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Bass Reeves
Both of my parents were incredible storytellers. My mom spins parables, wringing insightful meaning from the most mundane circumstances. My dad was a fantasist who never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I loved the tales he told but I took them with a grain of salt. So when he asserted that “You know that the Lone Ranger was a Black man, right?” I rolled my eyes. Even though I’ve…
Today’s the day! My 5th novel, Nobody Knows You’re Here is out today in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.
On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a “nice girl,” but that won’t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody’s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.
When the situation gets more dire—deadly even—Beatrice has to become the hero she and her fellow prisoners need. To escape she’ll have to outsmart her captors and do terrible things that would horrify her former self. If she succeeds, there’s no telling who she’ll be when the ordeal comes to an end.
You may not recognize Garth Williams’ name, but if you’re American who was born before 1980, I bet you’d recognize his illustrations. From Stuart Little to Charlotte’s Web to a whole series of Little Golden Books, he illustrated some iconic children’s books. My favorite of his book illustrations is The Little Fur Family, but this is quickly becoming a close second. I’d never heard of it before I saw it at an estate sale today, but I immediately recognized the drawing style. I love all the little animals and the details to them. $2 and about 10 alcohol swabs later, I’m very pleased with my treasure.
Sometimes little pleasures in life are loadbearing. Whenever someone is like "If you'd just give up tea and coffee and sugar and--" im like I'll stop you right there. Because if you finish that sentence i am going to kill everyone in this building and then myself. If i have to face the horrors of the world without my little jar of caramel flavoured instant coffee i am going to go full American Psycho. Believe it or not, my main priority in life is not to have perfect teeth or be an Olympic athlete or look like a supermodel, but to actually enjoy living, because I spent far too long not doing that and it royally sucked. And boy, some people don't like hearing that. Particularly dentists
I once gave up processed sugar for 9 months. Lost a bunch of weight. My tinnitus was radically reduced. So was my will to live. I woke up one morning, at my breaking point. So healthy. So hopeful I would get hit by a bus or become an innocent bystander to a shootout. Ate a donut, suddenly did not want the earth to destroyed.
I read this book back in January and I’m still trying to process it. The basic plot revolves around a young girl who is swept up in a South Korean government plan to clear the streets of “undesirables” (primarily poor and homeless people). They are imprisoned in work camps and poor houses in preparation for hosting the Olympics. That’s right the 1988 Seoul Olympics, not even 40 years ago. It’s a heartbreaking story that fueled my already high levels of anger about the city of New Orleans sweeping homeless people off the streets in preparation for the Super Bowl this year. And why is it that the homeless people are never swept off the streets into … homes, but into detention camps? It’s the cruelty, not the cost. After all, NOLA spent almost $17 MILLION to forcibly “house” those people in a warehouse. That same money could have been spent to help homeless people, just as the South Korean government could have spent similar money to get people out of poverty, instead of punishing them for it. It’s not a cheerful book, but it did give me a lot to think about.
I bought a new reading chair this weekend. It was a real bargain, only $30 at ReStore, but almost as soon as it came in the house, the dogs laid claim to it. I was allowed to use it for a few hours this afternoon to spend with my current read: Shutter by Ramona Emerson.
Well I was planning to post about a different book today, but surprise! Amazon has posted the cover of my new book already, so here it is. Nobody Knows You’re Here, my first foray into the thriller genre, is coming September 16, 2025.
A desperate woman fights to escape captivity in this gripping thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.
Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.
On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a “nice girl,” but that won’t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody’s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.
When the situation gets more dire―deadly even―Beatrice has to become the hero she and her fellow prisoners need. To escape she’ll have to outsmart her captors and do terrible things that would horrify her former self. If she succeeds, there’s no telling who she’ll be when the ordeal comes to an end.
On this the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I think about how many times we’ve heard the phrase “never again,” and we’ve done nothing substantive to prevent genocide since then. Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Myanmar, Gaza, and those are only the ones I can name off the top of my head. I look at this photo of children in Auschwitz, and I think of all the children who are in danger from the greed, extremism, and hate that fuels genocide. Children always suffer. I don’t understand how anyone can look at these faces, even at the distance of 80 years, and think that money or land or power is more important than building a world that’s safe for children.
As we’re all taking stock of the things this Republican administration is destroying, here’s another childhood book that was a big deal to me. When I was in 8th grade, my English teacher was Mrs. Aletha Moon. Mrs. Moon was one of only half a dozen Black people in my tiny hometown. Although my grandad was friends with Mr. Moon, most of my family were your standard issue western small town polite racists. The kind of people who would never use racial slurs to people’s faces, but were completely comfortable saying racist things in private. At that time (1984), there was a lot of talk in my community about how bad affirmative action was.
In 8th grade English class that year we were required to write one of our first formal research essays. It wasn’t terribly rigorous stuff, but we were required to consult some sources and cite them. I wrote about affirmative action. Because all I’d ever heard about it were negative things, my little essay was pretty negative about it.
When I got it back, I’d received a B+ and among the marginal comments was this note: “I’m disappointed that your essay is so poorly reasoned. I had come to expect more from you.” It was the harshest thing any teacher had ever written on an assignment and I went to Mrs. Moon to see what I could do to bring my grade up to an A. (I wasn’t allowed to get anything but A’s, and sincerely, disappointing the smartest teacher I’d ever had was a real gut punch.)
Mrs. Moon offered me this extra credit: I could read Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man and write an essay about it. Not a research essay but a simple reaction essay. I do not remember what I wrote, but I remember exactly how I felt reading this book. I knew that one of my very distant great-grandmothers had been a Black woman* who had sued for her freedom, but nobody in my family really talked about that. At 13, I’d lived as a white child in a town that was almost entirely white, and I had no idea exactly how cruel the world I lived in was toward Black people. “Eye-opening” doesn’t begin to cover it.
I remain very grateful to Mrs. Moon for correcting my path in life. Without her, perhaps I would have grown up to be a Republican. Perhaps I would be looking on at the horrors being unleashed while feeling perfectly comfortable in my white skin.
*If you’re curious, my 8th great-grandmother was Elizabeth Key Grinstead.
I just hope that when I die, somebody who loves me has the decency to delete the 100-odd WIPs that only have like 9 pages. Nobody needs to see that.
For many years now my sister and I have sent letters asking every president to free Leonard Peltier. I’m not ashamed to admit that we cried when we heard the news that Biden had commuted his sentence. It’s not the pardon we had hoped for, but to know that he is going to go home and be with his family is enough. It’s giving us a little hope today, and I’m trying to hold that energy for all the trans folks in the US, as well as all the Dreamers and other immigrants.
Anytime timeframe for the next book's release?
Sept 16th.
This is the book. The Book™️. The one that made me obsessed with books. I read The Tombs of Atuan, when I was 8. I’d read tons of books by then, so it might seem I was already obsessed, except this book made me aware that I was much more interested in fictional worlds than the real world. (And who could blame me?) The copy I first read was one of those battered yellow library books without a cover. The kind of books that were meant to last for decades. It was the only LeGuin book my tiny grade school library had, and I confess, I had no idea it was part of a then trilogy. I didn’t learn about that until the internet came around and it became easy to look up books. While I like and respect the other EarthSea books, they don’t make up a cornerstone of my life the way this one does. You could even say this is the book that radicalized me, because the main character, Tenar, overthrows a lifetime of indoctrination and turns her back on brutal superstition. May we all have that kind of awakening.
I rewatched this footage of Rutger Bregman at Davos, and I’d really like a t-shirt that says TAXES NOT PHILANTHROPY. I’m sure that is connected to me living in Kansas, where the Koch Brothers went around doing “philanthropy,” when we should have been taxing them. We should still be taxing the remaining Koch brother. As an interesting side note, David Koch is dead, but was unable to take all of his hoarded wealth with him. So what’s the point of all that money?
Now that we’ve discussed pets, let’s talk about the other greatest thing in the world: books. Let’s talk about this book.
Little Fur Family was the second book I learned to read, so no surprise it is indelibly marked in my brain. It’s about … a little fur family. The story doesn’t tell us exactly what kind of creatures they are, so we are welcome to believe they are some wholly unknown thing. They live in little tree stumps and wear clothes and have the usual personal relationships that humans have. This is my favorite page from the book, when the little fur child goes to visit his grandfather, who is a gruff old fur man. I’m sure I loved it best, because I loved my old gruff grandad.
I still sometimes take out my copy of the book to look at. What is your favorite childhood book?
I forced myself to read the Vulture piece on the accusations against Neil Gaiman, because he was once a favorite writer of mine, and I believe in looking honestly at those things you love and admire.
The thing that strikes me most in learning about the horrible things he has likely done is how they seem to align with other aspects of my life.
Like so many people, I first got into Gaiman in college with the Sandman comics. In fact my entire friend group was really into them.
As the years passed, one by one, I learned terrible things about those college friends.
The least awful of them turned out to be a Trumper. Another turned out to be a plagiarist. Yet another was revealed to be an embezzler, and a fourth is a serial adulterer, betraying every partner they’ve ever had.
The nadir of that friend group was convicted of molesting his own children.
Looking back at those friends, it seems almost natural that I also greatly admired a writer who did cruel, ugly things.
My mother was an emotionally abusive (or neglectful depending on her mood) narcissist, and it became clear to me in adulthood that this had marked me in some way that allowed other abusive people to identify me as a likely target.
I wish I knew how to wrap that up in some meaningful way, but I continue to struggle with it in light of these revelations about Gaiman.
Since I’ve covered all my dogs, I feel I should hop in the way-back machine and introduce my cats as well. All I wanted was a cat. Any cat. My then-husband, however, insisted that he was allergic to cats. Rather than give up, I started researching hypoallergenic cat breeds. Now sphynx cats are not hypoallergenic, but with regular bathing their dander levels can be kept low enough that it won’t aggravate people who are allergic to cats. So we got these cats from a breeder in New Orleans. Flanny was considered a show quality cat, both in color (blue mink) and hairlessness, while Sippy was considered pet quality, because a solid black cat with some hair was considered less desirable. So one was expensive and the other was really expensive.
Naturally that meant Flanny was the hateful one and Sippy was the sweet cuddly one. Regardless, they brought a lot of joy and fun to my life for 20 years, which I can’t say about my now ex-husband. I’m sure it will surprise you that he was not in fact allergic to cats but just thought he wouldn’t like them. 🙄
