I feel like a School Headmaster please take your seats. We oversee book expo and other shows but honestly a former independent bookseller. [applause] but i could not hack in the tough independent world so i joined the confines of forprofit corporations where things seem easier now i can oversee shows like this and talk to all of you. But i will not delay the amazing lineup of authors we have coming up. I just wanted to take a moment to tell a story and acknowledge a friend that many if not all of us have in common. Talking my way to get a job into running and independent bookstore in my hometown st. Paul i didnt know anything about independent bookselling unlike the other luminaries i knew woebegone but shortly after i took this job i got a call in the famous person in the book world into call me to meet the nondescript meeting at a hotel in january in minnesota. [laughter] so this chilly introduction was how i first got engaged with the American Booksellers Association and in that room were people that soon became my luminaries ken white before he was famous himself i am not sure Mitchell Kaplan was in the room but his charismatic figure was looming about somewhere and independent bookselling i got an education with a 2 percent solution teaching me how to do my job so from there i moved east ended up getting a job running book expo over ten years ago and then did events all over the world and to build relationships but none of that wouldve happened if they hadnt made that phone call and asked to participate in the American Booksellers Association. With my story specifically and there are thousands of people that have a similar story and the details are different with the impact on their lives and then to retire. And then to take a brief moment on behalf of myself personally on behalf of people like me to champion independent bookselling so thats my story i just want to say thank you. [applause] so now we invite jen the more merchant who will introduce the panel for the morning and we will have a great conversation. Thank you for being here. Good morning everyone and editor for book expo and the adult author best one dash breakfast with an amazing lineup of authors so well just get right into it first we have tana hussey coats. [applause] next we have marjorie. [applause] next up is Karen Malcolm gladwell. [applause] and now our mce Rachel Maddow is the host of her own show on msnbc awardwinning show as well as the author of drift which is the number one New York Times bestseller. With the Public Policy from Stanford University as a doctorate in Political Science where she attended on a road scholarship. She said she would write and one never write another book but we are glad that she did. Welcome Rachel Maddow. [applause] speak i am such a night owl this constitute is very late tonight so smoke or drink or whatever you need to do. It is exciting and intimidating to be here i am more than excited with each of their new work i have imposter syndrome so i will be brief about my new book that is called blowout as some of you may know i have a tv show very soon it will be a phone show and at what length and for that show i write several thousand words a day as long as there are no swearwords and abide by nbc news rules and standards i can say all the words that i write on my own terms on tv every night which means i have the greatest job on earth. But that may also make you wonder why on top of that i would be so greedy to want an additional outlet. So in the abstract i dont but in 2012 when i wrote my first book drift, and this past year working on blowout, i felt like i was writing despite myself because in the course of my day job i found myself repeatedly getting stuck doing my regular work to try to make sense of a larger dynamic i cap felt like i was caught in the intellectual bottleneck so this process dynamic any given day but that was a couple hundred pages long and although i talk access loan incessantly that doesnt fit into my daily work. It is the same thing that happens in 2012 if you remember drift that was the use of American Military power from decisionmaking and then Congress Never votes on. I feel there was a tele bull story where that all came from in a very recent one fairly recent story and a way to point out why it didnt have to be that way forever. But my new book, blowout came from a realization that there is a fairly simple uniquely destructive dynamic at work through the news we are living through right now with the oil and gas industry. It is a couple hundred pages long but the basic idea the democratic system of government and competent governance at home and abroad has a potent and unrelenting enemy in that industry. Oil and gas was a rich and dangerous sector and should be recognized as a political entity with a track record eve being strong governments. So part of the book subtitle is the phrase rogue state russia. On my day job i have spent an amount of time on the russian attack and the aftermath. The book is not about that attack per se but it does let me get off my chest what i hope americans could better understand about why russia would want to do anything like that. And why they chose those weird methods i think it took that from profound economic and strategic weakness and for me, coming to understand that is revelatory thinking about what they have done but since the attacks and why and what makes for success in their own eyes as they mount these operations. One last point i recognize the oil and gas industry is amalgamated made up of Many Companies run by many executives many employees, shareholders each person who comes from a mother who i am sure is very nice. [laughter] i dont think the oil and gas industry is bad because it is made up of cat loan bad people but it is uniquely destructive entity particularly to our democracy and democracies abroad because of its inherent process purpose was cynical but rational expectations it has built for itself in terms of the way it does business. When used as directed this is an industry whose products are in the process of ending the world and sooner than previously expected but even before we get to the climate apocalypse that same industry really is doing its best to undermine the ability to govern ourselves effectively. So that is cheery theres a lot of Oklahoma City and equatorial new guinea there is a taxidriver warm seats in the house including rex tillers and. [laughter] z now warrior princess. And the spy ring made up of terrible spies. And the cover is a little apocalyptic my mother has already told be based on the cover she is afraid to read it and i will admit it is about the end of the world but it is a funny story. [laughter] thank you for this time and in advance it comes out october 1s. Thank you. [applause] and to bring up the first real author Malcolm Gladwell a tipping point, blink, and david and goliath host of the podcast revisionist history one of the most 100 influential people in the world by Time Magazine and one of the form policies global thinkers. Previously as a reporter with the Washington Post covering business and science serving as the bureau chief graduated from toronto and was born in england growing up in rural ontario now living in new york. Please welcome Malcolm Gladwell. [applause] thank you for that introduction. It is a pleasure to be here although i have profoundly mixed feelings i see all of you who have done so much over the years to sell my books and advance my life on a metaphorical level im glad to see you up and at them this first thing in the morning also i am somewhat appalled i am up this early i have not seen 8 00 oclock a. M. In many years so it is very novel and terrifying experience. I have a book coming out septemh called talking to strangers i hesitate to use the word inspired but grew out of an incident with a young africanAmerican Woman and as she pulls out around the campus a Police Officer comes driving up behind her quickly and she moves to get out of his way. Instead he pulls her over and says i pulled you over because you did not use your turning signal when you got out of the way. She is baffled by this and they have a conversation in the beginning it goes according to protocol as a motorist in place officer. But she is quite upset and lights a cigarette so the officer tells her to put out the cigarette and he said what does she said why cracks i am in my car he said no. Put out your cigarette he said now you defied my order and as you remember things escalate they have a tussle and he drags her out of the car handcuffs or inputs are in jail than three days later she hangs herself in her cell. That was one of a number of cases that captured public attention beginning with Michael Brown and extending through eric gardner and mcdonald and fitzgerald and on and on but that was the case that affected me the deepest forgot im not entirely sure why but there was something about the meaninglessness and the stupidity of the officers reaction that i could not let go of. So i decided to write a book about it and what happened between those two people. First with the conventional explanation. The first was that this was about race. A racist cop who thought the worst of her because she was black and there is an awful lot of truth in that that case would not have happened as it did if she had blue eyes and blond hair. So now the alternative you is that its a bad cop who didnt know how to be a cop and theres a lot of truth to that as well that if you read or even listen to the audio tape he has no idea how to deal with someone who disrupts the carefully narrative way it is supposed to work. But then they were laughing or a deeper way to understand this and it was a failure of communication between strangers they were profoundly different on many levels one from chicago or texas one armed or unarmed one standing and one seated and fundamentally have a new idea who they are talking to and then to see something sinister and then realizing she is dealing with the immature rookie cop and not a Police Officer who knows how to deal with issues so then i realized we have versions of this breakdown of communication over and over and that signature crisis of the day are versions of the same problem. So with bernie made off someone who investors thought that they knew but nobody could glimpse his true self or think about the Jerry Sandusky case at penn state or larry nasser at michigan state. Two men highly regarded in a professional role hardy on hiding a dark secret and incapable to know how to communicate that reveals themselves to us. I could go on its about an American Woman who goes to italy and acts in a way that is consistent with her own american codes of conduct that is inconsistent with italian codes of conduct and they are so baffled and disbelieving about the way she believes after the death of her roommate they falsely imprisoned her for four years. I could go on and on but at Stanford University two people who meet each other late at night at a party and proceed to misunderstand each others intentions while being totally drunk out of their minds. This is what happens we had alcohol to the problem. So to take all of those case studies and others that i talk about late milt chamberlin, hitler, sylvia platt to understand what it is about the particular dynamic between strangers that is so problematic in the mistakes that we are making that cause these encounters to go arrive. I try to come to an accounting of what we can do to get better for quite will not ruin it for you but two points and passing are worth considering but the striking thing it did not happen in the context we normally associate with these crimes it was not late at night in a bad neighborhood but coming from a Job Interview in the middle of the day in a rural part of texas with cows grazing in the field. So that suggest that these problems are not confined to the most darkest and problematic areas of society so when you examine the conduct of the Police Officer that arrested her closely you realize he was not a rogue cop or bad apple but textbook behaving exactly the way he was trained to behave in once we realize that fact we realize who is to blame for these encounters not the individuals but all of us. Thank you. [applause] next author one of the worlds most popular and to claim storytellers publishing 120 countries more than 35 million copies sold her 19 novels include a grant country as well as pretty girls and the Good Daughter and pieces of her. This summer she returns with her latest installment called the last widow the founder of the save the librarys project to support libraries. [applause] and Library Programming and native georgia living in atlanta so the pieces of her that her are in development for film and television. [applause] everybody has notes i feel bad i realized i have my grocery list. [laughter] milk. If you dont know me i write violent shocking twisting thriller. Slaughter is my real last name. Some of my earlier reviews said i write like a man which i think was meant as a compliment they just didnt know how to explain why a woman would be so interested in crime that so affects women so thats it they came up with. [laughter] but usually people are surprised when they meet me they think i am in leather with a switchblade i have social issues so maybe beret and they often say i thought you would be taller. Which is disappointing to both of us because i didnt think i was taller. [laughter] but normally i dont talk about my books a lot you get it for free so i dont have to sell it to you. [laughter] normally what i talk about the book i give too much away so now i will talk about myself. Into give you my origin story the way that i write so to be attractive and successful. [laughter]. Strikes back, thorn in my side. So very early on i was encouraged to write these violent graphic stories. Her dad was a typical 1970s, 1980s dad. He didnt know how to communicate a. To this day whenever it rains, all of us limp from my dad grabbing our knee. He still does it by the way. But when we were kids you know how at christmas time or dad gets on the roof, he would do that at the summertime we cant forget when we were in middle School Together at a slumber party. I said you are going to have to be more specific. So he climbed up as we had gone to sleep finally and he put a white sheet over his head and forgot to put the ie holes. We screamed so loud he laughed so hard he fell off the ladder. I was born and raised in georgia. When we went on vacation, the Florida Panhandle and my dad would drive us there. When i was the youngest i was in the middle on the hump. We would eventually start to wilt from the heat because it was about a thousand degrees in the car. My dad didnt believe in turning on the air conditioner because it wasted gas. He would talk about family and that is the Great Southern tradition. He would tell about my aunt and bless her heart we all loved her an awful human being she was really mean and constantly disappointed in us. She loved the church. One of the things she did for the church and volunteered at the bingo parlor because that was the moneymaking side and that was the only one she could get because people hated her. This is something that can be fixed but in the church and took up savings for her to have this surgically repaired but she wouldnt do it because she said jesus touched her on the lip and made her special but i think thats what she loved was challenging able to laugh at her and so when she would work at the bingo parlor, she insisted on calling out the balls and she would say [inaudible] i remember my dad telling these stories and thinking wow if you tell stories you can cuss and you will find i cost an awful lot. My dad started telling stories because my grandmother loved stories. They were dirt poor literally they would have to bring the word from the floor with them to the next place so they didnt have to sleep in the dirt. He was one of my brother nine bd sisters in making my grandfather smiled as the gift everyone could get her by telling a good story but she had a magazine called drew krein magazine in. Every sunday she would go to the bad side of town and she would read it while she was cooking our son a dinner and then she would hide the magazine in her bedroom so we wouldnt know she was reading it and as soon as we kissed her on the cheek and we were told to go play we would find this magazine and read it cover to cover and scare each other to death. There were these horrible stories they always have the hae standing she should have listened to her father or her husband. We were afraid we were going to be murdered so that is one of the reasons i love writing about crime is i think my grandmother would be mortified that people know im really interested in it. When my grandmother passed away, one thing that we always did every easter which was an important holiday for her we would visit her grave. Anybody from the south, this is a true story it was a preacher that was buried with a telephone because he was afraid the rapture would happen and he wouldnt be able to get out of the grave and its a story like harry potter but he still needs classes. The leather shoes, pink dress, my sister was 16 and i was kind of chubby so just picture what happens when you open a can of cinnamon rolls. We would all trend aloft to visit my grandmothers grave under this telephone line to trade one day might have thought that it would be really funny to ring a bell. Remember when telephone sounded like those he rang hi key ring w and we all started screaming. [laughter] none of us can quite recall what happened next but we do know we ended up in the back seat stacked on top of each other. When you read this book its pretty scary and people will come up to you and say that kept me up that was so scary. My first thought was at least you are not covered in urine. Thank you. [applause] [cheering] it makes me realize i definitely should have tried to be funny or. [laughter] today is the first day that ive ever talked about the book. Im going to work on that. Our next author, an attorney and a New York Times bestselling author of over 19 novels, the cocreator of the nominated series monstrous published for which she made history in 2018 as the first ever woman to win the award in the best writers category. [applause] her comic book work also includes x. 23, black widow in the dark wolverines and astonishing xmen for which she was nominated for a media award for outstanding media images of the, gay and transsexual community. Please welcome margery. [applause] so, shes a really hard act to follow. My sister in arms, the artist and basically my better half when it comes to our collaboration on this book. The great thing is after all these years shes the only person who knows about when i say things like you know what we really need in this book like what would really make it sparkle, cannibalism. [laughter] shes like okay lets do it. Monstrous is a really dark folk and there is no way to sugarcoat it. It is a fantasy about the aftermath of genocide, slavery, weapons of mass destruction and its also a book about the profound healing power of love and friendship and i thought i would talk a little bit about how it came to be. Thats all for professional stuff. What very few people know is my chinese name, the one on my birth certificate. My grandfather wanted his chineseamerican granddaughter to not only have the chinese name he wanted it registered and certified on paper and hes the one who chose it so carefully each character for a maximum so my chinese name i grew up. I was lucky to grow up seeing my grandparents and i spent every weekend in their laundromat in vancouver british columbia. To this day i can still smell the detergent and see my grandfather and his office in the back where the dry cleaning on and i remember my easygoing grandmother. Nothing ever ruffled my grandparents. Once while i was visiting them a white woman ran up with a shotgun and was going to blow her boyfriends brains out. My grandfather got between the two of them and got her to put her gun down and my grandmother was there with him the entire way like full on ride or die. If they were standing always going back to church, helping their friends, the only daughter, only son, i was alone and if you had with my grandparents you would have thought they were the kindest, most peaceful boasts serene people anywhere. That was a lie. Behind those gentle hopeful faces, there was a war. It was world war ii. When i was a kid, it had only been 40 years and now that im in my 40s i understand that its practically yesterday. For my grandparents if id have been for years past. It meant you grew up with those stories that would give you nightmares forever. I will be honest, traumatized parents dont come with a rating system. They are rated war and i still remember i was little and they were telling me these stories and i remember eating watermelon and my grandmother looked up and she cheerfully told me the story how she and her classmates were crowded on a river ferry to escape japanese but there were too many people in every Single Person there, all of her classmates died except for. She said i was the only one who lived and went back to eating her watermelon business as usual. And that was totally normal. Then there was my grandfather who was a former combat pilot and in the middle told me about this time aboard the British Navy Ship and the race to the abuse they had to endure from the birds and air battles later on in the war he always held one back just in case he ever sought to shift again. He was for real and he was wistful about that bomb. He really wanted to drop it. So, those were stories to grow on. It was a lot. I didnt know the war and hunger. Ive wanted to forget those storiestories is disturbing thed war. America was already apocalyptic enough with its visions of the Nuclear Ballistic future. With their living memories of another nightmare i never forgot the stories the. When i was in college and law school and i would think about my grandparents did what they had endured to make me possible and i thought about what i inherited from them. When they passed on i tried to write a stor this story down bei wanted to remember them. I was trying to get close to my grandparents and was the distance between us so i have become a writer book after book and comic after comic and finally it happened. Monsters came along and just like my grandmother who survived an apocalyptic war, you dont have it too closely to see my grandparents into their stories. I wrote a monstrous as an act of communion a way to show them that i heard what they said. Because i wanted to be close to them and i wanted to live again. What i know now is my grandparents gave me such a gift when they told me their stories. They told me the most valuable lesson of all which is that you dont have to be broken by terrible things. There is hope. Theres the strength and conviction of knowing you deserve to live, but you fought your way back to life. My grandparents taught me Everything Else in life is cast by a selfawarenes selfawarener what life throws at you, youve got this. You dont have to be afraid. And if so, the stories my grandparents were trying to connect my grandfather gave me a name and history that i inherited and im still trying to resurrect and understand. Monsters is just the first attempt. Thank you. [applause] the fourth and final that you will hear from tonight fourth and final author of youre going to hear from this morning is the author of the beautiful struggle and we were eight years in power and between the world and the witcwhich won the National Book award in 2015. He is the recipient of the Macarthur Fellowship and lives in new york city with his wife and son. [applause] its funny to me how those of us who are to begin with our weird parents. [laughter] that is the wav way that mine ss also. It probably wouldnt do you any justice for me to stand appear and summarize the books so i will say it is the story of an enslaved young man with a memory and he cannot remember his mother. Have to read the book to find out why and where that goes but i wanted to talk about where the story came from and its actual origins. First its a consciou it is a ct at constructing myth and the need for me originates in two places i hinted at before, it begins with my parents one of whom is here. [applause] it was the lone ranger love this show and i remember being in the back seat of my parents red Station Wagon talking about how i couldnt wait to watch tarzan that week. What could be wrong with tarzan. Trying to figure out why does my dad detests tarzan and i couldnt come up with an answer and then at the end of the week my dad took me through it and talked about tarzan being the king of the jungle and the role that they played and this was a d in when he explained it to me i got it right away. It was about the role people like me played. Anything happening in the household at the time when i was a kid i could only have toys that basically had a black faces and i sort of understood this but it was very awkward as a child like g. I. Joe was the biggest toy in the world and i was basically complained to like two of them. I would see all these toys and i couldnt abide them. But once again it was about the myth. It was about who gets to be a hero i and who gets to not be a hero to. Its avoided an attempt to be a wrapper for instance. [laughter] no freestyles tonight this came back to me in nonfiction and this is where i got it. I went on a bender exploring the civil war and at that point in time i was a journalis journalit indialantic doing work in it was getting curious about things individually about why we believed where they were as opposed to what the evidence showed a. When i first saw it i thought that it was plausible then i began to see the statements at the time that the people that inaugurated the civil war. It clearly said we are doing this because we like slavery. The constitution in the Confederate States of america very clearly outlined the position of the folks that inaugurated the civil war. The documents into the secession very clearly say you can go to the battlefield wherever across the country and you would see people with gray uniforms on. They would argue you up and down on one side or another that it wasnt about slavery. The facts are right there and clear as day. When i realized was a parallel story that comes with it, the story of this ground galant confederacy, the story of a lost cause of these heroes that are memorialized over this country but in a great battle right now over this notion to take down the statutes and the reason people find it so hard to believe its because the facts violate the myth that theyve been schooled on the myth that theyve been taught if you have to live in the world the fact you have to let go of all these heroes who organized your worldview. The black panther movie came out about two years ago, a year and a half ago, Something Like that. Someone felt how happy they were. Will conducwauconda does not ex. [laughter] it was a big thing for him. I said what does he care for the first, dont go see the movie. Why do you object to some black people having this involvement in the movie coming in but i quickly realized was because somebody went through his twitter feed and he had a question about star wars and leah and the force. So, the force is fine. Its not the force that doesnt exist but wauconda doesnt. What became clear was that he objected to the myth, of black people having their own myth. There is a movement right now people objecting to the presence of people of color and object to the women in certain comic books because these roles disrupt the myth. Often times we think about the symbolism as not being tied to anything but what i realized as i couldnt convince anybody of the basic rational level until they were attacked. If you believe in the myth of a lost cause thats what people were happier slaves of the civil war wasnt about slavery, then on some fundamental level, you dont believe that people are human beings. I could argue with you up one side and down the other and give you fact after fact that if you dont believe im a human being, if youre myth has dictated that im not, then my fact really doesnt have any meaning. And once they realize that and i cant say that i realized that before i started the story. I realized maybe right in the middle of it i got how political and how radical and how empowering it beat the active construction. In this moment politically theres a lot of things i would go out on the limb and say a lot of the people in the room object to. There is a Political Movement obviously, people doing Different Things to try to oppose the moment, but unless we arrive at some sort of a vision of the world on a deep level that goes beyond empiricism and beyond journalism and beyond factfinding and history and that sort of thing, unless we can arrive at a level on a democratic italic. Vision of human beings, a lot of the things we see will not actually have been. The world to try to get folks on the same page where we can look at each other and truly believe we are human, that is the world of myth and the symbolism in the story. Thats my perspective and it is a lot as far as im concerned. Thank you so much. [applause] have we gone through the magic curtain . We are going to spend a few minutes just talking among ourselves. You are welcome to listen. The questions i have for you are not profound but its to talk about whatever you want to. And able to do that because i did not understand the industry but that was just something i had to do was set to another goal to compete with myself. I was never supposed to be a writer or a doctor or lawyer or engineer or pharmacist or something practical. I did not tell my family i was writing i was writing all these books on the side never told my family. Then all of a sudden i sell a romance novel and i was so excited is so painfully shy. And i finally tell my folks so i dont think i will practice law. I am going to write full time which i had a book contract which was totally foolish and insane but i did it my mom so what do you know about writing collects. [laughter] and my dad was convinced i would be homeless but i think he still convinced i will be homeless. So getting over that and take up space for myself and a leap of faith was one of the hardest things i ever had to do. I didnt get easier. Publishing is scary and its hard and you never know what will happen but i keep having to take that leap of faith over and over now i am more sure of myself but refusing to give that up was one of the hardest things i have ever done. I was excited. Since 2005 we had a five yearold kid with a 6000 check in the mail which is my portion of the advance which was a ton of money. And the idea somebody would give you that to write was shocking to me program always amazed that people pay me to write percolation and say that too loud. [laughter] but for me it is a hobby and then i would receive renumeration is incredible to me and its a privilege. What is the difference between essays and books . And to be an essayist and an author so. The biggest thing is procedural. It is atlantic branded even know if your name is on the cover. And much to the chagrin even though that is always scary. I love Penguin Random house they will not be happy about that. But moving from journalism so what was that transition like . With the notion that the book is permanent. And by 10 00 oclock nobody would read it again into the new yorker and now youre sitting in an office. [laughter] and then people are still reading them it is quite alarming. [laughter] i have a similar as i write thousands of words a day but i dont have any Writers Block at all because i feel like if i write something wrong by the time i spit it out there is wiggle room but as you commit to the page and theres no way to fix that and making it much harder to commit but these two books and that is it. I swear. [laughter] and then before i was finally willing to put that down do any of you struggle with Writers Block . For us it is a little different maybe doing books we are expected. I feel maybe i shouldnt worry about it being permanent i never did before. [laughter] but i love my readers i value them but i never think about them one im writing but im also very arrogant and working on my 20th book now and so for me and one thing i learned in college but then i dropped out of college and then sit at the table and write if i dont want to write then i stop. Writers block is procrastination or you dont want to. I was writing two or three novels per year but that isnt to say that i get stuck because and the story had veered off in the direction it shouldnt make conscious was take a moment and look at this and think if you want to do this because you will go to a bad place if you do that was my version whats done is done that had is it the artist draws the book if you have been writing your first and second and third issue that you took a wrong turn, you are done. Then you just have to live with it. Also Writers Block takes on a whole different form in the visual medium. So what is hard there is a picture of what you want to produce and then you sit down to write it there is a massive golf in between the two. Maybe some of the fellow panelist and then it all starts off terrible and thats always where the real writing happened and the editing. And the hardest thing is to be okay with that. And then to save my god this was awful. But if you cant because you can always improve then you build off those two sentences have built off of that now eventually you have a book now that you have to rewrite it. [laughter] i got a job at the Washington Post so you quickly learn how to write quickly and badly if necessary. So you write so much so quickly at the very end of my tenure at the Washington Post i was covering a horrible event then you go there and call it in. I just dictate at 1200 word article over the phone. You can no longer do that but spirit doesnt that make you want to try quack. No. [laughter] picking up on what you just said, i wonder that success that you have all had through your work and then when you hear four people people who are fans. Does that ever weird you out or put you off your game . And where most people know me from tv i often find the way my show or my presence and then if something gets to me it makes me selfconscious of my work that isnt constructive because i cannot see my audience but in my mind think about how it is received versus presented. Does that ever happened quack. Im always nervous to tell people im a writer. Not because they have a great book idea but because they always assume that i write cat books. [laughter] not that theres anything wrong with that. [laughter] my Facebook Page is basically cats. So immediately of under the impression they dont take me seriously as the adult human being. Thats why dont tell people of a writer. And then rewrite series serious characters i just cant listen to them because the reason they like the books they are surprised. Thats all i care about. He dont ever hear of a representative sample of your audience but the extroverts. They are a tiny fraction. If somebody goes up to they dont know i like you i dont like something that you wrote is not normal. [laughter] it is a tiny snippet of humanity or they write letters to the editor or comments. Spec if you hear 400 comments in a row does that come to your mind at all quick. I think it is key and i dont want writers writing what they think they want to read. And then and also the same about any artist. And then to start writing about the committee that loves your work the most, you are probably done. That they wish it would go some other way. Thats so true as a Woman Working in the industry many comments are gendered but then with color they are racialized so if i Pay Attention to any of that, it will do a number on me. And romance novels are considered to be at the bottom of publishing. So i just learned then i started to publish to have very thick skin and tune things out and embrace my freak. And the point is it is incredibly intense. At the summit and they ask everybody who had gotten a death threat to raise their hand. It was three quarters of the room. It was not me. So you absolutely cannot. And that she gets out with a chanel suit and comes marching in and says i love your work and i disagree with absolutely everything. [laughter] i am absolutely wrong and everything i watch every night. [laughter] so now one last question. I am struck and reading all of your most recent works to prepare for this said that you all are in the midst of a career that has ascended it already very accomplished so is your publishing career additive . That if you took out of those five pages newly took out two sentences that they should be in the bases of some other plot and then your current work in futur future. Although i word rather not. I have draft upon draft and for sentences and first paragraph and then to go back years and years later and suddenly they are fresh and new to me now i can have a novel out of them. Thing that comes out of my imagination i hold onto but the other thing is that it is a form of therapy. Or whether race or this idea of mother daughter relationships are very complicated. I work these things out over and over again and that i look back and say this again cracks as part of the consciousness. I am totally different i dont take notes i just do it on the computer but most of my writing is done in my head so by the time i sit down and very clear about what i want to write like taking dictation from a self. But i do think of the books as a whole will happen with the character, that things are okay during that they respond to in the next book one character used to be very black and white and then just to keep it in my head to keep me more focused as a writer also the incest and they blame the librarian who gave me flowers in the attic for that a grip on that in General Hospital where luke raped laura then they had a blue lawn a beautiful writing wedding so im shaped by popculture but those of the Guiding Principles of rape and incest so i am sure about that. s opening a book from a mans perspective i just dont care about men killing men so i changed it around to women being violent. So with revisionist estate on dish history and those for vice versa. And then to have been an example talk about this guy named francis and those who befriended the mobster to hang around for a couple of years to embed themselves. I interviewed the guys son and then for the podcast it is a different set of questions. Now i realize telling the story with my voice i was interested in this character and then the father had to rules like romulus and remus. Or that there was a baby alligator to the new york apartment or driving the family a crossed from kenya so when you think about a different form you are inclined to want a different part of the story. In the News Business you have a decision to have the access journalist and to know the people that you worry about. So if i encounter people in a nonworking environment and get to know them and asked them questions i am incapable of ever recognizing anything mean or bad in the world. So its best not to know anybody i am called upon to do their obituary someday. Thank you for doing this it is an incredible honor to talk with each of the four of you. I appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]