Black Girls Matter: A Deep Dive into Jayne Allen's Literary World

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Hello.

Testing.

One, two, three.

Testing, testing.

How's everyone doing tonight?

Oh, that's good energy.

We love that.

Very big Wednesday energy.

I'm Brianna.

I work with Mahogany Books as operations manager, but I'm shifting a bit into events coordinators.

So thank you guys for coming out tonight to this wonderful event.

As you know, part of Mahogany Books mission is Black Books Matter.

And if you're familiar with Jade Allen, you know that she has some amazing books that contribute to that mission.

How many of you guys have read Black Girls Must have It All?

Awesome.

Okay, that's the third one.

What about Black Girls Must Die Exhausted?

Yep, yep.

Great.

That's a good consensus.

It's a great trilogy.

But now we're excited to talk about Jane's newest book, and she's going to take it away and share even more about this amazing, wonderful book.

The first thing I want to do is go ahead and hand it off to our amazing library staff who helped us to put on this event today.

I'm going to hand it over.

Hello, everybody.

Glad to see you all.

We welcome you again.

How many people?

This is your first Mahogany Books event here at Oxon Hill.

How many people?

First time.

Wow.

A lot of first time.

That's good to note, Brianna.

Okay, so we thank you for finding out about this event and coming to the Oxon Hill branch of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System.

I am Malaney Townsend Diggs.

I am the south area director.

So I direct this branch Baden.

Nobody go to Baden.

Upper Marlboro Surratts.

Clinton is where my office is.

And who else?

And so I'm just glad to be here tonight and glad you are here.

And we have famous author here, Jane Allen.

And you know how to get your books right.

You know that you can find our books, her books, and anybody else's books at Mahogany has Right.

On our catalog, there are ebooks, audio books that you can checkout, and the physical book, if you're still into that.

But we welcome you and want you to take full advantage of what the Prince George's County Memorial Library System has to offer.

Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you.

Okay, now I'm going to go into Jane's bio so you can get a little bit more of the history of her if you're not already familiar, which I think most of.

So.

Jane Allen is a writer, producer and entrepreneur.

In the earliest years of her career as an alumna of Harvard Law School and Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, she worked as an entertainment attorney, including in service to the late artist Prince.

Purposeful in centering and celebrating black women's societal contributions, Allen's writing crafts transcultural stories to explore contemporary issues such as modern relationships, workplace and career dynamics and the complexities of race.

Her common themes include mental and physical health and highlight the importance of self love and self care, all with a healthy dose of warmth and humor.

Allen currently serves on the diversity committee of the Authors Guild Council.

A proud native of Detroit, she now lives in Los Angeles, California.

Let me present Ms.

Jane Allen.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you to Mahogany Books and to the Oxon Hill Public Library for hosting.

I am so excited to share this book with you all tonight.

And this is one of my first events in years that is solo.

I usually have had a conversation partner.

Now I get to just talk to my heart's content, which I can do happily because so much went into this book and I just have so much love for it in my heart and overflowing with things to share about it.

So we're gonna start with a video which I think will set the stage and the tone for what I have to share and what I have to talk about.

But I think you, there's certain things you just have to see to believe.

So we'll start here and then we will go from there.

Saint so I am working on a new book.

My latest novel is called the Most Wonderful Time.

I have an incredible character, Ramona Tucker from Chicago.

She winds up in Malibu and part of her experience in Malibu is going surfing.

And she's a first time surfer.

It's nothing she ever conceived of doing personally in her life and the same for me.

I'm also from the Midwest and from Michigan.

It's not too far from Chicago.

It's never anything I ever thought that I would do either.

And you have to go out and do it.

To be the author that I want to be, at least.

I needed to see what it was like for myself.

So I rode some waves, all in the name of making great art.

I think this is my first author coming to take a surfing lesson and one that's going to write about in, you know, for work as well.

So I'm feeling pretty special.

I grew up as a competitive surfer.

I started when I was 4 years old.

My father taught me how to surf, and he's from Greece, and I decided to represent his country on their national team for surfing, which I'm currently participating for.

And we're going to do an Olympic qualifier in February.

I love it.

It's just my passion in life.

So Dimitri is officially the best instructor in Malibu.

Oh, wow.

So says I.

I love that.

Thank you.

I mean, but you can see, like, I literally knew nothing.

I came here, knew nothing.

You saw me stand up.

You saw me, sir.

I mean, that's crazy.

So thank you.

To catch a wave, it felt like a rush.

You feel the rush and the power of the water behind you, and then all of a sudden there's a panic moment, like, oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I was surprised by how fast the wave is.

I mean, I think telling me it was like 25 miles an hour, about, like.

I mean, you're going fast, like, on the water, and you're.

You can feel the wind and, like, you know, you're moving.

So that was, like, the thing that surprised me most because I was not prepared for how fast it was going to be or how fast it was going to feel, you know, like you're on a craft that's, like, moving in the water.

You're in control, but you're not in control.

And that's.

That's the cool thing.

There's so much power in this water, and you know it.

Thank you.

So this.

I'll talk a little bit about the inspiration behind the book and then the journey that I went on in writing the book.

I.

The original idea started as a premise.

A lot of stories that I've seen that I loved.

I found that there was no representation of my point of view, of my culture, of myself.

I could enjoy the story, but not find myself in the story.

And I loved the book, the movie, the holiday, two women swap places.

I love the premise, and I do a lot as it pertains to sort of understanding how your position in society affects you as a person, which was Black Girls Must Die Exhausted.

And I think that was the first sort of Exploration and interrogation of how one's social positioning can affect the person, the human being, and bringing a humanity to things that have just been sort of blanket identity pieces.

Black womanhood that we just accept as sort of an identity, but without unpacking and thinking, wow, you know, what is this costing me?

What is this giving me?

What is this?

What am I owed?

What does this mean?

And so that was really the Black Girls trilogy of books.

And so the second part of the interrogation that I'm doing through my fiction is really trying to understand, again, what is this experience?

How does it differ from the way based on the ways that society classifies you, treats you, and views you?

And not just what are you owed, but what do you owe yourself?

And there's nothing like a shift in perspective to help you answer that question.

To be able to see what your life is like by stepping into somebody else's shoes and seeing what their life is like.

So that was the premise of this exploration.

The story is that there are two women, desperate women.

They're desperate for different reasons.

You have Ramona Tucker, who is in the south side.

She's from the south side of Chicago.

She's a professional in Chicago.

She is pretending to still be engaged.

She broke up with her fiance weeks prior to the moment that the story starts.

But she's still planning her wedding.

She's still shopping with her mom.

She's not telling anybody they're broken up, the invitations have gone out.

And before you think she's completely delusional, which maybe she is, she has hope that this person that she built a life with is gonna, you know, come back to his senses and come back into the life that they built.

Okay?

She has her reasons for believing that.

And so the only hiccup for her is that her mother throws this over the top Christmas Eve party that brings.

Her mother is a retired flight attendant and has amassed this treasure trove of cultural traditions from around the world and brings everything to bear every year on Christmas Eve.

And so the whole neighborhood comes and it's a thing.

It's a thing.

So if she's not going to show up with her fiance, then, you know, it's.

Everybody will know her secret.

So she devises this kind of scheme to get away and just for a week, and then that will buy her more time to continue this charade that she's living.

But this is desperation, and that's worth unpacking also.

Why is that so important to her?

And, you know, why is this an identity piece for her?

Why is this why is all of that.

So that is part of the exploration of this story.

And there is another woman desperate for different reasons.

We have Chelsea Flint in Malibu.

She's a white woman.

She is the daughter of Scottish immigrants.

Her family has.

Her parents came with inherited wealth.

They weren't particularly responsible.

They definitely lived it up and didn't really produce much to show for what they inherited.

And unfortunately passed away seven years prior to the moment the story started.

And Chelsea was an artist, an it girl.

You know, she had a really fast rise right after art school.

She was the it girl of Los Angeles contemporary art scene.

Kind of that woman that you all, like, look at and think, oh, wow, she's so cool and has it all together.

And she had this instant hit that this painting that did super well and started her career.

And then when her parents passed away, it was like the bottom fell out for her.

She just didn't really have a sense of definition.

Has been kind of stuck in a cycle of grief which has gotten.

Made her stagnated.

And so the inspiration, the freedom, all the things that made her her and made her art what it is, have now kind of over the past seven years, gone away.

And she's just stuck in the inherited house that she inherited, a beachside kind of bungalow cottage from her parents in Malibu.

And she's just holed up there with all of her memories.

And that's the only definition of herself that she had.

She doesn't, you know, she hasn't recaptured that spark that catapulted her to the top of the art scene.

So taxes are due and she's got to do something for quick money.

And it's her gallerist who's kind of stuck with her.

You'll meet Helena.

Helena as a character.

I loved writing Helena.

She's kind of this stodgy British woman who is no nonsense.

And she's like, you know, you're going to have to leave.

And this is.

And she's helped her financially.

So the kind of.

The deal was that the art was going to pay Helena back.

Helena's out of money and Chelsea's.

Helena basically forces Chelsea's hand and tells her, no, you're going to rent the house because I'm not paying these taxes for you.

So this just happens right on time for Ramona.

She winds up shipping up to out to Malibu.

And Chelsea heads to Chicago.

And her story kicks off.

So the.

A couple of things that are important to note as themes.

So Chelsea in Chicago, she winds up in basically a black family very quickly.

Ramona's mother finds out that there's this woman spending the holidays by herself.

So you can only imagine.

And you'll read about what happens with that.

You know, that's not flying.

And Ramona has.

One of the things that I had a lot of fun with was this idea of family and culturally, how we create family and what family is for in black culture, which is my culture, we have family that you're born with and family that you make, and there's no difference.

So your sister girl is your sister.

Your play brother is your brother.

Your play cousin, who you have no idea where they came from is your cousin.

There's no difference.

So that is very much a cultural thing that I think is so beautiful.

And I wanted to celebrate that.

So that's one of the things that I celebrated in this book.

I'm always trying to celebrate and identify aspects of black culture that I think we just sort of accept and take for granted, but don't really realize how beautiful that is.

It is very beautiful to be able to, as a people, have something sort of endemic to your culture that pushes you to accept others as family, even though they're not people that you're related to and they're not related by blood.

So that's just something that is a theme and that's celebrated within the book.

And when Ramona goes to Malibu, she begins to intersect with the character that is the setting of Malibu.

So the other characters that you'll meet are the actual settings of Chicago and Malibu.

And Malibu is.

There's a lot that I needed to learn and had to research.

So one of the things was going surfing.

And I'm going to tell you the significance of this just in a little bit.

But Malibu only has only 10,500 residents, and about maybe 400 of those people are.

And just like that announcement, Malibu kind of is like, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

That's very much how Malibu is.

So in California, Malibu is a very insular community.

And in California, what people don't really know, the beach is public property all the way up to the high tide line.

So even though you have, quote, unquote, private beaches, you'll have private landowners, very wealthy people who have homes on the coastline want to create a private nature to the beach that's behind their houses.

That's public property.

And so you'll find a lot of wealthy people will have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of litigation trying to prevent access to their beach because it's the intersection of property rights and public access rights.

And so there's all of this going on.

And basically it boils down to a fundamental concept of belonging.

And as it pertains to surfing, I just want to take a little bit of a poll, just quick poll.

How many people here know how to swim?

That's a pretty good.

That's a pretty good.

Wait, put your hands up again.

That's about.

That's a little over half.

It's a little over half.

That's not.

That's not reflective of.

Across most of black Americans, what percentage of people can serve, for example, the highest demographic of drowning deaths is young black males.

And you're only 10% likely to know how to swim if your parent doesn't know how to swim.

So the, statistically so the access to bodies of water has everything to do with some of that, not just not everything.

It has a lot to do with that.

And also certain things pertaining to hair and culture and views about water and swimming.

But in Malibu, this is one of the best surfing beaches on Earth.

It's one of the best surfing beaches on Earth.

Now, I've lived in California 20 years, never gone surfing until this was captured my first time ever.

And never questioned that I didn't or why I didn't.

I just hadn't.

But if you're going to be in Malibu, wouldn't you go surfing?

Right?

Most people would.

So I put a.

So I put a black woman there.

And then that becomes a little bit of a different analysis.

A black woman in Malibu.

And so it's a question about belonging and who belongs where, who has rights of access, who, who's rights will be protected vis a vis other people's rights.

So I'm going to give you a little bit of a spoiler, but not a complete spoiler for the book, but something happens to Ramona in Malibu when she first arrives that questions her sense of belonging deeply and fundamentally.

It affects how she experiences Malibu, it affects how she views herself in Malibu.

And it has everything to do with the character of Malibu itself and a lot to do with the character named Joan, who you'll meet in the book.

So I'm not going to spoil that, but it was something to explore and understand the character of Malibu and the nature of Malibu.

And so when I was researching this and starting asking these questions like why is it not obvious to go surfing?

Why is Malibu so insular?

What is going on?

Why is it not so common to expect to see brown black people at the beach in this way?

What's going on.

And I had to go back and research the history of access to the coastline, which as I found out, very closely mirrored and paralleled the civil rights movement post Jim Crow in the United States.

So California was never a slave state.

It was never a state of legally enforced segregation.

However, it was a state that had hosted slaves that enforced slavery and had what was called de facto segregation nonetheless.

And the southerners from Jim Crow south would come west to California or from Montana or, you know, with their slaves and they would set up and recreate the lives that they were living, where they came from.

So you had segregation in Southern California, you had slaves, people who were enslaved in California, they came over, they came as slaves and they were maintained that way.

So when it came to segregation, I think how many people have heard about Bruce's beach, the story of Bruce's Beach?

So this was, I live in la, so this was like big news.

I thought it was everywhere, but evidently not.

Bruce's beach was a black owned beach club in the 1920s.

And it was established by an entrepreneur who, Mrs.

Bruce, I can't think of her last name right now, but it was established by an entrepreneur who was trying to ensure that black people had access to the beaches.

It was in a place called Manhattan Beach.

Now I actually just went to a house in Manhattan beach not about a couple blocks from Bruce's beach location.

That house is worth about $18 million two blocks from the beach.

And that house is about a fourth of the size of the lot that the Bruce's had.

So what happened with Bruce's beach was that the white neighbors in the area did not like having the institution of this black beach club.

And they started slashing tires, setting fires, having police and dogs and all kinds of things, trying to prevent access to the beachgoers and ultimately the city.

They used eminent domain to reclaim the land, saying that they had urgent need for a park.

So they reclaimed the land from the Bruces and then there was no park built for 20 years.

There's a park there now, and they gave the Bruce's the land back recently.

So that's why it was in the news.

But the thing about Bruce's beach that I realized in my research is that this is only one of many stories.

There are five Bruce beach like stories along the coastline of language.

And there was in the beach towns, there was only one area where black people were welcome.

It's called the Inkwell.

How many people have been to the Santa Monica pier?

Do you know where the Inkwell is?

So the Ink Wall is like right where in front of where Shutters is at the end of Pico.

So right next to the pier, that was the Inkwell.

It was a very narrow strip of beach.

And that's where black people were welcome, where that's the only place they felt comfortable.

And as it pertained to surfing, that was the only place that blacks could really surf, was where they were welcome on the beach.

So this is so when we find ourselves thinking of things that we don't do.

And I won't get into the whole historical.

I researched all of this, but I won't get into the full depth of access to bodies of water.

But basically, the municipal bodies of water were segregated.

Desegregation came, and then the funding dried up for municipal pools, and people filled them with concrete and did all kinds of stuff.

And so for black people to have a knowledge of how to swim and to swim and to have that culturally integrated is still very rare.

And so putting my black female character in Malibu and putting her on a surfboard, I thought when I was writing the story, this is just part of the story.

This should be what happened.

And then when one of the characters kind of pushed back on, what is going on?

What are you doing, Malibu Barbie?

Why are you out here with Malibu Kin on this?

What are you doing?

I had to really interrogate that as an author and ask, why that reaction?

Why is it not natural to think of?

Or why is that not the first thing you would think of?

That I'm going to the beach, I'm going in the water, I'm going surfing.

And the things that come up are, I don't want to get my hair wet.

I don't want to.

I don't know how to swim, or the ocean is dangerous.

That's not for me.

We don't do that.

And without interrogating why.

So that was part of the whole research process and understanding where that came from and unpacking that.

And that's in the book.

So you'll be.

I want you to understand that I researched that.

And it's really important to me that when you read my work, that the parts that feel real are.

You can trust them.

Even though I made it all up, I didn't make it all up.

It comes from somewhere.

There's real world rules.

There are rules to the world we live in.

And it's about understanding what those structures are, how this works and how this came to be, as opposed to simply accepting it and not interrogating it.

So that's part of what I'M doing with the work that I'm doing.

I'm going to pause because I'm going to do a reading.

But I wanted to see if there are any questions right now because usually there's someone asking me questions and I want to make sure that I cover anything that people might be curious about.

Are there any questions now?

Okay, so I will cover that after I do some reading and I'll talk about the video.

So for people that got here a little bit, I know there's a lot of traffic.

We just showed a surfing video.

I'm going to give you a little bit of a little card where at the end of this where you can see it on the website.

So.

But long story short is that I took a surf lesson to be able to write about the character going surfing.

I'd never gone surfing in my life.

I never, I've been in LA 20 years, never thought I was going to go surfing, never planned to go surfing, never was going to go.

But I did go and it was a, it was a transformative, life transforming experience which I will talk about in a second.

But I'm going to read from this book.

I'll take, I'll leave this here so you can see it and I will read a little bit just from the very beginning.

So the little passage I'm gonna read, you're gonna meet Chelsea and you're gonna meet Malibu and you're gonna meet Ramona and a little bit of Chicago and you'll meet Latrice who is kind of the star of the book, but she's Ramona's best friend.

Latrice deserves her own book.

So when you read that, the next thing you'll think is when's Latrice getting her own book?

I don't know, but she deserves one.

So we start.

The story starts on December 10th.

And the way that the book is organized is not conventional chapters, it's by date.

So I just did something creative but it just seemed more natural and it's broken up in a little bit of a different way.

So December 10th, we're with Chelsea Flint.

An otherwise lovely morning in Malibu, California.

In Southern California, sunlight simply is from majestic daybreaks until orange sherbet sunsets wash the sky.

The sun is everywhere.

Its warmth kisses the tops of the swaying palm trees and lays a blanket across the sable colored beach sand.

Its light tickles the rippling surface of the ocean and makes it writhe in sparkling delight.

And in Malibu, a sleepy beach town just up the Pacific coast from the bustling metropolis of Hollywood land.

The sun makes a glorious daily procession to each of the 10,500 residents.

That's why they're there.

For the sun and the sea.

But where our story begins at this day break, the sun was having a very hard time finding its way to Chelsea Flint.

Flanked by modern coastal mansions, a modest beachside cottage sat stuck in time like a weathered shipwreck.

At its bedroom window, the sun's rays wiggled through thin gaps and closed shutters to create their soft strokes on a still sleeping Chelsea Flint's freckled face.

Outside, the Pacific roared gently with white capped waves lapping the sand at slow tide.

A lovely morning it was, but Chelsea remained blissfully unaware of the obvious from her ocean facing bedroom.

The developing splendor outdoors made a view so remarkable that it should never, absolutely never ever be covered.

But her shutters were shut as tightly as her eyes while she bundled cozily red hair extending like a fountain of lava into an avalanche of bedding.

Piles of comforter and pillows engulfing her slight bodied frame like a bath of meringue.

She was deep, deep in a forgetful slumber far away from the realities that would shortly come to call with the sudden shriek of her cell phone.

So that's the beginning of the story.

That's how you'll meet Chelsea.

And you'll meet Ramona.

Not Ramona, Helena.

And so I'm going to introduce you to a few pages later.

Ramona.

Ramona Tucker on an especially cold and particularly dreary morning in Chicago, Illinois.

Leaning against floor to ceiling windows in her office on the 29th floor, Ramona Tucker wrapped brightly manicured brown fingers around her Santa Claus coffee mug as she stood viewing the downtown winter skyline.

At Denton Lord and Orwell, Chicago's largest architecture firm, it was easy enough to look out over the city and find at least one of their projects.

But although Ramona was at work, that wasn't the focus of her thinking.

And although she was looking at the window, she wasn't looking through it.

Ramona was seeing her own reflection and thinking about escape.

In that reflection she saw a woman in her earliest 30s, conservatively dressed with a silhouette of a well defined twist out hairstyle, unnaturally textured hair.

She saw cheekbones and full plum tinted lips.

She saw the curves of her shape round up top and down below her waist.

Curves that she'd been trying to tame for what was supposed to be the biggest event of her life.

On her fourth finger of her left hand that studied the mug sat an engagement ring.

A tiny disco ball reflected the light of the room.

The wedding planning had gotten out of hand.

And it had gotten out of hand because, as things currently stood with her now ex fiance, there wasn't going to be a wedding.

No escape from here, she thought while simultaneously calculating the December wind's velocity along the length of the company high rise.

On the ground, the same wind would whip strongly enough to bring tears to her eyes.

This far up, it would send her all the way to Kansas.

And maybe Kansas wasn't so bad of an idea.

The glistening of her engagement ring caught her eye again as she brought her hand up for the zip of energy from the fragrant dark roast.

It was surely time to wake up.

The vapor from the mug flushed her face with warmth and she blinked away sentimental tears.

It was the cusp of the holidays and there was no such thing as a holiday with her family without Malik.

And there was no such thing as a holiday with Malik so long as they were broken up.

A sound at her door commanded Ramona's attention.

Startled, she drew in a quick, deep breath.

It was still the middle of the workday, and final review of the company's end of year financial reports was her responsibility.

Every comma figure and dollar sign needed to be perfectly placed before they went to the CFO for signature.

She looked up quickly and smoothed her skirt, hoping with these minor adjustments she could discreetly wipe away any sign of sadness or disorder before her visitor noticed.

Emotion was certainly not their office culture.

Hey, Mo.

Ramona's eyes traced the voice back to bright red lips underneath the wide, round fluff of hair.

Ramona's colleague Latrice stood positioned in the middle of the door frame with sparkling brown eyes and a disposition much sunnier than the day called for.

So that.

So you're meeting everybody at the beginning of the story.

And something that I thought about in writing this, I wanted you to really be able to feel where you were.

And I think about kind of how our lives are and what we watch, how we experience, how we're living, and I think we're all on adrenal overload.

So as I'm writing I'm always thinking about my reader and oftentimes my readers look like you and I think about not necessarily what we always know we want, but what I think we need.

And so this book is meant to be a vacation and an escape and a slowing down in a way that will keep you entertained but allow you to just chill.

Like sit on the sofa and go somewhere and really just get loved on and understand and to think about and to Take your time with.

So when you start reading, take your time with it.

You know, give yourself, let yourself enjoy it.

Let it unfold for you in your mind.

Let the pages fall away.

And until you find yourself in this space and forget that you're reading, that's what this is for.

And I think the other piece of it, this is a fun.

It's a holiday setting.

It's a rom com home swap.

There's a lot of spice.

There's two different book boyfriends to choose from.

A lot of stuff is happening with fingers and things and, you know, just a lot.

I did write that.

Yeah.

My dad hasn't read it, my mom has and we don't talk about it, so it's fine.

But, you know, it's fun.

But the foundation of this book, it's a book about healing.

It is really a book about healing and it is a book about.

I have this concept in the back of my head.

I'm sort of making this up, but just personal reparations.

Right.

Like we, you know, when you're owed something, in general, you know you're owed something.

But we don't often ask ourselves, what do we owe ourselves?

What do we owe ourselves to get out of every moment that we're living?

What do we owe ourselves to get out of the experiences that we're in?

What do we owe ourselves in the moment that something goes wrong, when there's still an opportunity to claim what can go right?

What do we owe?

What are we owed and how can.

How do we play a role in making sure that we get what we're owed on an everyday basis out of situations that we're in?

And that's really the question that I hope you come out of this book asking about the situations that you confront.

What am I owed and what do I owe myself?

And how do I claim my equal measure out of.

Out of this situation?

So fundamentally a book about healing, even though it's a fun vacation in a romp.

And I hope that you experience it in that way.

So I think, are we at the place of Q and A?

Okay.

Okay.

So it's time for our Q and A.

If you have a question, can I just get a little hand?

I'm going to pass the mic around so we can get Jane to answer and then we can get started.

Questions.

I think we had one earlier.

I have that question.

Hand you the mic.

I'm going to re.

Ask it.

I can rephrase it.

Hi, Jane.

Hello.

So I'm curious, how has your writing.

Process changed since Your debut novel to now.

So thank you for that question, because that was the one piece that I want to cover from the video.

So when I first wrote Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, it was a world that was very familiar to me.

The characters were familiar.

I was kind of.

And my theory about.

Right.

Authors.

This is not.

It's not based in anything other than just my thoughts that you start writing something very familiar to you.

You know, people.

Some people's first book will be a memoir, or it'll be like very close to a memoir, close to life.

And then, you know, if things go well, they start branching out further and further.

So for me, this book was that branching out.

So I wrote the Black Girls trilogy.

You know, there were things for me that I felt like.

Were challenges.

Like in the third book, has everybody read.

Who's read Black Girls must have it all.

Most people.

Okay.

There was an experience that Tabby is having that I haven't had.

And I.

And that I was proud of to write that because that was written through research and trying to understand on a human level what kind of experience that character and that person was having.

And to have done that in a way that I've had people who have had that same experience come to me and say, wow, you really nailed that.

That's really.

How did you do that?

And, wow, you didn't live that.

No, I hadn't.

But I set about understanding deeply enough that I could put it on the page in a meaningful way for that character.

So with this book, you know, I'm writing a character who's familiar to me and Ramona, the black woman from the south side of Chicago.

I'm from Detroit, and, you know, Ramona is very familiar to me.

And people ask me, do I write characters like my family?

And usually I do not.

But Ramona's mom is kind of like my mom.

Some people.

Some aunties here that know my mom, so you.

You'll know.

So that was familiar, but everything else was not.

So I had to write a white character, Chelsea Flynt.

And I'm not white, so I know.

Shocker.

At all.

So.

So I had to understand.

I had to try to find a way to understand what that experience for Chelsea is.

Obviously, all white people don't have the same experience, but there's a complete different way that, you know, you're treated in society different from me, different from what I know, different from.

It shapes your point of view, your perspective.

So many things about how you view the world is how the world views you and how you move through It.

So there are things specific to Chelsea that I set up to, you know, limit what I needed to understand.

But that was a huge challenge.

So stepping out, further into character, into settings.

Now, Malibu is close enough to la, but I had to research it.

Chicago is not la.

It's not Detroit.

I've never lived in Chicago.

So I went to Chicago for a week during the holidays and had to construct a life to be able to set up the framework that is reflected in this novel.

So all of those things had to be researched and architected and constructed through actual visceral experience.

And the one thing was when I put Ramona, another quick spoiler, but not really put her on a surfboard.

I had researched that extensively.

What would this be?

And I wrote it from research, and I thought, okay, this seems like it makes sense.

And something within me was like, nah, that ain't it.

Like, you got.

You have to go.

And I was like, but, you know, in service to the art, I did, you know, I pushed myself.

And I just remember it was like.

It was.

I don't know, it was like 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning.

I'm driving out to Malibu.

Like, this is crazy.

You about to kill yourself.

You know, I'm like, oh, you know, I just got there.

I was shaking.

I was like, this is the biggest mistake ever.

Either, you know, something good better come from this.

And I did pick Demetri, who was on.

You heard he's on the Greek Olympic team.

So I was like, at least he won't let me die.

He's gotta be a good swimmer.

So that was my safety net.

But suiting up and being on the sand, you know, all of that was fine.

And it was an interesting experience, but I didn't understand anything until I got out in the water.

And when you're surfing, you get out past the whitewash and the waves and there's this place called.

It's called the.

Oh, my gosh.

I just drew a blank.

The lineup.

It's called the lineup, and the lineup is the place beyond the waves before the wave breaks.

And the swells are coming and the water is moving rhythmically, you know, up and down, and you paddle out to the lineup and you sit on your board and you wait, and it's just you in the water and it's peaceful, and you're literally in the arms of the ocean and it's rocking you while you wait for your wave.

And in that moment, I knew that this wasn't just something we just don't do as black people I knew that I.

That there was something that kept us, had to have powerfully had to keep us from that.

And that was when I knew I needed to do more research.

And that was when I found the whole entire history of access to the, to the coastline and the rest of the stories.

Not just the Bruce's beach story, but the rest of the stories, the Black Ebony Surf Club story and the Dockweiler beach story.

And what was Shutters Hotel was originally supposed to be a consortium of black investors, a beach resort that was built, and then the municipality changed the zoning law so that you could not only do single family housing.

And then after the consortium, the black consortium ran out of money, they changed the zoning laws back and so now they're shuttered.

So there's the Pacific Beach Club, which was, if you could imagine, the Titanic on the sand.

It was a 10,000 plus square foot facility.

They had a black pageant for a black bathing beauty pageant or something on the beach.

And then a week later, the whole thing burned down.

There are countless stories like that.

And I went and examined that after I was out in the water and I just.

I knew this was ours too.

It was supposed to be ours too.

And so that was a question about, you know, what about belonging and what are you owed.

So to answer your question in a long winded way, I just have started to step out and branch out further in the less familiar realm.

I just sold two more books in a new series that's paranormal romance.

So we're breaking some of the rules of reality, but it's black shapeshifters.

I've created a whole new history paralleling the Creole people in Louisiana and its shapeshifters.

Werewolves are shapeshifters.

But I've taken it a step further where the, the werewolves and the vampires and, you know, creatures that come over, things that go bump in the night, that came over and from old world Europe actually melded with the Africans in the.

In the old world south here.

And the Africans brought magic and gave them the ability to control their powers and elevate what they were able to do.

So it's not just shifting at midnight into a werewolf form.

It's being able to control the forms that you change into and the timing.

So that series is again, paranormal romance.

A woman who doesn't know that she's the rightful ruler of the shapeshifters finds this out in the context of finding out that her love interest is trying to kill her, basically.

So it's going to be hot and steamy.

And also when should we look out for that one.

I'm seated already.

I know somebody was like, I'm pre ordering in my mind so that I think I'll probably have a first draft somewhere around next year, which means it's 2026.

So I sold first two books of the series, but I'm envisioning something that's longer running.

True Blood was one of my favorite shows ever.

So True Blood fans, we're about to bring some of that flavor.

True Blood with smoke flavor.

That sounds amazing.

I think we're all excited and ready to say it.

It's only like a year and a half.

It's okay.

We have time for one more question.

And.

Okay, I'll get two.

We'll do our last two.

Okay.

Hi, good evening.

Thank you for sharing your time with us tonight.

So your resume is quite impressive.

The schools that are listed there, the degrees.

What was the moment like, the light?

What was the lineup that made you say, not this anymore, but novelist?

What was not necessarily the logical thought process, but that moment that made you change?

It wasn't a moment that made me change.

It was just something that kept chasing me.

When I was in law school, I was supposed to be writing notes, and I was writing songs.

When I was.

We were supposed to write a thesis.

I went to Harvard for law school.

You're supposed to write a thesis to graduate from law school.

It's supposed to be a research paper.

I went to my thesis advisor.

I was like, I don't want to do that.

I want to write a novel.

And he was like, okay.

But that okay turned into okay, you know?

So that was the agreement.

I wound up.

I ran out of time in the novel, but I wound up writing a screenplay.

That was my thesis.

Very unconventional, but it was just a seed of something that I did not allow to die, regardless of the environments that I was in.

I took writing classes.

I just kept feeding that little bit of curiosity along the way.

And it was just recently where I coined myself an artist, when I understood what that meant, even to be one.

Okay.

I am an artist now.

And I did not know that was what was in the future for me.

But I didn't let go of the possibility that that could be what it was until I understood it.

So hopefully that.

You're welcome.

Awesome.

And our last question.

Good evening.

So my question is, what was the most challenging part of your writing process as well as what is the message or theme that you hope readers take away from your book?

I think the most challenging part of this process was interrogating for especially Ramona, what the experience owed her.

And I had a life experience when I was trying to figure that out.

I had to understand what it took from her, what she encountered, the setup.

But she.

Something happens when she comes to Malibu very early on that makes her question her belonging there and almost kind of steals the joy of her trip.

And when I was.

And it seems like maybe something we would brush off, you know, like, oh, this is just what happens.

This is.

You know, but it's not.

And that was.

That's the whole point of the.

Of the fiction I'm writing, is that we're not brushing anything off.

We're going to interrogate it.

We're going to understand it, because we're going to grow, you know, we're going to get more life out of this, this interrogation, this journey, you know, this story.

And so the hardest thing for me was getting past that surface of brushing it off and being that, you know, strong Black woman.

It's like, you know, I eat this for breakfast kind of thing, and letting that character be affected by what happened.

And it just happened so happened for me.

Something similar happened to me in life, in that moment when I was writing.

And I had to let myself be affected by it and feel my way through it and find my own healing from it, to be able to write it in the book.

So that was the hardest thing, was to let myself be affected and then find that pathway to healing, to even understand what that was, what that looked like, what that's supposed to be.

And so hopefully within the pages, you know, that's why I said, this is a story about healing.

So I hope nobody misses that.

And I hope that that is something that people reading can feel like they can trust, because I had to do it.

As a writer, you can't write past what you know and what you've lived.

No writer can do that.

You can't take a character in their development past where you've developed.

You can't.

And so for me, I guess the other answer to that is the man personal mandate to continue to grow and continue to push and continue to push past those boundaries, personally, for myself, to find new journeys of healing for myself so that I can put in books and ultimately give to my readers.

Let's hear another round for Jan.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you so much.

And thank you guys for sharing this amazing book event with us at Mahogany Books, where you guys always know Black books.

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