Speaker 1: You have to understand that the majority of the time
Speaker 1: that Black Americans is spent in this country, it's been
Speaker 1: spent on the side of being an other and it
Speaker 1: still is today, and it's important for someone to understand
Speaker 1: what the other feels like so that they can have
Speaker 1: compassion for someone else. You can get into the complexities
Speaker 1: of the stories and the complexity of the individual characters
Speaker 1: and everything they're going through. Ultimately, it's like, listen, this
Speaker 1: is what it feels like. And if you look at
Speaker 1: that book and you go it makes me uncomfortable. Understand
Speaker 1: that that discomfort is what other people are feeling when
Speaker 1: you aren't recognizing them in their context of what's really
Speaker 1: going on in the country.
Speaker 2: Hey va, fam, I am honestly what an amazing idea.
Speaker 2: I had to create a podcast where I can just
Speaker 2: get incredible people to talk to me and people whose
Speaker 2: work I have gotten to enjoy. And this is the
Speaker 2: first time I feel like I don't think I've had
Speaker 2: an author of a fiction novel. We do lots of
Speaker 2: author interviews at Brown Ambition BA fan, you know, we
Speaker 2: do because we love our career in our finance books.
Speaker 2: But I am such a fiction fan. I mean, my
Speaker 2: guilty secret as a personal finance and negotiation expert is
Speaker 2: that the majority of what I read has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with business and finance. It is escapism, It is
Speaker 2: science fiction, it is fantasy, little romance. I love books.
Speaker 2: They are so especially at a time like this, crucial,
Speaker 2: as like an escape route from reality. Sometimes and then
Speaker 2: there are books like sky Full of Elephants by today's
Speaker 2: guest ce Bo Campbell, not Williams. Even though I will
Speaker 2: never live down the mistake I made when I don't
Speaker 2: know why I want you to be Williams so bad,
Speaker 2: we'll just leave that alone. I have the author of
Speaker 2: the novel sky Full of Elephants with us today, be
Speaker 2: a fan, and I couldn't be more grateful. This is
Speaker 2: just such a treat and such a joy for me
Speaker 2: to be here. And he's in New York at Simon
Speaker 2: and Schuster. On the seventh we talked about the seventeenth
Speaker 2: floor on the celebrity floor. Now as someone who has
Speaker 2: always loved books, and like also we'll talk about your
Speaker 2: career path. You know you you work full time, you
Speaker 2: have your own business. I'm just geeked for you, like
Speaker 2: I am excited for you as a person who has
Speaker 2: written this book who has which has become such a
Speaker 2: massive success, and everybody black is talking about this book.
Speaker 2: Everybody black. It's like sky full of elephants cinners. That's
Speaker 2: my thread speed.
Speaker 1: That's it, that's the that's what I want, that's what
Speaker 1: I want. I want. It was for black people, so
Speaker 1: it was it was important to me, indeed, And when
Speaker 1: we did the initial marketing, I was like, I know,
Speaker 1: you want to like try to get it in your times.
Speaker 1: You want to try to get it in you know,
Speaker 1: Alley Town's a possim Clobelet's find the black bookstrogrammers. Let's
Speaker 1: go talk to them first. Let's give them arcs, Let's
Speaker 1: give them space. And I put it out. I was like,
Speaker 1: anyone that's trying to do a book club, there's four
Speaker 1: people in that book club. There's twenty people in that
Speaker 1: book club. I'm coming. Or you got to do is
Speaker 1: say the word and I'll be there. And I did.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was, I don't even know. I did
Speaker 1: like a hundred book clubs. I've done so many, and
Speaker 1: it's like I want to have a conversation with black people.
Speaker 1: And that the impetus came from like coming to my
Speaker 1: aroun I first wrote the book my mom. I went
Speaker 1: home to visit a mom and she invited all of
Speaker 1: her church friends to the house and she was like,
Speaker 1: they all need to talk to you about this book.
Speaker 1: And I was like okay, and I said how they
Speaker 1: had read it? My mom had an arc, so I
Speaker 1: gave her a couple of early arts and she was
Speaker 1: passing the minds all beat up, and they just they
Speaker 1: were like, we want to talk to you. And it
Speaker 1: was the range of conversation, the things that they really
Speaker 1: didn't have space to communicate, didn't have space to get into,
Speaker 1: they did and it was really remarkable, and I realized,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what it's all about. The book is
Speaker 1: a flat tape that we can gather around.
Speaker 2: That's metaphor number two that I will steal.
Speaker 1: And the anchor, fine, you can have it, you can
Speaker 1: have it.
Speaker 2: What a book? All right? I got to tell you something,
Speaker 2: so bea fam I'm by the way, spoilers are ahead.
Speaker 2: I'm not Terry Gross. I don't know how to do
Speaker 2: a book interview and not reveal spoilers about the plot.
Speaker 2: And the great thing about Sky Full of Elephants is
Speaker 2: that the plot feels like a spoiler, And that's when
Speaker 2: you know it's going to be good, because they're telling
Speaker 2: you upfront. All the white people in the in America,
Speaker 2: in North America, I think that's what we established in
Speaker 2: the book, have found the nearest body of water and
Speaker 2: unlive themselves, just walked on in. And we come to
Speaker 2: this New America about a year after this so called event,
Speaker 2: and we meet a couple of characters. We first meet Charlie,
Speaker 2: who I love and do you are you someone? Cibo?
Speaker 2: Like do you have? Do you picture someone in your
Speaker 2: mind when you're writing your characters like we readers do?
Speaker 2: Can I tell you the guy I was picturing the
Speaker 2: whole time was the boxing coach from the Wire? Did
Speaker 2: you watch the Wire? Whoever that boxing was?
Speaker 1: That's good. That's pretty accurate. That's pretty accurate.
Speaker 2: Who all the moms in the neighborhood would come up
Speaker 2: and be like, Oh, we got a pie for you, coach.
Speaker 1: I don't even know his name. That's pretty accurate. Though
Speaker 1: I don't know his name either, but I honestly I
Speaker 1: had whenever I write, I will have like I'll make
Speaker 1: my sort of outline, and outline is literally just a
Speaker 1: sentence free chapter and then I will start to accumulate
Speaker 1: photos of people places, and I have a whole board,
Speaker 1: like a Pinterest board, like a visual Pints board of
Speaker 1: just like celebrities that I think, people that I think
Speaker 1: will fit the characters sort of way, not necessarily always
Speaker 1: how they look, but their way of being. And then
Speaker 1: I have a whole bunch of like places that I
Speaker 1: can describe them, you know, And so you're not far off,
Speaker 1: you know, for who did you picture? Tell me? I
Speaker 1: actually actually actually had my dad. I know it sounds
Speaker 1: that's lame, but my dad was trying because my dad
Speaker 1: was just like Charlie. He was very He was really
Speaker 1: really gifted. He could he could make anything. He could
Speaker 1: make anything. So watch him sketch houses that he wanted
Speaker 1: to build when I was a kid, and he was
Speaker 1: sketching in blueprint and he could do most of it.
Speaker 1: He could, you know, he could do he could make
Speaker 1: his own concrete before the foundation, he could do the
Speaker 1: carpentry work, he could do the plumbing. He was really gifted.
Speaker 1: But he was just not fulfilled, and like his potential
Speaker 1: sort of crashed down onto itself and he became angry
Speaker 1: all the time. And you know, he went from having
Speaker 1: the potential of being extraordinary father to being a really
Speaker 1: terrible one. And I wanted to imagine a world in
Speaker 1: which he was fulfilled, like he got to achieve all
Speaker 1: the things that he wanted. What would that look like?
Speaker 1: And so Charlie was the arc of that, that transition
Speaker 1: into feeling unworthy to feeling worthy.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm just blown away. I mean I'm not blown away,
Speaker 2: but when you hear something like that, you know, we're
Speaker 2: both parents now and you look at these little humans
Speaker 2: and it's like our only jobs as parents really feels
Speaker 2: like giving you the tools to cope with this world.
Speaker 2: And it's a miracle when parents are damaged and aren't
Speaker 2: able to heal that their kids go on to, you know,
Speaker 2: become such a great dad. Like I can already tell
Speaker 2: that you're a great dad and an artist, and like,
Speaker 2: in spite of all that, it's just really beautiful. And
Speaker 2: the way that you incorporated that story into your art
Speaker 2: is just like, that's what it's about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what That's how we process these process those
Speaker 1: the feelings that we don't have language for. We try
Speaker 1: to articulate them in such a way that other people
Speaker 1: can share in it too. In whatever form that they
Speaker 1: they sort of experience it. And so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've always thought that our kids are like and and
Speaker 1: Charlie it was the same way he looked at Sydney's
Speaker 1: sort of like she was the she could redeem it.
Speaker 1: Any our children came in, Oh my god, my dms
Speaker 1: are all Sydney. Everybody's Sydney. They they're so it's either
Speaker 1: love or hate, and that there's no in between, knowing between.
Speaker 1: Hard to write that character Sydney, but yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: is that she reflects he reflects back to Charlie his
Speaker 1: own sort of value system. I think I think as
Speaker 1: a dad of girls, and in particular the girls will
Speaker 1: look I look at them and I see, you know,
Speaker 1: how they're developing. I see the space that they feel
Speaker 1: like they occupy. I see, you know, whether or not
Speaker 1: they're aspirations no matter what they are, or at least
Speaker 1: have the space to be fulfilled if that's not happening.
Speaker 1: It's reflection on me. It's reflection on the type of
Speaker 1: father that I am, the type of person that I am.
Speaker 1: It's reflection on what I've given them. And so when
Speaker 1: you think of it from a cultural standpoint, my wife
Speaker 1: is biracial, and so our kids are multiracial in that way,
Speaker 1: and I go, we live in a predominantly white area
Speaker 1: in the UK, and I go, I gotta take them
Speaker 1: to Florida so they can see my mom. I gotta
Speaker 1: take them Florida so they can have this chicken. They
Speaker 1: take them in Florida, taken experience this culture because it
Speaker 1: needs to be balanced. And I want to be the
Speaker 1: person that gives them that, Like, that's my gift, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted Charlie to experience that too.
Speaker 2: Love that stopped giving me so many distracting things to
Speaker 2: talk about, because now I'm going to be like, that's
Speaker 2: why we had the insane. I like, my family's from Georgia,
Speaker 2: and my dad's from Georgia. Oh, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: into my history. It's going to blow your mind. But
Speaker 2: so my dad's from Georgia. I'm obviously biracial. Maybe not obviously,
Speaker 2: but I am, and my kids are half Hispanic. My
Speaker 2: husband's Dominicans, so they're multiracial. And the world I think
Speaker 2: we'll see them racially as Hispanic or Dominican or whatever,
Speaker 2: because that's how they present. And I'm just like, oh no,
Speaker 2: they're gonna know they have a black mama from the
Speaker 2: South and back. And it's like I want them to
Speaker 2: see so many different like iterations, like so many different
Speaker 2: examples of what blackness can look like, and to love it,
Speaker 2: like they love my dad, they love my aunt, their
Speaker 2: great aunt Brenda, who's like my grandma, Like they love
Speaker 2: their cousins on that side, like I want them to
Speaker 2: see and be around, you know, and to feel like
Speaker 2: I love that, you know, so that they can grow
Speaker 2: up without a doubt, like being consciously aware of the
Speaker 2: beauty of blackness and the pride of it, and to
Speaker 2: know that they are. And I mean it's a brag,
Speaker 2: but my son colors himself with a brown cranky talk
Speaker 2: about the appear at night. They do their like their
Speaker 2: giant portraits of themselves. I was like Leo, his name
Speaker 2: is Rio, like baby, not even in the brightest summer
Speaker 2: would you ever achieve that shape. But I love that
Speaker 2: he wants to be chalk.
Speaker 1: I love it. That's beautiful. That gives me a lot
Speaker 1: of joy. That gives me a lot of joy.
Speaker 2: And he did girls on his hair.
Speaker 1: That's magical. It's magical. Honestly, the idea of the culture
Speaker 1: is really funny because like it's when you almost have
Speaker 1: to claim it. It claims you, but you almost have
Speaker 1: to claim it. But when you leave America, the specifically
Speaker 1: the black American experience is the American experience. For so
Speaker 1: many people outside of the country they think of like
Speaker 1: when they think of America, so many of the traits
Speaker 1: they're thinking are part of the black culture. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the white culture, right or not shocking at all.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating they you know, they're they're wearing the j's,
Speaker 1: they're they're talking to talk you know of maybe like
Speaker 1: occasionally acting like a Texan or a Californian. Everything else
Speaker 1: is just black, Like they think of it as black,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's a counterweight to the concept of
Speaker 1: like like trump Ism. You get to like they almost
Speaker 1: treat it like it's odd and over there. They're like,
Speaker 1: that's why are you guys doing that? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I know why i a'll be doing that. And to them,
Speaker 1: it's like that the export is blackness, not trump Ism,
Speaker 1: and not these other elements.
Speaker 2: So the art, the music, the films, the TV, the
Speaker 2: pop culture that is us and so deeply it's very insidious.
Speaker 2: The other side. Okay, well I stopped distracting me, all right,
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to Charlie. So to establish Charlie, we
Speaker 2: meet and you know and thank you for telling that.
Speaker 2: Example of how that you know your father is woven
Speaker 2: into Charlie's character. We meet him twenty years after he's
Speaker 2: been imprisoned and he is released after the event they
Speaker 2: break out because all the white people are unalive, they're dead.
Speaker 2: And he is a professor at Howard when we meet him,
Speaker 2: he's teaching what is he teaching? Solar solar Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Like electrical systems, and he's teaching a portion of that
Speaker 1: class is solar panels.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha. I selfishly, I really wanted to like see
Speaker 2: what one of his classes would sound like and what
Speaker 2: the kids are asking him about and if they're kids whatever.
Speaker 2: But anyway, maybe the sequel And he gets a call
Speaker 2: from someone he never knew existed, his daughter, Sydney, who
Speaker 2: lives in far Flung, Wisconsin, and basically tells him she's in.
Speaker 2: Sydney's mother is white, and she tells him you're my dad,
Speaker 2: and I need you to come. I need you to
Speaker 2: come get me because I've been here for a year. Surviving,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to get to, of all places, Alabama.
Speaker 2: She wants to go to Alabama for some reason. Sydney
Speaker 2: feels like Alabama is where the world hasn't changed, and
Speaker 2: she's going to find her people, her people, her people,
Speaker 2: her people, the ones that could be left in Alabama.
Speaker 2: And Charlie gets in his little Prius or whatever whatever
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a prius, says, no doubt. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of preous So well, Prius.
Speaker 2: I know just a picture that it's very like interesting.
Speaker 2: The blackmail hero not driving like a muscle car or something.
Speaker 2: She gets into the electric car. He finds his way
Speaker 2: to Wisconsin, so I'll pause there. He's about to meet
Speaker 2: his daughter. She's nineteen. Will we meet Sydney nineteen? And
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that I actually started to read The
Speaker 2: Sky Full of Elephants, or listen. I listened to it.
Speaker 2: I did a combo listening and reading on my on
Speaker 2: my on my phone, like an e book thing. And
Speaker 2: I was visiting my sister in Wisconsin and my mother
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin where my mother's from. What my mother is white?
Speaker 2: My mother is white, She's born and raised in Wisconsin. Oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, my sister and I have different fathers, so
Speaker 2: my older sister and my older brother are fully white.
Speaker 2: We were raised as siblings, so you know whatever. And
Speaker 2: then my younger brother and I are both biracial. And
Speaker 2: when we meet Sydney, she's not only in Wisconsin, she's
Speaker 2: also the biracial, the only biracial child in her family.
Speaker 2: So she's had to watch her brothers, her mother, her
Speaker 2: stepfather walk into the lake behind their house and kill themselves,
Speaker 2: and she's tried to save them, you know, at that
Speaker 2: scene where she's trying to save them and she can't
Speaker 2: and she can't make herself drown because her will to live,
Speaker 2: Like whatever. I got chills just telling you that. And
Speaker 2: I started to read it, and I was in the
Speaker 2: kitchen with my mom and my sister, and I was like, so,
Speaker 2: I'm reading this book. No, no, I don't know why
Speaker 2: sometimes I choose violence. It is really uncomfortable to tell
Speaker 2: your white mom that you're reading a book about how
Speaker 2: all the white people are dead. She was like, now, listen,
Speaker 2: we've she and I we have gotten through two Trump terms,
Speaker 2: you know, like two Trump elections, and in the first one,
Speaker 2: she did not vote on the right side of progression
Speaker 2: and she's come around, like she's made so many strides,
Speaker 2: but that was a tough one for her to swallow.
Speaker 2: She wasn't pleased about the premise. And then I realized,
Speaker 2: I can't explain this to her. It's not for her.
Speaker 2: You know, Hey, ba fam, we got to take a
Speaker 2: quick break, pay some bills, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: All right, ba fam, We're back. But the way that, like,
Speaker 2: there is so much overlap with my story in Sydney's story,
Speaker 2: and like I would have been Sidney Devin, I could
Speaker 2: I could actually kind of put I could put myself
Speaker 2: and how she might have put myself in her shoes?
Speaker 2: Like what if it had been in my teenage years
Speaker 2: when we all did live together and only my brother
Speaker 2: and I would be left because my mom and dad
Speaker 2: split up, So then I would have had to go
Speaker 2: find well, he wasn't there, he was in Atlanta anyone
Speaker 2: that party.
Speaker 1: But wow, I don't think I've ever met anyone that
Speaker 1: has that close to parallel.
Speaker 2: That's incredible, right, So I was like, why, Wisconsin, why
Speaker 2: you know what? How did Sydney the character get formed?
Speaker 1: Well, she was initially based off of my wife and
Speaker 1: my older daughter to some degree, right, so my wife,
Speaker 1: like when I first wrote the first chapter with just
Speaker 1: Charlie early on, I gave it to my wife and
Speaker 1: she responded to it like she was like, this isn't
Speaker 1: my experience. She goes my experience growing up bi racial
Speaker 1: in West London, I didn't have black culture around me.
Speaker 1: I didn't indeed, I didn't even know how to interact
Speaker 1: with it. There were times when I would see a
Speaker 1: bunch of black women together, I didn't feel like I
Speaker 1: could just roll up on them like that. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel my blackness. And she traveled back and forth to
Speaker 1: New York quite a lot as a kid, and she
Speaker 1: goes the only time I felt when I was in
Speaker 1: New York with my grandmother, who was from Trinidad. But
Speaker 1: then she'd go back to London and she would be disconnected,
Speaker 1: and so I started to think, well, I want to
Speaker 1: incorporate her experience. At the same time, my daughter was
Speaker 1: having trouble with her hair and she was just like, Dad,
Speaker 1: I just want you to like either shave it or
Speaker 1: just do dreadlocks, because I don't even want to have to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to have to comb these curls out
Speaker 1: every day, I don't want to deal with it. And
Speaker 1: I realized how much her hair as signed itself to
Speaker 1: her identity and she didn't understand it. I hadn't done
Speaker 1: the work to help her understand how important it was.
Speaker 1: Now she loves her hair, and so I started there.
Speaker 1: And then Wisconsin was for two reasons. One that there
Speaker 1: are cities in Wisconsin. I'm sure you know that are
Speaker 1: like the whitest cities literally in America. Like one I
Speaker 1: was looking at her. I want to say it was
Speaker 1: maybe Kenosha. It was ninety eight point one per white,
Speaker 1: which is like, that's crazy, Like that's a lot. That's
Speaker 1: like a lot of not it's a lot of homogeny
Speaker 1: happening right like it's it's real strong and so. And
Speaker 1: it just so happened that many years before I wrote
Speaker 1: this book, I was profiled in the store one time.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't bad, but it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know, you're just annoyed that somebody comes
Speaker 1: up to you asking a bunch of stupid questions, wanted
Speaker 1: you to show them your bag to make sure you
Speaker 1: didn't steal anything, like come on, So I walk out
Speaker 1: of this store. This was this was in Florida. But
Speaker 1: I was with I was with a bunch of friends
Speaker 1: who were from Wisconsin. They're from White white Fish Bay
Speaker 1: and from Milwaukee. And I walk out and I tell
Speaker 1: them I was like, this thing just happened. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, you know what happens, you know
Speaker 1: to black people. And one of the people, this girl
Speaker 1: shoes there, she goes, she goes, could you just be
Speaker 1: making that up? I was like, why the world would
Speaker 1: I make that up? And she goes, well, black people
Speaker 1: say that type of stuff all the time and more
Speaker 1: if you're just maybe picking up on it because you
Speaker 1: just feel connected to other black people. And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at her like that doesn't need one does it even
Speaker 1: makes sense? But two, It's like I'm trying to tell
Speaker 1: you the sky is full of elephants, and I can
Speaker 1: see the elephants and you can't. And one day those
Speaker 1: elephantsre gonna crash down. And you said it just like
Speaker 1: that to her, And that became eventually the title of
Speaker 1: the book. And because she was from Wisconsin, and because
Speaker 1: Wisconsin was such a strong concentration of whiteness and sort
Speaker 1: of culturally in my experience at least, I was like
Speaker 1: this feels right, and then you know, Kenosha with that
Speaker 1: guy Kyle Rittenhouse happened and I was like, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: go there, let's do it there, and so it worked
Speaker 1: out that way. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Way, let me tell you what I thought about hit
Speaker 2: me and you know your name? I couldn't tell. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: is this a guy written who's written this? Or a woman?
Speaker 2: So I found out I don't like to necessarily go
Speaker 2: into a book understanding everything about the author because it's
Speaker 2: not always super relevant. But I did.
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: The more I got into the book, we meet Sydney
Speaker 2: and she has internalized so much. Well, I mean, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you what my perception is, and you can kind
Speaker 2: of tell me. But when I feel like when we
Speaker 2: meet her, she's so she's so traumatized and devastated by
Speaker 2: the death of her family that she looks to the
Speaker 2: only people that she feels like she can blame. Who
Speaker 2: is who's left? And who's left? Yes, appear to be
Speaker 2: you know, well, actually I don't think I'm even clear
Speaker 2: on who's all left. Is it just black people who
Speaker 2: are left? Or are there others?
Speaker 1: It's there are others, there's you know, Latinos are left
Speaker 1: and Asians are left, and Native Indigenous people are left.
Speaker 1: But I had this image in my head or to
Speaker 1: sound bite in my head, and it was a James Baldwin.
Speaker 1: He has said something along the lines of he goes,
Speaker 1: I know white people don't know a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but I do know this, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: black here. And it was that. I was like, it
Speaker 1: was the concept of like sort of anti blackness that
Speaker 1: created the event, and it was less about you know,
Speaker 1: if a person is this type of black or this
Speaker 1: type of black, but rather the desire to not be
Speaker 1: black was what sort of inspired it. And that was
Speaker 1: how I was picturing it in my mind. Is like,
Speaker 1: because people ask me all the time that like is
Speaker 1: this is this white? Or is this white? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not really thinking about what it's white. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about what doesn't want to be black? What is avoidant
Speaker 1: of black? And that's what was important to me.
Speaker 2: Well, when we meet Sydney, she definitely doesn't want to
Speaker 2: be black.
Speaker 1: I know she does not.
Speaker 2: She is so much internalized well even like delusion, because
Speaker 2: I don't even think she really fully accepts her blackness.
Speaker 2: You know, she's kind of grown up in this all
Speaker 2: white area, and I too. I mean, I mean I
Speaker 2: grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, so I wasn't
Speaker 2: as isolated from you know, diversity in a good way.
Speaker 2: But then I would still go to schools where I
Speaker 2: was the only chocolate chip in the pancake. And then
Speaker 2: it's like, do you feel othered? And my dad was
Speaker 2: in my life, so I couldn't, but I still, you know,
Speaker 2: I did have that tug of war that she feels
Speaker 2: when she finally does does get to have community and
Speaker 2: meet other you know, black people, that feeling of like
Speaker 2: does she belong here?
Speaker 1: And all of that.
Speaker 2: I definitely grapple with that is just like your wife,
Speaker 2: you know, did feeling like, well, if there's a that's
Speaker 2: who I want to be around, but do they want me?
Speaker 2: Am I gonna like pass the test to get you know?
Speaker 2: And but yeah, it was really difficult to read the
Speaker 2: character of Sydney because she has internalized so much racism
Speaker 2: and bigotry and prejudice. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: Sydney girl, I'm gonna trust we are gonna go on
Speaker 2: a ride.
Speaker 1: You're gonna figure this out. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's it. So people, I'm not surprised people. It's been
Speaker 2: so polarizing. Like you said the response to her, I
Speaker 2: also feel like it was a brave character choice for
Speaker 2: her because those feeling are very real, Like they're very
Speaker 2: believable if we give into the idea that like, humanity
Speaker 2: is capable of incredible racism and prejudice and self hatred,
Speaker 2: self loathing. Those are human feelings and emotions that exist,
Speaker 2: and at a time like this, I think it's I
Speaker 2: think it's important to acknowledge that they exist so that
Speaker 2: we can try to change them or you know, or
Speaker 2: be aware of them. We can't be in this like
Speaker 2: state of you know, a state of like I don't
Speaker 2: know a little bit of delusion or ignorance about what's
Speaker 2: really happening, because then we end up being like, wait,
Speaker 2: what how is tack here again?
Speaker 1: I definitely think it's an ignorance. It's in part because
Speaker 1: we're constantly sort of distracted and put in the teams,
Speaker 1: and then you go, the only community I have is
Speaker 1: this team that I'm on, and you haven't really vetted
Speaker 1: in because it's probably distracted all the time about something else.
Speaker 1: And Sydney, for her part, you're exactly right in that
Speaker 1: you know, she was internalized and she had developed, you know,
Speaker 1: these similar feelings about about black blackness and black culture.
Speaker 1: But simultaneously, the loss of her mother, the loss of
Speaker 1: her her family, made her want to hold on to it.
Speaker 1: And so at once she's gripping in order to claim
Speaker 1: something and unwilling to release that claim to claim something else,
Speaker 1: claim claim more. And there's this tension. And so there's
Speaker 1: actually two parts in the book, and I realized they
Speaker 1: sort of I wrote them to be ripped quite subtly,
Speaker 1: but there were projections of both Charlie and Sidney Psyche.
Speaker 1: So you had when Charlie leaves DC and he's driving
Speaker 1: across to go meet Sidney. The first person Charlie encounters
Speaker 1: is is uh the woman? The woman? And again I
Speaker 1: like that she was she was, I really like it.
Speaker 1: I know she was great. The earth was burned black
Speaker 1: all around. And he arrives to her and she immediately
Speaker 1: like sort of reorients him to himself. She gives him
Speaker 1: some food, nourishes him, she gives him wisdom, and she
Speaker 1: sort of goes, you know, who are you going to be?
Speaker 1: And sends him on his way to become it. In
Speaker 1: my mind, that was a projection of his psyche. He
Speaker 1: literally had to drive into the blackness in order to
Speaker 1: reach a person that felt ancestral, who could go, let
Speaker 1: me point you in the right direction. Right, And she says,
Speaker 1: she's like, you're going to Wisconsin to figure out your life, right,
Speaker 1: to find something. When Sydney leaves Wisconsin, or leaves Oscosch,
Speaker 1: the first place she comes as Kenosha, and that town
Speaker 1: is spray painted in white and a chaos of whiteness.
Speaker 1: And she meets Little, and Little is wearing the KKK uniform.
Speaker 1: His blackness is shrouded in white. And he grabs Sydney
Speaker 1: and he says, you're one of us, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to let her go. That's her psyche, that's her
Speaker 1: whiteness going. You can't leave this place, you can't leave
Speaker 1: this way of being, and it is chaotic, and the
Speaker 1: whole town is the only town is busted again. All
Speaker 1: the other towns are actually intact, but that one's busted up.
Speaker 1: And when she falls into Charlie's arms, that's when her
Speaker 1: journey towards claiming blackness begins. But up until then, she's
Speaker 1: sort of starting to go the route of Little, where
Speaker 1: it's breaking something's breaking in her mind, and so both
Speaker 1: of those things are true.
Speaker 2: What's the total I'm trying to think like that the
Speaker 2: novel takes place over how many days? It doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like that long.
Speaker 1: No, it's not that long. It's I'm gonna say maybe
Speaker 1: like seven eight days something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a week. So for me, when I
Speaker 2: realized that, like towards the end of the novel, I
Speaker 2: don't want to give anything away. Also, Doug, go buy
Speaker 2: the novel. I'm trying to give Sydney grace because she
Speaker 2: has such a long way to go. Like it's not
Speaker 2: like I'm glad that she got her hair moist and
Speaker 2: she got loved on by some beautiful black queens like,
Speaker 2: but Homegirls still doesn't know how to do her hair
Speaker 2: by herself. If she ever has children, like she's gonna
Speaker 2: have to deal with it all again. Like she needs
Speaker 2: a lot of therapy. And you know, I tried to
Speaker 2: have compassion for her. Yeah, it was definitely painful to
Speaker 2: you to see her be in so much pain and
Speaker 2: to like miss out on all the love she could
Speaker 2: have for herself. But I try to like what gave
Speaker 2: me peace was like it's only been a week. She
Speaker 2: has a long life ahead.
Speaker 1: Of her working away. I think that was that was
Speaker 1: something that kind of got lost as well. There are two.
Speaker 1: The one there is like a constant motif of the lavender,
Speaker 1: and the lavender was a nod to have.
Speaker 2: Great my mom's favorite scent. I didn't even mention that, Oh, that's.
Speaker 1: So funny, weird. And Elizabeth Laura Jane.
Speaker 2: I have not talked about your book with her since
Speaker 2: I read it because she really didn't like. I was like,
Speaker 2: I was like, Mom, it's not like I want you
Speaker 2: to die. She's like, but you're reading this book. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I didn't think it. This guy did.
Speaker 1: Let me talk to your mom to get jump in
Speaker 1: a book?
Speaker 2: What would you say? I mean, you don't have to
Speaker 2: answer to her, like or anybody really about it's your book.
Speaker 1: But it's not about answering. The whole point is to
Speaker 1: expand us a little bit, to make us, you know,
Speaker 1: to expand our minds towards imagining a different reality. Because
Speaker 1: the truth is is, while your mom might go, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't this this is suggestive of like killing all
Speaker 1: the white people. You have to understand that the majority
Speaker 1: of the time that Black Americans is spent in this country.
Speaker 1: It's been spent on the side of being an other,
Speaker 1: and it still is today. And it's important for someone
Speaker 1: to understand what the other and feels like so that
Speaker 1: they can have compassion for someone else. You can get
Speaker 1: into the complexities of the stories and the complexity of
Speaker 1: the individual characters and everything they're going through. Ultimately, it's like, listen,
Speaker 1: this is what it feels like. And if you look
Speaker 1: at that book and you go it makes me uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: understand that that discomfort is what other people are feeling
Speaker 1: when you aren't recognizing them in the context of what's
Speaker 1: really going on in the country, what their needs are.
Speaker 1: And so if you feel that that's an important feeling,
Speaker 1: it's an important feeling to process, an important pathway towards empathy.
Speaker 1: I think then you get into the characters. You know,
Speaker 1: when you get into the characters, you understand that the
Speaker 1: idea that some of these characters in the story could
Speaker 1: endure what would be a massive, massive, massive change in
Speaker 1: the country. To have that many people, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the country disappearing. Like to see that
Speaker 1: and to go, that's really really bad. And somehow I
Speaker 1: feel free. Like if someone said that to you, saying
Speaker 1: that because they're mean. They're not saying that because they
Speaker 1: dislike you. They're saying that because that is the degree
Speaker 1: to which they feel oppressed. And I want people to
Speaker 1: understand that, like, that's not if someone says to you
Speaker 1: they will feel freer. That's that's an orient yourself to that,
Speaker 1: to like where they at, because that means that they're
Speaker 1: in a place that they feel really really restricted and
Speaker 1: half for a long time, so much so that they
Speaker 1: are breath of this, like they've been indoors for the
Speaker 1: last two hundred years and all of a sudden they're like,
Speaker 1: this is what air feels like. It's amazing. And I
Speaker 1: think there's there's certainly a need for understanding and compassion,
Speaker 1: but I think when I think about it, the word
Speaker 1: is always empathy. It's like, just exchange the emotion and
Speaker 1: you'll see, and when you see, hopefully it impacts your emotions.
Speaker 1: And there's no reason to be angry, no no reason
Speaker 1: to be mad, there's no reason to feel I mean,
Speaker 1: I say this to people all the time, like the
Speaker 1: whole of Middle Earth was created in a book and
Speaker 1: they're ain't a single black person like they're elves. Man,
Speaker 1: there's like hobbits where they're no black people.
Speaker 2: You know, there's so much logic. People don't listen. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so much logic. We don't have time for logic.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's not this datage. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that conversation and I and frankly, I think Sidney,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately, I think she represents the grace that
Speaker 1: black people have had towards what is an astounding amount
Speaker 1: of racism over a long period of time. It's always
Speaker 1: been with grace. It's always been with like you you
Speaker 1: slap me, and yet I'm still standing here, willing to
Speaker 1: be at the table with you. I'm still here, you know.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is Sidney sort of represents
Speaker 1: the other side of that, and it does. It's like
Speaker 1: Lavender is like a reminder of grace, and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the book without giving away the full inning,
Speaker 1: and she has to go off man and go figure
Speaker 1: that out. And a lot of people say that to me,
Speaker 1: They're like, I want more. I want to see what
Speaker 1: happens after that, and it's like, I know, you do.
Speaker 1: That's why I wrote it that way, because at the point.
Speaker 1: That's the point, like think, like take it with you
Speaker 1: and imagine, like imagine what that that the healing feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, and so yeah, Sidney's I would love it.
Speaker 1: I would love that conversation with your mouths. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just wanted Sydney to know that that what was
Speaker 2: a guy's name, the cutie that she was crushing on.
Speaker 1: Sugar fella fella.
Speaker 2: Oh what a beautiful name. Fella fella. Uh yeah, tell
Speaker 2: me little things. I wondered, is it too much on
Speaker 2: the nose too, like the parallel between the Great Passage,
Speaker 2: you know, like slaves being brought across the sea and
Speaker 2: dying in the water and then that's how the white
Speaker 2: people die. Was that too much of a parallel for
Speaker 2: me to draw? What was the water?
Speaker 1: The water? No, no, no, The water was meant to
Speaker 1: be an erasure. So it was partially tactical because I
Speaker 1: wanted I didn't want a whole bunch of dead bodies
Speaker 1: lying around, so I couldn't like have you know, Stephen
Speaker 1: Kenby wanted it to feel right. It just wont me
Speaker 1: to look, so I needed the erasio. I definitely wanted
Speaker 1: the idea of the tide coming back to be prevalent,
Speaker 1: and then I wanted to be visible that no matter
Speaker 1: where you went, you couldn't escape this sensation. If you
Speaker 1: saw a river, if you saw a lake, if you
Speaker 1: saw a bath, the water suggested a rebirth and a
Speaker 1: change in a sort of evolution. And you know it.
Speaker 1: When Charlie had his bath, when Sydney had her bath,
Speaker 1: they were changed. You know, there's a lot of these
Speaker 1: sort of interactions with water, but the Middle Passage specifically
Speaker 1: one of the early questions I got. And I don't
Speaker 1: think they think I had an answer. They were like, well,
Speaker 1: bodies float. This was my first book talk I did
Speaker 1: in New York. I think this guy thought he had
Speaker 1: in the corner. He was like, well, bodies float. So
Speaker 1: if the body's walking into the water, water were they're
Speaker 1: foating all over? And I just went, have you heard
Speaker 1: of the Middle Passage? He's like yeah. And I was like,
Speaker 1: our ancestors held them down, and so they got us.
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all you need to know. In that water,
Speaker 1: they got us, and so they gave the world back
Speaker 1: to us. So there was a connection. It wasn't as
Speaker 1: as clear as like, it wasn't as metaphoric for me
Speaker 1: as quite literal in that they were there, the spirits
Speaker 1: of them, you know, held them down and wouldn't let
Speaker 1: those bodies float. They sort of allowed the world to
Speaker 1: come back to us. There's a scene where Sydney's where
Speaker 1: her parents walked to the water and she says she
Speaker 1: tried to pull them up as she physically couldn't. It
Speaker 1: was like trying to pull the whole earth up with him.
Speaker 1: And that is the idea is they were being held.
Speaker 2: Hey, ba fam, We're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 2: pay some bills, and we'll be right back. Welcome back,
Speaker 2: be a fam. Let's get back to the show. Well,
Speaker 2: I haven't had a chance to read it again. Like
Speaker 2: I said, I have two small children. I read a
Speaker 2: book through one time. So that's a win. That shows
Speaker 2: you how much I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Read the book.
Speaker 2: Huge if she wanted and I really wanted to read
Speaker 2: this book, you like, I haven't even read the plot twist.
Speaker 2: I know there's going to be we're going to find
Speaker 2: out who did this and what did this? But I
Speaker 2: want to read it again because I'm still trying to
Speaker 2: My brain is still trying to unravel the last like
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of the book because the emotion, you know,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's the emotions were carrying me through the
Speaker 2: first part of the book and the feeling and the whoa,
Speaker 2: I'm just like on this ride, and then the technical
Speaker 2: stuff comes in and I'm like, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't process this exactly. It's a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: it's it's complex, and I wanted it to be really
Speaker 1: complex because a lot of there's a there's like an
Speaker 1: excavation of history and if I'm tangenting, just tell me,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of excavation of history about America
Speaker 1: and then Haiti and I wanted to give a nod
Speaker 1: to the relationship is something larger than that, something big.
Speaker 1: And the Shango bone is a note in that that
Speaker 1: that bone is real, Like I didn't make that up.
Speaker 1: That bone is literally twenty five thousand years old and
Speaker 1: it has we talk about the bone.
Speaker 2: You decided to say, I don't want to be super
Speaker 2: spoiling spoilery.
Speaker 1: But got it. Got it. The bone it's called the
Speaker 1: jungle bone, and it was found on the Nile, not
Speaker 1: far from the Congo and they when they discovered this bone,
Speaker 1: it's not big bones like the size of a pencil.
Speaker 1: There are striations on the bones. Marking on the bones
Speaker 1: that did note it a very complex mathematical system. I
Speaker 1: think it's the equivalent of computational binary, like really complex
Speaker 1: like mathematics on a bone the size of a pencil.
Speaker 1: And when they first found it, they did the carbon
Speaker 1: dating on it, and they thought it was five thousand
Speaker 1: years old. Now, for context, the Greeks are three thousand,
Speaker 1: so it's still older than the Greeks. And what we're
Speaker 1: talking about is like Pythagoras and all that is two
Speaker 1: thousand years older than they thought. It was two thousand
Speaker 1: years older than Pathagonas America is only two hundred, two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy years old, So two thousand years before Pythagoras.
Speaker 1: They found his bone, and then they a couple of
Speaker 1: years later they redid the carbon dating on it. Because
Speaker 1: of the technology for carbon dating evolved, they found it
Speaker 1: was twenty five thousand years That's it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to comprehend. It's not hard now, but like when I
Speaker 1: first heard about this, I'm like, wait a minute. The
Speaker 1: people that you've been telling me all of my life
Speaker 1: are like living in huts and trees. Were able to
Speaker 1: put the equivalent of computational mathematics on a bone twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand years ago. That happened, and it had and
Speaker 1: then I started to look at more stuff discover such
Speaker 1: amazing stuff like the Dogon and Mali and all these
Speaker 1: different places they were doing extraordinary things, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted the book to sort of have a turn towards
Speaker 1: that and go, hey, what we're talking about here is
Speaker 1: we're talking about America. We're talking about this the healing
Speaker 1: of all of the trauma of enslavement and Jim Crow
Speaker 1: and all of it. But there's a whole lot more
Speaker 1: stuff that you still don't know yet that are signals
Speaker 1: in the air that you can have access to, and
Speaker 1: it's really found is really complex, and so the whole
Speaker 1: nod to Nikola Tesla was was to that because he's
Speaker 1: doing a lot of the experiments that he did was
Speaker 1: based off of experiments that were already done in Egypt
Speaker 1: and different parts of Kimmit, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: I want to give a nod to that. And so
Speaker 1: it went a bit complex, but I like it.
Speaker 2: But our history is complex and it's it's it's deep,
Speaker 2: you know. I think being black in America you do
Speaker 2: kind of grow up with the understanding and like our
Speaker 2: history was stolen from us and we don't know where
Speaker 2: we come from and all of that. But but we
Speaker 2: we have to do more work. But it's there. So
Speaker 2: if you were picking, if you were like putting together
Speaker 2: a great like like you know, read Sky Full of
Speaker 2: Elephants and then go to this museum or read this
Speaker 2: book or you know what kind of if someone's really
Speaker 2: curious to learn more about these topics, what we're in,
Speaker 2: sources of inspiration for you or places you can point
Speaker 2: be a fan too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I love the book anything about France Fanan.
Speaker 1: His work is a lot about decolonization and colonization and decolonization.
Speaker 1: Uh Chinwa Chepe who wrote Things Fall Apart, and he
Speaker 1: wrote it, I want to say he wanted in the sixties,
Speaker 1: but it was like telling the actual stories of people
Speaker 1: that were living in nations when a colonization was happening.
Speaker 1: Things Fall Apart is great or God is Great, and
Speaker 1: anything about Friends for on. But I really love Wretched
Speaker 1: of the Earth. It's like, man, it's intense, really intense.
Speaker 1: And then I would say Maladoma Patrisse some who wrote
Speaker 1: of Water and Spirit and I love this book so much.
Speaker 1: It's about this kid who's growing up in Burkina Fosso,
Speaker 1: which Burkina Fosso right now is like leading the sort
Speaker 1: of African ascendency right now. They're doing amazing stuff. He
Speaker 1: was he was Braisen Bikino fossil in a tribe that
Speaker 1: had a specific religion called Tagara, and he was kidnapped.
Speaker 1: Although the children were kidnapped and taken to a monastery
Speaker 1: to become you know, preachers and nuns, and then they
Speaker 1: were sent back to sort of bring the people to Christ,
Speaker 1: and so he was. And this was happening over generations
Speaker 1: and many jurations. So he was kidnapped when he was
Speaker 1: like eight, taken to this place and he was never
Speaker 1: able to do his When they turned thirteen, they do
Speaker 1: their ceremony to become an adult. He was never able
Speaker 1: to do it. He ran away when he was nineteen.
Speaker 1: He goes back to his tribe and he's begging them
Speaker 1: to take him back, and they're like, no, we can't.
Speaker 1: You're encoded with a completely different system because you went
Speaker 1: and he begged him. He got his father to beg him,
Speaker 1: and they were like, we're going to put you through
Speaker 1: this ceremony. And it's probably going to kill you, but
Speaker 1: if you get through the ceremony, you'll be reconnected with
Speaker 1: our people and the story. And it's a it's not
Speaker 1: it's an audible, it's like it's a true story. It's
Speaker 1: what he experienced going through that, what he had to
Speaker 1: shed and what he had to gain. It's extraordinary, extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can see how that might have inspired the
Speaker 2: bath and yeah, exactly some of those. Okay, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to like use my time wisely and I have questions
Speaker 2: just career wise, Like you wrote this book. You run
Speaker 2: your own creative brand agency. You're not a professional author
Speaker 2: as a job. Turns out that's really hard to do
Speaker 2: and make.
Speaker 1: Money from a struggle.
Speaker 2: Talk about, like I know, on very much time, but
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about your career trajectory and
Speaker 2: how it led you to, you know, getting the time
Speaker 2: to write this book.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, I was. I went to college on a
Speaker 1: football scholarship. But while I was there, I sort of
Speaker 1: became a writer, which is on an interesting story, but
Speaker 1: I sort of became a writer. And I was trying
Speaker 1: to decide if I wanted to write and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do film, or if I wanted to try to
Speaker 1: actually go to the NFL, which was my dream. And
Speaker 1: then I realized I was a little too small to
Speaker 1: go to the NFL, even though I made go to college,
Speaker 1: and I decided to write. I wrote, right, we got
Speaker 1: to step into it, America, We got to step into it.
Speaker 1: But I wrote my first book when I was like
Speaker 1: twenty at four to as a part of the course
Speaker 1: that I was in, and it got published, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was terrible novel.
Speaker 2: I was what, this was your debut novel? Oh, you
Speaker 2: have a secret.
Speaker 1: It was, but this other book was like it was
Speaker 1: like a small press and it just wasn't. And they
Speaker 1: fell apart like it was a whole mess.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just that you're human and you also can
Speaker 2: write terrible stuff. So that's fine.
Speaker 1: Oh, which.
Speaker 2: His first novel was like this out the Ballpark, I.
Speaker 1: Write, I write, this is the thing. This is the
Speaker 1: thing I tried to teach everyone, which is a relative
Speaker 1: to this story, is we have to give ourself room
Speaker 1: to fail. We have to give ourself room to make
Speaker 1: the mistakes. I teach my team, my design team, you
Speaker 1: have to you're literally bringing something that doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: this world to a three dimensional space. When you're being
Speaker 1: a creative, it doesn't exist. It's up here in this,
Speaker 1: in this sort of ethereal realm. When you're bringing it
Speaker 1: into three dimensions, that's not easy, and it's wrought with
Speaker 1: with mistakes, especially if you go from that ethereal space
Speaker 1: to a program, because the program has to interpret whatever
Speaker 1: you're hearing in your head. Don't do that. Get you
Speaker 1: yourself a pencil and a piece of paper and start sketching,
Speaker 1: start writing, and you will iterate faster that way. You'll
Speaker 1: make your mistakes faster that way. I wrote All the
Speaker 1: Sky Full of Melphons by hand first, all of every
Speaker 1: single page, what in every single page, I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: Every single page I wrote by hand first, and because
Speaker 1: because I well, interestingly enough, I wrote it my remarkable.
Speaker 1: Let's go, I'll show you actually have it here. I'll
Speaker 1: actually show you the whole book. This is my remarkable.
Speaker 1: It's like an electronicy. Yeah, it's like an electronic writing pad.
Speaker 1: Situation a little I'm going to show you. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: show you the entire novel right now, Skott Full of Elephants,
Speaker 1: because it's on here. All of my books in my
Speaker 1: writing I used to write everything on a on a
Speaker 1: sketch like a like a proper notebook.
Speaker 2: But then I don't know if I had all hand
Speaker 2: strength to do that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's no joke. Here look this is you
Speaker 1: see the pages here, and I'm gonna show you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see why you wrote it. You have nice handwriting.
Speaker 2: I don't have nice hands.
Speaker 1: Look at that every page you can scroll for days?
Speaker 2: And does this converted to type after you're done? Thank
Speaker 2: the Lord, because I'm like for your editor.
Speaker 1: But I know right, And so I as a when
Speaker 1: I graduated college, I written my first book and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to go be a writer and
Speaker 1: I but it did. It didn't. It wasn't a good
Speaker 1: book and it didn't. I didn't make any money off
Speaker 1: It was like I think I got a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: bands or something. And so I moved back home. Didn't
Speaker 1: know what I wanted to do, and I started working
Speaker 1: at the front desk of a hotel and I was
Speaker 1: doing it just to write books. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit at this desk check people in and
Speaker 1: keep messing around. And the job that I had, they
Speaker 1: were offering another position for someone in marketing. They were like,
Speaker 1: we need a marketing person and they didn't have a website.
Speaker 1: They were like, me a marketing person, and I went,
Speaker 1: I could do that. And the boss at the time,
Speaker 1: he goes, I need someone that can build me a website.
Speaker 1: Can you build a website? And remind you this is
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and I was like, no, I
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even have a computer, but I
Speaker 1: can build your website. And he goes, Okay, I'm gonna leave.
Speaker 1: I'm going to Did you.
Speaker 2: Leave with the fact that you don't have a computer
Speaker 2: or was that internal dialogue?
Speaker 1: That was internal dialogue. I just said to him, I
Speaker 1: got it, don't worry, I got it. I could do.
Speaker 2: This is like very low. We're talking like Zanga vibe.
Speaker 1: This is I still had Zanga back then. So you're
Speaker 1: you're exactly spot on.
Speaker 2: What was your background music.
Speaker 1: Back then? I want to say it was tried. I
Speaker 1: think it was tried because they had a Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was tribe.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I could tell you the song Midnight Marauder.
Speaker 1: That's what it was. That's what I'm not here. And
Speaker 1: I remember I remember how I did it. I sinked
Speaker 1: it m P three into it and I was able
Speaker 1: to like upload it somehow.
Speaker 2: So that was if you could figure out. Because I
Speaker 2: was coding on Zanga, I was full on doo and
Speaker 2: I was like, I want mine was John Legends, ordinary people,
Speaker 2: and I wanted it. I wanted it to scroll with
Speaker 2: the page like I had all the.
Speaker 1: All ages space that you play. Man. I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't like at that time because websites require like real
Speaker 1: high functionality, and that website required booking integration, so I.
Speaker 2: Had to hotel website is not like creating someone's like
Speaker 2: portfolio page. That's a big ask.
Speaker 1: Okay, It's pretty pretty complicated coding, and so I designed first.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how to design, but I ended
Speaker 1: up buying a cheap deal computer. I pirated a copy
Speaker 1: of Photoshop on lime wire back then and basically gave
Speaker 1: my computer aids.
Speaker 2: To do it. I was about to say that for
Speaker 2: its life.
Speaker 1: Works works on my on my laptop. It's crazy. And
Speaker 1: so I got photoshopped, like figured out how to code
Speaker 1: or design and then like break it into slices and
Speaker 1: then export the slices into dream Weaver. And I was
Speaker 1: like tinkering with it, and then I and then it clicked.
Speaker 1: It clicked. I was like, wait a minute, the design
Speaker 1: and the code they're working together and I and it
Speaker 1: wasn't like someone's designed and someone's a coder. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I need to be both of these things, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do is tell a story. Hotel
Speaker 1: is a physical space that needs to be sold in
Speaker 1: a digital environment, and it needs to be sold at
Speaker 1: what is the equivalent of a luxury purchase right now?
Speaker 1: A luxury purchase is anything over seventeen hundred dollars. If
Speaker 1: you go and you stay at a hotel that's three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a night and you stay for a week,
Speaker 1: guess what you're hitting that luxury status. And so you're like,
Speaker 1: it's a very difficult online purchase to make unless you're
Speaker 1: going through a third party. If you're going through hotels
Speaker 1: dot car, you feel a little bit more comfortable. But
Speaker 1: if you're doing it direct at the hotel, it's got
Speaker 1: to be a nice experience otherwise you're gonna feel comfortable
Speaker 1: doing it, and the hotel has to sell you on
Speaker 1: it to sell you on yourself in that space. And
Speaker 1: so I was like, I'm going to design something that
Speaker 1: makes other people feel the energy of the physical space.
Speaker 1: It isn't going to be just about like empty bedroom shots.
Speaker 1: It's going to make you feel something. I want a
Speaker 1: beautiful lifestyle. I want video. I wanted to feel like
Speaker 1: a thing. And so I started to start to design,
Speaker 1: trying to evoke a sense of place and then coding
Speaker 1: functionality that matched that sense of place. So like over states,
Speaker 1: that made sense. Having the filtration of all of the
Speaker 1: rooms make feel smooth and intuiting, and so that hotel
Speaker 1: did not have a website experience. Within a year they
Speaker 1: had made over a million dollars in digital on web
Speaker 1: web based.
Speaker 2: Bookings over that person from the site you made.
Speaker 1: From the film site that I made, and so they
Speaker 1: were like, you're doing great, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: still didn't didn't know what I was doing. I was
Speaker 1: just tinkering, messing around. And then I realized I that
Speaker 1: by the end of it, I have learned to write PHP,
Speaker 1: I learned to write a little bit of job script,
Speaker 1: I learned to write HTML. And I learned this pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And so did you get the job.
Speaker 2: Though, or they weren't paying you as a front desk person.
Speaker 1: They gave me the job.
Speaker 2: The promotion.
Speaker 1: I got the promotion as soon as I finished the website.
Speaker 1: They gave me the promotion. It wasn't a lie. It
Speaker 1: was like twenty seven a year or something. And I
Speaker 1: was jumping for joy back then because I does the
Speaker 1: first salary. Yeah, it was enough. It was enough. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't eating McDonald's every day, so or ramen, and
Speaker 1: so I did that. And then as I've done it,
Speaker 1: I was getting a lot of people asking me, you
Speaker 1: did do building this website? Can you do something for me?
Speaker 1: And I had a spring break group that was coming
Speaker 1: from Canada come down and they were like, Hey, we
Speaker 1: want to build a co op site. Can can you
Speaker 1: do that? And I'm like co op in one way
Speaker 1: and they go, well, we want anyone is booking spring
Speaker 1: break travel to come to our website and be able
Speaker 1: to book any of the hotels on beach. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: so like you want the hotels to advertise on the
Speaker 1: site and they're like yeah. And then I had to
Speaker 1: suddenly learn s CEO. I had to learn organic, I
Speaker 1: had to learn like conversion optimization, like all of these
Speaker 1: things that I wasn't thinking about before to think of
Speaker 1: it more like an e commerce experience, and so I
Speaker 1: built that and it was but pre dates Google Ads.
Speaker 1: So I had to create a function that allowed the
Speaker 1: ads to rotate on a certain amount of click and
Speaker 1: then clock the clicks for pay for us. And it
Speaker 1: was ridiculous. And then all of the hotels they didn't
Speaker 1: they didn't have anyone to design the ads, so then
Speaker 1: they paid me to design all their ads and then
Speaker 1: they paid they were like, can you build our websites?
Speaker 1: And then I had to open a business. And that
Speaker 1: was the first business I opened. That was two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, and I have no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2: So you've been doing it for almost twenty years now
Speaker 2: full time because now you in your company Creative Design Agencies.
Speaker 1: I was sorry, Creative Work Circle Circle.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I just made that up out of nowhere at all.
Speaker 1: What your company's going Creative Creative Arts is DC, and
Speaker 1: they're amazing. They're amazing. But we did that. We were
Speaker 1: like back then I had that was my first company
Speaker 1: and it was fine, like we did I It was
Speaker 1: mostly me and I had one person that was an assistant,
Speaker 1: But I did the best I could and then I
Speaker 1: had a friend come up to me and he was like,
Speaker 1: you want to be the creative rector of my agency?
Speaker 1: And his agency was did humanitarian work all over the world,
Speaker 1: and so he took on that job and he was amazing.
Speaker 1: Just he's still my dear friend, but he's one of
Speaker 1: those people that's like, we're not just doing work, We're
Speaker 1: here to change the world. And so we did. I
Speaker 1: travel everywhere with him and doing all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: from working with Shakespeare, shakespeare Birthplace Trust to you know,
Speaker 1: doing like campaigns with UNICEF, all the stuff. And then
Speaker 1: I while I was doing that, my other friend Adam,
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, I got this opportunity to do
Speaker 1: these hotel websites. I know that's what you used to do.
Speaker 1: Do you want to do it again? And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's look at it. And flew to New York
Speaker 1: and he had five pitches to do in one day,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what he was doing. He was
Speaker 1: just like, come with me on these pitches, and I'm
Speaker 1: like okay, And that day we win all those five pitches.
Speaker 1: One after together, we went four out of the five
Speaker 1: and the fifth one the person we were pitching came
Speaker 1: to work for the agency, and those out of those four,
Speaker 1: two of them were the top two hotel operators in
Speaker 1: all of New York. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it went from like zero business to more business than
Speaker 1: we had any business doing, right, Like it was ridiculous
Speaker 1: amount of business. And I was just me. Right, it
Speaker 1: was like me in my dark bedroom trying to get
Speaker 1: these websites coded up. But we did it, and it
Speaker 1: was you know, we ended up branching out and it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we need to hire a photographer, we
Speaker 1: need to hire writers, we need to hire if we're
Speaker 1: going to try to make a sense of place and
Speaker 1: a digital experience, it needs it needs to do the work.
Speaker 1: And so i'd be I was sort of the creative
Speaker 1: director for that agency, co founder and creative director of
Speaker 1: that agency, and then still the creati director for the
Speaker 1: other agency. And I did that for four or five years,
Speaker 1: and then I just then I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to writing. That's that's because I'm still
Speaker 1: telling stories at this point. Is that's all I released.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I want to go back to writing.
Speaker 1: And so I focused on one agency and then I
Speaker 1: started tinkering, and I wrote I think three novels that
Speaker 1: I've just shelved because I was like, Nope, that isn't right,
Speaker 1: Like that's not the test of writing from one from
Speaker 1: the beginning to the end of a narrative. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of people only they're only gonna try that once.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, nah, try it, like, get the feeling
Speaker 1: of the fullness of it. Don't write like the first
Speaker 1: chapter and go this isn't working right the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And this is why. And this is really important for
Speaker 1: anybody listening who thinks of themselves as a creative in
Speaker 1: any capacity. It doesn't matter if it's because critical thinking
Speaker 1: is creative. Writing specifically is one of the few artistic
Speaker 1: endeavors where you don't have a tool if you want
Speaker 1: to If you want to paint, you get a brush,
Speaker 1: you get some you get some colors. If you want
Speaker 1: to be a photographer, you get a camera, you get
Speaker 1: a videographer, you get a camera. But with writing, particularly storytelling,
Speaker 1: you can just speak it and require a tool. The
Speaker 1: trick is is your first draft has to be the clay.
Speaker 1: If you're not. If your first draft isn't perfect, it's
Speaker 1: the clay that you're molding to perfection. You create the clay.
Speaker 1: And I see too many people they think of their
Speaker 1: draft as that. They're like, this is the book. It's
Speaker 1: not the book, that's the clay. If you get your clay,
Speaker 1: you can you can really make something magical and don't
Speaker 1: be discouraged. Know that that's the beginning, not the end.
Speaker 1: Build your clay first. And so I was keen on
Speaker 1: like figuring out what kind of clay I wanted to
Speaker 1: work with. So I write whole books and be like Nope,
Speaker 1: that's not right, that's not right. Then I almost gave up.
Speaker 1: It was very close to giving up on writing. And
Speaker 1: my wife, she was the one that was like, you
Speaker 1: got it. You can do it. You can do this.
Speaker 1: Get back to write and get back to focusing on
Speaker 1: like what are there was stories you want to tell?
Speaker 1: But I didn't have an agent at that time, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, okay, let me marry my two realities.
Speaker 1: In my agency life, I do a lot of strategy.
Speaker 1: So what's the strategy for getting an agent and getting
Speaker 1: a successful book? What does that look like? I thought, Well,
Speaker 1: someone needs any agent wants to know that you have
Speaker 1: some sort of profile, right, so you need to be indexible.
Speaker 1: Someone needs to type your name in. They need to
Speaker 1: be able to see you first. Second platform. Secondly, you
Speaker 1: need to have some form of sort of self distribution,
Speaker 1: which is to say, if all they see when they
Speaker 1: Google is your ur L and all the things that
Speaker 1: you've done your US not enough, You've got to be
Speaker 1: able to expand it. And then you need to have
Speaker 1: pieces that resonate towards what could be a novel, which
Speaker 1: is the business proposition, which is any any publishers going,
Speaker 1: I need a novel, and I need to be able
Speaker 1: to serialize that novel into a lot of work so
Speaker 1: over the course of a career. And so I went, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a book of poems, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to use the poems to be indexible, because now
Speaker 1: if I can, if I can write a book of poems,
Speaker 1: and even if I just self published them, it'll have
Speaker 1: distribution across Google, and people can type my name very easily.
Speaker 1: They can find me on Amazon, they found you all
Speaker 1: the places. It just so happened in that book of
Speaker 1: poems end up winning an award and being published and
Speaker 1: it got full distribution. But that was my initial plan.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, I'm going to write a collection
Speaker 1: of short stories, and I'm gonna take each one of
Speaker 1: those short stories and I'm going to send them to
Speaker 1: different magazines and see if they'll publish a short story,
Speaker 1: because if they do, I'm not indexible on their websites
Speaker 1: as well. And then I'm going to roll that short
Speaker 1: stories short stories up into a collection and use that
Speaker 1: to go get an agent. And then once I get
Speaker 1: the agent i'll get, I'll write a novel and that
Speaker 1: I'll get published. That was my plan, and Mandy, that
Speaker 1: plan was exactly that way. Everything I just described happened
Speaker 1: exactly with that. I just described it just like that,
Speaker 1: just that.
Speaker 2: Kid on his Dell computer figuring it.
Speaker 1: Out, backing away with my my very very slow LimeWire
Speaker 1: affected computer.
Speaker 2: So but.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: That's grind. I mean, I want to give respect to
Speaker 2: the grind. Thank you for sharing all that the grind,
Speaker 2: and like the I mean, and you we're also living
Speaker 2: a full life, like you're meeting your wife, you're having children,
Speaker 2: like you're traveling, and then you're dealing with the doubt.
Speaker 2: I love your wife for you know, motivating you and
Speaker 2: bringing you, giving you that space and that encouragement, because
Speaker 2: that's all you need in those I mean, I I
Speaker 2: just submitted my clay to my editor, and I think,
Speaker 2: what can happen when you're when you're making the clay,
Speaker 2: is you try to compare your clay to someone's oz
Speaker 2: that has been the final product. I ain't about to
Speaker 2: We can't compare the clay to what's on the bookshelves
Speaker 2: that you know, because that's been Yeah, there's been multiple, many,
Speaker 2: many different hands in that final product. But I just
Speaker 2: submitted my clay. Took me three years to make that clay.
Speaker 1: Listen, get yourself a bottless champagne, because that's that's a celebration.
Speaker 1: That's a real celebration.
Speaker 2: To night we celebrate. I submitted it on Monday. The
Speaker 2: book change from when like the Sky full of Elephants?
Speaker 2: Did it change like the premise of it or was
Speaker 2: it pretty much like I know I'm writing this book,
Speaker 2: the event's going to happen, and I know it'll be
Speaker 2: Charlie and Sidney's story and then you move forward from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't change very much. Indeed, part of the
Speaker 1: the this sounds I realize what I'm about to say
Speaker 1: sounds pretentious, but I was able to sort of choose
Speaker 1: the publisher. And I know that does not happen very often.
Speaker 2: If a pretentious is a fact, but you earned it,
Speaker 2: just as you had a proof of product already.
Speaker 1: I was able to, like, you know, there were a
Speaker 1: few different publishers that were ruying for the book, and
Speaker 1: it just so happened that Simon Schuster and Olivia they preempted.
Speaker 1: They were like, nope, we want it, and they came
Speaker 1: in early. And so I was like, well, let me,
Speaker 1: let me meet with different ones, let me see, because
Speaker 1: I don't want my book to change.
Speaker 2: I want it to be you wrote it at that point.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a novel. You'd write a chunk of it,
Speaker 2: if not the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I written the whole thing because, like I say, I
Speaker 1: become accustomed to like, I'm trying to get to something
Speaker 1: I don't want. I don't want. I don't want it
Speaker 1: to mean the work of art if you think of
Speaker 1: it in those terms, you want it to at least
Speaker 1: feel complete enough that no one else is going to change.
Speaker 1: If I was writing a song and I gave it
Speaker 1: to another musician, they'd be like, well do this and
Speaker 1: do that, and I don't want that. I wanted it
Speaker 1: to be. I want to be mine. So I wrote
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and then I gave it to I
Speaker 1: gave it to my agent that he sensed around and
Speaker 1: they know Olivia a wonderful one of our editors. She
Speaker 1: preempted it and she was I was like, let's get
Speaker 1: on a call. Get on a call. And the first
Speaker 1: thing she says, she goes, She's like, I recognize that
Speaker 1: you know I'm Jewish and white. I die in this book,
Speaker 1: and I want to make sure that everyone that that
Speaker 1: does not change. We needed to be exactly what you
Speaker 1: want it to be. I was like, that's what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Was like, so what type of stuff?
Speaker 2: I was going to ask if your editor was black?
Speaker 1: Hard to find she's wonderful, remarkable. She was like, I
Speaker 1: want to figure out how we can expand the story
Speaker 1: and make it bigger. I don't want to change it.
Speaker 1: They want to make it bigger. And so the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole Vivian Hoseiah piece, like I knew they would
Speaker 1: get to they would be in Alabama because I'd already
Speaker 1: written that, but I didn't write how they got to
Speaker 1: Alabama and how that all that that was all, Olivia,
Speaker 1: we wrote a couple of additional scenes that that we
Speaker 1: sort of tinkled through, we reorganized some bits, so she
Speaker 1: was she was pivotal in getting it into that boss
Speaker 1: as you described, but we'd never changed from its its concept,
Speaker 1: and she was she I don't think she would have
Speaker 1: even allowed it because she wanted She was like. The
Speaker 1: one thing that it did say, which was which was
Speaker 1: really fun is they were like, well, your book is
Speaker 1: going to come out around the election, so maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we'd wait until the year after, and I was like, nope,
Speaker 1: let's do it the year before.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 1: And that was when what's his name, Ron DeSantis was
Speaker 1: everyone thought he was going to be it and he
Speaker 1: was burning in Florida and all that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: let's be confrontational, like let's let's let's do it. And
Speaker 1: even that she was like, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 2: That's so funny to me because I'm like, this book
Speaker 2: is meant to be a lightning rod, Like right, I
Speaker 2: mean it's not that, it's not a quiet book. I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna scoot this. Just excuse me. I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: casual white people.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how many banned books list. Is it on if any?
Speaker 1: So far, I don't think. I don't think it's on.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it on any So it's going to
Speaker 1: be that I know of, because I'm sure it's going
Speaker 1: to be, but not that I know of. I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of people saying, like, you know that it
Speaker 1: will be banned, lots of that, like people constantly get
Speaker 1: it now before it's banned, that type of stuff. But
Speaker 1: I kind of think of it. If it ever was banned, I'd.
Speaker 2: Be like, great marketing. I mean it's like, literally they're
Speaker 2: banning the most innocuous, you know books and this I
Speaker 2: know they're bugging you, like, hey, where are you come
Speaker 2: do your paperback?
Speaker 1: And that was just was also amazing. She's the publicist.
Speaker 1: She was like, are you done. I'm like, I'm ALMOSTO.
Speaker 2: I know a little side to the to the handler.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of these, but I'm also selfish
Speaker 2: and I will not make you leave unless.
Speaker 1: Tell me this is this is this is your time,
Speaker 1: This is your time.
Speaker 2: You owe me because you use my life for this book.
Speaker 2: You stole my life story.
Speaker 1: And made me stole it. Laura Laura Jane, Laura Jane,
Speaker 1: sorry her too.
Speaker 2: So yeah, my sister's Mallorie Anne. I'm a Manda Lee.
Speaker 2: You know, my mom moved to the South, so she
Speaker 2: had a little bit of Southern in her no But
Speaker 2: I I just want to congratulate you, and I'm so
Speaker 2: excited for you. I think that this novel, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't look at like I don't want to, you know,
Speaker 2: become obsessed about like numbers and all sales and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. But I know people are talking about it,
Speaker 2: so I really hope that they are buying this book.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's good, you know, you know good.
Speaker 2: Any awards on the horizon is that important for this book?
Speaker 1: I realized It's funny was on they were in La
Speaker 1: at Reparations Club and had this talk and said talked
Speaker 1: about wanting awards, like wanting to win all the awards,
Speaker 1: but then realize that she couldn't. They couldn't have the
Speaker 1: awards at the expense of the audiences that they were
Speaker 1: trying to speak to. And so I was nominated for
Speaker 1: It was longest before the Aspine Award. I think the
Speaker 1: Wrap Games Award as well. But I've kind of I've
Speaker 1: already say this all the time, like I already won
Speaker 1: like to even write a book and get it published
Speaker 1: you want, you want, but then to have people read
Speaker 1: it and care about it. To be on this call
Speaker 1: makes me feel like I don't want anything. I'm not
Speaker 1: desirous in that way. I just want to be able
Speaker 1: to sit and talking contributes something to literature. You know,
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison is to me the greatest American writer, if
Speaker 1: not the greatest writer in the history of the world
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned. And I always imagine that
Speaker 1: I would write something that she would touch, she would
Speaker 1: nudge someone. But have you have you heard of this book?
Speaker 1: You know? Like in that that's it? Like I don't
Speaker 1: really to me, that's the height, and I know that
Speaker 1: won't happen. But perhaps that's as we sort of find
Speaker 1: the book, and different people find a book in different
Speaker 1: environments and they share it with someone else. That's all.
Speaker 1: That's all that. I can't imagine anything greater than you know,
Speaker 1: so I don't find myself desirous in that way.
Speaker 2: Well, I have an award for you. It's not really
Speaker 2: an award, but it is a first. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to use this time to let you know that Brown
Speaker 2: Ambitions launching a book club, and sky Full of Elephants
Speaker 2: is going to be the first.
Speaker 1: Do I get? Can I get like a button or something?
Speaker 1: I get like a yeah, sure, I just.
Speaker 2: Made this up, So yeah, we can make a button.
Speaker 2: Can I use canvas to do that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, listen, that's that's amazing. Can I
Speaker 1: do get to come? Can I be like in it?
Speaker 1: Can I come and like? Sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love for you to come. I think, well,
Speaker 2: ba Fam, you're just finding out about it. So Ba Fam,
Speaker 2: you can go to brown Envision podcast dot com and
Speaker 2: find details about the book club and how you can
Speaker 2: join it. BA fan has been asking for a book club.
Speaker 2: But like I said, when I read books, I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily want to be reading about the same stuff that
Speaker 2: we talk about all the time on the show. I
Speaker 2: don't think that life is just money. That's why we
Speaker 2: do more than just money and finance here. It's about
Speaker 2: the human experience and you know, our wellness. And I
Speaker 2: can create the book club that I would like to
Speaker 2: be a part of, which is a mix of everything.
Speaker 2: And so I think sky Full of Elephants we barely
Speaker 2: scratch the surface of what we could have dived into.
Speaker 2: But I would love to bring ba fam into this
Speaker 2: because it's like when you see a really good film Sinners,
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for other people to read and watch and
Speaker 2: experience it so that I can then have a PhD
Speaker 2: level breakdown discussion, like I want to get into the weeds.
Speaker 2: So bea fam. I need you to like be my
Speaker 2: reading buddies. So we're going to read Sky full of Elephants.
Speaker 2: We're going to reconvene. We're going to reconvene this summer.
Speaker 2: And Cibo Campbell, thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 2: time for writing this book, for staying true to your
Speaker 2: art for any aspiring writer. There's so many aspiring writers
Speaker 2: out there work in nine to five. So I want
Speaker 2: to write a novel. And I hope the takeaway for
Speaker 2: y'all is, you know Cibo's anecdote about making a plan
Speaker 2: incrementally understanding that there's small things you can do now
Speaker 2: to put yourself in a position so that the really
Speaker 2: amazing opportunities can come to you. That was so smart,
Speaker 2: so strategic, and so lacking. I feel like among many
Speaker 2: creators is like those incremental steps to getting it done.
Speaker 2: So someone else who's like an incremental steps girl, I
Speaker 2: am Yeah, just huge kudos. It's an honor to have
Speaker 2: met you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, stay, thank you.
Speaker 2: Can we be Lena locked in? Are we like friends?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: I'll be I'll be a mind off. I would come
Speaker 2: to London. Oh, I'm going to be in London for Beyonces,
Speaker 2: for Beyonce's concert. Almost see how they get down in London.
Speaker 1: Saying that to me, Everyone's like, yo, are you I'm
Speaker 1: going to be there for Beyonce. You don't even know
Speaker 1: how many people said.
Speaker 2: This to me.
Speaker 1: I want to be in I'm going to be in
Speaker 1: the States when Beyonce. I'm going to see my mom.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be be Aflorida.
Speaker 2: Oh good boy, Now go see your mom. That's okay,
Speaker 2: London's not that far.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, And congratulations on getting your book submitted.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on finishing it. It's it's I know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's a weight off of your shoulders that will only
Speaker 1: come back when when it's time to do all of
Speaker 1: the edits and do all of the stuff to get
Speaker 1: it ready.
Speaker 2: But I think I might have a summer. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I might have a partial summer. I didn't
Speaker 2: expect having a summer. I guess I got to make
Speaker 2: plans now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't expect summers with kids in general, but
Speaker 1: like with you kids and a book that you're now editing,
Speaker 1: it's going to be.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a good bit of fun. So congrats,
Speaker 2: thanks so much. All right, good luck. The paperback is
Speaker 2: coming out this fall. Go make an incredible, brilliant marketing
Speaker 2: plan for that. I'm sure you will. Until next time,
Speaker 2: Yay browny Mission book Club.
Speaker 1: Vik can't wait, I can't wait?
Speaker 2: Please okay v a fan, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: listening to this week's show. I want to shout out
Speaker 2: to our production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our fearless
Speaker 2: leader for idea to launch productions. I want to shout
Speaker 2: out my assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for helping
Speaker 2: me put the show together. It is not a one
Speaker 2: person project, as much as I have tried to make
Speaker 2: it so these past ten years. I need help, y'all,
Speaker 2: and thank goodness I've been able to put this team
Speaker 2: around me to support me on this journey and to
Speaker 2: y'all be a fam I love you so so so
Speaker 2: so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you signed
Speaker 2: up to the newsletter to get all the latest updates
Speaker 2: on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary celebrations to come,
Speaker 2: and until next time, talk to you soon via bye.