Go Rest, You're Worthy with Rhonda McKnight

[00:00:00] What's good, family? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams, the host of Black & Published Podcast, and the author of the novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree. This historical fiction novel is about the secrets kept between mothers and daughters over the course of seven generations, and is told backwards in time from 1995 to 1860. The Seven Daughters of Dupree was published January 27th, 2026, and is available everywhere books are sold.

[00:00:28] So if you can, please consider getting a copy of The Seven Daughters of Dupree today. This is the Mahogany Books Podcast Network. Bitter and Sweet is my favorite book. I don't care what I write, I will never love another book more. I said that over and over and over and over again. So when it came time for me to sit down and write another book, I was stuck with my words.

[00:00:54] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams, and this is Black & Published, bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights, and storytellers of all kinds. We have a return guest to the show today. Rhonda McKnight is back with her new novel, Writer in Residence. It's a book that forced her to face a writer's block of her own making. I remember once somebody was comparing a Shonda Rhimes show to another one of her shows.

[00:01:20] And I said, well, at the end of the day, it's still some of the best writing on television. Stop comparing Shonda to Shonda. Stop comparing Rhonda to Rhonda. Every book stands on its own. It breathes its own air. It takes up its own space in the world.

[00:01:38] Rhonda's new novel is set in the bookish world. Her main character, Alex, is a writer and allowed Rhonda the freedom to express her real thoughts about her profession and the publishing industry for the first time. How she says writing this novel healed her. Plus, how she's learned to be okay with keeping her romances closed door.

[00:02:00] And in setting the novel on the Gullah Island of Edisto and the South Carolina Lowcountry, how she was able to thread the needle between telling the truth and not dishonoring a people she greatly respects. That and more is next when Black and Published continues.

[00:02:32] So welcome back, Rhonda, for Writer in Residence. Where did this book come from? This book came from a lot of places. Number one, I'm one of those writers that sort of I have this this wall that I pin things against like ideas, things I want to write about. And I wanted to write sort of like a bookish book for the first time in my career. As I thought about like what was going to be the next book I was going to submit to my publisher.

[00:03:00] I started thinking about trends and I've never really done that. And I thought I looked around at a lot of the books that were on the bestsellers list and, you know, a lot of bookish books, books about librarians, books about bookshops. I was like, should I do something like that? And so I sat with that for a little while, came up with one idea that I really liked that even my publisher likes. But we decided that it wasn't the right time for that story for some reasons. So then I started thinking, well, what could I write that was sort of similar?

[00:03:29] I wanted to come up with another idea. And I thought, you know, I feel like I want to write a book about a writer. It's sort of bookish, but not quite. And so, but I really didn't have an idea. So in 2024, I was one of the featured authors at the Low Country Book Convention, which was a part of the Pat Conroy Literary Center. I've been very fortunate to be invited to be a part of different things with that center.

[00:03:54] And so the night before the conference was beginning, a group of us all went out to dinner. And there was a group of kids there who were connected to the Pat Conroy Center, their Day Low Program, which is diversity, awareness, youth literacy organization. So I'm sitting with these teenagers that are into reading, into writing. There's an author there who had just finished her writing residency with the Pat Conroy Center, which I did not know they had. And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, gone.

[00:04:23] I've always wanted to be some kind of writer in residence, you know, type of opportunity. And I said, I'm going to look that up and see what the requirements are and see if I can get that like next year or whatever. And so between the two, I thought writer in residency, how interesting would it be to write a book about an author that gets this dream opportunity? Something I would love. I feel like I would be excited to write about that. But I thought, what would her, it can't be just about her writing.

[00:04:52] You know, like you can't just write a book about somebody writing. So, because maybe that's going to be real boring. Yes. So I thought, what if her residency involved working with kids? Because the energy from these kids was just so beautiful. And I knew that I would be setting the book in the Lowcountry because that's what I've been doing. And then I remember driving back to my hotel that night and thinking, what island? Which island? And I remember this article that I had seen years ago in the medium.

[00:05:21] And it was about Edisto Island and how Edisto Island Beach in particular, this was Black land when the formerly enslaved Gullah Geechee people were basically run off the beach because white people wanted that property. And how there had originally been 90% of the people that lived on that land in the, I want to say the 1930s were Black.

[00:05:49] Now there were two people that still had property on Edisto Beach. And what a crime that was, because of course, the land was taken in shady land deals, just land theft, all the things that happened in the Lowcountry to take land from Black hands. And I thought, it's Edisto, it's time. I knew that I always wanted to set a story there so that that particular bit of history could come out.

[00:06:19] And I realized at that moment that Edisto would be the right place to do that. And so it came, the idea for the story came from a whole lot of different places, but largely it was sitting at that dinner. I'm eating, I'm talking, and my writer brain is churning and going, oh, there's a story at this table. I love that. I've always thought about the significance of the Sea Islands from specifically Gloria Naylor's Mama Day.

[00:06:47] And knowing that the way enslavement worked in the Sea Islands was kind of akin to the way that it worked in the Caribbean islands, which allowed the Black enslaved class to really keep a lot of their language, their roots, their customs, their ways, which we see in the novel. But also just in how they live and they work the craft that they make, the things that they do, the way that they eat and the way that they grow things and all those different things.

[00:07:16] In setting your novel there with the character Alex who comes back and forth from the mainland onto the island and is doing this residency, we find her at like a low point in her career. She don't have no deal. She barely got an agent. She don't have no ideas. She doesn't have no idea because her and her mama are kind of beefing and she's just like, whatever.

[00:07:38] And then this man that she knows in passing as a writer is now all of a sudden a big, bold font name author. And they run into each other again. And this begins her course to trying to find not only herself, but her voice and then also unlocking keys of the past. What is it about all of those different threads that interested you and bringing them together in this very historic place? Hmm.

[00:08:05] I guess I should have started with really what the book is about. You know, the question, what if you took an ancestry DNA test expecting to learn more about your family and instead discovered a secret that changed everything that you believed about yourself and your family? Hmm. Was one of the questions that I asked myself during the writing of this book, because that actually wasn't originally one of the threads.

[00:08:34] It was a thread that came in later. And that's what happens to my character, Alex. She is a writer. She's a novelist who has writer's block. And she lucks up on this opportunity as a result of this man that you've mentioned to get this residency with this literacy center in Edisto Island. But she's a writer who's lost her voice.

[00:08:56] And what begins as a search for her voice becomes like this journey to family, heritage, community and love. And so I think that in answering your question, the books that I've been writing that have been set in the South Carolina Lowcountry have been about black heritage. They have been about community. They have been about pivoting and a woman trying to figure out her next step.

[00:09:25] And there have been strong romances. So there are stories about love and not just romantic love, but love of family, love of culture, love of food, love of comfort. And this particular book, I think the difference is, I felt like all of those elements that you mentioned were tied up in my desire to write a book about a woman who really needed to sit with what her identity was, but also sit with it while resting.

[00:09:54] It's a story about a woman who needed to rest. And to figure out she was good enough exactly as she was. I feel like that is the need of so many black women right now. We need to rest and we need to remember or be reminded that we are good enough in whatever it is that we do right now.

[00:10:23] But then you put all of that on a writer in an industry that we both know doesn't really allow rest, especially once you're in the door or your books are in the pipeline or out. And Alex is more than a dozen books deep. It's not an industry that allows you to rest. And it is often an industry that will tell you in more ways than one that you aren't good enough as you are.

[00:10:53] I was reading the book and I was like, I feel like Rhonda's talking to me about certain things that I'm going through. I was like, is this auto fiction that we're getting a little bit like are these all of the, you know, the projections that you have as an author that you're giving this character in context of this much larger story. It was cathartic for me to read a little bit. It was also a little scary, but you know, how was it for you?

[00:11:19] You know, it's, you know, what's so interesting is a lot of writers, their first book will have a lot of themselves in it. And people are honest about that. That was never my experience. I did not do that with my first. I didn't do that until this book. And the interesting thing is I did not even see what I was doing until I started reading my copy edits. And when I read that book, when I went through the copy editing process, I realized, oh, my goodness, I have written a book about myself.

[00:11:49] There's so much of me in this book, so much of me and my thoughts, so much of what I have experienced as a published author, so much of what I hear from my peers. Like I've just shown up and decided I was just going to write a book like almost a tell off, you know, without some of the, without some of the other stuff that we don't talk about. Right. Right.

[00:12:11] But let me tell you how another piece of the inspiration, things that inspired me to write this book, but then there was a whole subconscious thing going on. And let me tell you about that. So in 2024, my novel, Bitter and Sweet, came out. I love Bitter and Sweet. You endorsed it so beautifully. Oh, my gosh. My pleasure. Every so often I read that endorsement and just like sit with your beautiful words about my book. And it just, it does my heart so good.

[00:12:39] And so Bitter and Sweet was a very personal novel for me. It was inspired by the Black maternal health crisis, which is my family has a personal story in that space. And so it was a sort of a love letter to my maternal grandmother, who my mother didn't even know, you know, because of loss. We lost her in after childbirth. And so there were real personal elements in that book.

[00:13:07] I felt like I had next leveled my writing in that book. So when I read that book, I see I was a stronger writer in that story. And I just, I love Bitter and Sweet. And what I did was I told people, and I still do this. Bitter and Sweet is my favorite book. I don't care what I write. I will never love another book more. I said that over and over and over and over again. So when it came time for me to sit down and write another book, I was stuck with my words.

[00:13:36] I had talked myself out of believing that I could write a story as well as that story. And so I, for the first time in my life, had a creative block. Now, let me tell you, Alex, and you know this, and we're not going to spoil it, but Alex has a particular way that she thinks about writer's block or that she had thought about writer's block. Baby, if them wasn't my words. And if I wasn't eating them off of a menu, just like Alex was.

[00:14:04] Like I ordered them up. I said, bring me some writer's block with some sweet tea. Okay. And so I'm a person who believes in what you say. Words have a lot of power. And so I did not even realize that with my own words that I was hemming myself up, that I was blocking my flow. Because when I sat down to write another story before this book, I could not get there. I did not trust my voice. I was just like, this is not good.

[00:14:34] I was talking to my little writer's crew, you know, because we have our little group chats. And I was like, I'm failing. This is not coming together. And they were like, girl, you always are like this before. I know it's different this time. This is next level me. And my peeps didn't believe me because I'm always that writer just going, I don't know. This is not coming together. You know, I'm like, no, y'all, I'm different this time. So it was really inspired. I think when I came up with this idea that I thought, oh, this is cute. This is a good idea.

[00:15:02] What I did not know that I was settling into a healing session. That I was sitting down with that laptop and that I was going to get completely healed from not only my words, but from just sort of my fear, the fears that I created that I've always had. Really, every time a book comes out, I'm afraid, you know.

[00:15:30] Oh, this is the one that's going, this is the failure. This is the one everybody's going to hate. This is finally it. This is the book that's going to take me. Right? I have that with every book. All 29 of them, I've had that. But I needed to realize that I am, I'm not going to compare. I had to stop comparing myself to myself. Every book is its own individual book. And I need to let every book sort of stand on its own.

[00:15:58] Sure, if people love The Thing About Home, and I know readers are going to do this, but I had to stop myself from internalizing the way that other people perceive my work. Like readers may say, oh, The Thing About Home, I love, that's my favorite. And so then they're comparing maybe Bitter and Sweet and Writer in Residence. And you see people making comparisons literally on social media posts and in reviews. Oh, it's just it moved me as much as this one. But my books, my stories stand on their own. They shouldn't be compared to each other.

[00:16:28] You know, there's a thing that I've said, sometimes I have to, Nikesha, I have to remember the things that I say. I remember once somebody was comparing a Shonda Rhimes show to another one of her shows. And I said, well, at the end of the day, it's still some of the best writing on television. Stop comparing Shonda to Shonda. Stop comparing Rhonda to Rhonda. Every book stands on its own. It breathes its own air. It takes up its own space in the world.

[00:16:57] And sitting and writing this book and not even being aware of how I was being healed on the inside, just releasing some of the things that I thought, some of the ways that I desired the words that Miss Kate to be true for me, who's a character we'll get into. How healing that was. And that I wrote this book slower than I normally do because I took those moments of rest. Like you said, publishing does, you, where's your next book?

[00:17:27] You supposed to be, we don't care. You supposed to be able to have a book release every year in the same cycle, especially for a mid-list author like me. Every year, there are authors who are writing two and three books a year to satisfy that demand. I'm talking people in traditional contracts. And so you're right. This is not an industry that allows rest at all. Probably because it's female dominated. Okay. And women ain't supposed to have no rest.

[00:17:55] But I was able to take rest. I had a, because the last book was 2024. This is 2026. It took me a while to write it and to get it out because I just let myself breathe. I want to talk about the historical pieces of the story. And you mentioned earlier that, you know, there's a DNA test that happens in a secret. The main character, Alex, doesn't really know much about her father. She doesn't really know much about her mama, to be truthful.

[00:18:25] Okay. To be a hundred about it. She don't know nothing about none of them people. She don't know nothing about none of them people. But she connects with a relative through the DNA test. And that begins the unraveling of secrets that Anne heard during this residency and going out to a distal island because she becomes very fond of one of the students that she's teaching as part of her residency.

[00:18:49] And it's the people on the island who can look her dead in her face and know who her people are and all her history that she has no idea about. And so as much as this book is about Alex taking rest and realizing that she's worthy, it's also about dealing with familial secrets and shame and really bringing that all up to the light.

[00:19:14] What was it about, to use your own words, but in a different context, the call coming from inside the house that you wanted to explore with Alex and her family and this land? You know, that was kind of a risky thing I felt like for me to do. Hmm. Because I want to always honor the Gullah Geechee people.

[00:19:38] The reason that I write about them, aside from the fact that I know there's some DNA history with my family that connects me to Georgetown, which would connect me to that area. I'm still trying to make those connections. Ancestry is busy. That's a lot of work. But there are stories that I'm hearing. There are words that my family uses. There are practices that I've learned that my grandfather was doing. I'm like, all of this is low country stuff. This is Gullah stuff.

[00:20:07] But I don't claim that heritage. I'm working on that. I'm figuring that out. But aside from that, that was never the reason that I chose to write about the Gullah. I chose to incorporate the Gullah in my stories because they have been invisible. There are a lot of women who write low country stories that are big bestsellers, New York Times bestsellers. And of course, I haven't read all those books.

[00:20:34] But the few books that I have read, I always felt like the Gullah people in those books were accessories on the side of the road. Like those straw baskets they sell, you know, in the marketplace and on the side of the road. And that was how their characters were utilized in the books. And I wanted them to take up space. I wanted their history and their culture to show up in a book fully for them to fully be realized.

[00:21:03] That's been important to me in the last two books and certainly in this book. So when I decided that the call was going to come from inside the house, I was like, does that dishonor? And then I realized the truth is always honorable. And sometimes the call comes from inside the house. The call has come from inside the house in my own family. Okay.

[00:21:29] Land in the South is like, maybe it's like blood. Land culture here is just people will do anything to get a piece of territory. People want the acreage. And people, sometimes our own people in our own community, they can undo the community. That is a truth. And it just became the story that I felt compelled to tell without giving it away.

[00:21:57] You have to read the book to find out what I'm talking about. But I love developing it. I felt there was an accuracy to it. How many times do we see people, and I'm not just certainly just not talking about in the Black community, but how many times do we see people take opportunities and decide, I'm going to look out for myself regardless of my community and the collective? We see it with music artists that left groups and went off on their own.

[00:22:26] It's in every area. Politicians that the community raises up so that then they go and do their own thing. Everybody's trying to make their own dollar. And I think it's the rare person that stays and stands and fights for the collective. And so one of the things I want to say that as Black women, as Black people, we have to fight so hard to hold on to our identity.

[00:22:54] We have always had to fight to hold on to our identity because enslavement completely tried to strip it away and steal it and make us nothing, not even a whole person. And then, you know, if I think about contemporary times right now, we still have, even in the community, all these weird Black men making strange podcasts about Black women. All of these thoughts running around on social media, all of these think pieces about who we are and who we aren't.

[00:23:24] And we are struggling, a lot of younger people, I have a lot of young readers are struggling with their identity, with knowing that they're good enough, knowing that just the way they are is good enough. Because once you feel that you're whole and you're complete and you're good enough as you are, as God made you, then you can begin to rise into other things, accomplish other goals.

[00:23:49] But, you know, like I had a reader, and I'm not going to say what complexion they might have been, who wrote a review that said, I don't understand why he loved her. And I said, you know, this is what I'm talking about. What I wanted was, Alex was enough.

[00:24:11] I'm going to tell you, one of the reasons that I was inspired to make him such a big author, and he's big, like he's on the shortlist for the Pulitzer, okay? And so here we have this writer who writes romance, and romance is one of them genres already that's like, people always try to diminish it and make it nothing, even though it carries the industry. Right, like it keeps the lights on. It keeps all the lights on with every publisher, right? But she's feeling some kind of way, because not only does she write romance, she's failing to even write romance.

[00:24:41] And so here you come along, Mr. Selling 500 books at a time in a line and Pulitzer shortlist, and you've written this amazing book. And so she's feeling like she doesn't measure up, right? And then her best friend, who's also a writer, has a slightly more successful career than her.

[00:25:00] And there were reasons I chose these two people to be the anchors in her story, and that's because in writing for authors, we struggle, I think most of us struggle with looking outward and seeing what the competition is doing. The industry sort of, it makes you do that. This one got a bigger book deal. This one got a movie deal. Oh, she made the bestseller list. And you're sitting there with your stories, and it's not really a jealousy or an envy.

[00:25:30] It's just that you poured your heart out into your books, too. And you're like, when's my moment going to come? It's easy to do that. I know it's easy to do that in any career arena. But when it comes to fiction, writing, you feel it a little bit more because it's like we've all created these beautiful stories. And it's like, when's my moment going to happen?

[00:25:53] And so when you see people, and I'm going to be honest, when you see people whose stars are rising and you don't want to watch it, you can easily click unfollow. I'm going to unfollow her for a minute, baby, because I can't even watch all this play out. I can't watch it play out. But when you're dealing with that with people that you love and who are bound to you, you can't unfollow.

[00:26:15] And I wanted Alex to sit with that and have to process her emotions around other people's success. I needed her to dig deep because I think it forced her eventually to listen to the voice. She thought she had no voice. She thought her voice had died off that she couldn't write anymore. No, it was just quieted by all the noise she allowed in.

[00:26:41] And so she had to sit with that because she was attracted to this man. And she loved her girl. Ain't no one following. I'm going to have to deal. And so when I think about what that woman said, when she said, why? And I didn't know why he loved her. He loved the essence of her.

[00:27:03] Listen, I want any woman who's struggling with not feeling good enough to realize that when you show up, all you got to bring is yourself. Baby, bring yourself, bring your beauty, bring your essence, bring a good conversation and some good manners. OK, that's all you got to bring to the table. You don't have to bring anything else. You don't have to be superhero. You do not have to be super black woman. You do not have to have Ph.D. and all the things behind your name. You just have to show up as you.

[00:27:33] And that's good enough. She was good enough for him. That's why he loved her. That's why he was attracted to her. I think now is a good time to introduce the audience to Alex. Can you read something from Writer in Residence? And then I want to touch something, a couple of things that you just said. OK. Writer in Residence by Rhonda McKnight is about Alex Chambers, a romance author and a writing rut. She has no ideas, no book deals and a looming deadline to get something on the page.

[00:28:01] When she wins an opportunity to take a residency at a literacy center teaching writing to high school kids, the opportunity is the beginning of a creative evolution and a personal reckoning as she comes face to face with families from her mother's past who can't forgive or forget what her father did, even though Alex never knew him. Here's Rhonda. I think I'm going to start us at the beginning so you can just meet her at the onset. We're at chapter one.

[00:28:29] Nothing could have prepared me for what I was experiencing because failing as a writer didn't happen all at once. It came in quiet steps, a missed deadline here, a half-written paragraph there, bad story ideas everywhere, until the silence between words was permanent. One morning I woke up and I realized I stopped trusting my own voice, and I wasn't the only one who didn't believe in me.

[00:28:57] I stared at the subject line of an email that had turned my life upside down. Regarding your option book, I clicked open for what had to be the 20th time and re-read it again, and though I could probably quote every single word. Hi, Alexandra. I'm so sorry, but the team has decided to pass on your proposed ideas.

[00:29:22] Though interesting, they're not consistent with the direction the line is going in. We'd love to see something fresher, more relevant to today's market. Please submit a detailed outline and the first hundred pages for consideration. Warmly, Sally Grant, Senior Editor. Detailed outline? First hundred pages? If I hadn't already crashed out about this yesterday, I'd be losing it right now.

[00:29:51] I haven't been asked for a sample chapter since I was a new author, since before the accolades and bestseller lists, before Sally, the one who was taking the line in a different direction. I wanted to blame her. After all, she was my spokesperson on the team. If she didn't fight for my stories, there was no one to do it. But I couldn't realistically put this on Sally. Publishing was a business. Sally had bosses, too.

[00:30:20] The first published author I ever met told me not to throw my life away writing. I'd attended his book signing with hopes of being inspired. I was a freshman in college. Discovering that an author was speaking at a local bookstore seemed like a gift. I had questions. When I asked what I should do to have a writing career like his, he replied, you're a sweet kid. Find something else to do. He didn't stop there. He proceeded to say other uninspiring things like,

[00:30:50] this is a tough road to hoe. It's not all it's cracked up to be. It's feast or famine. More famine than feast, darling. His cagey, bitter smoker's voice put his message to music. And any writer talking in that many cliches was not to be taken seriously. And I hated his book. But my 18-year-old self listened. I changed my major from creative writing to education. And taught for eight soul-sucking yet rewarding years.

[00:31:18] If those two things could coexist. I wondered if I'd have to go back to it. Back to a life without characters and stories. Sure, I could do both. Most writers worked a full-time job. But I hadn't had to. I sold enough books to pay my bills. But now, as I sat in front of my laptop, staring at a blank document, the author's warning picked at the edges of my brain,

[00:31:46] bringing startling clarity and humbling remorse. Like his words, my career had become a cliche. And I couldn't make my muse work. I was out of words. Thank you. What I love about this story and all of your books that I've read, starting with The Thing About Home and Bitter and Sleep, and now Writer in Residence, is that we find our heroine at a very low point.

[00:32:14] And then the build from there begins a climb. And as much as she's climbing to regain something that she feels like she's lost, whether it's a love or connection to family or a career, as we have in this one, it's also a journey deeper into self and to reclaim what they didn't even know that they were missing. You said earlier about the South that there's like a blood claim with the land.

[00:32:42] And lately in literature, Black literature especially, I think about like, your book is in conversation with Tara Shelton Harris' Long After We're Gone, and Dolan Perkin Valdez' Happy Land, and Shannon Sanders, whose book came out earlier this year, The Great Wherever, about these strong claims to land. And even with what I did in The Seven Daughters of Dupree, my main character says, you know, it's something about being here on this land, like she feels a call to go back home that she never thought that she would experience.

[00:33:12] And in having that deep call coming from such a place that is grounded in Black history, like Edisto Island, what is it about land that you think is healing to people who are wandering? I think that we are always connected to our ancestors by blood. And the land that many of us have, that we come from, the land that our ancestors tilled,

[00:33:40] it's always soaked in blood, more perspiration than ever should have had to fall off of their bodies. And all of that, there is a soul, a blood tie to the land because we're buried in soil. We work in soil, they toil in soil, and then they're buried right there on that land and on that same soil. And I believe that it is a soul connection that as much as some people want to get away from,

[00:34:10] that literally our cells, our blood, our DNA calls us back to the beginning, back to where the souls and the bodies toil, back to where they lay, where they rest. I feel like they're always calling us. It's physiological. It's spiritual. It's all the things. We love deeply and we're connected to them

[00:34:38] and we want to right wrongs. We identify with the soil. When I think about land, I think about nature. We as Black people, our ties to nature goes back across the water. We have always been a people who have been connected to nature, the land. There's a piece of this book where we have an older Gullah woman named Miss Kate who becomes the voice in Alex's head.

[00:35:07] She is like the conduit that offers in this healing through her cooking, the Gullah dishes, the soul food, the food that fills Alex, the moments that she has in this woman's house where she soaks into her sofa and just observes everything around her, the books that she collects, the sweet grass that she weaves while they're in conversation. Even outside of this woman's house, she has a large garden and she has these birdhouses

[00:35:34] and she explains the connection to the Gullah, how the Gullah have a connection to birds, that birds bring messages. And this is who we were on the other side of the ocean. And it's still who we are because loving nature and being connected to the land and being connected to nature is a gift that God gave to Black people. And so even if we think I'm an inside girl and I don't do bugs and I don't do the outside or whatever,

[00:36:03] baby, you always going to be connected to that. And it's a beautiful thing because nature is beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I think that we're pulled back to the land because being a part of the natural world is who we are as a people. We can't get away from that. You can play away from it, but you're not going to get away from it. One of the other things that I love about your book is that there's always a love story at the center. And so no matter what else is going on, I'm also going to be here for the couple

[00:36:31] rooting that they get together and do something strange. Even if we don't see it on the page, I'm like, it's cute. It's cozy. It's all right. But so yeah, do you think that it makes the ancestors smile to see couples in love? Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Because they were in love, right? You know, when I think about who we are as a people right now in 2026, you know, you see a lot of people, if you're a person who spends any time on social media,

[00:37:01] you see the unseriousness of black folks when they get to laughing and keek-keeing about whatever topic they're going to go down the pipeline on, right? Where do you think we got that from? That's our people. That's what we do. And so we know how to, the reason we know how to laugh and have a good time, the reason we know how to get together and have a family reunion and have all the food and all the things and play the spades and laugh and run and enjoy watching our children run around together and all the cousins is because we've always done that. And even when we are enslaved,

[00:37:30] we knew how to have celebrations and weddings and gather whatever food we could get to celebrate and bless our souls with. Yeah, they love it because we got that from them. They're glad that we're still doing it. And they're glad that we can do it now more freely, right? Unencumbered. You know, we've got that saying, I'm my ancestor's dream. We are our ancestor's dream. Like they dream from freedom. And even though we're dealing with some weird stuff going on,

[00:38:00] politics, all the racism, all this stuff, we're still a free people. And we get to do things. We get to own things. We get to enjoy things. We get to legally get married. You know what I mean? Like they love our freedom for us. So yeah, they smiling, child. They smiling. What did this book heal in you as the author? This book healed the belief in me that no matter what I wrote, it wasn't good enough.

[00:38:28] The fact that even what you mentioned a few minutes ago, the couple, if you be rooting for them and hoping they're doing some things off the page, baby, you can't get nothing but off the page with me. And that sometimes feels like it's not enough, especially when you're talking about romance. But this is what I write. This is how I write. I struggle with writing a kiss. And let me tell you, it's a real hot kiss in this book. It's real hot. But it wasn't there. I just wrote, they kissed. And she went in the house. Might have said, ma'am, absolutely not. I know you struggle with writing these kisses.

[00:38:58] But we have not gone 179 pages for this. You're going to have to come. So I came back and I said, Lord, it's almost too much for the publisher. And so it's a pretty steamy kiss. But a lot of romances are open door. And so there's sort of this romance that's not open door. Books like mine are such a small little niche part of the market. And I think when you're in a small little niche part of the romance genre,

[00:39:27] it makes you feel small. Because always your sales are always less. It's always going to get less attention. Even people who enjoy my books will tell me they enjoy my books. But when they make recommendations, they recommend some spicier books. So it's like, even though you loved it and you wrote a beautiful review, when it comes time for you to make a rec, oh, read this, you know, because it's got that heat. And so I used to feel that. I don't care about that anymore.

[00:39:54] This book taught me that my stories stand on their own, that they have a purpose, that they have value just as they are, no matter what, even if it is a smaller niche. And what I learned this summer validated what I was feeling. I had an opportunity through my publisher to go to Black Lit Weekend, which is a weekend where Black bookstores all come together. And they learn things from each other, talk about industry trends, learn about technology.

[00:40:22] And a few authors are able to come to the event as well. And I was one of the invited authors because my publisher sponsored me to be there. And I got to talk to some bookstores about what they think about my books and what they do, how they promote a book like mine. And I was so pleased to hear them say, I sell so many of your books because what I always have people that come in that will say, I'm looking for something warm or something cozy,

[00:40:50] or I need a palate cleanser. And they say, you're the only book we have that we recommend for the reader who is looking for that. You are the one who writes that. So while I feel like I'm in this small little niche, I'm not. I'm the only. I'm the specialty item. And when you think of it that way, they'd be fine. Y'all just keep. And I actually ended up sending letters to those bookstores with some bookmarks,

[00:41:18] reminding them of our meeting, thanking them and reminded them, make sure to remember to recommend me as your readers cozy read, their palate cleanser. You know, that's exactly what it is. And fuzzy and cozy. It's a tender book. It's like, it's a lifetime movie. It's whatever you want to say it is. It just gives you the good feelings. Yeah. And you're like, yes, I like being here in this world with these people and watching them fall in love and have their steamy kiss. Like, and we know other things are happening.

[00:41:48] We have imaginations as adults. You know what's going on. We do. We do. We do. We do. And people are looking for that too. And so I learned, I was healed in writing this book and understanding that as Alex had to understand that her voice was her voice and that she had the courage to write what she wanted to write. I have always had courage to write. I've had 29 books of courage to write what I wanted to write. And that is good enough. That is good enough.

[00:42:17] Is there a book 30? Because I feel like 30 is a nice whole round. 30 is a nice whole round number. There will be a 30th book. Okay. What it'll be, I cannot say. I will say that I will be revisiting the low country because I'm not done with that. There are too many stories, too many beautiful islands that I have not,

[00:42:44] you know, even began to scratch the surface on stories that I can tell that are set in South Carolina. And then even off the coast, you know, we have so much history here in South Carolina and I love sharing it. So there will be a 30. God give me strength. There will be a 30. Big thank you to Rhonda McKnight for being here today on Black & Published. You can follow Rhonda on Instagram and threads at authorrhondamcknight. And make sure you check out Writer in Residence.

[00:43:13] It's out now from Thomas Nelson. You can get a copy of the novel from Mahogany Books and get 10% off your first purchase using code BLACKPUB at checkout. That's B-L-K-P-U-B. That's our show for the week. If you like this episode and want more Black & Published, head to our Instagram or YouTube page. It's at blackandpublished and that's B-L-K-andpublished.

[00:43:41] There, you can watch a bonus clip from my interview with Rhonda about what she wants readers to take away from her novel. Make sure you check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. I'll holler at y'all next week when our guests will be Cheryl Lister, author of All My Sisters and Me. You're so angry because you don't feel like, you know, you had never been treated as if you mattered, that you were not enough. You will feel threatened when you finally find a place when somebody sees you.

[00:44:09] You feel seen in this Bradley family and she's finally feeling that security. And if somebody else comes in the room, you're thinking, oh my God, there's not going to be enough love for me. That's next week on Black & Published. I'll talk to you then. Peace.

[00:44:56] And always remember, Black Books Matter.