HISTORICAL FICTION

The Tenant

Okay, so my life is officially at rock bottom. I’m 26 with nothing more to show for myself than a mountain of debt I can't pay back because I just got fired from my job as an assistant manager at a third-rate fast food chain. So, when I get a phone call from a rude lawyer telling me that my great aunt Sophie has died and she's left me a house - a whole damn house! - in Alexandria, Louisiana, I jump at the opportunity to skip out on next month's rent, since I can't afford it anyway.

A Blue Note

2022

Pauletta is a new PhD in History with a brilliant mind and academic scars she’s struggling to hide. In the summer after her tense graduation, she has a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship meant to prepare her to find a tenure track job she’s not even sure she wants. Instead of stacking her CV, Pauletta only wants to immerse in the history of her people.

1930s New York

Paule Campbell was born with Jazz in her veins. Her love of music took her from a rural town in Georgia all the way to New York in the throes of the Harlem Renaissance, a place where she could finally be herself — a fat, masculine, lesbian trumpet player with big dreams and a bigger heart. Soon after her arrival, she makes the intimate acquaintance of Amy Delphine, another Southern transplant pinning her dreams on art to escape the realities of Jim Crow.

--
During an all too short summer in the archives, Pauletta traces Paule and Amy’s tender love story through Paule’s letters home and Amy’s poetry and journals, unwittingly finding the courage to accept her own pain without being defined by it and open her heart to a life and love she was too afraid to hope could be hers.

Back in the Day

BAY AREA BLUES (No. 2)

Helping pack up his childhood home was going much easier than Amir expected. The only sticking point is the record collection his father Alonzo refuses to put in storage. When Amir asked his father why he needs to keep all those records with him, Alonzo offers to tell him a story instead.

the night gate

1830. South Carolina. 

Fiba and Robert are enslaved on a plantation in the Deep South. Their magic is weak and all they have to look forward to is a death that will bring them closer to the people they've loved and lost. Until one night, Fiba steps into the woods, determined to See her future - if she even has one - with Robert hot on her heels. Under the Moon and Star, Fiba finally sees the future she wants in Robert's eyes. 

But it starts with blood.