foreign [Music] foreign foreign montia and you're watching PBS books thank you for joining us PBS books and collaboration with whro is pleased to host this conversation with New York Times best-selling and award-winning writer as a Cosby author of all the Sinners bleed a novel PBS books is proud to partner with the Library of Congress to promote their 2023 National Book Festival let's take a moment to hear from the librarian of Congress Dr Carla Hayden I'm Carla Hayden Library of Congress and I want to give a thank you to PBS folks for supporting the national Book Festival hope you can join us in Washington and online for this year's Festival on Saturday August the 12th well thank you Dr Hayden if you live in Virginia or in the DMV area then don't miss the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival it's on Saturday August 12th from 9 A.M to 8 P.M the festival is free and open to everyone it is a quick drive or train ride away for a complete schedule of the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival it can be found at loc.gov bookfest also to note that two of the main stages will be live streamed all content will be available about a week after the festival you can curate your own experience now through August 31st PBS books and PBS stations will host a series of 10 virtual events with 11 authors they will be available on demand as well on PBS books and the national Book Festival website well today's conversation features sa Cosby's to to discuss his latest work and involvement in the festival all the Sinners bleed features a small Southern Town's first black sheriff facing a questionable shooting a Confederate Pride March and a serial killer well it is quite an adventure so let's introduce as a Cosby welcome how are you I'm well thank you for having me thank you for letting me be a part of this this is wonderful oh my gosh it is such an honor to have you here and you have accomplished so much you have won the Anthony the berry the mccavity awards from Southeastern Virginia uh you obviously many people know you for razor blade tears uh which was on Barack Obama oh my gosh Barack Obama's summer reading list um and also NPR it just seems like you have won so many awards I've been on so many amazing lists and we can't wait to learn about your latest novel that was just released in July released in June but uh it feels like it just came out in July I'm so sorry well to moderate this conversation we are super we are just super excited to have such a wonderful person we have Barbara Ham Lee Barbara Hamley is an award-winning journalist a television radio host diversity Equity inclusion and Justice facilitator and the owner of her own business sharing info LLC she is best known as the executive producer and host of another view a weekly public radio talk show that discusses today's issues from an African-American perspective for 11 years Barber held a variety of leadership positions with whro public media she is very involved in community serving as a board member for many organizations including Virginia Center for inclusive communities and the national center for the prevention of community violence it's my pleasure to welcome in Barbara hi Heather how are you thank you so much it's giving me this opportunity I am so excited we're so excited to have you here and I'm just gonna hand it over to you I just can't wait to to hear more about Sean's book so enjoy the conversation and we'll see you on the other side okay sounds good hi Sean how are you you how are you I'm good there you are technology what would we do without it right yeah exactly so I will I will tell you Sean I wish that you and I were seated under the tree in the backyard of Titus and and Marquis with Titus and Marquee passing that jar that's a good way to while away in the evening I've done that many times in my me too [Laughter] I tell you reading reading a book um and and honestly between I I will tell you this I've read half of it and listened to parts of it on Audible because I had to get through all of it before I interviewed uh but it was just so compelling and you pulled every emotion out I mean I laughed out loud when when um titus's father was talking about the uh uh Rebel and he said the guy with the eggs you know I I was screaming in my car I was driving in my car and when Titus was trying to decide whether to go then listen to the interview with Kelly and I'm going no Titus don't go because I don't want him to mess up his other people you know you know what's changing I have a lot of uh really really talented uh female uh writer friends who I let them read the early draft of the book and every one of them was like he knew he ain't got no business going that girl house at 10 o'clock so you know I was just like come on bro don't go it's such a sweet person and and you know you already knew how insecure she was to begin with and then you know and and that's part of some of the Southern Charm even though you know southern women are Fierce don't get me wrong about that but you know they tend to to step back a little bit especially if someone's coming from the quote-unquote big city and um and so you already knew she was going to have that kind of a conflict but but let me ask you this how do you describe what the book is about because I know other people have their own descriptions but what is your description of the book um for me the book is really it's it's an amalgamation of things but really it's a journey about discovering who you are it's a journey about understanding who you are in your place in the world for Titus you know there's a lot of issues in the book racism sexism class uh historical relevance but for me it's really a book about Titus learning that he doesn't have to bear the weight for everybody else you know it's a journey of Discovery for him um it's an understanding that you can be spiritual without being a part of organized religion it's an understanding that you know the person that you're most responsible for is yourself and that's something that Titus as a character has to learn of course he learns that through the you know the prism of a mystery uh of a crime novel but really it's a journey of self-discovery for him um I I think that he's in a very different place at the end of the book than he is at the beginning um you know he he he feels sometimes like Atlas you know he's got all this weight on his shoulders and um as his brother likes to tell him you know you don't have to bear that weight that's not your responsibility so you know it's something that that is uh in in terms of of African Americans when we always talking about how we have to reach back and pull the next person along you know and so a lot of people do take that whole weight of everything on their shoulders um I agree with you he was a totally different person um in the end which leads me to ask you because you kind of left it open are we going to hear more about Titus in the future you know what's funny I usually don't write a series character most of my books are Standalone raisingly tears Black Tie Wasteland uh darkest prayer um but I think Titus he's such an you know it's funny what Titus when I first started writing the book I didn't really have a handle on him as a character it was just he was an avatar for a lot of things I wanted to talk about and then eventually he became sort of this this really compelling character that I may want to revisit someday um just because I do think he has a few more things to say uh and that that sort of idea has sort of opened up the idea of maybe revisiting um some characters from my other books I mean I haven't I may revisit black top or Eastland um to see what happened to bug and Kia and you know I get that question a lot with my books like the end of blacktop Wasteland is also sort of open-ended and people always ask me well debugging Kia the main characters in the book do bugging kids stay together did they make it and I used to have a very flipping answer I'm like I don't I don't know because I stopped writing at that point so I'm not sure and people do not like that answer so I had to come over they want you to live with that character I will say that I think there's a strong possibility that Titus may make a reappearance just because I think he has a couple more things to say so how do you start the process what's your process for writing a book I mean I know I read somewhere that you sit down and you're writing you have a lap um desk and you're writing while your wife is watching TV and so forth but but there's got to be a way that that the first idea germinates where does it come from most of the time it's something along the lines of I just sit here and I think wouldn't it be cool if so would it be cool if there was this really great getaway driver who had to return to that life or wasn't it be cool if there was this really smart um small town sheriff who solved a big crime or and so it's always sort of this possibility of what happens if uh stories that sort of enter my mind and I want to examine them and see how far I can go with it um and what I do is I write myself a synopsis I write myself just basically a little little story to myself about what I'm interested in maybe where the story is going to go and then I use that as sort of a um guidepost or a map to how I want to uh do the rest of the book um and sometimes I'll start that process and the story Peter's out and nothing happens and then other times I start that process and then something clicks and I'm very interested in what's going to happen I always feel like I'm telling myself the story first and if I can interest myself in it then hopefully readers will be interested as well so there's some parallels in the book uh in terms of storyline to your actual life but this is not our autobiographical no I mean there's certain things no there's certain things in the book that I used um to help give Titus a sort of full nuanced characterization um like my like Titus my mother was disabled when I was young um uh my mother didn't pass away till a few years ago Titus lost his mother when he was young I have a brother but in real life my brother is older I'm the baby um so uh but I I grew up in a small town like Titus um you know I played football and wrestled and stuff in high school um so there's a little bit of me in the book I guess if you if you had to pin me down I think Titus is probably me if I was a lot cooler in like 30 pounds lighter well I thought the Titus with you because as I was reading it and I was like okay just looking at your picture and and thinking about some of the things that I read and I was like okay it's coming from somewhere in there but how did some of the descriptions that you use first of all you're very descriptive writer which I love because it just takes your mind right there but I gotta tell you Sean some of that stuff is so graphic why is that in your head you what he winds up doing I don't want to give away people's book you know because I want people to go read it but but why is that in your head it's not really though you know it's funny I it's only in my head so much as it's a part of the story and so when I'm sitting there and I'm writing I think okay what's the the worst thing I can come up with what's the most visceral thing I I do write in a very descriptive way I write from sort of this uh the five senses methods I want you to feel the heat in during the day I want you to you know see what's going on around you in the story I want you to smell the Honeysuckle and the Magnolias in the air and so I try to create this sort of really immersive atmosphere but a lot of the horrific things in these books in my other books they don't stay in my head I had a conversation with Dennis Lane at a convention a writing convention last year and he said that you know it's hard for him to write novels because he has this all this darkness that comes up that bubbles up that he has to put on the page and it's harboring him to get away from that I don't know what this says about him or me but that doesn't bother me I'll write something terrible but I'll go play with my kid you know so I don't know who whether that makes him more uh stable or or me more stable but it doesn't stay in my mind you know it's funny the the graphic stuff never bothers me like the violence and stuff the things that do affect me the things I think about are a lot of times the emotional things you know um talking about his dad or in raised by Tears Ike going to his son's grave or in in all the Sinners bleed whenever Titus talks about his mom or the relationship between his brother those are things that stay with me that that linger um because I think those are the things that have the most resonance you know a friend of mine another friend of mine who read an early draft of all the Sinners bleed you know she said you know Titus the only time he really laughs is when he's with his brother or he's with his father and it you know it's because those are the times he can take down this Persona I did a lot of research for this book so I talked to several different African-American police officers former Sheriff um you know I wanted to get a feel for what it felt like to be an officer especially in today's comment especially in a post you know after the murder of George Floyd and how do you feel about being a police officer and how are you able to sort of balance your commitment to being an officer but you're an identity as an African-American and so a lot of those conversations made their way into the book and those things also stay with me and resonate a lot as well yeah because you know what resonated with me was was titus's um description of how he was feeling watching the um Confederate uh soldiers marching through town and he was describing you know what he was feeling on the inside and I wonder do you think as a southerner and I have Southern Roots also is that something that we will ever be able to get across to those who believe in um what I call revisionist history but but the the actual feeling of seeing people glorify what we know was a horrific time do we think that we'll ever be able to get people to empathize to that level I don't know I think there are people I think if you can have a real conversation with someone and when I mean real conversation it's not yelling at someone or someone yelling at you at a a town council meeting but a real honest conversation about what those statues what that revisionness history as you call it is that sort of a myth of the Lost Cause what that means you my great great grand my great great grandmother three times great uh was born a slave and was free and the stories that she handed down through the generations to us are they're so banal the evil and the horror it's it almost becomes commonplace when you listen to her stories how they you know they just don't understand what it meant to be cattle what it meant to be property and how dehumanizing that is you know we have a you know there's this whole situation going on in Florida right now where they're trying to create uh educational standards to say that there was some benefit from slavery and I don't understand how anybody could sit there with a straight face and say well yes we took your children we took your wife we took your daughter we murdered your sons we worked you until you died but you know in the end you learn how to shoe a horse it's the sort of it's a presumption that a African-Americans were enslaved we didn't have skills already you know these people when they came here with skills yeah I mean that's been been eliminated they came here with knowledge of irrigation with agrarian skills with steel and and ironworking skills and so it that's one thing but then to just have the audacity you know the unmitigated Gall to tell someone well yeah slavery had benefits those type of people I don't know if you can ever reach them but I think you have to make it behooves us to make the effort because in many cases a lot of people have have a background where they weren't properly educated about what slavery was and what the Civil War was and so you know they're repeating the lies that their grandfather their grandmother told them and so you can make the attempt but I think you know to paraphrase James Baldwin we could have this discussion as long as this discussion isn't rooted in your idea that I don't have the right to exist and I don't have the right to feel the way I feel and so that's why it's a big part of the book because it's a big part of my life hi I'm Barbara Hamley from whro and if you're just joining us um we are talking with Arthur S.A Cosby about his book all the Sinners bleed and uh a novel and let's get back to the conversation so Sean do you feel like and I haven't read your other two books um so and but I'm going to now that I've read all the sentence please because it was fabulous um do you think that it is do you feel the necessity to have to always explain race uh explain classism in your books um because well I'll give you an example when George Floyd happened you know people reached out to me um as a talk show host wanting to know uh what to do and these were Caucasian people asking me what to do and and there was this whole pressure to always explain is that our job I think I I think unfortunately it is the it is the millstone that our nation's history of racial animus has given us you know it it unfortunately Falls to us to sort of crew to to tell these stories to have these conversations in a way that sort of educate people you would hope people would want to educate themselves but you know a lot of times I mean I'm not telling you nothing you don't know sometimes people are lazy and yeah they want you to explain it I think it was Tony Morrison who said it's not my job to explain racism you know go talk to your grandfather go talk to your daddy you know I have other things to do and so I think some but you know in the you know unfortunately it does seem to fall to us for me as a writer I think especially as a southern writer I think those themes of race race class religion sex sexism and sexuality are just intrinsically tied to Southern fiction I think the four pillars of Southern fiction are race class sex and religion if you read William Faulkner or Ernest J Gaines or flanner O'Connor or consumer colors or uh you know uh uh even Cormac McCarthy and Pat Conroy um or or any Southern writer or anyone who identifies even modern writers like Michael Farris Smith and Ace Atkins and Jasmine ward those things are just inex really tied to what we're trying to do as writers and the stories we tell um but that being said I don't I don't get paid to have a class on racial politics and so I don't feel it's my responsibility to explain it once I talk about it in my books I think if you read my books you know my stance and um you know where I stand and also you understand hopefully if you read my books what excuse me what racism and what classism and what you know uh religious extremism has done to the South so I don't feel any need to further um expound upon it when I'm uh at dinner you know having having a ham and cheese sandwich but at the same time if we don't and we also run the risk of again the story being changed told from somebody else's narrative you know yeah I think so too I think you know I think it's one of those things talking about race in America as a black person is almost like it's like putting out a campfire you know it's yours you got to do it you don't want to you don't want to take the time to do it but it falls to us because if we don't do it like you said someone else can shift and you've seen that right now in real time people trying to shift this narrative that slavery wasn't that bad or that uh slavery had benefits or that Jim Crow you know wasn't that bad and so again I would rather talk about you know fiction and narrative and story structure and the ideas for other books I have and and and I would love to have those conversations but I have to have those those race conversations because again like you said if we don't do it and someone either is not gonna have a conversation or they're going to manipulate and revise um history and changes so okay let's talk about something else then how come with all of the stuff that Titus had been through that he could not have a relationship that lasted that's not there I'm not really I think Titus is there's a lot of good things about Titus he's Dependable he's honest he's forthright but there's a lot of stuff you know that's broken inside of him and he's not honest about that he's not being forthright with himself about what he wants and what he desires I think the relationship with Darlene is something that Titus feels like he should do it's not something that he really wanted to do and I like that she is the one who calls him to account for that that she has the agency to confront him with that you know uh he's a hero he's a protagonist but he's also human hopefully and so he has his flaws he has his weaknesses um and one of those weaknesses is that he's not emotionally vulnerable he's not emotionally open both the women in his life at one point or another say something to him along those lines that you know you should laugh more you don't smile enough you're not open enough and I think that's something if we see him again that he'll work on um but I wanted to show that in the book because I wanted a I didn't want him to be this sort of this sort of robot perfect hero you know I wanted to have his flaws you know and I wanted that flaw to be something that everyone can relate to I think everyone can relate to that type of person that you have in your life where you love them a little bit more and they love you I think we love you absolutely I just felt so bad for him though because I just wanted him to succeed because he was changing so in all of the other aspects of his life in terms of his growth so but anyway so an attitude of this big time Arthur how has Southern Living changed I don't have to pay for Desserts when I go out to eat that's pretty cool everybody knows your name everybody wants to buy me a drink or buy me some buy me a dessert that's nice uh I think it's so funny a little reverse motel and you would thank people because I do write very honestly about the problems of a small town you would think maybe people wouldn't like that people love the books everybody wants to be killed in one of my books if I've been to Walmart that's the number one thing someone will ask me hey you working a new book yeah can I be in it can you kill me yeah or if you want I will say though coming from a small town that has a you know like a lot of small towns South has a very complicated racial history I've got nothing but support from folks you know like I like to say even people that I know didn't like me in high school are proud of the books and so it's it's fun it really is fun to see that support and and see that sort of Hometown rallying around a a HomeTown son done good but uh other than that I think the biggest thing that's changed for me is I think I grew up really poor uh and so these books have afforded me the opportunity to travel to see the world literally I just got back from England I was in Amsterdam earlier this year I I before that I did a national book tour I went to like 10 cities and 12 days of you know um being able to see the world and being able to understand that people have more in common than they have than we have differences and to see the readers who have really embraced the books who have really taken the books they like they know the books better than I do so it's like you know I have people asking me like you know on page 176 when Titus said Thank you blank are you thinking about I I don't know I don't remember I don't even know what's on my page 170 exactly but it's such as a writer it's so gratifying and so heartwarming that people really love the books people have really embraced not just Titus but all my stories and you know as a Storyteller that's the thing you want you know like when you start writing for me when I started writing my only goal was I wanted someone other than my mama to like my books and that was it you know I just wanted someone outside of my family to appreciate my work and it's it's just been an incredible incredible experience do you remember what when you first recognized that you wanted to be a writer so my mother's passed away yeah my mother's passed away she passed away a couple years ago but she used to tell this story that when I was four years old she would tell me fairy tales and Bedtime Stories and I would complain about the plot holes in the stories so like she would tell me she would tell me like about the three little pigs and I would be like why did they build all their houses out of bricks in the first place you know so my mom told me oh you were one of those kind of kids yeah and so my mom said she encouraged me to write my own stories she said then you can answer all those questions you want so when I was seven or eight I wrote a story about I wrote a story about these about these space these are like astronaut gnomes that landed in our backyard in our in our magnolia tree and I gave it to my mom it's a terrible story it was a terrible story but she was so impressed that I had come up with it on my own and I hadn't asked anybody for help hadn't asked anybody to help me write it and the look of her face when she was reading it it gave me this I don't know how to say it it gave me sort of this euphoric high like it was just it was like this sort of psychic connection like something I wrote is having an effect on someone else and from then on I was addicted to writing I wanted I didn't want to be anything else whatever I like to say like Steve Harvey I've had a bunch of different jobs I've been bad at all of them except right so so you know people would say well he's this great author he he just started writing and they just picked up his books and he became famous I think there was a little more to it than that right I've been writing since way back when you had to send a story you had to send it with a self-addressed stamped envelope to get it back so I've been writing before word processors and laptops uh no I've been writing I set my first actual story out for consideration when I was 17 and I'll be 50 uh in a few days and so happy birthday yeah thank you so for a long time I just you know I had a little spurts of success here get a story accepted here get a story accepted there uh it took me a long time to find my um my uh my Niche you know I started out wanting to write horror stories and sci-fi stories and uh I wasn't finding a lot of success and then when I was 30 3 or 34 I had a friend who introduced me to a gentleman named Todd Robinson from New York City who uh published a quarterly magazine of prime stories called Thug lit and uh she had she was a this is a true story I swear to God she's a belly dancer and she had gone to New York City and done a show and after the show she had gone to this bar in in the village in Greenwich Village and Todd in addition to being a writer and an editor also manages a bar and they got to talking and when she came home she said I met this guy he publishes a crime fiction magazine he pays like 50 or 100 bucks and you should send him a story and I really needed that money and so I wrote this crime story and um he accepted it and published it and that was sort of the beginning of my my writing career it was like finding crime fiction just clicked I'd always been a fan of crime fiction of I grew up reading Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and Chester Himes and Ross McDonald and John D McDonald and uh Dorothy L Sayers and PD James and uh you know Walter Mosley and all those folks um but I had never written crime fiction or thought about writing it because I come from a small town they tell you write what you know well I'm a small town it's never who done it like we always knew who did it the question is whether you're gonna call them out or not exactly and so I didn't know if people would be interested in those stories but then I I started reading rule crime fiction like Daniel woodrell um and and Rule fiction in general like Jasmine Ward I said well there's a there's an Avenue there that I can pursue and it just it sort of took off from there you know I mean the last seven years if you had told me previous to the last seven years that all the things that would you know you're gonna be on Obama's list twice you're gonna be a New York Times bestseller your books are gonna you're gonna be on tonight's show and all these things I never would have believed it because it never seemed possible the only thing that I really believed was that I was a pretty good writer I didn't think I was the best I still don't um but I thought I was pretty good I think you know here's the thing somebody can teach you the mechanics of writing they can teach you verb subject agreement they can teach you not to write in a passive voice can't teach Japanese Storyteller either are you're on yeah and I grew up in a family of storytellers and so I knew I had that going for me but you know like with everything a lot of your career is opportunity meets execution meets luck and I had a lot of all three of those so you've listed a lot of authors that you've read and so forth I'm assuming you spend a lot of time in the library oh yeah you have a favorite Library oh yeah presenting for the Library of Congress yeah my local library is the Matthews Memorial Library in Matthews County Virginia uh smallest town smallest county in the state 8 000 people I know all of them um and so I would ride my bicycle to the library because like I said I grew up poor uh my mom was a single mom and she was disabled so she didn't work um very much at all and so I ride my bicycle down to the library on Saturdays and on Saturdays they sold old books so you could get five paperbacks for a dollar and um I would go down there and buy books from the This Used Book Rack but also you know the Librarians would you know I could rent as many books as I could carry so I'd get my backpack and I'd rent all these different books and check them out um libraries are such such an incredible incredible Bastion of knowledge and and education and entertainment especially for folks that are in lower income situations like I was because you know not everybody can afford to go to a nice fancy bookstore and buy a bunch of books and you know as a kid the library was sort of this gateway to just all these different worlds that I could I could explore um one of you know my favorite memories of being in the library like I said on Saturday morning sitting at one of the tables and back just reading by myself um and sort of broadening my mind in a way that uh I don't think people understand unless you've been in that situation you know I can so relate to that because I remember when uh in Baltimore where I grew up when you got to the fifth grade you were allowed to check out 10 books and every week I would be at the library I'd check out my books and I would curl up on the couch with a bowl of apples and just read I just I so I definitely really understand my family my family were big readers too like my mom read Greek mythology and historical novels and biographies my uncle read uh Travis McGee novels by John D McDonald my grandmother read romance novels which I would sneak and read them but they weren't enough you think they're gonna be salacious but they use like really big words to describe things and so you just gotta keep running back to the dictionary like oh what does domestic mean oh okay now I get it yeah and then my aunt read horror novels and she still always tease me she's like I'm gonna give you this book if it don't let it scare you because I don't want your mama mad at me and I'm like yeah yeah I'm fine I remember she gave me Salem's Lot and she's like all right I'm gonna give you this book are you gonna be able to read it I'm like yeah sure I'll be fine I think I was 12. books scared me to death I slept with a popsicle crucifix underneath my pillow like a month area so as we start to wrap up what words of advice do you have for people out there who are listening to this and going you know I want to get where he is I really I really have been trying this writing thing and do I keep up with this what do I do give them some advice I think there's a couple things that somebody told me so this doesn't originate with Sean I'm not you know I'm not the wise Guru on the mountain but one thing that I learned is you just have to read a lot reading a lot when you're an aspiring writer will help you find what things you can do and what things you feel like you can excel at and other things that are not in your wheelhouse and that's important to know what your limitations are limitations don't mean that you quit limitations mean you focus on your strengths and so for me I learned early on that like dialogue was one of the things I was really good at I learned early on that characterization was one of the things I was really good at I wasn't that great at romantic uh situations as you can see from all singers believe um but you learn to get better at it um the other thing I think is important and this is the thing that people don't talk about a lot you know writing is an art getting published as a business and if you want to get published you have to be really good at the art but then you have to go to where the Publishers are so you know you have to go to conventions go to writing groups join a writing Circle go to uh any type of writing convention or Symposium like uh the Washington independent book review which is pretty inexpensive you live in a DMV that's a great great place to go and meet Publishers meet editors meet agents you have to go where the people are I don't care who you are as a writer You Can Be You Can Be Dostoevsky nobody's coming to your house to ask you the privilege of publishing your books so you really have to put yourself out there and I know a lot of writers are are introverts and it's difficult but trust me the juice is worth the squeeze um and if you wanna if you want to get there that's the best way I can I can that's that's what someone told me and that's what worked for me and so we should also tell them to come to the Library of Congress National book fair oh yeah I'll be right there I'm gonna be there on the 12th and uh I'll be uh I'll be butting around and then talking and and telling stories and I I just I'm so honored you know to be a part of that program the Library of Congress you know I think a society is only as good as the story as it tells about itself in the Library of Congress is where our best stories are kept okay and just one final question so you've traveled all over the world you've you have all these opportunities now are you going to stay as you called yourself what did you call yourself you are a uh Southerner born and bred are you going to continue to be a southerner born and bred I can't be nothing but that's you know right down to my boots that's who I am and I think you know I you know my mom always said the shine wears off of new pennies quick and so you can't change who you are you just gotta enjoy the moments that you have um I'm really enjoying the moment right now I ain't gonna lie but at the same time don't let it change me you know you know I've been like I said I've been all over the world I've been blessed to be a bestsellerless and presidential lists and I've been on television and stuff but at the end of the day I still like you know being here in my small town and you know uh hanging out with my cat or walking down through the woods and or having a a little super moonshine with my brother on the back deck those are the things that are important that's fantastic thank you so much S.A Cosby and uh I really really appreciate this conversation I want to invite Heather back into our conversation and I Heather I hope you had a good time I love this conversation it was such a great conversation Barbara thank you for guiding the conversation for so many thought-provoking and and fun questions um Sean thank you for your your master storytelling and for your extraordinary creativity and for putting out the campfire yes it's it's been really wonderful to hear hear your banter back and forth you guys it's really wonderful so thank you both uh thanks for an early honored to have you on PBS and Sean I will tell you I will be calling you because I've got to have you on again as a guest of another view okay I would love to do it thank you so much thank you thank you very much just a reminder out there for everyone if you live in the Washington DC area now through August 31st you can still see us promoting the August 12th national Book Festival um it goes all day um but our programs leading up to that are happening now well I always like to thank my library Partners more than 1800 strong as well as numerous PBS stations throughout the country um but most importantly we'd like to thank all of you for joining us until next time I'm Heather Marie montia and happy reading [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign foreign