 It's a very odd feeling for a book that I was told really shouldn't be written. So in that way, I feel a slight kinship to James Baldwin because he was told Giovanni's room should not be written, the story of two men in Paris who fall in love. And he was told it would ruin his political career and his writing career. But he continued on. I didn't have as much at stake as James Baldwin. But people did feel a little off put by the characters being vampires, by that being the setting, the context for the story because vampires are traditionally or have been traditionally so predatory. And so some people felt like why would I connect vampires with lesbians? Why would I connect vampires with gay men? Why would I connect them with people of color? So I tried to answer all of those questions in this book. As a feminist, I felt like I could do that and not risk betraying my principles. So it meant I spent a lot of time thinking about what the traditions were of vampire lore and how to change them so we can talk about some of that after. I'm going to read the first, a little bit from the first chapter, which is Louisiana 1850. The girl slept restlessly, feeling the prickly straw as if it were teasing pinches from her mother. The stiff moldy odor transformed itself into her mother's starchy dough smell. The rustling of the girl's body in the barn hay was sometimes like the sound of fatback frying in the cooking shed behind the plantation's main house. At other moments in her dream, it was the crackling of the brush as her mother raked the bristles through the girl's thicket of dark hair before beginning the intricate pattern of braided rose. She had traveled by night for 15 hours before daring to stop. Her body held out until a deserted farmhouse where it surrendered to this demanding sleep hemmed by fear. Then the sound of walking, a man moving stealthily through dawn light toward her. In the dream, it remained what it was, danger. A white man wearing the clothes of an overseer. In the dream, the girl clutched tightly at her mother's large black hand, praying the sound of the steps would stop, that she would wake up curled around her mother's body on the straw and corn husk mattress next to the big old stove grown cold with the night. In sleep, she clutched the hand of her mother, which turned into the warm wooden handle of the knife she had stolen when she ran away the day before. It pulsed beside her heart beneath the rough shirt which hung loosely from her thin young frame. The knife, crushed into the cotton foals near her breast, was invisible to the red-faced man who stood laughing over her, pulling her by one leg from beneath the pile of hay. The girl did not scream but buried herself in the beating of her heart alongside the hidden knife. She refused to believe that the hours of indecision and finally the act of escape were over. The walking, hiding, running through the Mississippi and Louisiana woods had quickly settled into an almost enjoyable rhythm. She was not ready to give in to those whom her mother had sworn were not yet fully human. She tried to remember some of the stories that her mother now dead had pieced together from many different languages to describe the journey to this land. The legends sketched a picture of a Fulani past, a natural rhythm of life without bondage. It was a memory that receded more with each passing year. She looked up at this beast from the other land. His face lost the laugh that had split it and became creased with lust. He untied the length of rope holding his pants and his smile returned as he became thick with anticipation of her submission to him. His head swelling with power at the thought of invading her. He dropped to his knees before the girl whose eyes were wide seeing into both the past and the future. He bent forward on his knees stiff for conquest, already counting the bounty fee and savoring the stories he would tell. He felt a warmth at the pit of his belly. The girl was young, probably a virgin he thought. And she didn't appear able to resist him. He smiled at her open, unseeing eyes, interpreting their unswerving gaze as neither resignation nor loathing, but desire, the flash fire in him became harder. His center was bright and blinding as he placed his arms, one on each side of the girl's head and lowered himself. She closed her eyes. He rubbed his body against her brown skin and imagined the closing of her eyes was a need for him and his power. He started to enter her. But before his hand finished pulling her open, she entered him with her heart which was now a wood-handled knife. He made a small sound as his last breath hurried to leave him. Then he dropped softly, warmth spread from his center of power to his chest as the blood left his body. The girl lay still beneath him until her breath became the only sign of life in the pile of hay. She felt the blood draining from him, comfortably warm against her now cool skin. The blood washing slowly down her breastbone and sinking into the floor below was like a bath, a cleansing. She lay still, letting the life flow over her. Then slid gently from beneath the red-faced man whose cheeks had paled. The girl moved quietly as if he had really been her lover and she afraid to wake him. Looking down at the blood soaking her shirt and trousers, she felt no disgust. It was the blood signaling the death of a beast in her continued life. The girl held the slippery wood of the knife in her hand as her body began to shake in the dream memory. She sobbed, trying to understand what she should do next, how to hide the blood and still move on. She was young and had never killed anyone. She trembled, unable to tell if this were really happening to her all over again or if she was dreaming it again. She held one dirty hand up to her broad brown face and cried heartily. That was how Gilda found her, huddled in the root cellar of her small farmhouse on the road outside of New Orleans in 1850. The girl clutched the knife to her breast and struggled to escape her dream. Wake up gal. Gilda shook the thin shoulder gently as if afraid to pull loose one of the shuddering limbs. Her voice was whiskey rough. Her rused face seemed young as she raised the smoky lantern. The girl woke with her heart pounding, desperate to leave the dream behind but seized with fear. The pale face above her was a woman's but the girl had learned they too could be as dangerous as their men. Gilda shook the girl whose eyes were now open but unseeing. The night was long and Gilda did not have time for a hysterical child. The brown of her eyes darkened her in impatience. Come on gal, what you doing to my root cellar? The girl's silence deepened. Gilda looked at the stained torn shirt and two big pants tied tightly at her waist. The wood handled knife in the girl's grip. Gilda saw her eyes, saw in her eyes the impulse to use it. You don't have to do that. I'm not gonna hurt you. Come on. With that Gilda pulled the girl to her feet. Careful not to be too rough. She could see the girl was weak with hunger and wound tight around her fear. She stared deeply into the girl's dark eyes and said silently, you needn't be afraid. I'll take care of you. The night hides many things. The girl loosened her grip on the knife under the persuasive touch of Gilda's thoughts. She had heard of people who could talk without speaking but never expected a white to be able to do it. This one was a puzzlement. Dark eyes and pale skin. Her face was painted in colors like a mask but she wore men's britches and a heavy jacket. Gilda moved in her small bone-framed frame like a team of horses pulling a load on a sodden road, gentle and relentless. I could use you, girl, come on. Was all Gilda said as she lifted the girl and carried her out to her buggy. So that's the genesis of Gilda. Probably some of you have read it already so I'm not spoiling anything to say the girl does grow up and take the name Gilda and spends a good part of her early life, the first 200 years, figuring out what the moral center is for this particular vampire family because it's a little bit different from Dracula. She doesn't want to become a serial killer. She, her family has a creed which is we take blood, not life, leave something in exchange. And so, but that's really not that easy to do if you are powerful and have a lot of issues that you would have if you escaped from slavery. You think you got bad issues. So the book is really about how she comes to embody and embrace that credo and the adventures along her path. What I was gonna do if we have time is I almost never read this, but it's a kind of an interesting thing for me. It's only on this piece of paper because I just submitted it to some journal who wanted a science fiction journal up in Canada who wanted something for their next edition. And this is also from the first chapter and it kind of tells you a bit about, well it tells you the moment in which the girl is faced with the possibility of becoming a vampire and you know, it's not an easy decision. You have to think about it five or 10 minutes. So this is also in the 1800s in Louisiana. Some years later, the girl has been rescued by Gilda and Gilda's partner, Bird, who run a bordello slash finishing school. And she knows there's something up with Gilda but she's not quite sure what. She knows it's like, hmm, is that an evacuation buzzer or somebody just trying to slip out with a book? Okay, so she doesn't question. She loves them. She thinks of them as her family. So this is a little later. The girl is a little bit older and they go out to the farmhouse where the girl was originally rescued. When the girl and Gilda arrived at the quiet farmhouse, the girl stored her small traveling box under the eaves in the tiny room where she slept whenever they visited here. The not tall house over the shallow root cellar barely reminded her of the night Gilda had discovered her in hiding those many years past and taking her back to New Orleans to live with her and Bird. Here, Gilda relaxed, not thinking of the past. The farmhouse offered privacy away from the dissembling of the city and relief from the tides which each noon and night pulled her energy and sucked her breath leaving her lighter than air. Still her mind turned back toward how her long life might end and if the girls should now begin. Whenever they retreated here, they usually spent their evenings reading aloud to each other or telling stories, some based on history, some made up. Tonight the girl wanted to know about the possibility of a war between the states but Gilda instead steered the girl toward the past. She asked, what do you remember of your mother's and sister's? After her mother died, the girl had run from the plantation leaving her sisters behind and the cutting of that tie still stung deep inside. The girl preferred to dwell on the home she'd made with Gilda and the other women in Gilda's charge. The special quality of Gilda and Bird's life did not escape the girl. It seemed more pronounced at the farmhouse where she found the large feed bags filled with dirt in the root cellar. She felt the thin depth of soil beneath the carpets and waited in their cloaks. Although Gilda and Bird kept the dinner hour at gathering time, they'd never eaten in front of her. Over the years, the girl simply noted each bit of new information about the two who'd become her family. One evening after several aimless days at the farmhouse, Gilda came down from her room and moved about the parlor where the girl was reading, making a circle before resting on the arm of the sofa across from her. The girl's dark face was smooth unchanged in the many years that had passed. Her brow wide and square under the braided rose that drew her thick springy hair to the nape of her neck. Gilda spoke to the girl in silence. Do you know how many years I've lived? Many more than anyone, the girl answered out loud, no longer surprised by Gilda's ability to speak without speaking. I sense in you a strong spirit and understanding of the world. You are a voice lacking among us. The girl looked at Gilda's face, the pale skin drawn tight with anxiety across her small bones. Her eyes glistened with flecks of orange. She wanted to comfort this woman who'd lifted her out of nightmares and become a mother to her when her own was lost. You must want to stay, you must need to live. Will you trust me? I never thought to leave you. My home is here as long as you and Bird will have me, the girl said in a firm, clear voice. What I ask is not an easy thing. You may feel you have nothing to go back to, but sooner or later we all want to go back to something, usually some inconsequential thing to which we've never given much thought. But it will loom there in our past and treating us cruelly because there is no way to ever go back. In asking this of you and in the future should you ask it of others, you must be certain that you, that others are strong enough to withstand the complete loss of those intangibles that make the past so alluring. The girl said nothing, but she felt a change in the room the air was taught with energy. Kilda said aloud, there are only inadequate words to speak for who we are. The language is crude, the history false. You must look to me and know who I am and if the life I offer is the life you choose. In choosing, you must pledge yourself to pursue only life, never bitterness or cruelty. We take blood, not life, leave something in exchange. The girl peered deeply into the swirling brown and flickering orange of Kilda's eyes, feeling herself opening to ideas and sensations she'd never experienced before she drew back, startled at startled at the weight of time she saw behind those eyes. Don't be frightened by the idea of death. It is a part of life and all things. Power is the frightening thing, not death. And the blood is a shared thing, something we must all learn to share or foolishly spill onto battlefields. Kilda listened to the words as she spoke them and looked deeply into the girl's eyes. My dream was to see the world over time. The real dream is to make a world, to see people and still want to make a world. You're often be timed as not really time. There was a joy to the exchange we make, we draw life into ourselves, yet we give life as well. We give what's needed, energy, dreams, ideas. It's a fair exchange in a world full of cheaters. Kilda closed her eyes and drew back a little freeing the girl from her gaze. The girl felt a chill as if Kilda's lowered lids had shut off the sun and for a moment she was afraid. These were the ones who nurtured her like everything about them was unknown. She sensed not just a new world but untold danger. Finally confusion lifted from the girl when she remembered all was not unknown. Bird and Kilda had given her not just shelter but love. What was offered now was larger than simply a long life. It was a grand adventure for which her flight from slavery into freedom had only begun to prepare her. Do you choose it? Yes, the girl whispered. Kilda opened her eyes and the girl felt herself drawn into the flowing energy. She sensed a sharp nick at her neck and heard the soothing song her mother used to sing when she was a child. She felt Kilda's lips at the small wound and was sucked into a powerful undertow. She held on to Kilda as she sank deeper, barely hearing Kilda as she said, now you must drink. She held the girl's head to her breast and in a quick gesture opened the skin of her chest. She pressed the girl's mouth to the red life that seeped from her. The girl's journey into the future had begun. So that's Kilda's beginnings. I imagine people have some questions so if people wanna ask me questions, you can. I'll read another section probably, but right now I was looking to see if there was a score. Warriors 24, Cavaliers 17. Thought I'd mention it in case your mind was wandering. So, you know, I mean, if people have questions, I'm happy to answer them. I have another section I'd love to read if we have time, but I wanna make sure people get to ask me things. She has a good conscience. She sleeps since five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. That's one of the things I thought about a lot. It's interesting. Very few people asked me that, have asked me that over the last 25 years. Where she slept. Yeah. And she chose the ground. Yeah, nah, too dirty. There is one section in which she does actually sleep in the dirt, but that's in the new Gilda novel that I'm working on. I thought about that a lot because the traditional coffin, close it over you, and the coffin will be lined with the soil of your native land, which is why Dracula had all that dirt on the ship when he arrived in the U.S. So I just, I thought, you know, coffin cramped, uncomfortable, and it's hard in the 1800s, maybe you could cart a coffin around. But in contemporary times, it just seemed a little awkward and how do you explain a coffin in the basement? Today there's no problem with that. Well, yes, if you're into the golf stuff, yeah, you could really get away with it. But she tried not to draw attention to herself. So I thought about the soil that she would want to have the soil stored in safe places around the country. That was fine. And as we saw in the farmhouse, they keep the soil in the basement in the farmhouse. So I thought, okay, she's gonna sleep on bags of soil. But we want them to be inconspicuous futon, what could be more uncomfortable and be filled with dirt. They're all filled with dirt, aren't they? So I decided on that. And it seemed like in the places where she lives, she of course takes special precautions about daylight getting in and how it locks. But essentially she sleeps on a futon with her soil and the soil of other members of her family mixed together. So she doesn't really go into a box per se. But that was one of the things I had to think about a lot because all of these can, gothic mythologies, people grew up with them. And it's so surprising how much people know about Dracula, it's a little, it's kind of a little weird, but people ask kind of questions that relate to the Dracula mythology and different ways that I have changed it. So I spent a lot of time doing that. Yeah. What do you just find about moving with a certain standard and switching to another thing? Oh, yes. I loved the hunger. I didn't like the ending though. And I had read the book and he, the film I thought was better than the book, but I still didn't like the ending. I loved the sensuality and the style. You know, and that was one of the things that Dracula had going for him. He had a great sense of style, you know, with the opera cape and just very elegant. So I really admired that. So it made a difference to me in thinking about how Gilda would present in the world. That it was important that she be, that she grew up to be kind of self-aware and you know, having to figure out in the 1800s, what is she gonna wear? You know, and she figures out to travel, the way to be safe is to dress as a boy and make her way to what was then Yerba Uena, San Francisco, to meet with her other teachers, Anthony and Sorrell, who are meant to help her with the next phase of her education. But to get from Louisiana to there, it's not like she can hire a buggy. She's not gonna be going out in the clothes that she wore when she was working in the bordello, you know, doing the laundry and stuff. She has to protect herself so she dresses as a boy. And then when she gets, this is chapter two, she gets there and you know, first crush, always the worst. You know, leave it to Gilda to fall in love with the psycho killer. But beautiful red hair, she could resist. But then the woman wants to dress her up so they can, you know, go out. Well, it's like, Gilda's thinking dress, not so much. And so she has to figure out what she will wear. And I really got that sense of style that I wanted her to be really sure about. And so she figures out what she wants to wear. Because fortunately, Amanda Bloomer had invented them by then. Yeah. I'm curious about what you do about the whole vampire. To encourage you to even get started. Well, when I started, I didn't start out thinking, oh, I'm gonna write a vampire story. I started the story as it was really a revenge story. Because somebody harassed me on the street and I was so furious. I wanted to kill them. But instead I went home and wrote a story in which a woman gets a wrath on the street and kills a guy. And I thought, oh, this is really good. I felt good. Let me write some more. And you know, you don't get arrested for that. So I started writing this story and I thought about, well, you know, this is about how a woman survives. Let's take her through different time periods. And I thought, well, she could be a time traveler, but you know, that's not so much fun. And as it evolved my thinking for the next story, I realized, of course she could be a vampire. Then she gets to live forever. And then I get to place her. Each chapter in the novel is in a different decade and in a different area of the country. Because if you don't age, people hate you. So she moves around a lot. And so it kind of evolved from my idea of wanting to have an African-American woman be in different decades and see how she would survive and what she would encounter. Both that was directly related to her being an African-American woman and things that were tangential, just what the culture was about. And so then I wanted her to have often a moral dilemma. And if you have come from a place of absolutely no power and now have power, that does present a dilemma. I mean, are you gonna act just like the people who have acted, who abused you and enslaved you? Or are you going to figure out some moral high ground? And so being a vampire seemed like a good way to do that. Yes? So I have a question about, I'm not quite sure how to frame it. There's sort of the master vampire narrative with Dracula. And you've made some changes in what it means to be a vampire for Gilda. Like what kind of research did you do into other approaches to being a vampire, other approaches to the idea of the vampire, are there like different cultural, in different cultures are there stories that are like vampire stories that informed your thinking about what was possible for Gilda and her family? Yes, I did a lot of research into vampire mythology. And I had the good fortune of starting this before the onslaught. You know, there was no, well, there was Buffy, but there was no Twilight, there was no vampire diaries. And I literally was able to read every novel about a vampire in print at that time, no way I could do it now. I also read Leonard Wolfe, who is a Hebrew scholar, also happens for some interesting reason to have written a really definitive book on the mythology of vampires around the world. And just about every culture since prehistory has had a vampire mythology. Usually the vampires are not as well dressed as ours. And they are, they're usually fearsome creatures, usually ugly twisted, you know, because of course there has to be a balance. So the vampire who has a gift of life has to pay for it in some way, often. So I did a lot of that reading. And from that, I was able to kind of decide what from the traditional Christian Victorian mythology I would keep and I would drop. Because that, the Dracula, and the things that grew out of it, I mean even the contemporary like Anne Rice, she holds to a lot of the same principles or myths and I felt I could change them, why not? You know, I mean, one of the things, and Anne Rice was probably the first book I read and then there's a fabulous writer named Chelsea Quinn Yarbrough who's written like 50 vampire novels. And each one of them takes place in a different decade or century really, which is what gave me the idea to have each chapter take place in a different decade. But I read them and most, Chelsea Quinn Yarbrough, she does shift things, she too must have decided she did not want a serial killer as her hero. So that she has a character, a couple of characters, and they take blood from people who work for them and that's what they do. And they don't want to be vampires, they want to be like the Red Cross. Giving up the blood. So that was helpful to me. I decided a lot of things like the whole thing about not being seen in a mirror. It didn't work for me because I felt that was based on the Christianity, that mythology of people who don't have souls, you can't see them in the mirror. And my feeling is who's to say who has a soul and who doesn't? And since vampires predate Christianity, then how was I gonna write a black woman who could not see herself in a mirror? Not gonna happen. So different things like that, I just chucked. Other things I kept, like difficulty vampires have crossing running water. It seemed a biological reality since our bodies are made up of water in some huge percentage. And if tides can be moved by moon and all of that, then certainly human being could be moved and touched by moving water. So I left that in. So it was fun to think about these things. I didn't, once I decided, the biggest thing I decided was Gilda was not gonna be a serial killer. That was the hardest, really hardest thing I had to come to grips with. And then once I decided that, it kind of the philosophy kind of followed because then you have to have something happen. If she takes blood, she can't just go out, take a pint of blood and come home and put her feet up and watch TV. There needs to be some kind of energy there or some kind of tension. So yes, I did a lot of research and that helped me figure out, as we say sometimes when we teach writing, you have to know the rules so you can break them. So that's what I did. Yeah. So this is super fascinating. I wanted to know how did you choose where Gilda would move based on the cultural shifts that were happening throughout the centuries and also the huge political shifts that are gonna affect some of the ways the black woman in the United States from slavery until the president. So what went into those decisions that you like, or is it, yeah. It was like wheeled fortunes. Especially because it was based on her decision not to take, to be in this, they moved into this position of power and not take life and have huge, dramatically like shifts that are happening that she couldn't alter. Right. And that was key. Figuring out that Gilda was not gonna alter history that her goal is to provide other people with whatever small thing they might need to better their lives and ultimately better the life of the culture. So it never really works when the hero sweeps in and changes something. Something always goes wrong. So I thought like politically I believe a lot of social change happens one person at a time and we have to start with ourselves. And that if she could actually offer an individual the opportunity to change something that would improve him or her then her contribution or his contribution to the world would be a value. So that was the second part of your question. The first part, it wasn't totally arbitrary where things happen, where she goes. But I did, I would think of something and then see like if there was a place like Rosebud, Missouri. I love the film Citizen Kane. So I had to have a chapter called Rosebud. I was damn it, if I had to find a way. So I looked on a map, I found Rosebud, Missouri in the 1800s and I read up on Rosebud and thought about the migration of African-Americans how that would affect that particular area. And then who would Gilda meet in that area cause she has to get her heart broken again. So let's get a minister's widow. But someone who is working with people who have migrated from the South who have been up in that area and need a minister's widow to help them pull their lives together and their families and all that. So that's kind of how I chose them. Some of them I picked because, well, I wanted something to be in San Francisco and this was before I moved here. So I had, I looked up San Francisco in the early part of this entry and found out it was called Yerba Buena which means healing herb. And I thought this would be the perfect place for her to come to heal from losing the first mother, losing the vampire mothers to heartbreaks. I mean, the heartbreak, where else would she go but Yerba Buena. And so I did research on that. So in some ways it was arbitrary but it would be, I wouldn't call it arbitrary. I'd say it was organized serendipity. The second book that I'm doing, the chapters take place in between these chapters. I mean, it stands alone. You don't have to have read this book but it's much more about her emotional growth and the strife, the weight it puts on you to have that kind of power and when she's good at it and when she's not. And there's a couple of times when she needs help because she's got this power that she can't. She can't quite come to terms with. And so yeah, it was organized serendipity, what each place is. How about if I read this third little section? What year did the book end up? 2050, which is interesting because let me see where is the chapter? A fellow was doing land of enchantment that'd be New Mexico, 2050. This guy wanted to write a review and he says, I don't really know how I can review it because it's futuristic but it's vampire and I was like, I don't understand your conflict. But most like a vampire, either they're like totally like Trinity blade, where they're all in the future or they're all Gothic in the past. So anyway, hopefully he's quelled his anxiety and written the review. So this, I'll end with this little piece. This section is in Rosebud, Missouri in 1921. Gilda has been in Rosebud with her lovely minister's widow and she realizes that she needs to kind of move on and the preconditions that would allow her to bring the minister's widow into vampire life do not exist but it's really hard for her. So she goes into town and is standing outside of a bordello which as I mentioned earlier, she grew up in a bordello so she's very comfortable. She's out there listening to the music coming down from the windows. Gilda leaned into the music letting it wash over her like a spray of water. Her hunger was not forgotten. For that moment however, it was simply fed by the sound of the horn. The thinning blood inside her moved languidly seduced by the tide of sound. It's abrupt ending left a piano tinkling randomly in the silence then applause. They cheered in rhythm with the music but beneath it all Gilda heard a quiet sob so close that for a moment she thought she'd made the sound herself. Above her to the left of the corner of the building a slightly open window was dark with sadness that seeked out from under the curtains. Gilda felt disoriented then her body was released from its stupor and spoke to her of its need. The moment of euphoria was gone. The fire of hunger ran through her veins. The muffled sobs reached not just her ears now but all of her senses. A woman lay immobile sunk deeply into her pillow. The smell of sex clung to her linen. In the girl's head was a jumble of thoughts awash in resignation. Gilda rummaged through them picking at each. The lost child, the need for companionship, shame. She felt young to Gilda. There was little protection around her. But most amazing was that the woman was devoid of dreams. She had no fantasy or embellished aspirations on which to affix her daily life. Today barely existed. Gilda pushed into the room with her own thoughts infinitely more directed than those of the young woman. She massaged her spirit loose into the bonds that wound tightly around the woman's chest to help her breathe easier than dropped a veil of sleep over her. Gilda entered the back door of the establishment and heard the patrons and business girls and the front parlor still praising the piano player and cornetist. She followed her line of control holding the young woman in sleep and passed the closed doors of the corridor. Behind some of them, she heard the grunts of impending and expended passion. Behind one, she heard silence, no thoughts, no dreams. She entered the darkened room and was stunned by the close air of defeat. The mirror was smudged, clothes were strewn carelessly and the coverlet betrayed days of filth. It was a room in which no one really lived, not even the one who slept here. The girl lay on her back, a mass of Auburn curls plastered to her damp head. Her face was set in grimness, her fists clenched by her side as if prepared to do battle with the world, she cared little for. Gilda peered into the creamy white features, wondering where along the short path this one had traveled, she'd lost her ability to dream. Even in the fearful hours of dawn, before Gilda could be certain there would be another night of life, dreams crept into her rest to stimulate her mind and heart. Gilda felt such sorrow at this diminished capacity for life. She held the girl in sleep and pulled her into her arms. A small incision at the side of the neck, blood seeping out slowly. It reminded her of the wounds she and her sisters suffered on their tiny hands as they'd wrenched the cotton from its stiff branches. Lines of blood covered them until the flesh was hardened by experience. Gilda put her lips to the trickle of blood, turned it into a tide washing through her, making her heart pump faster. Her insistent suckling created a new pulse and filled her with new life. In return, she offered dreams. She held the girl's body and mind tightly, letting the desire for future life flow through them both, a promising reverie of freedom and challenge. The woman absorbed Gilda's desire for family, for union with others, for new experience. Through these, the girl perceived a capacity for endless life. As the blood left her body and the woman's psyche responded with a moment of terror, Gilda used this to further suffuse her dreams with urgency. She wrapped the fear around the edge of the dream, making it all the more compelling. Gilda did not stop taking the blood until she felt parts of her dream become the girl's own. The young woman began to cling to life and experienced the urge to project into a future. Her mind was filled with the thoughts of the other women who lived and worked in the house, the smile she had not acknowledged, the endearments and angry words yet to be shared. Gilda pulled back, comfortable with rooting a dream inside this girl. She loosened her hold so that the young woman's breathing returned to normal, then backed away from the bed, looking down at the face, now full of expectation. The woman's fists were relaxed. She'd reached one hand up to cover her own small breast where it rested as if giving assurance to a lover. The woman sighed and Gilda slid the window open wider, slipped through and silently dropped two stories to the back alley. The sounds of Saturday night life continued to reverberate as she walked out to the street. She maintained a slow pace, moving south then west to the edge of the city, enjoying the evening air and the memory of the girl's soft pale skin. Her resurgent dreams cast a new glow on Gilda's life. In giving dreams, she had recaptured her own. Thank you. So if you have any questions before we, yes. Can you talk a little bit about working on a novel where blood is so central during a time when we were starting to learn about AIDS and the role of blood in the larger culture? Well, yes, I can. Knowing blood was gonna be so central, because I started it before there was the AIDS pandemic. I read a lot about blood, women's relationship to it, men's relationship to it, psychologically as well as physically. I donated blood to the Red Cross every, I don't know, I can't remember what it is, every six or eight weeks or something. They really were a little bit worried about me because I would show up and they'd go, you're back again. I said, yeah. So, because I wanted to feel blood leaving my body. I wanted to look at it. I wanted to see it in that way as opposed to on a tampon. And so I had thought about blood a lot and why, here's a generality, for men, blood means death. It means you've been hurt, wounded, and you're gonna die. For women, it means life. It's something mostly most women have a relationship with blood. So that was interesting to me. Then as we got into the 80s, I realized, when the first person, I was told the first person I knew passed away from HIV, I realized I have to think about this and how it's gonna appear. And again, I didn't really want her to swoop in and solve things, although later, in the book I'm working on now, there are health, I think it's, I can't even remember now as it's in this book or the next book, it's starting to get a little hazy, but people start to hunt vampires for their blood, for their life-giving properties as health starts, the immunological and ecological systems start to break down. So yeah, it's in this book because I had to think about it as I heard about HIV and, but again, I did not want her to rush in and give everybody a transfusion. It just didn't seem like that was gonna be the story. So I did give her the ability to be able to tell if someone has an illness. I put that early on in the 1800s because I wanted to be able to explain it but not go into it. In the new book, the next book, she does have to grapple with someone dying. So it was a very strange feeling to have thought in my head there, what could happen next? What could happen next is all the immunological systems and ecological systems could break down and then to watch the news and see that this is happening. I was like, maybe I'll write a movie about a red convertible. I mean, a book about a red convertible next time because it was a little upsetting, weird, weird. But I think if you play out, I was just at a feminist science fiction convention and one of the panels was playing out the things we know to write the future, which is what speculative fiction writers do. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what would go bad next? So, yeah. I know it's easy to like get wrapped up in thinking about the vampire mythology and genre and things like that, but thinking about my bookshelf, the older stories since so comfortably next to like Tony Morrison and a lot of others, because it strikes me about so obsessed with like history. I'm not. I'll sit next to Tony Morrison any time. Thank you. But just the interest of like history and all of those things. And so I was wondering if there were other traditions and you know not, you know, you talk about your research about vampire mythology, but like whether it seems that it works in so many other contexts as well. I was wondering what some of those were as well. Or if you were conscious of that. Okay, let me see if I'm answering, if I'm hearing your question. I was raised by my great-grandmother, so her perspective was kind of like my perspective in a way. She was amazingly somewhat startled, but comfortable with change. I mean, she was born in 1883. She died in 1971. So think about the things that changed between 1883 and 71. And so I always saw her perception of the world changes in this very sort of, she can be in awe and comfortable at the same time. And I found that amazing. And I think it affected how I thought about the world and how I looked at the world. And I realized I wanted to write, well, that's one part, but then I realized I wanted to write, I like writing historical stuff. There's something about seeing people in a different context in which you can actually learn something from them to me in a deeper way. So contemporary fiction has a lot of things to teach us, but if you took the same story and put it in the 1800s or the 1700s, it becomes more intense to me and more interesting. So that's one of the reasons my plays are what they are. I'm writing a cycle of plays, which means like three. And I've written two so far. But a play is about African-American artists in the early part of the 20th century. James Baldwin and Alberta Hunter are the first two. I haven't picked the third one yet. But the point for me is before the 1960s, there was a certain kind of, the African-American community and the culture held a lot of hope in it. And it really felt like around the corner, there's gonna be change. People are gonna see how bad racism is and mend their ways. Well, still waiting. So, but I wanted to capture that sense of people in that period of hope, being full of hope and doing the best they can to make social change because they feel it so directly. And to me, the 1950s with all of the horrific things that were going on there, Jim Crow, lynchings and all of that really fueled people's hope. So that's why I write things in the 1950s. So I think I have that historical thing inside me that I want to write from that. Is that kind of answering what you're asking me? Okay, yeah. I'm drawn to history. And I thought, and one of the questions that I got was like, well, how was her, I would be, I don't wanna, you know, crack down Pauli Murray, or by Rustin. Yeah. Interact with these people. But then I thought, and I don't know if Gilbert can re-minds because Rustin would have been hidden. Right. As was Pauli Murray. Right. You know, we know of them now looking backwards, but in the same way that Phyllis Liner, the surviving one. Phyllis. Okay, Phyllis. She said that Harry Hay thing. We didn't know that the mansion existed because there wasn't gay parades back then. Right. So the 50s, we didn't know about what was happening down in Los Angeles. So I mean, how would she, unless she could read minds. Which she can. Oh, she can, okay. She can. Because then she might be drawn to King and then wait, there's, by Rustin. Wow. And she'd go, come out. Come out. Come out. Or be drawn to Eleanor Roosevelt somehow. And then there's Pauli Murray. Yeah, you know, that was a, there's a couple of chapters in which people mention other people who are well known. And you get a sense, I want you to get a sense of the context around them. But I really steered clear of that because as soon as you do that, the story becomes about the famous person. And the feels, I mean, the first question would happen would be, well, why didn't she keep King from being killed? And I can't answer that. Stephen King thinks, I guess he could, JFK. But I can't, you know, I can't, that's not what I want to tackle. So I deliberately stayed clear of that. Although in the different chapters, you can see what's going on politically around her. So I didn't want to abstract her from the history. But keep her focused on the individual lives she could affect. You know, I mean, it would have been really a different kind of different kind of book if she she'd be like the Caped Crusaders or something. So, and I wouldn't be that good at that. Okay, unless there's more questions, come on. Yes. Will you just give us a little more info on a little more preview of the Guild of Stories you're working on now, a little bit? Okay, it's been, it's been a while. I mean, I've been reading from this book for 25 years. I love Gilbert, I miss her so much. You know, writing her is so much fun. So I decided I would write more, but I didn't want to go into the future. So I thought I would go in between. So the first chapter of the of this new book, I have written about five chapters, the first chapter takes place when Gilda returns to Louisiana towards the Bordello looking for her other mother bird. And she, so as I said before, it's more about her emotional growth. So at this point she's, it's early 1900s. The whole, that whole area of New Orleans has undergone a lot of change. And the place that was the Bordello is not a Bordello anymore. It is actually, let's go for girls, but run by someone from the past who is now a vampire. And it kicks off with Gilda searching for bird but realizing that she has more important things than to sit around moaning for her lost second mom. You know, she's got, there's a crisis with some kids who are being abused and who are on the run like she was. And so she has to step in. There are the, each chapter, there's this one chapter which I, because you know, people complain the first Gilda didn't have enough sex in it. I'm trying to fix that. I'm assuming you've read the book. So I'm not, okay. Aurelia that she, you know, the minister's widow that she's in love with one of the people. She's always falling in love with the wrong person. But anyway, so she leaves Aurelia to her taking care of the black community because they need her and everything. But her heart is really broken. And so is it a hundred years later it's almost a hundred years later, I guess in the new book she's writing, she's retreated and she's writes everything on the internet. She does all of her life on the internet. And she tracks down Aurelia's great, great granddaughter and starts communicating with her. So I think that's in here. You can see how they start to blend together in my head. But in the second book, she actually goes in search of her. She decides she really wants to meet her. And she has a friend who is a vampire, Julius, who says, I don't think that's a really good idea, girlfriend, because you know, every time you try that shit, something bad happens. So she, you know, and it's at a time when there's some kind of wars going on in the South and a whole big political thing going on and kind of like today. So she goes to find Aurelia's great granddaughter and she behaves badly, she behaves badly. Let me just say that because the first time she resisted the temptation, but the second time she really can't and her great granddaughter looks just like her and sounds just like her, except that she's deaf. So she doesn't really sound just like her, but she's got the same attitudes of helping and social justice and all of that. And guilt is bad and somebody has to stop her. So that was kind of fun to write, you know. I did let her get a little sex before she goes too far over the end. So I try to show the struggles that she has. Trying to think of what are the other chapter? Oh, there's a chapter in Chicago in 1927, which was also fun to write because it's one of those situations where Gilda decides she's not gonna read people's minds. Mistake, because she decides it's kind of a little bit rude. So she kind of becomes friends with this guy who owns a nightclub and African-American guy who owns this nightclub and he's trying to survive but organized crime is trying to squash him. And she starts becoming friends with them because the woman who sings in their nightclub and she's, again, crush on this beautiful woman who's singing. And so she becomes friends with them and kind of starts hanging out with them and thinks that the woman she has a crush on is like girlfriends with the bar owner and she's wrong. Because he's boyfriends with the bartender and because she won't read anybody's mind, she doesn't know. And she doesn't find out until she has to save their lives from mobsters who try to kill them all. So it's kind of adventure, but also romance and her growth, it's a lot of growth, hopefully. Yeah, okay, well I will say that I feel really honored to bring you all to here. Thank you, Karen, for having me. I'm happy to celebrate the Hormel Center's 20th anniversary. It feels like such an accomplishment that we made it this far. Well, I want to mention the exhibition. We're having the 20th anniversary exhibition going on right now. Some of it's in here. This is about the very beginnings of the Hormel Center, but the biggest part where we show off a lot of our archives is downstairs on the lower level of the Jewett Gallery. And just so you know, when we opened in 1996, we were the very first LGNT Center to be created permanently in a municipal civic institution.