Bookwild - Cebo Campbell's Sky Full of Elephants: Exploring Black Identity in a World Without White People

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

This week, I got to talk with Cebo Campbell and MacKenzie Green about Cebo's speculative novel Sky Full of Elephants. We dive into his inspiration for the story, how he chose Charlie and Sidney as the characters to lead the story, and get a few details into the production of the Sky Full of Elephants movie!Sky Full of Elephants Synopsisn this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly "post-racial" America in search of answers. One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he's now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn't even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house. Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it. When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell's astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.Follow Cebo hereFollow MacKenzie here  Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I got to talk with Sebo Campbell and McKinsey Green about Sebo's book, Sky Full of Elephant, which was so exciting because this is going to be one of my top favorite reads from 2025. We do do a portion that is spoiler-free, so if you're just wanting to hear about the story a little bit without spoilers, you can go ahead and listen to that. And then there's so much to talk about with this speculative fiction novel. So we also have a spoiler section, which reminded me how much I love doing those. So there might be some more of those to come, but here is the synopsis, which I think does a great job of telling you just enough. One day, a cataclysmic event occurs.

All of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he's now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone. he wasn't even sure existed. His daughter, Sidney, a 19-year-old who watched her white mother and step family drown themselves in the lake behind their house. Traumatized by the event and terrified of the outside world, Sydney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sydney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where

Sydney believes she still may have some family left. But neither Sydney nor Charlie is prepared for the new world and how they see themselves within it. When they enter the kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sydney thought they knew about themselves and the world will be turned upside down. Grimming with heart and humor, Sebo Campbell's astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be black in America in both their world and ours. This book is fantastic. It is a really fun exploration of what you just heard, identity, self-actualization, healing, all of those things. And when I first posted about this book, I was trying to decide which books to get for a Libro FM sale.

And McKinsey told me, this guy full of elephants was fantastic. So I went ahead and got it. And then when I was thinking about interviewing him, I was like, it would be really fun to have McKinsey in this interview as well. All of that being said, let's hear from Civo. So if you've listened to any episodes leading up to this one, you have heard me talk about how I like posted. And I was like, here are these audiobooks I'm thinking about. Who knows if any of them are good? And McKinsey was like, Skyfull of Elevance is amazing.

And I was like, got it. And so I immediately started listening and loved it. I thought it was so great. And then I tagged CBO in something. And we just kind of started having a conversation. about it and maybe doing a podcast about it. And I was like, well, since McKinsey is also the reason that I like was like, yes, let's do this one. I need to bring McKinsey. So we're doing a dual interview that we do every now and then here. And I'm super excited for talking with both of you.

I would have to say this is the most exciting message exchange Kate and I have ever had CBO where she read it. I was like, you have to read this. And then she DM me and goes, oh my God, he saw it and I went oh my god and she was like well what are you doing and I was like I'm about to go on vacation but you tell him anytime he wants to do it I don't care like I'll I'll step aside on my actual birthday and and talk with my man about this brilliant book wow yeah that's that's fabulous well thank you that makes me really yeah well I mean I think my first non-spoilery question for you that I have thought since the moment I read it is what what was the impetus because I know like I love that book, I'm sure you read it Last White Man on Earth, like those books that have a premise that

when you hear them, you're like, ooh, what happened that sparked the catalyst for the idea of this book? I tell the story a lot, and so if you've heard it, just bear with me. It was Ferris Bueller's Day Off is what sparked it. Have you heard this story? No, I have not. This is so exciting. That was not what I was expecting.

Well, so I was living in New York at the time. I still sort of live in New York. I go back and forth, but I was in New York. I had just moved there. I was living in Brooklyn. And I had moved from Texas. I lived in Austin, Texas. I moved to New York.

And I was having a very rough time. And it was cold or snowing. I don't know what to do with snow. It was like my car kept getting towed. It was just the worst, right? And so whenever I'm having a tough time, I always watch 90s movies. That's like my go-to. Yeah.

put on John Hughes. I'm like just chilling. If you see me watching Love Jones, I'm having a hard time. I'm having a real hard time. Come and save me. But I'm watching, I was watching Ferris Bueller's day off. And I love that movie. We've seen it a hundred times. But for some reason, I'm watching, I'm watching this kid. And I'm like, he's skipped school. He's got his friends to skip school.

He has the audacity to look right at the camera the whole time he's talking. Right. He's, he changes his grades. He steals a freaking. in Porsche. He impersonates a cop. And by the middle of the film, he's like in a parade singing Donka-Shay. I'm watching this. And I'm like, I was like, what, I wonder what would happen if you took Ferris Bueller and replaced him with Trayvon Martin, what would happen. And the clarity with which I knew the answer to that.

I was like, that movie wouldn't even begin to work. We would not necessarily root for his mischief the same way we did. do with Ferris, even to imagine like an insanely audacious teenage black kid that just steals a Porsche and we're all like go get in the parade and sing doctrine. Like that, it's a really tough thing to imagine. And so I was sitting there and I was like, why can't I picture this? Why can't I believe in that type of story? What's holding me back from imagining, you know, Trayvon and a Porsche?

And so I was really deeply studying that in my head that night. And I woke up the next morning and I was like, you know, I'm going through a bunch of stuff. And I was like, I'm going to write a Ferris Bueller book. That's what I'm going to write. I'm going to write the black Ferris Bueller. And I came up with this character and I thought he was very audacious. I thought he was, you know, mischievous. But then when I apply the rules of the world, as I understood them, the story just fell apart.

And so then I tried a different character and the same thing happened. And I realized that there was something blocking me. me from being able to to create free characters that look like me. So then I was reading Tony Morrison and she always talks about, you know, writing beyond the gaze. And I was thought, well, what happens if I just remove the gaze entirely? What happens then? And then I walked out of my little Brooklyn apartment and I was in Crown Heights and

walking through the neighborhood. And I was like, what does the neighborhood look like it? There were no white people in it. And it just sparked all these questions that I had. that I didn't know the answers to, but I thought it would make a good book to try to answer these questions. What would it look like?

What would it look like to eventually arrive to what felt like audacity amongst the whole black population, but certainly amongst individual characters, to feel actualized? And then it just like, as soon as the questions were in my mind, which I think is what speculative fiction ultimately is about, it's going, I've got a question I can't answer. I'm gonna give you the question as the reader,

let's see if we can figure it out together. That was the sort of propulsion of writing the story. I think what's interesting here you say that are two things. I love it. Yeah, it's, I think about Tony Morrison and Sula with the line of when they decided they could be neither white nor male, they decided to be something else.

That was the first thing that when you were like, what if we like observe the gaze? And then the other one hearing you say, I lived in Harlem for six years. And I lived in Harlem during the pandemic. And I would hear friends talk about being in Lower Manhattan and fighting to get toilet paper, being in line for two hours. Meanwhile, uptown, I was like, I don't know what y'all are talking about with a toilet

paper shortage and people being mean. Like, I remember walking in a whole foods and a person being like, hey, baby, don't forget your gloves. And I was like, oh, thank you so much. Like hearing you say, it's like, it is that thing where almost, I think when I read the book and it was this immediate thing of like, imagine what it would be like to live in a world with no white people. It was like, I got that experience for a while.

Like I remember graduating grad school and people cheering on the street. And then classmates being like, why were you so emotional? And I'm like, do you know what it feels like to walk out of your apartment in your cap and gown and just have people on the street cheer for you? Because they're like, black person graduating. We don't know what it is, baby, but we're proud of you. And I was like, I wished that experience for everyone I knew. Like every black student in the program with me because I was like, I wish you could

know what that feels like. But so I think hearing you, yeah, a couple things sparked me too is hearing you say that about Ferris Bueller being a black man. I think about when they rebooted 24 and they made that joke about if you immediately make the character black and he takes off running, they were like, that we have to address immediately is every time he's going to get stopped by the cops. Like every single time. And so, yeah, and so it's really fascinating that that is like, yeah, that you thought to yourself like, what if Ferris was a black kid? Oh, great. We get in trouble for stealing the porch. Now what do we have to eliminate to make this fun?

Yeah. And it says as much about us as a community as it does about the character we're trying to create. It's like a mirror. And I personally, that's something that I'm grappling with every day just existing is going, how do I feel like I'm moving freely and simultaneously in the space that I'm moving freely? there's enough to actualize, right? And those things have to be true at the same time that I feel free enough to move

and in my movement there's enough space to hold me. And those two things, unfortunately, my experience has not always been true unless I'm in communities like you describe where you go, oh, I feel something. I feel connected to something. I feel enriched by something. And then there was this crazy thing to happen is

you have to understand how hard it is when I first wrote this book to tell people what the book was about. because it is not easy to walk into a room and be like, well, all the way of the first sentence in the synopsis. It's terrifying to even begin to talk about. But I sort of arrived to this reality that it wasn't really about white people. It was about the idea of whiteness that encapsulates all of us, all of us. And that became like what I think of as a central premise of the narrative, which is this, I think what you're describing in Harlem is this sort of communal relationship.

that we have as individuals to the spaces in which we occupy, that we are not just alone in a community, but we are amongst a community. And that can include everybody, all people, and that the decision to allow the concept of whiteness to sort of wash over the globe is one that by definition, others so many people that it doesn't allow for the community. And so that's what it sort of came down to is how we arrived to a sense of un-other that we can be together again. Well, I remember when you, when we were kind of prepping for this and you talked about, you know, and even through this where you were like, oh, yeah, some time in New York, I always think about friends, again, lived in lower parts of Manhattan who would say,

oh, when you get on a train at 5 a.m., it's empty. And I was like, no, the train coming from the Bronx through Harlem packed with people headed to go work. I was like, I've never gone to the gym. Yeah, it was like, I've never gone to the gym at 5 a.m. And not been on a pack train headed downtown early in the morning. And I was like, however, getting on the train at like 2 a.m. Empty as I start heading uptown because people are asleep headed to work. And I was, and it's just like, like you're making me think of a friend who was like, I got my wallet taken out of my bag in Soho.

And I was like, girl, I once got on the train at 135th. And a nice woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, baby, you backpack's on Zip. And I was like, oh, thank you. Like it was that communal experience that, yeah, to your point, it's like when we operate in community, how different an experience can even be from, you know, a 40-block difference of what my friends are going through and what I'm going through. Exactly. Well, to your, to your inspiration with Ferris Bueller, how did you transition into or how did you decide that Charlie and Sydney were the characters to tell this story?

That is a very good question. So I think what any of these stories you want, a character, you have to think of the character as a guide in these experiences for us that we can look at, we're not necessarily projecting ourselves onto Charlie, but we're allowing Charlie to be the eyes through which we experience this new world, and we have to trust him. So I knew I wanted, like, the central character to be someone that we all sort of can look at and go, he's a good dude. He's a good dude. And I didn't, I initially didn't have Sydney in my mind at all.

I was just going to write Charlie and he was going to be it. And I patterned Charlie after my biological father, who is this very gifted, talented person. He could build anything. Like you can just, you can hand him something he could figure it out. But at the same time, he was profoundly unfulfilled. He just, for all the skill that he had, he could never find his way in this world. And and it sort of ended up crushing him by the time, you know, the potential of it ended up crushing him by the time he was older. And so I was sort of imagining my father being able to, like if he did fully actualize whatever that look like and how would he navigate to that.

So he was the, because he was a good dude. So he was central. And then I gave the first chapter that I wrote, which is actually the first chapter of the book. It was a short story, actually. And I gave it to my wife and I said, what do you think about this? And my wife is biracial. So my wife is her father is from Liverpool and her mother is from Trinidad.

And she just, she was like, it's great. She's like, writing is great. When she says that, I'm like, you know, you don't like it. She's like, what? Okay. And she goes, well, it's great, but I don't really see myself in it. And I was kind of stunned because I'm like, what do you mean? This is us.

What are you talking about it? And she goes, my experience isn't always like that as a biracial person. She goes, sometimes I walk into spaces. and there's a bunch of black people, and I don't know if I feel welcome, and then I walk in other spaces, and there are white people, and I don't know if I feel welcome.

And the fact that she was British, and the British experience of being a Black Brit, and in particular, black Brit in West London, you're basically just the only black person in that area. So she was like, when I come to the States, and I arrive in New York, I feel different, and she's like, identity is a real struggle for me. Whereas this character, Charlie,

he knows who he is. He just doesn't know who he is. is in the world. And I was like, I need to make sure there's space for people who are having that issue, too. Like, that's important. It's important to not take a person like that and go, well, you don't know who you are. You're unassigned. And it's like, no, that's not.

That's not what it's about. It's about inclusivity. And so I wanted to make space for that. Sydney is not my wife. I want to say this because she gets mad at my face. He's the most hated character in the whole book. And you tell everybody that's me. And I'm like, it's not you.

was not my wife, but it was the idea of her is like, and so I thought that would make for us a nice sort of spectrum to help us orient ourselves to the story. So triangulate into the world. I'm curious. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, I was just curious going into Sydney because I feel like this might be a very specific, like,

because my siblings, my half siblings are biracial with a white mother. You know, I was curious, did you intentionally know going into Sydney? she's going to have a white mom because I feel like that is a conversation a lot of black folks have where they're like there's white mom biracial and there's black mom biracial and like there feels like a noticeable difference between those two well there's there's a cultural access and I do find it to be I don't think it's universal but definitely think it's it's a big differentiator I think it's my personal belief that any functioning society that is to is to function with equality at the forefront is a matriarchal society. It's not a patriarchal society. So if we are being

led by women by default, it's going to feel inclusive. Every family that I know, they gather around the woman, just like my family, we all gather around my mom. Like, we gather around my grandma. They're the, they're the epicenters of our family. And so they are also the culture givers of the family. And so if everyone has gathered around them, that's where they're gaining their sense of And so I think when you have a white mother who isn't, who isn't like actively incorporating, you know, the range of both cultures, then I think it can feel very isolated. It can feel disconnected. And it is disconnected in the strangest way because you walk out your door and you still feel it, but you don't feel it in your home. And so. Or at least you don't have the tools in the language to be able to discuss what that feeling is. And so I wanted it to be a white mother because of that very reason. In fact, there's a lot of Easter eggs in the book. One of them is the town in which they are Ashgosh and the one right below it.

Not Kenosha, but there's another one right below it. At the time of me writing it, it was 98. I think it was 98.1% white of the city. So it was like one of the most racially non-deverse areas in the country. so that wanted it all to be like she doesn't know the culture and I want her to ask the questions about the culture because we need to ask the questions about the culture and so ultimately I think she ended up being more of the lens for the story than Charlie. That's what was fascinating to me with your answer. I think it was such a specific thing where somebody in my life is from Wisconsin,

from a tiny town in Wisconsin. And I was saying to them, have you ever heard? Like, I thought you had made up town. So I was saying to them, like, is this a real place? And they were like, yeah, about as white as where I grew up. And I'm like, oh, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. And then I'd like the next town I'd show, they were like, again, I keep telling you, every place is not Milwaukee.

Like, you've got to stop assuming. And I'm like, oh, okay, because I'm from D.C., went to school in Miami, went to school in New York. I'm just like, I'm like, what are y'all talking about? Like, in my, I remember even the same person. and I was like, because you know Alan Iverson, and they were like, had never heard of him. I was like, what? We're the same age?

And you'd never heard of out? Like, it's just so fascinating that you were able to nail these like very specific Easter eggs that I think much like, you know, Kate and I've talked about this, like a sinners where when you really dig into it and really get under the hood, even people from Wisconsin are like, no, no, no, like you said, it's 98% white. And you're like, what? And there's a lot, like a lot of the location. But even where they meet Ethel in Wayne County.

Wayne County used to be called the Grand Central Station for the Underground Railroad. And so it was intentional that he arrives there. And that's where he's guided towards a sense of self. And even Chicago. How much research does it take? Yeah, that's why I was about to ask, like all the cities, chose. Yeah, all of this. Like, how did you land on this? I don't know. I just, you know, it's one of those things where I think I get in trouble

a lot in my house because I'm like, my wife will always be like, did you read that? And I'm like, well, I guess I just sort of absorbed it. I don't know. And she's like, well, I don't believe it unless you can show me. And I'm like, I don't know. And so I think that's how I've always learned is like I just pick up things and they just stick in my brain. And And then when I, they're completely disorganized, but I hold them in my brain. And so when it's time to use it, I go, oh, yeah, this, this, this, and I'll piece it together. You know, and I had sort of thematics that drove some things. Like I knew that the path back to the South was going to be, or rather the return to the

south was the antithetical to the great migration. So I knew I wanted people in Chicago, which a lot of people from the South migrated, particularly from Alabama, migrated to Chicago. I wanted them to go from Chicago back to Alabama and to claim the South back. I wanted that to be a part of it. And so the thematics helped me to kind of fix locations and fix some of these themes.

And there are so much just stuff that we don't talk about that is just out there in the world that I'll go, why isn't anyone talking about that and can I build this into the story? I mean, the Shaggart was like that. It was like, that's cool. No one knows that that's real. really is a real thing.

Yeah, it's like I have all this information in my brain. And I will research, but it's mostly out of just enjoyment. Like, I like reading about that stuff. I like, like knowing those bits of information. And I don't know how they're going to play out on the story until I'm piecing the story together. And I go, yeah, that makes sense. That connects to that. That connects to that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll just ask one more because I think we're getting so close to spoilers. so then we'll just move into spoilers for anyone who hasn't read it yet. But I think this can be answered in a spoiler-free way. You did mention how self-actualization and even just like understanding your own identity was like such a driving factor for the story. Was that something you kind of went into it knowing or was that one of those things too

that as you started writing it, you realized that was like, like the big question. I definitely went into it thinking that, but I didn't have any idea how it was going to play out, right? In fact, the book ends in such a way it won't spoil. The book ends in such a way where you still don't really realize it. And so the point is not the destination of actualization, but the journey towards it and the movement towards it.

There's a line in the book where they say, better as a direction. And that was sort of guiding principle for me throughout the book. It's like, I just need everyone to look up and go, we got to go that way collectively. And you start moving that way collectively. You don't necessarily have to arrive to it. In fact, I don't think of myself as like I don't, this is crazy to say I've never actually said this at loud. I'm not going to actualize in my lifetime. My children will actualize in theirs, right? And my job is to create space for that. And that's all right. Like that's an honorable place to be, a noble place to be, just like my ancestors were

for me. And so I go, that, we have to move towards that. And so if I want my kids to be actualized, how can I help them understand what actualization means? Like, how can I help them imagine what it means to feel like you've achieved a full sense of self and that the people around you are achieving a full sense of self? And that as a community, we are marching. towards the outcomes that our ancestors were imagining, you know, 100 years ago.

Like, what does that actually look like? Because I know there are a lot of stuff that we have access to now. But when I picture people in 1967, right, 19607, you had like, like, JFK and RFK, and you had, you know, Malcolm and Martin and all these people. Like, when I go back and look at their interviews, I'm like, these people are smart, smart. Like, I don't know what we're doing. They're smart smart. I look at them and I go, when they picture.

what the future would look like in 2025. Does it look like this? And what happened on the arc towards that? Because I think some of it might, but I find that a lot of the things that we might be arguing about in political stages are the same things they were arguing about them. And I'm like, we haven't pushed the needle on some of these things. And so the question then I think going into it wasn't

if the characters would be actualized, but rather can they identify a, point at which actualization is reached and march towards that point by the end. If you're an author, chances are high that you just want to spend your time writing and maybe reading, not thinking about social media, what to create, and what to post. And the good news is, I have a solution for you. With just three hours of in-person filming, you can receive 90 days or three months' worth of social media content.

The content is a mixture of videos, photos, edited reels. And when you receive the content, you also receive a PDF that's a content calendar that links to all of the content tells you exactly when to post it and gives you an option for captions. And if you've ever felt like you're tired of just talking about your book all the time, we will help you come up with ideas that are general content for your page that's not just all about your books. If you are tired of thinking about your social media presence and just want to get back to writing, check out the link in the description. It is kind of always a journey, too. Yeah.

Like, I like what you said that you're, hopefully your children can. But at the same time, like, my experience with, like, therapy, I really had, I'm such a destination person. So that was, like, a big part of my therapy was like, you're not going to perfect this. Like, you're just going to get to know yourself better and have tools for help. to handle it and it's just going to keep happening. So I also resonated with that part too. Yeah. It's tricky. I mean, I think this is a, but sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say, I think this is a non-spoilery thing, but I often, when you're talking about the actualization part of it and also kind of, at least for me, the underpinnings of the white gaze itself

and how the book examines it is that I, I, I have written in people's speeches before that racism is like added sugar, right? You don't, when you really start to pay attention to the nutritional content of the things that you eat and you start turning over the labels, you realize that there's like sugar and mayo. And you're like, well, why is there even sugar in mayo? Like, what does this have to do with anything? Or you're trying to like, you know, or you have ketchup without sugar added and you're like, this tastes like garbage. I did not realize like sugar was the thing that made me think I like ketchup. And I think that is what, at least for the book, kind of examine.

for me because this tiptoes into spoilery territory, but like that moment in Chicago, we can just go. Okay. That moment of them in Chicago like happening upon a Kinsanayana. And all of a sudden it's kind of like, even the character is like, I don't really know why we have these anymore now that they're gone. Like it's almost this moment where like Howard, I found myself being like, is Howard even, does Howard are like, I almost found myself going like, oh, I'm shocked.

everybody didn't decide to go run and take over Harvard. And it's like, well, no, because who cares about Harvard if all the white folks that give validation to Harvard are gone, you know, or even that moment of Sydney even being like, I wished I had the call to walk into the, like, into the water. You know, it's like all the sudden, it's just all of a sudden you realize how many things this is a part of. And even for myself, I started examining from like just a shallow level of like, yeah, if I woke up tomorrow and when white folks were gone, would I even care about like getting my hair braided for vacation? So it looks nice.

Or like whatever? It's just all of a sudden, I think you call into question, even those of us who think we are actualized, what we would start to question if we woke up the next day. and every white person was gone. I, firstly, I'm going to steal that sugar comment. That's great. Yeah, this is the trick because I, as a person who I travel the world, I move relatively freely, kind of get to experience a lot of different things as both a writer and I'm an owner of a creative agency in New York that does luxury hotel,

so I get to go stay at all these different things. fancy hotels. And you don't know how often I just want to be at my mom's house. Like at the end of the day, I don't be at my mom's house, feeling a bit of a little bit of feeling like I can, you know, have some good food, have a good laugh, that there's a sort of a way of life that I think feels, it feels fringe and it feels uncivilized in the context of the sort of whiteness.

Yes. That I'm like, actually, I just kind of want more of that. And if there was no whiteness by which to contrast that, would I just do that? And so there is a sequence in the book that's super important. There's DC, there's Chicago, and then there's Mobile. And there's a dynamic in my head. I wrote this down. I want DC to be black excellence.

And they're not in competition with each other. There's different forms. I want DC to be black excellence. I want Chicago to be the black fantastic. and then I want Mobile to be the Afro future and that we get to see the difference between them. And when I say D.C., it's taking all of the ideas of being, how can I say this just sounded ridiculous,

like a perfected black person in the context of whiteness, which is, you've got a good job, you're a doctor, you wear the suit, you wear the dress, like you've reached excellence in that context. And then you go over to Chicago, and it's like, no, we just having fun. and this is about us just enjoying ourselves, grilling out,

and that's the fantastical part, right? Yeah. What Mobile represented was Sankofa. It's like, let's go back. And let's remove these ideas of who we are relative to that. Let's go back and let's bring all that forward and what does that look like? And that started to look, and I didn't know what it's going to look like going in.

I didn't even know that Mobile was a kingdom until it was a kingdom. Like I didn't know what was, I'm writing it and the character just says, you know Mobile is a kingdom now. I was like, oh, no, I got a right of. Like, what? Like, okay, I got to figure that out. And I didn't know. Then I thought, okay, if I were to bring forward elements and reimagine them, what would it look like? What would it feel? And it wouldn't look like Wakanda because we're America.

Like, we're still American. And we're still the country in which we all, and we don't get to just discard the traumas. You know, like Kate, you're saying, you don't, they don't go away. You don't get to just claim it as completed or get to a place where you go, I've reached this thing. It just, you carry it with you, but you carry it in a way in which it doesn't, it isn't an anchor. It's rather a pin for your kite that you can still fly with it, you know. And that, to me, by the time they reach Mobile, I wanted us as a people and as readers to go, I've experienced the black excellence and I do love it. I experience a black fantastic and I do love it.

But there is something else that if all of that was gone, that I actually might want that. And that has no relationship to either of those things. It almost felt like the way you, oh, so sorry. There's like a lag on my side. So sorry. I was going to say it almost felt like the way you wrote DC is almost like the embodiment of our kind of people. Like I found myself being like, I bet the link still exist.

I bet they're still having Jack and Joe meetings. Like I bet they're still doing all of that stuff in D.C. As where I felt like Chicago was somebody going like, if you even try to talk to me about that shit, I'm going to fight you. Like, I don't want to do it. And then like, and they were like, we're here to have a good time. Like in my head, Chicago was where they were like, well, we bought back Freaknick. As where Mobile, like you said, felt like what it says in the book is like,

we took inspiration from Haiti and now we are creating the future. And like, and I think like I said, even for myself, I found myself being like, oh, yeah, what would my mom and her friends feel like if they woke up tomorrow and, like, the links serve no purpose? Like, what would my dad do if a boule meeting has no point anymore? Like, would they just be like, oh, I, okay. I guess we're not doing this anymore.

They would have to find something else, man. Yeah, like I was just like, yeah. The critical thinking element of like actually going, Am I doing these tasks that I'm doing every single day? I'm operating the way I'm operating because it is my nature or am I doing it because I've been nurtured in this capacity? And that question is important and vital, I think, now more than ever to go, I want to know what my nature is.

I want to know who I am. And if I'm responding to the principles within me, am I responding to the things that matter to me or I'm responding to the things that matter to me or I'm responding to. to an external stimuli that has nothing to do with me. Did you almost dive deeper into the, I was so sorry, we're all over the place. Did you always dive deeper into the Latino characters and like the Asian characters?

Because you kind of touch on characters of other races, almost on the periphery dealing with, how whiteness has impacted them. Like was there any, ever a moment where you had an urge to like dive deeper into them at all? yes and I'll give you a bit of a take that will be explored a little bit more in the movie so oh exciting okay getting some exciting info here hot goss hot goss yeah there will be so yeah since we obviously are in the spoiler area and you're talking about the kingdom

I thought it was, I remember as I was reading, I didn't know if we would be told why there was like mass suicide essentially from all the white people. I didn't know if we were going to know. And like I feel like the synopsis lately I've been complaining about how synopsies and trailers sometimes just tell us more than we need to know. I feel like the synopsis was so good at like hiding a couple of details that felt like satisfying reveals. one is that it which is not where my question is going but we can maybe get back to it one was

like that we didn't know that charlie was in jail for wrongfully convicted for raping a white woman and that that's how sidney even exists now like that reveal i was like gardening i was like peeling with weeds and listening to it and i was like oh my god i'm like i have to write a note about this um so i thought that reveal was actually really satisfying and like helped complicate the story as well. But then the other one was then finding out that it was this frequency that they tapped into that connected them to like themselves. And then the idea that like white people having to feel what had happened was so hurtful that they caused them to commit suicide. Did you know from the get go that it was going to be a frequency that caused it or did you surprise your story?

yourself too. It was a total surprise. It was a total surprise. Oh my God. I don't even know if I was I love it. When authors say that, I'm like, oh my God. Total shock. So I was I remember. I remember like when I realized it was a kingdom because it was just they were just going to go south. It was like we'll figure it out when we get there. And I've mapped out just the journey south visually for like the country and what things look like, what things they interact with. And then when they got to Chicago and he says it's a kingdom, I was like, okay. And then we get to the kingdom. And I still don't know.

I'm just kind of like writing it, documenting it. And then when Charlie gets to the, to meet the king, I felt it like, it's hard to describe in these moments. But it's like your antenna is up and then stuff is just going into your brain. I'm not, not me. And something's in the garage. And I was like, okay, what's in the garage? I type in and it was like, it's some sort of radio. And I'm like, a radio.

What is in this garage? Like, what is this? And in the act of trying to figure out what was in this garage, it was like, oh, what's in this garage actually did this whole event. And now you got to figure out how, why. And that, it was so strange. And I tell you, some of these things happen and you just go, that, that feels like a higher power situation. I was writing along and a fella, I think it was fell. No, it was a herald.

He goes, it's like it's a sky full of elephants. And I did not see that coming at all either. He just says it in the book. And he goes, like, sky is coming down. It's like all this energy. And then I was like, wow, that's crazy. All right, let's rock with it. And that was it.

It was completely out of nowhere, no expectation. But I did have the sort of responsibility to try to make sense of it, to go, okay, if this is happening, why? Why? If you had the power to make this choice to go, I'm going to heal a wound that has lasted for 200, 300 years, at the expense of having so many other people feel those emotions with you, like all of the suppressed emotional in the whole country, would you, would you do that? Like, would you actually pull that lever? And I struggled with it. And I went, that has to be Charlie's struggle. He's the person who faces things.

So he needs to be the person that's going to choose whether or not the healing of a whole people is worth, you know, the mass suicide of another. And that ultimately really wasn't about that. It was about allowing us everyone to feel what deserves to be felt. Mm-hmm. And so it came out of nowhere. I kind of love that your answer, too. you're like, it just like was you literally like gestured around your head, which was reminding me of the cover that I meant to bring over here. But it's like your answer was like, oh,

the frequencies just came to my head and I knew what it was. I literally never said that at last. That's exactly it. That's exactly that. That's crazy. I love that. That's nuts. Yeah. How did you? I was, oh, I was going to say, how did you land on the kind of subsets of black folks that we met and how they respond to the frequency. So like for lack of a better example, I always say, I tried to explain it to someone. I said, you've got like your HOTEPs who want to be white so bad that they are walking around in white clothing, hoping that they feel the call to throw themselves in the ocean. But obviously from the reveal, we realize that they obviously have a lot of anger at kind of what

whiteness has done to them. Hence why they didn't land in the ocean. You have the white folks in that one town who are safe that I guess you could even argue must be well-meaning white people because they didn't throw themselves in the ocean. Like, how did you land on those that got to survive? I, it was, there was a quote from James Baldwin, and he said something like, like, he's like, I know a lot of things about white people, and there's a lot of things I don't know. But what I do know for certain is they don't want to be black here in this country. They can want everything else in the world.

they don't want to be black here. And I was like, that'll be my dividing line. Just the idea that they don't want to be black. So I started playing with that initially. And obviously that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but I was like, I'm going to just start there. And then I sort of realized that there needed to be the spectrum that would encompass everything else, right?

Like if what we're talking about is if we're just isolating black people in general, that spectrum by itself is like it's a huge it's a huge spectrum of possible emotions and possible reactions and who's included and who's not included who's at the cookout who's done it like it's a big spectrum and so i was like okay i need to just try to give as much context for the extremities of that spectrum as possible so you have someone like little whose mind is broken you know and like and and and it's broken because of the system that had been rapping and pressing him all of his life. And you've got Charlie who's in prison. You've got you've got the king and the queen who a lot of what they're doing is a response to what they felt the whole lives. And at the center of that, I wanted something really simple.

And it was, I just want the dynamic of family because that was the only thing that I think keeps the pressure off is the dynamic of family. So Charlie and Sydney trying to figure themselves out. You've got Zoo and Sailor and you see Zoo and Sailor and you go, this is a great, you know, parent-child relationship. They're great. Both of them are, wow, but this is working for me. It works. And then you've got the king and the queen in their whole unit. And you get to see all of these people just going, all we want is, is the community, the binding of a community, all of them, whether that community is to be with a group of walkers or that community is to be with the kingdom. It's like I just want to be bound to something meaningful.

And that by definition was a sort of separation from being bound to something that actually wasn't meaningful. That was the idea that you were inferior in the country. I'm like always waiting to make sure I don't talk over anyone. Give it a couple. Give it a couple of sentences. Kind of like diving into the kingdom and like the kingdom and like the, of the frequency that they were sending out. And like you're saying, the question of do I hope to heal more of my people at the cost of maybe hurting other people?

Because by the end, when Charlie's making the decision, they're also talking about how they don't know what will happen. Like they don't know it'll happen if they do it another time. But there's like a quote at some point that someone's having a conversation where the gist of it is is the king. who did it the first time responsible for what happened? Or is it all of the white people's actions that made them feel that way? Is that actually still who's actually responsible for then what happened when they did turn the radio on?

And I thought that was so fascinating because obviously I picked up the book. I was not offended by the premise, but I was thinking about the fact that obviously this is a premise that's going to offend a lot of people. and hearing the different perspectives as they were trying to decide what do we do since maybe we could fix this and use this, I thought it was so fascinating because there are some people who are like, you would just kill a bunch of white people who didn't do anything, didn't do anything wrong. And it was making me think how like I could see how some white people obviously

would be pissed off about that. But to me, it kind of had something clicking. We're like, we're fine. white people, all kinds of people, watching John Wick movies where like how many people are getting just like moat down, but we're like, oh, revenge. Like it's justified because we're in this main character's mind and like, it doesn't matter that that security guard just thought he was going into work today and got killed by John Wick instead. Like it was making me think of how easy it is for a lot of people to jump into like, oh, it's a revenge story. And so whatever happens is okay. And I kind of

have talked myself out of a question, but how did you, how did you like kind of build those conversations? Was that another thing where like as you were writing it, you were just kind of exploring it yourself? I knew I liked the, once I got to Mobile and I started to see what was happening, I liked the idea of like if you were to take the idea of like it being a death, right? Like not death of people, but you go, what if it means death of a system or what if it means death of a certain way of life? would you still do it? And I look around and I go, nope, they still wouldn't do it, right? Because if you want to abolish the police force, as a result, keeping some of these communities from people getting murder, still people are like, no, actually, I really want to keep the police force, right?

If you go, I want to abolish the way farming is happening for certain foods and take antibiotics. out of chicken, people go, it'll actually save a lot of people from getting cancer, maybe. And they'll go, hmm, actually, it's cheaper. So let's keep rocking with it. And so the question is, while it's an extreme scenario, you know, with the mass suicide, it's applicable to things that are, that we can change right now in front of us every single day. And so when I'm in rooms with people that feel that way, when they're like, you know, as someone say to me, they're like, you're committing genocide. And I'm like, I don't think you know what genocide means. And I don't think you know who I can do.

I just write a book. That's right. I don't know what you're going to. But the idea is that it's the deconstruction and or destruction of concepts that are hurting other people. And are you willing to, as a way, help those people destroy those concepts? And I challenge anybody that feels offended by the book to take death out of it and ask yourself a question about our current reality.

And see, every single day, you can go, if I do X, these people will be better off. Mm-hmm. Well, two things in your answer made me think. One, I think fiction, there was like a piece, I think it was the New Yorker did a piece about how, like, men don't read fiction. And it is a huge reason we're in the position we are.

And I think fiction is a way to get people to truly examine a scenario that they can't necessarily when you tell them to do it to themselves, right? It's like I think about when a woman would go on TikTok and be like, what would you do tomorrow of all the men disappeared? And right, the first comment is always a man being like, who would protect you all? And then it's immediately a woman being like, from who? Who are we being protected from? What do we need to be saved from in this fictional scenario where you're gone?

And then the other thing it made me think of is because I'm a big old blur. Truly bears. I'm a big old blurred. And it made me think about how recently with Ironheart, there's all this discourse of like, she's a criminal. She's working with the bad guys. and you're like, okay, I'm going to hold your hand with a napkin in between it when I say this. Tony Stark was a war criminal.

Like, I don't want to be mean to you, but like he is the son of a billionaire who helped fund war. And I think what I love about what the book does, all of a sudden it becomes a fictional scenario that you now have to sit with because, like we said, all the white people aren't gone. I remember once early on my best friend made a joke because I just, I do a radio show and I like got on the show and I said like just not even thinking I said if you see a Nazi punch him in the face just like not even thinking and people wrote me the ink they were like so you're okay with punching people in the face and my best friend who is the tiniest white woman from truly my best friend who's the tiniest white woman from Florida goes listen if somebody says punching Nazi in the face my question is why you flinching why you looking around and make sure nobody's about to punch you she was like that's the question you need to ask yourself and I think almost yeah and I think almost that's what the book forces you to do. To Kate's point, if you hear that and you're like, if you have been a part of the

oppressive system, you are going to throw yourself in the ocean to go die. And your first response is, so you want me dead? Is like, well, pause for a second and maybe examine why you think in the story, you're not in that other town where the handful of white people

survive, that you instead are like, I went immediately into Lake Lanier and died, like, kind of thing. And it's like that it's like I just love what you. I think and then off of that commentary. The other question I had is in Mobile and we kind of saw it with sinners, it's like when you eliminate the white gaze, there is a level of sensuality that comes to the black experience of like here you have

kind of this woman telling him to take off her clothes and she takes off hers. Like was that an intentional choice also where you were like, we are now in this utopian black futurist society. And like, sexiness for the sake of the male gaze is now gone. And now there is this level of sensuality afforded to women that may not have always been there. Yes, 1,000%. I think when I imagine like the black experience, just in general, I see a profound amount of intimacy. And it's important that that word is a prerequisite to a rise.

to sensuality because intimacy is like, I just feel comfortable giving you my time. I feel comfortable going deep with you and like feeling like we're connecting on a love that that is a, it precedes the physical experience and enhances the physical experience. And so, and it applies itself to a lot of things. So if you're like, I'm going to make some food, right, I'm going to make you dinner. A person, like I say, my mom is a, she's a, she's a, she's a caterer. and when she makes food for everyone, it's a spiritual experience.

Like, she's not messing around. She's like, she's like, it means something to her to invest her time. She ain't got a single recipe. It's an art form and she's thought about it and she's invested it and she can't wait for you to eat it. And when you eat it, if you don't hum or slap the table, she hasn't done her job.

So she takes something that's in her, creates it, and you have a physical experience with it. And I think that is what she's doing in the kitchen is intimacy. What you're watching her as intimacy. And creation, it makes something that feels sensual. And I think that's true for the culture all over the world. And it's important that it said is the book centered around the American experience. But I've been to the continent, right?

I've been to South America. I've been to places. You know, there are black people and they're doing the exact same thing. or at least their version of the same thing. And I go, there's a connective tissue between that, that, that experience of intimacy, becoming sensuality and spiritual as a bridge between those two things. And so, yeah, for sure, because I believe that. I believe that I grew up in a space where you weren't looking at women just because they were beautiful.

You were looking at them because you were like, I feel connected to this person. There's a phrase I would never forget this. I went to college. I went to college in St. Louis. And, you know, I'm in theater. I went to college and a football scholarship, but I was also in theater and creative writing.

And I'm in my classes and I'm talking to people. And they would say stuff and I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I feel you. And this guy goes, why do you say that? I was like, what do you mean? You got to know what he was talking about. He goes, why do you say I feel you? What does that mean? And I'm like, I don't know.

It means like I understand, I think. And he's like, well, you understand. And I didn't register until later. I was like, it's because I do feel you. I connect to you. That's what I'm describing. And that is my whole family describes it that way. If you talk to anyone in my family, they'll go, yeah, I feel you.

I feel that. And that to me, it embodies that sense of sensuality that I'm describing. It's like it's a deep, deep understanding of resonance that translates into something physical that becomes sensual. And so I certainly want that. And it's, it's, it is beyond gender. It is beyond any specific type of relationship. It's prerequisite to those things. And so, yeah, definitely.

I wanted to interrupt this episode really quickly. I have a goal of monetizing Bookwild, but I would love to do it without having to have ads in the podcast. And one way that I can do that is through my Patreon community. For those who don't know, Patreon is a community platform that allows, creators to share what they're creating behind a paywall. And so that means exclusive content or early releases. The book Wild Patreon has two tiers. The first tier is the bookish tier. And at that tier,

you get all of the episodes out a day early. And you get access to our private community chat, where we can talk about anything book related or TV shows or movies. The second tier is the Book Wild tier, and it includes everything from the first tier, but also Book Wild's Backlist Book Club. So this year, I've been wanting to also still read more Backlist, even though I read plenty of arcs, and Book Wilde's Backlist Book Club felt like the perfect way to do that. We meet on Sundays. We are international right now, so Sundays are the best way to do it. And we meet on Zoom, and we all pick a book and we talk about it and then we talk about everything else we read during the month and then we pick another book for the next month. So it's been so much fun so far and we'd love to have

you join the book club. So if you'd like to support the book Wild podcast, you can go to the Patreon link in the show notes and you can sign up for whichever to your interest you. And if you're looking for a free way to support the show, if you can like and review it on whichever platform you listen to, that helps so much. Yeah. That connection is obviously like, that's why I thought it was kind of cool that you use frequencies. Like there's, there's some quote at some point that I had here where it's talking about where they, how they discovered it in Haiti. And it says something about like what, what Nicola Tesla had to like use science to figure out. Black people had like always been tuned into was like the gist of it. And again, I, I'm glad. I almost called you Sydney McKinsey. I'm glad McKinsey already brought up sinners because I was also like, I don't want to be that white person just comparing everything to sinners.

Like there's not anything else to compare things to. But that theme was so similar, having just like talked to McKinsey and all kinds of people about sinners and then reading this, it kind of felt like where the sinners used horror to talk about connection. and then some people who don't have connection and like want to steal that connection or exploit it, this used speculative fiction to talk about that. The fact that like you can be connected in a way that like not everyone can be essentially

is kind of where I'm headed with that. And so you said you kind of didn't know the frequency part was like going to be like the answer to it. But did you always know you wanted to write about even what you were just kind of done say or just finished saying is like the way that feeling connected to something, feeling connected to your ancestors, I can't say that I have ever felt deeply connected to my ancestors either. Did you did you know that that was still going to be like the big thing you would be writing about? Yeah, only because I knew that that's what kept them out of the water. So that sort of connection, I didn't know how it would translate, but I knew that that, whether they could feel that connection or not, it exists. And it exists. And it has existed even as a as a sort of counter argument to blackness. It's like, you all are alike or you all are the same or you all, you this, but you're not a part of this. Like that isn't, that wasn't black people going, you know, rallying together going, these are the markers that identify. us, that was someone else that was that, right? And so that, that, that bound us in a way.

So I knew we're going into it that that would be the case that you'd have a sort of connection between everyone. The frequency piece, again, I end up reading all this stuff and I sometimes will get into these almost like conspiracy theory level of research or reading. And I can kind of distinguish your stuff that feels a little bit crazy or what doesn't. But I was reading once about how before, when the Egyptians were developing in mathematics, prior to the arrival of the Greeks, that they were working with a certain frequency, it would not go below that frequency because they felt like it was out of harmony with the world. And so they stopped math. They could go, it could go further.

They were like, if you go any further, you're out of tune. So when Pythagoras came and he integrated with the Egyptians and he started to learn all the mathematics, he was like, hey, you guys could go further. And they're like, we know, but we don't want to because it would be out of tune. When he went back, Greeks, he was like, let's go further, guys. And then everything that they developed is out of tune. And so I think that there is a tunage to something that makes us feel unified. And I'll put it to you really simply. And I'm giving you a bit of a nod into what's in my next book, which is, we'll be out in 2020, hopefully 2026.

But there is this sense that the Greeks came back, right? And Pythagoras had the mathematical knowledge of the Egyptians. And they started to apply it deeper and break that tunage. You eventually developed the Roman Empire, which took over the whole world and still has the world in a grip. I mean, literally we're the tagline for America's E-Purpose Union, why are we using Latin for that? Like, I don't understand. Like, we're still connected

to the role. And so that tunage, that out of tunage remains. Like, it doesn't feel like we're going, let's figure out how to exist, co-exist together. But in places where the tunage does remain, which we consider now, like,

developing countries, they do still go, we're in this together. We're in tune with the nature. We're in with each other. We have our fights. We have our bickering the same way you need to burn some of the land and help you grow better, but we're here to coexist. That was a break in our realities, I think, at a certain point. And so I wanted that to fold its way back into the novel, which is like there is a frequency on which we can all exist and coexist together. And right now we're not on it. And we need to get back on it. But in order to get back on it, we got to turn that one off.

right they got to shut that down and everything that is built upon that one we got to shut that down and so that yeah i knew i knew that there was something but i didn't know what it was until i was like 200 pages in and then i was like okay i got to go backwards because this doesn't make any sense but yeah yeah be connected for sure yeah i've got a very stupid final question for my side of things which is landing on death by going into the ocean. Because I think for me, my thought was, Oshun, wade in the water. Like, we could have had some insane opening chapter

that was like this final destination style white people dying. But like I said, this may be the dumbest question on the planet. But how did we land on water? Yeah. I get this question, it's not the dumbest question. Everyone I always ask my question. Because I have one person, Jason, you may don't know Jason Reynolds.

He was like, he was like, I want a resolution. You didn't give me restitution. I want to fire. I was like, I don't, I'm not Stephen King, but I'll. So I definitely, there's a big relationship to water in our culture, I think. And the middle passage, water being a form of baptism, water as a way to gather, of any community, particularly a tribal one, is going to try to gather around water because water is going to be the source of life. So I knew that was going to be vital.

I also tactically didn't want the story to be about white people. I wanted it to be about the black experience as a result of this. And so if there were bodies lying around, then what we're going to be talking about is like, watch out for that corner. Who's rotting? Who's rotting? Who's not rotting? it would be that. And so I needed the erasure. I needed something to go, I'm going to erase this, and I'm going to give it back to you. And then it started to like sort of matriculate into other things. It was like, oh, well, the tide always comes back. And that's the idea of sort of redemptive nature of the world. And then I had a friend come to me and he was like, after he gave him a bit to read and he was like,

but see what bodies float? So like what's happening? Like, why aren't the body is floating in all the water and then it just like clicked. I was like, oh, because our ancestors are holding them. And he looked at me. He's like, what? And I'm like, yeah, the ancestors that have drowned in the middle passage, the people that were, you know, thrown over ships, they're in that water. And they're going, now is your time. And they've got us in the same way that they expected us to claim it. And that, and that friend, when I said that, he just looked at me and he was like, all right, I bet. That works. That works. And I said, okay, cool. Then we'll go to cook.

And so that was the idea was, like, I think water could be the element of our transformation, which is inclusive of Charlie's Bath and Sydney's Bath. In the film, there's this really beautiful rain sequence that didn't get to make it into the book. So, yeah, water was, was, it had to be, it couldn't be anything else. Like if it was fire, fire is a living rage, whereas, water is, is, it doesn't have the emotion. It only has purpose. And so I wanted that to be the case. That is such a cool answer. That is beautiful. I love it. One of mine that I was really interested in because it's a really, there's so much imagery and kind of like motifs throughout the book as well.

But especially like at the very beginning of it, Charlie is thinking about how in some ways he's relieved that all of these white people died and it makes him wonder am i too dark of a person for thinking that which obviously from the get go is like we're starting off with like dark versus light energy and that keeps going through the whole book so there's like the interesting part that like charlie also understands energy and like how to harness solar energy there's like that part to his character and i was like oh this is all like tying into his character there's a line kind of near the end that talks about how we thought the light was what we needed, but it was in the dark that our ancestors found themselves, like, so much.

And the other one that I have written down here, like Mobile, when they get there, he's thinking about how they're enlightened is the word that even comes to mind for him. And I'm like, all of this, like, just goes together so much. And I'm always intrigued because it always seems so intentional. But sometimes authors are like, I didn't realize I was doing it. it. So in terms of the imagery, was it kind of intentional or was it also just like because that was the story you were telling, it was showing up that way? Very, very intentional. And so I think of writing is like coats of paint, right, where you go, I'm going to give it my first coat

of paint and then I'm going to refine it and refine it. And each time those details, you may not know them on the first past, but they're in the back of your mind and you figure out how to incorporate them in all the places. And to me, the idea of dark and light was fundamental to the narrative. And I tried to put it in every place that I possibly could. And I'm glad you really, you picked up on a lot of important things. That idea of the idea that dark is where light radiates, right? Like you don't turn on your light in the day time. Do you know what I'm saying? Like you just let the light. But at night, all everything illuminates. That to me was what I wanted. I wanted it to feel like, and in the film it does, like in the, and I'm saying this, like, the film is done, I'm writing, we're writing it now.

But there's a transition from D.C. and Chicago where everything feels like it's daytime. By the time you get to Mobile, a lot of it's shot at night, and the colors are a little bit brighter. And you get, you get different types of illuminants from fire to, like, traditional luminous. And then the moon is brighter. The dust of the cosmos is brighter. You can see it. You can see. And I think that our ancestors really start to understand themselves,

is lying in the back in the dark and look up. That we don't do now because there's too much light in the sky that obstructs the view. And so I'm like, I want us to register how important that is that like that there is an internal illumination that happens when your eyes are closed. There is an internal illumination that dark. That we have to do it. the premise of the book as I see it is like is the the book is the signal the book is telling you hey man like turn it on like turn yourself on and activate right now yeah yeah and so to me that is in part learning to shine on your own and learning to be bright on your own which is what charlie does

and the people of mobile is in being healed they they illuminate and that that's this is everything. And that's speckled throughout the whole book. Yeah. All the way to the end. Even like Sydney in the very end of her first sequence, she's lying on the back and she's looking up at the sky. And it's just an empty sky with the sun up in its daytime.

At the end of the book, she's lying on her back and a body of water looking up at the sky and it's empty and full of stars. That binary was the story. Mm-hmm. I also, before I forget, loved she, we kind of meet her and she's holding a gun on or aiming a gun at people. And at the end, he kind of has that happen, but actually acts differently in that situation.

And I was like, all these character arcs are so amazing. Sydney's arc is funny because I get a lot of people, they're really, really, really, really want her to come back. And I guess my inboxes, the DMs are all Sydney all the time. Either they hate Sydney, they're like, Sydney should have come back. The ending, I wanted her to see her father. and I wanted to actually keep that binary. That's why she doesn't come back because I wanted her to end it in the water

just like she began it in the water. And in the film secretly, I think she'll come back. But right now, she's in the book. They keep my structure. Because Charlie has it as well. The beginning, he's teaching his class, but he feels unworthy. He doesn't feel like he should be the person

that disseminates his information. And at the end, he's disseminating the information. It feels very worthy. And they choose him because they think he embodies all of them is what one of them says. And that was the other thing. I had the hyrophant tarot card that he draws or is drawn for him that talks about he's the teacher and the student. I was like, I was just like, oh, my gosh, all of this is so perfect. You're picking up on all over.

That's great. The hyrophant card was a card. When I moved to New York, I had tarot reading. and at two at one when I left and one when I arrived and when I was leaving the card that was pulled for me was the strength card and they were like you in the strength card is a woman holding the open a lion's mouth and they're like strength is in vulnerability and I'm like okay I'm going to be vulnerable and when I got to New York I got the higher fan card and that particular card that I got the higher fans holding books but a woman is standing behind him and it's like you're going to go and be the delirable. or the herald of this information. And I was like, okay, that makes sense. But in both scenarios, I need to be by a woman. Like, no matter what I'm doing anything, you know,

I'm not going to be successful. And so, you know, I think I wanted to bleed a little bit of that into the book. Yeah. A lot as much as I could at least. Yeah. There's, I think anytime someone writes a slightly ambiguous ending or open-ended, everyone has feelings about if that's an okay ending or not. And I typically tell people the way that I tend to enjoy endings like that is if I feel

like the book has given me all of the information to understand what probably happened, then I'm okay with it just being like, and it's done here. So I don't know if you want to talk about what you think your ending meant or if you want to keep it ambiguous. But I will say that in my notes, I had like kind of like the high raffan card. That's why that was there. I was like, I think Charlie's energy is different. That's why they're wanting him to do it than when they turned it on. I think I don't have all of my notes for it. But it kind of felt like there was there was maybe still so much anger from them when they did it at that time. And so for me, it kind of felt like it will be different this time because his energy, his energy.

his energy is different and he's the source energy for it. You don't have to say if that's what you were intending or not, but that was me trying to guess my way through it. That's exactly it. I wanted Charlie, Charlie has a different, from the other characters in the book, it was a different center for his relationships to the world. He's been in prison for years, right?

He doesn't know what's been happening. All he knows is that he feels unworthy. and coming out, even with the world given to him, he still feels unworthy. His arrival to his worthiness comes with his relationship to his daughter, and that to be seen as a father meant that he was worth something. And that, to me, to be in the seat of fatherhood, it is particularly the father of a daughter. I think it gives you a certain element of empathy

that's really difficult to come by otherwise, and awareness of your impact on someone else's life in a completely different way. I'm very aware of myself as a man because I have a daughter. And I'm like, I can't have her thinking like that I'm, that any other man that she's going to date is going to hopefully have attributes that are honorable because she's seen honorable before. So I'm very aware of that, but I don't think I would be aware of it otherwise.

Also, admittedly, I had started a sort of of part two. I don't think I'm going to do it, but I started a part two and then the part two, if you think of like, Skyfieldville is about what happens in America in the event, after this event, and everybody is affected and they have a distinct relationship with Haiti, and you don't know what happens to the rest of the world. In Skyfield of Elephants, too, if that were going to be a thing, it would be what happens to the rest of the world. And it would start in the UK. I've written it all out. It's in the UK, and it's a father of three daughters in the UK, and he's Jamaican, but he married a woman in England. They had these three daughters. The woman died of cancer,

and he's raising these three daughters on his own. And the UK government finds out what happened. They found out something happened in the States. They don't know exactly what it is. They're definitely not going to cross this water to find out, sorry. They're not going to cross this water to find out what's happening, but they're terrified. And so what they decide to do is they say, I want you to get every single person that's not born in the UK, take them back to where they came from. And so they come into this man's house overnight, pull him out, leave his daughters, and take him back to Jamaica on a boat. And he has to figure out what is going on. How does he get back to his daughter?

And it's about the concept of immigration relative to the UK, which is Windrush. And if you've not known Windrush, Run Rush is a whole big thing. And so they will have the same choice that Charlie had, whether they will want to try to use this machine. They will meet Charlie. They will meet Sydney on the islands. And it draws a distinct relationship between the islands and the original continent, the same way that America drew a distinct relationship to Haiti, which is, I think, the last best of the original continent. So I had this idea that you would get the whole story of Charlie and the decision that he made and then how it affects everything else in the world. and what everyone else does as a result of it.

Like people thinking it's a weapon versus people thinking it's a mechanism for healing, all that stuff. Nice. Wow. I also felt like Charlie being, when you were saying the father part, being connected to that his daughter had both identities within her, kind of. I was like, I felt like that might have been part of what made him, like, have his own unique take on it now, now that he does feel like her father. too. I think so. And he loved her mother. Like they were together for a He felt something found for her. And so I think I think all of that is relative to the whole sort of amalgam of those things help him make a decision or decision flow through him that's going to

flow through him with a level of empathy. Yeah. You know, so yeah, for sure. Well, I loved the ending if you couldn't tell. So. in the book in general. I really, really appreciate it. And it was tricky to write because I wanted to keep going, but it is one of those things where you go. If people put this book down and they look up and they simultaneously want more and they look at everything around them through the lens of the questions in the book, then I've done my job. Yeah. Yeah.

It is kind of speculative fiction doesn't always have to have this. this, since it's so much about asking questions, it doesn't always have to have very definitive endings. No, no. I think it's, if the journey is done his job, you've got the questions. You know, you know what it's about. And when you close the book, that those questions live with you, they're superimposed over you, wherever you go, you know, and ultimately, yeah.

That's awesome. Well, if there ever is a second book, obviously, I will read it. But I'm also excited for this movie. Likewise. The movie, it was bought by Lawrence Fishburn, so we're developing it now. Nice. Which is going to be fun. It has been fun.

And then the new book, which is called Wells Without Water, is an horror novel, paranormal in the vein of centers. I wrote it before sinners, but it is in the vein of sinners. So I'm glad that you guys brought it up. I think it goes a little deeper and it's a lot scarier. I love horror, so I wanted to really show some horror chops. And at the same time, it's really fun. And so that will hopefully be out in 2026, but we'll see. I'm glad you're writing a horror book because there is a horror author that I love,

and I may or may not have DM them, please, for the love of God, stop writing black characters. I love you so much, you write black people so horribly. Please stop for the love of all things, holy. So, yeah, I'm really excited that you're going to write it for. Yeah, you know exactly. who it is. I was like, I love your writing so much. Please stop writing black people for all things. You're making it hard for me to defend you. So yeah, I really excited. I want to know where it is.

I'll totally tell you when we get off. You can say it. I can cut it. That's what I thought. I was like, please stop. Yeah. I want to know. If you read it, you'll be like, oh, oh, no. I'm going to be like, yeah, we need to talk. I'm going to be like, for the rest of the record, my book is all mostly black characters. The majority of them are black characters. But it has a distinct, it's about demonic possession and the relationship between demonic possession and colonization. Oh, boy.

And so it does create, it creates, I think in the black characters, degrees of, of, like, stereotypes as a way to show. That thing, show the... I love that. But it still works, I think. Okay. You're speaking to the genre of horror that scares me. It's always possessed dolls, children, and just demon possession.

I'm like, I can't hide from that. I can run from Freddie Cougar, but I cannot run from a demon possession. Literally can't run for Freddy. He's a dream. So you can't run. That's true. That's true. That's true.

So, yeah, this sounds like a book I'll be reading in the daytime. Yes. It's scary, man. I wanted to write the scariest book that's ever been written. I read a lot of scary books. I don't find them particularly scary. I find them mostly just like interesting. Engaging.

Yeah. Only a few times we've ever read something. I was like, damn, that was tough. But very seldom. I grew up watching horror movies my entire life. I mean, I was like five years old watching Freddie, like that kind of stuff. And so I want to, to introduce something to the genre that feels different and feel scary for different reasons.

I think I've got it. Nice. Well, you know McKenzie and I will read it the second. Well, I'll be trying to snap it up on NetGalley, and then I will be forcing McKinsey to get on NetGalley so we can bloody read it. That's right. Well, thank you for talking with us about this. This was such a. I almost said in lightning conversation, but it was a great conversation.

Honestly, it's my pleasure. I always love, I wrote this book so we can have conversation. I say this to people all the time. I'm like, authors write books, and then they go on to the next book. And I'm like, I just want to talk. Like that, I just want to have conversations. You know, so I'm blessed. It means the world to go to sit and challenge you guys.

Yeah, same. Thank you so much.