hands loomed larger than life up there. My mind spun with possibilities to be up high, all eyes on me. Yes, I would do whatever it took to become Cory Cormier's right-hand man doling out fireworks at my whim. I could practically taste the thrill of power. How would I do it? No idea. But it turned out not to be so difficult to distinguish myself that night. As it turned out, Cory Cormier had always wanted a little sister and we had one to spare. That was chapter one. So that was chapter one for a little Susie. It's about to become the property of Cory Cormier, at least temporarily. And the fireworks are about to become the property of Caleb and Bobby Jean Franklin, at least temporarily. And so what happens next, I won't read that scene so you can read it yourself, but they do in fact trade their baby sister for this bag of fireworks. And the result is, of course, they're stuck with this bag of fireworks. They don't really know what to do with it. As they're trying to get rid of it by hiding it in the woods because they don't really have anything else to do, they run into Styx Malone. And this is where our story really begins, right? With our new friend, Styx Malone. So this is, this is not the very first scene where they meet Styx Malone. This is actually the second time that they come back to see Styx when Styx explains what they're gonna do with these fireworks. And so I have, what I've done is something called Readers Theater, which I use when I do talks at schools and libraries a lot because I think it gives people a taste of the book. It's a little bit interactive. I get people to participate with me. And it's also fun. It's something that you can do with other people. You can do in classrooms. And you can do it with any book. I literally took a scene from the book, in this case from chapter, I believe chapter four, which I should have written on here and I didn't. This is the first time I'm using this, friends. So from chapter four, and then just turned it into a script. So this is a scene between Bobby Jean, Caleb and Styx Malone, who they will have just met. Styx is 16, Caleb is 10, Bobby Jean is 11. Of course they're freaking out about these fireworks, but Styx has all the answers. And the other part of the story are the narrators who read Caleb's internal thoughts. So instead of having one person read all the internal thoughts, right? I tried to break it up and have three narrators reading Caleb's internal thoughts. All the narrators are part of Caleb's mind. And then there's, in this particular scene, Styx tells a story, kind of an urban legend, which we can talk about when we do Q&A, but I have a separate reader for that because it's a big chunk of text. All right, so I need seven people to read with me if they are willing. Ready? All right, raising hands, raising hands. All right, wanna be Caleb? Should we be our hero, Caleb? Bobby Jean? Maybe Styx Malone. All right, I need my narrators. Okay, narrator one, narrator two, narrator three. All right, and I need somebody to be my urban legend storyteller slash studying the scene person. If nobody else wants to, okay, I'm like, I can do it, but it's more fun if other people read it. There's probably, I have a few more copies if people wanna follow along and anybody wanna just copy to follow along with. There we go. You can also follow along from the book. I'll double check that it's actually checked for more. Anybody else? Yeah, we'll follow up for you. Hi, Mama. How are you? Okay, so, yeah, you guys can all stay at your seats. If I'm doing it at night, you can stay at your seats, okay. I think everybody will be able to hear. If I was doing it in a bigger room, I would have you all stand up in the front, but I can't keep you guys in here. All right, so I have highlighted the parts. Let's see who our characters are. Our characters are Caleb Franklin, where's Caleb? Caleb. And Bobby Jean Franklin, Bobby Jean, brothers, and Styx Malone, age 16. All right. Styx is tall and slim and smooth. All right, and my narrators are here. One, two, and three, perfect. And I have, there will be a little interlude from our urban legend narrator over here, all right? All right, here we go. And our urban legend storyteller is gonna set the scene for us. Caleb and Bobby Jean Franklin received a big bag of contraband fireworks from their nemesis, Cory Cormier. They desperately need to get rid of the stash and pay Cory back before he comes looking for them. Their charismatic new neighbor, Styx Malone, offers a solution to their problem. On Thursday at noon, we met Styx Malone in the woods behind our house. We found him leaning against the same shag-bar hickory tree under which we've met him. By the time the summer was out, we'd be thinking of it as Styx's office. I wanted to kick back against a tree and just be. Styx made it look so easy. Well, if it isn't Caleb and Bobby Jean Franklin. He pushed off the trunk and ambled towards us. His arms hung lanky by his sides. I shook out my shoulders to relax them like his. How's it going with Cormier? He giving you any more trouble? Not so far. He's ready for a payday for sure. You've got something good going here. Let's step it up a notch. You mean like us together? Sure, the deal was for me to help you. He gripped a low horizontal branch, then swung himself around it like a hinge. You really think we can sell all these fireworks? Bobby Jean's questions were bringing me down. It was easy to believe everything Styx promised until you started thinking it through. Not only can we sell them, we can sell them all at once. Styx leaned over the branch. His scrawny stomach bowed right over it and his sharp black elbows pointed down toward us like punctuation marks. Listen, I'm gonna tell you how it is. We listen. How could we not? This is how it is. People have stuff. Sometimes they have stuff that you want, so you gotta take it. That's stealing. I'm not trying to teach you morality. I'm telling you how it is. We don't steal. You're currently stealing my thunder. I'm trying to tell you how it is. Sorry. We waited. We listened. You don't have to steal to get stuff free, you know? You just gotta learn how to make people give you things. Well, that sounded nice enough. You ever hear about the guy who turned a paperclip into a house? We hadn't, so Styx spun us a fabulous yarn. It went like this. Once there was a guy who wanted to see how much he could get in exchange for nothing, so we asked a friend if he could have a paperclip. The friend gave him a paperclip for free because it wasn't worth much. No big deal, right? Then the guy took the paperclip and went to a different friend. He asked that friend if he'd be willing to trade him a cheap ballpoint pen in exchange for the paperclip. Now, a ballpoint pen is slightly more valuable than a paperclip, but it's still not worth very much money in the grand scheme of things. The guy kept doing this, and the concept of the great escalator trade was born. Every trade he made was for something of approximately equal value. It wasn't unfair to any of the individuals he was trading with, but all along he was trading for something that was slightly more than the last thing. It took a long time, but eventually he traded a laptop for a fancy sound system. Then he traded that for a used car, for a boat, for a newer car, and so on. Eventually he was able to trade for a big fancy yacht for a mansion. And all because one day, years before, he'd asked a friend for a paperclip. Thus he proved the great escalator trade was possible and profitable. Then he lived happily ever after in his mansion. When Sticks finished the story, Bobby Jean and I stood slack-jawed. My imagination lit up like a Christmas tree, glowing with all the possibilities. An escalator trade is pretty simple. You just have to figure out what you want that's worth all the trouble. Not to the ordinary, I'd buy. To see the world that Sticks was talking about, the sort of stuff you could buy. Something big. What's the dream you know? What do you want? Truth to be told, there are plenty of things you wanted. Bigger squirt guns? It's gotta be better than the fireworks though, right? Yeah. Unlimited Lego pieces for life? Occasionally Bobby Jean showed signs of true vision. Better, but maybe even bigger? Bobby Jean and I exchanged a glance. We know. Sticks raised an eyebrow. Yeah? A swimming pool for our backyard. Sticks stroked his chin. Hmm, that's a good one. It actually might be too big though. Hard to hide a swimming pool. We don't wanna hide it, we want to use it. Who you mean for mom and dad, you goof? Yeah. The day a giant swimming pool shows up in your backyard, suddenly you've got a lot of explaining to do. I guess. It's also hard to take care of a swimming pool. Did you know that? That's what dad always says, too much work and too expensive. Your father's a very practical man. No, we need something stealthier than a pool. For a time? I've got an idea. If you're willing to entertain suggestions. Oh sure, we can entertain that. I'd rather show you than tell you. You know, like a presentation, real professional. Bobby Jean and I glanced at each other, why not? It's not far, you game? He pushed off the branch and kept moving as if our following was a foregone conclusion. Bobby Jean grabbed my arm and whispered. You have to tell mom if we're leaving the yard. Only if we're by ourselves. Where were Sticks? That was my iffy logic, but Bobby Jean didn't fight me well on it. We're way past the yard now anyway. Sure enough, we were already walking, stretching ourselves to keep pace with Sticks's long-legged stride. Nothing could have stopped me from following Sticks. If we pulled off a successful escalator trade of our own, we'd be famous for sure. Beyond famous, we'd be epic, legendary. We'd leave ordinary in our dust. That's nice. That's great. Thank you. That was excellent, very excellent reading, everybody. It's pretty hard to read something just cold that you've never read before, so you all did an excellent job. I'm gonna collect them back. I at least need the highlighted ones because I'll use those with other readers. But if anybody wants the plain pappies, you're welcome to take those and you can use them with your school or your friends or wherever you like. So that is that and I really should give, I usually give bookmarks to my readers to thank you for helping out. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And there are obviously more bookmarks too if other people want them later on. Okay, so that's what I wanted to share with you. I guess the only other thing I will say about the book before I let you guys ask any questions that you have is just that for me, what Caleb is struggling with, right, that feeling of being really ordinary is something really familiar, right? Sometimes we feel small, right, in the world. We feel like we don't have a big voice or we feel like what we do doesn't make a big difference, right? And so one of the things Caleb learns in the course of his story is what is special about him, right? He figures out that extraordinary doesn't necessarily mean extra ordinary, right? He's got good stuff going for him. And so he unsticks and Baldy Jean, help each other learn what's good about themselves. And so that's something that I think I actually put in a lot of my books. I write stories about people who feel ordinary, right? Because sometimes, especially when I write historical fiction, we, when we look at what people have done in the past, right, who made a really big impact on the world, right? We like to tell stories about heroes and famous people and people who are exceptional, right? And do amazing things, right? And we sometimes forget that you can make a difference by doing really small things, right? By being really nice to somebody or by pursuing your dreams, right? Sometimes we think we can't get the things we want and so we're afraid to even try, right? And so a lot of my stories are about what it feels like to just be one kind of regular person who wants to make a difference in the world and what it feels like to make that choice, to say, today I'm gonna be a person who makes a difference. And what does that look like? And what are the things that I want that I can go after, right? Like when I was a kid, I liked writing. I liked reading even more than I liked writing. But if you had told me when I was a little kid that I could be an author and I would have, look at this whole shelf, just like the books that I wrote. Like if you had told me that when I was like eight or nine or 10 or 11, right? Like Caleb, who's 10, right? I would have said, no. I don't grow up and be an author with all those words out there and traveler in the country speaking and teaching and talking about my books, right? That would have seemed too big, too impossible, too extraordinary, right? But what did I do? I liked writing and I liked reading, so I kept telling my stories and I kept saying to myself, even if nobody else wants to read this, I wanna tell it, right? It's important, maybe someday somebody will wanna read it. And it turns out, lots of people do. But I had to believe in myself, right? And so Caleb's story is a little bit about learning to believe in himself. And I think a lot of my books, when you really look at them through that lens, you can see that it's about how one person can make a difference in really small ways but add up to something bigger. That's what I got. I'm just gonna ask you about your first story that you read or you had somebody read that made you feel like you were getting better at it or you were getting good at it and what was it about? Well I remember the moment that I thought I thought, oh, all this writing that I knew might actually, somebody might be interested in it outside of myself, right? Then I was in college, and one of my professors, her name was Professor Harkins, she handed me back this essay that I had written. And it was just a sort of personal narrative about something, an experience from childhood, right? And I happened to write about being biracial. My dad's from Cameroon, West Africa. He's black. My mom is American and white. And so I have this biracial experience. And so I had written a two-page essay about that. So she handed it back to me. And she was like, as she physically handed it back to me, she said, this was really great. Like, you should keep writing. Like, your narrative is important. She said, she used the word narrative. And I remember feeling like, you heard it. And I also, at the same time, was like, what is she talking about? This is just a thing I wrote at midnight last night, right? It didn't feel to me at all special, right? Because it was just this story from my life. And so I remember that. And I remember feeling like, oh, like, maybe I do have what? Like, something to say? Like, oh, that's interesting. But also sort of being skeptical of it at the same time. And then much later, not that much later, like five years later, when I was starting my MFA program, and I started writing my first novel, The Rock and the River, which is about 1968 Chicago and a boy whose father is a civil rights activist. And then his older brother joins the Black Panther party. I'm trying to find his place in the movement, you know, in the midst of all the stories about the Martin Luther Kings and the Rosa Parkses. And he's like, I'm just like one kid, right? He's not really allowed to go over or do anything. Like, how can I help? And where do I fit, right? That struggle. And that, to me, as I was writing it, I was thinking about my experience of reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, which is an older detailer book. And I remember sort of how eye-opening that was to me about Black history in general and how it was one of the first books I'd read with Black characters. And I remember feeling like, oh, if I can write this type of story for a middle grade audience, I can give somebody else that experience that I had when I was a kid. So that was sort of the second moment where I was like, oh, I do have stories to tell that nobody else is telling. And maybe I can get them out there. Cool. Thank you. Dad. Two observations are things that I love about this book. One, a thing I love about Six Malones is I feel like there's such a timeless quality about this. It reminds me when I grew up, but it could be contemporary. And most of your other books seem to be set in a certain time period, whether it's the future or it's 1968 or so. I love that part because it's very like I kind of went back into my childhood. So I appreciated that. And the other thing is, as a kid, I would have loved the elevator scheme. Yes, you would, too. And I was obsessed with it. Like, even last night, I was like, how does that work? Like, I don't want to try this. And as a kid, I would have got obsessed with that. And so it's all those details that make it really, I don't know, more powerful for kids. Yeah, thank you. It is, I think, sort of timeless. It was not meant to be set in a specific, I mean, it's sort of present day. But it has echoes of other time periods. I mean, I think some of the echoes, there was a moment when I thought about setting it as a historical story. I think they would have to be white characters if it was a historical story. And so that, the way that they move through their town as young black kids makes it a contemporary story and some of the other things that happen. But it is generally timeless. And part of their dad's whole thing is like, stay in this town where everybody knows you, right? Like, don't be, and that's something that has been the same in historical periods as well as now, right? That there is some peril, right? It's being a young black boy moving around the world. And so that's the timepiece. But to the escalator trade question, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's called the escalator trade in the other story, but there was a man, an author, and we just looked this up, who wrote a book about, it's called One Red Paperclip, and it's about how he traded this paperclip into a house. And I always heard this story as like, kind of an urban legend, right? Which is how I frame it in the book, like sticks of telling this like, hey, so did you ever hear this, right, this one? And as I was researching it while writing the book, I looked it up, because I was like, where does this come from, right? And it turns out that there's this guy who wrote a book about his experience doing this. And it's called, yeah, One Red Paperclip. Kyle McDonald, I think we figured out his name. I've looked it up so many times, and now I'm just starting to talk about this book. I will eventually memorize it and be able to share it with people. But yeah, that was one of the inspirations was when I heard that I was also obsessed with it. I was like, well, it's like, how would that work? And what would you do? And you know, what could I trade? Like, how can I get something for nothing, right? That sort of fantasy. How many times? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of other sort of tall-tail-ish elements to the story in terms of, I mean, you know, the trading of the baby sister and some other things that they do, then pull on some of those, I guess, of Americana type, you know, narratives. Was that the seed for this book? The... Which it grew? Yeah, so, I always struggle with the whole, what's your inspiration thing? But in this case, there were a couple of inspirations. And I mean, I think that's what makes a book come together, right? Is that you have all these different pieces, right? These different ideas, these different stories. The escalator trade was one. The bag of fireworks traded for the baby sister was another, which was sort of an idea that was given to me by, I don't know what the equivalent of barista is at a yogurt place, at a frozen yogurt place, like the guy who was working as a clerk at the frozen yogurt place where you serve your own yogurt into the big cup and then you put all the toppings and they weigh it and they charge you that place, in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I was traveling through the South on a road trip and I stopped to visit my friend who lived in Raleigh and we went out for yogurt because I like ice cream of all stripes. And so we were the only people in this yogurt place at like three in the afternoon on a Tuesday or something. And the clerk, he was sort of overly chatty in terms of what our relationship should be, right? That's how we weighed the ice cream and he bought it. I mean, we bought it and we went and sat at a booth and he was still talking and came over and sat with us in the booth while we were eating our ice cream and we're just like, what? And he's just telling these random stories and they were funny and they were sort of quirky and enough that we weren't like, okay dude, why are you here? And one of the stories he told was about how his uncles had traded their aunt, like when she was a baby, for this bag of peanuts. That was as big as she was and like, obviously it didn't work and like, I don't remember his whole, I mean, I just remember that, this is the salient detail of the story is like, they traded her and how he was telling him this matter of fact, like, sure, stuff like this happens all the time. And I was kind of like, did they get her back? Like, how did that go? You know, because you could trade to the wrong person, that would work. You know, a curry courier lives around the corner so it's fine. But anyway, so like that was another seed. And so you just, I don't know, you just start writing these random seeds and like, it sort of sticks Malone comes walking out of the woods and you're just like, what do I do with you? Oh, these things in this story. What's next? What's next, yeah. Well, it's all a race of publication, but I'm doing another middle grade standalone. It's not a sequel, but another middle grade of the same like sort of style and tone. I hope, I hope it's only two thirds of the way done. But I'm working on in the cafe. Yeah, I know. And it will probably be out in 2020. Hopefully, I have a book coming out in 2019, which is A Companion's How I Went Down, which is a young adult novel about the controversial shooting of a black teen by a white man. And it's a multiple viewpoint narrative where all the different characters in the community, there's 18 viewpoint characters in How I Went Down and they're all telling about this loss of this teen boy. And I started working on that book in the spring of 2012. I've been created by Martin was killed. And so it's about that story that we keep seeing in the news in different ways. And I'm sort of an attempt to go behind the headlines and look at what a community experience is in the wake of that type of tragedy and that type of loss. And so I have been working on a companion to that book that is sort of the next version of that, which is to say, this was based on Shravan Martin. This is more based on Michael Brown or Freddie Gray or something like where you see a different kind of reaction from the community in the wake of this tragedy. And so I wanted to show that transition because this book predates Black Lives Matter as an organization. And so I want to try something that is part of, more a part of that. Those are the two things that are next. And it's hard to say which one will for sure come first. Probably the how it would downspeak. I don't know how to read. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to read. I don't know how to read. I don't know how to read. I don't know how to read. Come on in. Come on in. Welcome. Thanks for coming. Thanks to you. Hey. Any other questions? There's a time. I feel like I'm going to be trying to bookmark. I'm going to bookmark. Thank you guys a lot, bookmark.