November 4, 2025 • 23 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The mystery of the island was interesting to me. The
sea marsh grasses were coming up through the water, and
I looked at my friend and said, can you imagine
there might be a body floating right under that water
and you would never know. She said, you're real strange.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Sorry, here's your host.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And podcast librarian, award winning poet, future bestselling author.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And host of one of the most listened to radio
shows in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, book lovers. I've got a very special episode of
today's Public Library Podcast that was recorded on location in Bali,
So take a minute and enjoy. I am speaking today
with the award winning author of Island Secrets, a Queens
of Kiowa story, Nina Fox.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm excited about it. So let's get right into the book.
Tell us about your book.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Okay, it's a mystery. Imagine your husband has disappeared a
year ago, don't know where he is, so you need
to figure that out because without him, without a body,
without him being declared dead, there's no insurance and you
can't move on. So that's where the book starts. Our
heroine decides to go has a clue that has led
her to Kiowa Island where they have a vacation home,
(01:15):
this enclave of friends that go there together, and she
starts her investigation to find out what has happened to
her husband, where'd he go and where the money at?
What inspired this story a true story?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Really?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yes, someone that I used to work with occasionally disappeared,
just disappeared, just disappeared. And this person was an upstanding
we thought, family man and business owner and we would
occasionally do consulting work with him out of the country,
and we started getting calls because people wanted to know
where he was and we had no idea where he
(01:52):
was because he disappeared, but so did his companies. Four
one K money ooh, and so that kind of rested
with me a while. And then I had a group
of women invite me to Kiowa Island and they were
in my head the Queens of Kiowa. Originally I were
going to call them the Kings of Kiowa, but at
that time my agent said women can't be kings. I
now know that to not featured. There you go, and
(02:15):
they're women who had lived their careers done all the
things that we admire in corporate America, and now we're
enjoying the fruits of their labors. And they have vacation
homes on Kioa Island, and it was just like this
secret enclave of black excellence. Kiowa Island used to be
a plantation. It's one of the Barrier islands off the
coast there in South Carolina. But the mystery of the
(02:38):
island was interesting to me. And the first time we went,
we were chasing. There's a show called Diners Drive in Yeah,
and there was a restaurant featured there, and we went.
We tried to go. It was just a shack over
the water, which is where you see the book opens,
and it was a cove and these willow trees were
hanging over this coal and the marsh, the sea marsh
(03:01):
grasses were coming up through the water. And I looked
at my friend and said, can you imagine there might
be a body fling floating right under that water and
you would never know? She said, You're real strange. Somehow,
the two of those things came together with me as
a perfect starting place in my head, and I wanted
to write a mystery. I was like, here's a mystery
and this is what happens.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You had such rich characters and I loved many of them.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
But who was your favorite character to write? And why?
And I really want to know who inspired Denise?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, two questions. So the first one I think was
Melika Devereaux was my favorite character to write because she
had such a perfect facade, like she floated into the
room and her clothes were together, but she had a secret.
She was the person that she'd created, right. Yeah, she
came to be Melika Devereaux because she changed to recreate
herself as such, and we could recreate ourselves so many
(03:51):
times in life, and she was very intentional about it
and I loved it, although you know, her ending wasn't
so great. Who inspired Denise? I think Denise was a
conglomeration of those queens. Okay, if they were the people
that I would say, oh, I have mentors. They are
those people and they're doing these things that are great
that you look at and say, I want to be
that when I'm that Auntie, you know, right right? But
(04:14):
they worked hard, they chose to be here, and I
think I combined something from all of those people to
make Denise.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
You have written in a lot of different genres. Yes,
was this the first of its kind in writing mysteries
or did you.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Do this before? And do you have a preference when
it comes.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
To So I kind of write what I feel like.
I'm curious about life. I'm a psychologist by trade. I'm
also a coach, so I'm curious and I write to
the question. Okay, So I wanted to write a mystery.
I think there's been elements of mysteries and other books.
I wrote a Simon Foster and I wrote erotic espionage
that life interests me, and so it was the first mystery.
(04:52):
I've written two others in the same series now that
go with it that are not published yet, but they're coming.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Cinnamon Fought or The Queen and the Queen Got it right?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Do I have a favorite? I don't know. It's like
a whole big puzzle, okay, Like how do I make
the puzzle come out? And I'm curious, Like I would
love to write science fiction because I cut my thief
growing up on science fiction and thriller, but I just
haven't gotten there yet. I think I also want to
write in television because I like story. I like telling
a story.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Story.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, I asked these questions because that inspires me. I'm
a reader who likes to read a lot of different genres,
and I'm a writer who likes to write a different genre,
a lot of different genres, and so many times in
this business.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
You hear stick with one and I'm like, I don't
want to do that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I mean, I do have written multiple Like when I
first started out, they said I was chick lit and
then women's fiction. I wrote a bunch of those they
sort of had a maybe a comedic twist to them.
Then I did some ya young adults and new adults
because those were interesting questions to me as a mother
of at the time of young adults and some of
(05:56):
the puzzles or the questions that they were faced with.
And then erotic espionage came up because I honestly loved
to travel, w be you're interviewing here, me here, and
and Bali and I did a lot of work out
of the country, international assignments, and at the time I
was traveling with my now husband, so it was like,
(06:18):
what happens in these international mysteries that or international espionage
things that no one wants to solve, Like what are
the questions? So different things from the different cultures inspired me,
and I was like, well, what if? And that's what
made me write that serious So.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I love that question. What if? What was the hardest
thing about writing this particular book?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I asked, because you do wear a lot of hats,
and I want to talk about all those hats. You've
talked about some of them, But what was it that
was hard about writing this book?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
For you?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I was really interested in making Kiowa Island as much
a character as the people were.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Okay, I felt that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, so I'm glad you did it. It's so funny
because I was contacted by book club out of the area.
They're like, oh, you really know this area? They want
you to come. And I think they thought I was
a white woman, and you know, they were like, oh, oh, okay,
it's hilarious. But I don't know how they could think
that when you see how the characters talk. That was
something that reviewers talked about. They felt like they were
(07:17):
talking to a bunch of black women and they were.
They were clearly taking because there are cultural things in
the book. Although they're affluent, it was clear what culture
they were from.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You know, it's interesting you say that because I'd written
a book and I was querying and this woman told me, oh,
you need to add this into the query letter, that
the sisters are African American.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I said she.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I didn't ask why. I just said I said thank
you and thought about it. I'm like, no, I'm not
going to do that. Well, the reason I didn't do
it one.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I prefer the word black that part. That part to use.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Your imagination that everybody isn't it doesn't look like you
when something comes across your desk, ask questions.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Be open minded.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean, if I say they grew up in the
Jim Crow South, that's just not relevant to someone who
isn't black, right, it would just be the South.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I think it's so interesting that that would be asked
of us when we read characters from the mainstream, mainstream
culture and you can't see air quotes. You know, we're
not asking them the right that they were white. You know,
we're not a monolith, and we can have all these
different experiences and nothing makes those experiences less black because
they don't take place in the stereo typical South. But
(08:35):
we have to make an excuse to say, oh, they're
living this, but by the way, they're black. Why. Yeah,
you know, I just didn't think that was relevant because
there are people that live like this and we are
especially when you talk about Black Americans, I'm saying black,
not African American. For a reason, when you talk about
American descendants of slavery or American survivors of slavery, I
(08:55):
think that we are all different strata, strata experiences, and
we all of them are hours and we should embrace
them all.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes, I agree with you. So we're not finished with
Denise and Trent just yet.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Okay, you already kind of mentioned that, but what is
next in the Queens of Stories?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So there's a lot of things going on, and you know,
it took me. It's an interesting thing going back and
forth with all the things that are going on and
publishing and not publishing. How should you do this? Should
you be self published? You and I've been to everything.
I'm a hybrid author, so I've been self published, large press,
small press, all of the things in between. And I
wrote a follow on book called The Dead Don't Speak,
(09:32):
and my agent gave me some edits for it, because
some agents will do that, and I took a long
time getting them back because now people are expecting the
next book right, and traditional publishing can take a long time.
We came to an agreement what's going to happen, and
now she's out marketing that book. So in the Dead
don't Speak, you focus. Although Denise does pass through that book.
(09:52):
She's in the book, but it doesn't really focus on
her as much as a main character who comes to
Kiowa and Denise decides to say after they solve the
mystery of what has happened to her husband and opens
a business. So the Ladies in the Island Secrets form
a full time chapter of their social club, one that
I made up. They have this social club. They're going
to have their first chapter meeting. And in their first
(10:14):
chapter meeting, which Denise is hosting at this business that
she is now purchased, a woman shows up and she
is gorgeous, gorgeous, just face beat, hair beat, everything beat,
you know, all down to the ground. And after a
few weeks she ends up dead. Then after she's dead
they find out that she was trans.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Oh, so I want this book.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So if you can imagine all of the things that
happened first fall in the South, in the climate that
we have, you know, we're not new to trans people
or gay people. We just don't talk about it in
our community as much. And so here you are in
this woman's organization in the Deep South, because it is
still the South, and I like to read in current events.
(11:01):
And I at the time when I was writing this book,
United Methodist Church was being sued because they had a
thing where, you know, everyone is welcome, but you can't
be clergy. You can't be a lay minister if you were. Okay,
that's shaping the attitudes that people have.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, when did you know you wanted to write books?
And when did you know you wanted to help other
people write?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So I don't know, so that's interesting. When did I
know I wanted to write books? I think I was
always a writer, but I took me a long time
to arrive as a writer and art artist in my head.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Okay, no, give my self permission.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So you know, I was raised by my father, an
older father. He was born in nineteen twenty five, so
he was an older father. I was like a month
the last set of eight kids. So there were things
that I was not going to do. I was not
going to be a dancer, he told me. He says,
we didn't go to have no book dancing and Nigga's
in our house, so forget that, you know, So that
(11:56):
was not allowed. I was not. He was like, you
need to get a job because you cannot live on
my couch. You need to study something that's going to
make you up a living. So you know, I studied
something science and engineering, and Jason, that's what I did, right.
But when I was in I was an avid reader always,
so I read everything. I read my father's books, and
I remember writing in middle school doing two things. I
(12:18):
would read. My dad would read the newspaper, so I
would read the newspaper, the New York Post, New York Times,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And I can't so you're a native New York I.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Am a native of New York. Yes, native of New Yorker.
So I can't remember what the editorial was that I
responded to. And they published my piece. I was in
middle school and it was it was it was about
being black, but I can't remember what spurred that. Wow,
how old were you? And it was in the newspaper
(12:47):
and then I was like, oh, this is interesting. And
then so my mother died very young, and I wrote
a piece called the Last Christmas and I submitted it
to Catholic Digests and they rejected me. But that was okay,
and then I was like, okay, that is it for me.
And then I went to Hunter College undergrad. I'm really
in New York, you are, And I wrote a piece
(13:07):
in that intro that writing class they make you take
as a freshman, and my professor wanted to submit it
for publication, and I said no because I was too scared.
So I think I was always a writer, like I
always journals, I always wrote things down. But then when
I was in grad school working on my dissertation, by
the time I got there, I hated it the topic
because you're beating this thing to death for like four years.
(13:30):
And to make myself sit in front of the computer
and write, I would first write something fun for thirty
minutes and then switch over to what I was supposed
to be working on. But I had four hundred pages
of fun before I had dissertation, So and then I
put it. I put it in a desk and then
think about it. And then fast forward five or so years,
maybe three years. I was working at a computer company
(13:52):
with this thing in my this tone because you pre
supprint everything because your computer would crash and you would
lose word with crash and you lose all your stuff,
so you would print it. And there was a bit.
I lived in Austin and there was a big community
of artists there, and I met a poet who I'm
still friends with now. We actually just produced a film together, Oni,
and she said, I'm going to writers' conference. You want
(14:13):
to go. I was like, yeah, I got this thing,
I guess so, and so I went to that conference
and that was my first experience. I remember my daughter
was eleven years old. She's twenty eight now, I mean
eleven months old, she's twenty eight. Yeah, now. And I pitched.
You get to pitch the editors and agents, and a
few of them requested it. It was good. It was
good because I didn't expect to be there. I was like, oh,
let's just go see.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You know it's someone once told me that I'm an
author advocate. Now I'm going to say the same thing
about you. Tell us about the other things that you
do inside the literary world.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
We are actually recording.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
This right now here in Bali on location because of
your advocacy.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So it's funny. I never thought of myself as a
literary advocate, author advocate, author Africa. I never thought of that.
But last year in Mexico in Merida, at this event
where the writing sistress it Marita Golden called me a
literary activist, I was like, what, I never thought of
it that way. When I first became a published author,
(15:12):
there were not a lot of people writing books with
characters that looked like me. I mean, I think there
was Terry McMillan, and I think Elin Harris, and that
was it. I mean Mayangelo, but you know, that was it.
But contemporary fiction at the time that wasn't necessarily stuff
they made you read in school. And so at that time,
at the end of the nineteen hundreds, in the old days,
(15:36):
back in the olden days, there were a bunch of
us because they said blacks don't read, so it was
almost impossible to get a deal. So we all se
published our books. There was a bunch of us, you know,
and then you'd go on tour, so a lot of
times self fundus. So all the black bookstores around the
country and you'd see each other on the road. Literally,
like I remember major books in Atlanta had us an
(15:57):
hour or two hours apart, and one one of us
would go in the other won't come out nice, and
you would see each other and you would get to
ask questions, Hey, so and so, what happened with this, Oh,
don't do that because they took my money, that kind
of thing. Wow, you know. Then they decided that we did.
At one point for Borders Books, African American fiction was
the largest selling genre, and so they brought a bunch
(16:17):
of us up, all the publishers.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
I didn't realize that, yes, and it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Was all of us that have been self published now
had book deals. But then things change, technology change. Amazon
was only books mainly then and a lot of the
smaller book stores started to close. So we lost that
place where you shared around the water cooler, so to speak,
because it didn't exist anymore. And so there used to
(16:41):
be an African American book Club at SA conference and
I was asked to speak on that. That went for
five years and then went away. And that was another
place where you got to see the authors because we
were all friends and we would go together. And I
wanted to recreate that. As part of being a published
author for twenty years, I wanted that to come back.
I was like, I miss where people could ask you like, hey,
(17:03):
how do you do this? And you could get information,
they can give information and you share. And I'm a
firm believer that you learn things from people no matter
where they are in their journey. So that's why I
created the Writing Systems Summit. And the idea was that authors, writers,
people in this business could come together and other people
who wanted to go where they had been could learn
(17:23):
from them, and you could share and create a community.
And so that was in twenty nineteen, and so other
than the year that we were, you know, pandemics out,
I've been doing this every year somewhere.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But that's not all you do.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I do have that. I spent some time being an author,
staying home writing, So I work in tech, you know,
and have had a great career doing that. So I
help people help people figure out the path to the
goal that they are selected, whether that's writing a book
or having more executive presence, or figuring out how to
(18:00):
have more time in their day for themselves. And it
just fit with this, and it fit with work, and
I was already doing it. I help people figure out
why they haven't completed their book really or figure out
what that pivot is. I run another retreat called Unapologetic,
the retreat for Black women to help them learn to
embrace all of their talents and be intentional about what
they want.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So, what's the most important piece of advice you can
give an aspiring writer who wants to develop themselves into
an author and a brand.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Huh, Well, first of all, think about what that means. Okay,
you need to know where you're going, so you can
make a plan to get there. It's not a haphazard thing.
And also think about the time in your day. There's
a lot of things that are going to be on
your plate. And you all know when a thank's giving
plate is overloaded out every it gets you've got to
make room. We're only human something. You can't do everything
(18:50):
all the time, and so something's got to give. And
what is that going to be? And most of the
time you can't say, well, I'm going to give up
my husband or my family and my children to do
this other thing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I don't think anyone chooses that, but sometimes it ends
up being.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It ends up being that way. You have to offload
something to make room for the things that are important
to you. And hopefully those things that are important to
you part of them is you.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, so very important.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So what's the last book that you read that really
moved you, that just made you go damn?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So it maybe go damn. Actually was Mariita Golden's last
memoir okay, but it was a very literary memoir. I
talked talked about her life as a writer, but it
was set in such great contexts over her going to college,
post civil rights and it you understood the context for her,
(19:41):
and it makes me understand her calling me a literary
activist because we are we can be very active with
our words in deeds, and she was and that I
thought it was just so well written and such a
great example of what a memoir. You think I'm gonna
write a memoir and you're like, I was born by
the river.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Right right? She started in the middle in a way
that was great and they just see how all the
things happened in context. So I just loved that book.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So what's next.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So one of the things, there's a couple of things
I want to I love the intimacy of the Writing
Sisters Summit. I limited to fifteen attendees, okay, plus faculty.
I want to find a way to make a variation
bigger where there's actually two cohorts going at the same time,
there's two lead faculty. So that's an actually idea that
(20:34):
came to me, came to my husband this morning in
a discussion we were talking through. But I really want
to I've written some film stuff, but I really want
to write for television, Okay, So whether that's taking the
content that I have and having my agent market market
it myself, but I really want to do that. So
I actually have written the whole plan on this, on
(20:56):
how this is going to happen, but I think that's
something I want to do. So for me, when I
say I want to do this, I actually took the
Three Island Secrets Kings of Queens of Kiawa storybooks, wrote
out pitches for TV, a story, bible, season arc, the
whole thing. I've learned all the things and sent it
to my agent. And that's why I wanted The faculty
(21:17):
was like, why is she doing that? Because watch because
I kind of visualized all I wanted to And then
after the seminar that we had on screenwriting, I wrote
a whole series our eight episodes, like here's plotline A
his plotline being here's the conflict. Here's the end.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Since yesterday, yes, okay, I am under a TIV.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I was like, okay, nobody. I get focused on that
one thing and then I just do those things and.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So if people want to reach out to you, if
they want to find your books, if they want to
be a part of any of your seminars and cohorts,
or if they want to connect with you in any way,
or they just want to follow.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
You on social So I'm on all the socials.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
So Nina Fox with two two exoses, I'm gonna switch
to Spanish. Those eavesa now Noah, everybody' seeing those echis beer.
They won't forget it. So Nina Fox. Ninafox dot com
is my website. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm
on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn. They can also find me
in my community Incan Intention, which is where all the
(22:19):
things come together, okay, and they can find out about
the retreats there. They can take recorded yoga classes.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
There for a yoga we're sitting in a yoga studio,
in a yoga studio, and you are also a yoga instructor.
And this is what I'm saying people.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
This woman really does do it all, but she does
it with grace and intention and enough.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Room for everybody. That, to me is the part that
I'm most impressed with.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, thank you. All the things are in incan attention,
and you find that from my website Nina Fox dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Nina, thank you so much for taking time to talk
with us today. Thank you for all that you do
and we've got to do this again.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Thank you for wanting to talk to me. Thank you
for trusting me in Bali.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Sukuma another show in the books.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Join us for the next episode of the Public Library Podcast,
a place to check out books
The mystery of the island was interesting to me. The
sea marsh grasses were coming up through the water, and
I looked at my friend and said, can you imagine
there might be a body floating right under that water
and you would never know. She said, you're real strange.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Sorry, here's your host.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And podcast librarian, award winning poet, future bestselling author.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And host of one of the most listened to radio
shows in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, book lovers. I've got a very special episode of
today's Public Library Podcast that was recorded on location in Bali,
So take a minute and enjoy. I am speaking today
with the award winning author of Island Secrets, a Queens
of Kiowa story, Nina Fox.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm excited about it. So let's get right into the book.
Tell us about your book.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Okay, it's a mystery. Imagine your husband has disappeared a
year ago, don't know where he is, so you need
to figure that out because without him, without a body,
without him being declared dead, there's no insurance and you
can't move on. So that's where the book starts. Our
heroine decides to go has a clue that has led
her to Kiowa Island where they have a vacation home,
(01:15):
this enclave of friends that go there together, and she
starts her investigation to find out what has happened to
her husband, where'd he go and where the money at?
What inspired this story a true story?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Really?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yes, someone that I used to work with occasionally disappeared,
just disappeared, just disappeared. And this person was an upstanding
we thought, family man and business owner and we would
occasionally do consulting work with him out of the country,
and we started getting calls because people wanted to know
where he was and we had no idea where he
(01:52):
was because he disappeared, but so did his companies. Four
one K money ooh, and so that kind of rested
with me a while. And then I had a group
of women invite me to Kiowa Island and they were
in my head the Queens of Kiowa. Originally I were
going to call them the Kings of Kiowa, but at
that time my agent said women can't be kings. I
now know that to not featured. There you go, and
(02:15):
they're women who had lived their careers done all the
things that we admire in corporate America, and now we're
enjoying the fruits of their labors. And they have vacation
homes on Kioa Island, and it was just like this
secret enclave of black excellence. Kiowa Island used to be
a plantation. It's one of the Barrier islands off the
coast there in South Carolina. But the mystery of the
(02:38):
island was interesting to me. And the first time we went,
we were chasing. There's a show called Diners Drive in Yeah,
and there was a restaurant featured there, and we went.
We tried to go. It was just a shack over
the water, which is where you see the book opens,
and it was a cove and these willow trees were
hanging over this coal and the marsh, the sea marsh
(03:01):
grasses were coming up through the water. And I looked
at my friend and said, can you imagine there might
be a body fling floating right under that water and
you would never know? She said, You're real strange. Somehow,
the two of those things came together with me as
a perfect starting place in my head, and I wanted
to write a mystery. I was like, here's a mystery
and this is what happens.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You had such rich characters and I loved many of them.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
But who was your favorite character to write? And why?
And I really want to know who inspired Denise?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, two questions. So the first one I think was
Melika Devereaux was my favorite character to write because she
had such a perfect facade, like she floated into the
room and her clothes were together, but she had a secret.
She was the person that she'd created, right. Yeah, she
came to be Melika Devereaux because she changed to recreate
herself as such, and we could recreate ourselves so many
(03:51):
times in life, and she was very intentional about it
and I loved it, although you know, her ending wasn't
so great. Who inspired Denise? I think Denise was a
conglomeration of those queens. Okay, if they were the people
that I would say, oh, I have mentors. They are
those people and they're doing these things that are great
that you look at and say, I want to be
that when I'm that Auntie, you know, right right? But
(04:14):
they worked hard, they chose to be here, and I
think I combined something from all of those people to
make Denise.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
You have written in a lot of different genres. Yes,
was this the first of its kind in writing mysteries
or did you.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Do this before? And do you have a preference when
it comes.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
To So I kind of write what I feel like.
I'm curious about life. I'm a psychologist by trade. I'm
also a coach, so I'm curious and I write to
the question. Okay, So I wanted to write a mystery.
I think there's been elements of mysteries and other books.
I wrote a Simon Foster and I wrote erotic espionage
that life interests me, and so it was the first mystery.
(04:52):
I've written two others in the same series now that
go with it that are not published yet, but they're coming.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Cinnamon Fought or The Queen and the Queen Got it right?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Do I have a favorite? I don't know. It's like
a whole big puzzle, okay, Like how do I make
the puzzle come out? And I'm curious, Like I would
love to write science fiction because I cut my thief
growing up on science fiction and thriller, but I just
haven't gotten there yet. I think I also want to
write in television because I like story. I like telling
a story.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Story.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, I asked these questions because that inspires me. I'm
a reader who likes to read a lot of different genres,
and I'm a writer who likes to write a different genre,
a lot of different genres, and so many times in
this business.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
You hear stick with one and I'm like, I don't
want to do that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I mean, I do have written multiple Like when I
first started out, they said I was chick lit and
then women's fiction. I wrote a bunch of those they
sort of had a maybe a comedic twist to them.
Then I did some ya young adults and new adults
because those were interesting questions to me as a mother
of at the time of young adults and some of
(05:56):
the puzzles or the questions that they were faced with.
And then erotic espionage came up because I honestly loved
to travel, w be you're interviewing here, me here, and
and Bali and I did a lot of work out
of the country, international assignments, and at the time I
was traveling with my now husband, so it was like,
(06:18):
what happens in these international mysteries that or international espionage
things that no one wants to solve, Like what are
the questions? So different things from the different cultures inspired me,
and I was like, well, what if? And that's what
made me write that serious So.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I love that question. What if? What was the hardest
thing about writing this particular book?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I asked, because you do wear a lot of hats,
and I want to talk about all those hats. You've
talked about some of them, But what was it that
was hard about writing this book?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
For you?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I was really interested in making Kiowa Island as much
a character as the people were.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Okay, I felt that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, so I'm glad you did it. It's so funny
because I was contacted by book club out of the area.
They're like, oh, you really know this area? They want
you to come. And I think they thought I was
a white woman, and you know, they were like, oh, oh, okay,
it's hilarious. But I don't know how they could think
that when you see how the characters talk. That was
something that reviewers talked about. They felt like they were
(07:17):
talking to a bunch of black women and they were.
They were clearly taking because there are cultural things in
the book. Although they're affluent, it was clear what culture
they were from.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You know, it's interesting you say that because I'd written
a book and I was querying and this woman told me, oh,
you need to add this into the query letter, that
the sisters are African American.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I said she.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I didn't ask why. I just said I said thank
you and thought about it. I'm like, no, I'm not
going to do that. Well, the reason I didn't do
it one.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I prefer the word black that part. That part to use.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Your imagination that everybody isn't it doesn't look like you
when something comes across your desk, ask questions.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Be open minded.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean, if I say they grew up in the
Jim Crow South, that's just not relevant to someone who
isn't black, right, it would just be the South.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I think it's so interesting that that would be asked
of us when we read characters from the mainstream, mainstream
culture and you can't see air quotes. You know, we're
not asking them the right that they were white. You know,
we're not a monolith, and we can have all these
different experiences and nothing makes those experiences less black because
they don't take place in the stereo typical South. But
(08:35):
we have to make an excuse to say, oh, they're
living this, but by the way, they're black. Why. Yeah,
you know, I just didn't think that was relevant because
there are people that live like this and we are
especially when you talk about Black Americans, I'm saying black,
not African American. For a reason, when you talk about
American descendants of slavery or American survivors of slavery, I
(08:55):
think that we are all different strata, strata experiences, and
we all of them are hours and we should embrace
them all.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes, I agree with you. So we're not finished with
Denise and Trent just yet.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Okay, you already kind of mentioned that, but what is
next in the Queens of Stories?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So there's a lot of things going on, and you know,
it took me. It's an interesting thing going back and
forth with all the things that are going on and
publishing and not publishing. How should you do this? Should
you be self published? You and I've been to everything.
I'm a hybrid author, so I've been self published, large press,
small press, all of the things in between. And I
wrote a follow on book called The Dead Don't Speak,
(09:32):
and my agent gave me some edits for it, because
some agents will do that, and I took a long
time getting them back because now people are expecting the
next book right, and traditional publishing can take a long time.
We came to an agreement what's going to happen, and
now she's out marketing that book. So in the Dead
don't Speak, you focus. Although Denise does pass through that book.
(09:52):
She's in the book, but it doesn't really focus on
her as much as a main character who comes to
Kiowa and Denise decides to say after they solve the
mystery of what has happened to her husband and opens
a business. So the Ladies in the Island Secrets form
a full time chapter of their social club, one that
I made up. They have this social club. They're going
to have their first chapter meeting. And in their first
(10:14):
chapter meeting, which Denise is hosting at this business that
she is now purchased, a woman shows up and she
is gorgeous, gorgeous, just face beat, hair beat, everything beat,
you know, all down to the ground. And after a
few weeks she ends up dead. Then after she's dead
they find out that she was trans.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Oh, so I want this book.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So if you can imagine all of the things that
happened first fall in the South, in the climate that
we have, you know, we're not new to trans people
or gay people. We just don't talk about it in
our community as much. And so here you are in
this woman's organization in the Deep South, because it is
still the South, and I like to read in current events.
(11:01):
And I at the time when I was writing this book,
United Methodist Church was being sued because they had a
thing where, you know, everyone is welcome, but you can't
be clergy. You can't be a lay minister if you were. Okay,
that's shaping the attitudes that people have.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, when did you know you wanted to write books?
And when did you know you wanted to help other
people write?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So I don't know, so that's interesting. When did I
know I wanted to write books? I think I was
always a writer, but I took me a long time
to arrive as a writer and art artist in my head.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Okay, no, give my self permission.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So you know, I was raised by my father, an
older father. He was born in nineteen twenty five, so
he was an older father. I was like a month
the last set of eight kids. So there were things
that I was not going to do. I was not
going to be a dancer, he told me. He says,
we didn't go to have no book dancing and Nigga's
in our house, so forget that, you know, So that
(11:56):
was not allowed. I was not. He was like, you
need to get a job because you cannot live on
my couch. You need to study something that's going to
make you up a living. So you know, I studied
something science and engineering, and Jason, that's what I did, right.
But when I was in I was an avid reader always,
so I read everything. I read my father's books, and
I remember writing in middle school doing two things. I
(12:18):
would read. My dad would read the newspaper, so I
would read the newspaper, the New York Post, New York Times,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And I can't so you're a native New York I.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Am a native of New York. Yes, native of New Yorker.
So I can't remember what the editorial was that I
responded to. And they published my piece. I was in
middle school and it was it was it was about
being black, but I can't remember what spurred that. Wow,
how old were you? And it was in the newspaper
(12:47):
and then I was like, oh, this is interesting. And
then so my mother died very young, and I wrote
a piece called the Last Christmas and I submitted it
to Catholic Digests and they rejected me. But that was okay,
and then I was like, okay, that is it for me.
And then I went to Hunter College undergrad. I'm really
in New York, you are, And I wrote a piece
(13:07):
in that intro that writing class they make you take
as a freshman, and my professor wanted to submit it
for publication, and I said no because I was too scared.
So I think I was always a writer, like I
always journals, I always wrote things down. But then when
I was in grad school working on my dissertation, by
the time I got there, I hated it the topic
because you're beating this thing to death for like four years.
(13:30):
And to make myself sit in front of the computer
and write, I would first write something fun for thirty
minutes and then switch over to what I was supposed
to be working on. But I had four hundred pages
of fun before I had dissertation, So and then I
put it. I put it in a desk and then
think about it. And then fast forward five or so years,
maybe three years. I was working at a computer company
(13:52):
with this thing in my this tone because you pre
supprint everything because your computer would crash and you would
lose word with crash and you lose all your stuff,
so you would print it. And there was a bit.
I lived in Austin and there was a big community
of artists there, and I met a poet who I'm
still friends with now. We actually just produced a film together, Oni,
and she said, I'm going to writers' conference. You want
(14:13):
to go. I was like, yeah, I got this thing,
I guess so, and so I went to that conference
and that was my first experience. I remember my daughter
was eleven years old. She's twenty eight now, I mean
eleven months old, she's twenty eight. Yeah, now. And I pitched.
You get to pitch the editors and agents, and a
few of them requested it. It was good. It was
good because I didn't expect to be there. I was like, oh,
let's just go see.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You know it's someone once told me that I'm an
author advocate. Now I'm going to say the same thing
about you. Tell us about the other things that you
do inside the literary world.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
We are actually recording.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
This right now here in Bali on location because of
your advocacy.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So it's funny. I never thought of myself as a
literary advocate, author advocate, author Africa. I never thought of that.
But last year in Mexico in Merida, at this event
where the writing sistress it Marita Golden called me a
literary activist, I was like, what, I never thought of
it that way. When I first became a published author,
(15:12):
there were not a lot of people writing books with
characters that looked like me. I mean, I think there
was Terry McMillan, and I think Elin Harris, and that
was it. I mean Mayangelo, but you know, that was it.
But contemporary fiction at the time that wasn't necessarily stuff
they made you read in school. And so at that time,
at the end of the nineteen hundreds, in the old days,
(15:36):
back in the olden days, there were a bunch of
us because they said blacks don't read, so it was
almost impossible to get a deal. So we all se
published our books. There was a bunch of us, you know,
and then you'd go on tour, so a lot of
times self fundus. So all the black bookstores around the
country and you'd see each other on the road. Literally,
like I remember major books in Atlanta had us an
(15:57):
hour or two hours apart, and one one of us
would go in the other won't come out nice, and
you would see each other and you would get to
ask questions, Hey, so and so, what happened with this, Oh,
don't do that because they took my money, that kind
of thing. Wow, you know. Then they decided that we did.
At one point for Borders Books, African American fiction was
the largest selling genre, and so they brought a bunch
(16:17):
of us up, all the publishers.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
I didn't realize that, yes, and it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Was all of us that have been self published now
had book deals. But then things change, technology change. Amazon
was only books mainly then and a lot of the
smaller book stores started to close. So we lost that
place where you shared around the water cooler, so to speak,
because it didn't exist anymore. And so there used to
(16:41):
be an African American book Club at SA conference and
I was asked to speak on that. That went for
five years and then went away. And that was another
place where you got to see the authors because we
were all friends and we would go together. And I
wanted to recreate that. As part of being a published
author for twenty years, I wanted that to come back.
I was like, I miss where people could ask you like, hey,
(17:03):
how do you do this? And you could get information,
they can give information and you share. And I'm a
firm believer that you learn things from people no matter
where they are in their journey. So that's why I
created the Writing Systems Summit. And the idea was that authors, writers,
people in this business could come together and other people
who wanted to go where they had been could learn
(17:23):
from them, and you could share and create a community.
And so that was in twenty nineteen, and so other
than the year that we were, you know, pandemics out,
I've been doing this every year somewhere.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But that's not all you do.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I do have that. I spent some time being an author,
staying home writing, So I work in tech, you know,
and have had a great career doing that. So I
help people help people figure out the path to the
goal that they are selected, whether that's writing a book
or having more executive presence, or figuring out how to
(18:00):
have more time in their day for themselves. And it
just fit with this, and it fit with work, and
I was already doing it. I help people figure out
why they haven't completed their book really or figure out
what that pivot is. I run another retreat called Unapologetic,
the retreat for Black women to help them learn to
embrace all of their talents and be intentional about what
they want.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So, what's the most important piece of advice you can
give an aspiring writer who wants to develop themselves into
an author and a brand.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Huh, Well, first of all, think about what that means. Okay,
you need to know where you're going, so you can
make a plan to get there. It's not a haphazard thing.
And also think about the time in your day. There's
a lot of things that are going to be on
your plate. And you all know when a thank's giving
plate is overloaded out every it gets you've got to
make room. We're only human something. You can't do everything
(18:50):
all the time, and so something's got to give. And
what is that going to be? And most of the
time you can't say, well, I'm going to give up
my husband or my family and my children to do
this other thing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I don't think anyone chooses that, but sometimes it ends
up being.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It ends up being that way. You have to offload
something to make room for the things that are important
to you. And hopefully those things that are important to
you part of them is you.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, so very important.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So what's the last book that you read that really
moved you, that just made you go damn?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So it maybe go damn. Actually was Mariita Golden's last
memoir okay, but it was a very literary memoir. I
talked talked about her life as a writer, but it
was set in such great contexts over her going to college,
post civil rights and it you understood the context for her,
(19:41):
and it makes me understand her calling me a literary
activist because we are we can be very active with
our words in deeds, and she was and that I
thought it was just so well written and such a
great example of what a memoir. You think I'm gonna
write a memoir and you're like, I was born by
the river.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Right right? She started in the middle in a way
that was great and they just see how all the
things happened in context. So I just loved that book.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So what's next.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So one of the things, there's a couple of things
I want to I love the intimacy of the Writing
Sisters Summit. I limited to fifteen attendees, okay, plus faculty.
I want to find a way to make a variation
bigger where there's actually two cohorts going at the same time,
there's two lead faculty. So that's an actually idea that
(20:34):
came to me, came to my husband this morning in
a discussion we were talking through. But I really want
to I've written some film stuff, but I really want
to write for television, Okay, So whether that's taking the
content that I have and having my agent market market
it myself, but I really want to do that. So
I actually have written the whole plan on this, on
(20:56):
how this is going to happen, but I think that's
something I want to do. So for me, when I
say I want to do this, I actually took the
Three Island Secrets Kings of Queens of Kiawa storybooks, wrote
out pitches for TV, a story, bible, season arc, the
whole thing. I've learned all the things and sent it
to my agent. And that's why I wanted The faculty
(21:17):
was like, why is she doing that? Because watch because
I kind of visualized all I wanted to And then
after the seminar that we had on screenwriting, I wrote
a whole series our eight episodes, like here's plotline A
his plotline being here's the conflict. Here's the end.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Since yesterday, yes, okay, I am under a TIV.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I was like, okay, nobody. I get focused on that
one thing and then I just do those things and.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So if people want to reach out to you, if
they want to find your books, if they want to
be a part of any of your seminars and cohorts,
or if they want to connect with you in any way,
or they just want to follow.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
You on social So I'm on all the socials.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
So Nina Fox with two two exoses, I'm gonna switch
to Spanish. Those eavesa now Noah, everybody' seeing those echis beer.
They won't forget it. So Nina Fox. Ninafox dot com
is my website. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm
on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn. They can also find me
in my community Incan Intention, which is where all the
(22:19):
things come together, okay, and they can find out about
the retreats there. They can take recorded yoga classes.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
There for a yoga we're sitting in a yoga studio,
in a yoga studio, and you are also a yoga instructor.
And this is what I'm saying people.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
This woman really does do it all, but she does
it with grace and intention and enough.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Room for everybody. That, to me is the part that
I'm most impressed with.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, thank you. All the things are in incan attention,
and you find that from my website Nina Fox dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Nina, thank you so much for taking time to talk
with us today. Thank you for all that you do
and we've got to do this again.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Thank you for wanting to talk to me. Thank you
for trusting me in Bali.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Sukuma another show in the books.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Join us for the next episode of the Public Library Podcast,
a place to check out books
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