What was your inspiration for A Little In Love With Death?
In the 1980’s I had friends who lived on 139th Street just off Riverside Drive in Manhattan. From their window I could see a beautiful but abandoned building one block over from them. The majestic gothic-looking structure loomed in contrast to the glass, steel and brick of my friends’ high-rise apartment building. I later learned the object of my curiosity was a school for girls named for Saint Walburga. I always felt sad it would rot and deteriorate if someone didn't do something with it. Luckily The Fortune Society purchased it 1998 and reopened it in 2002 as a residence for the formerly incarcerated. Before that practical use it served to inspire me and my writing muse.
I’d stand before it and tried to imagine what events could have occurred within its walls. It stood so stately and silent. If those walls could speak, would they share tales sinister and spine tingling? How the sun glint off the fourth floor windows had me conjuring all manner of ghosts haunting the place. I then came across a line from Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The main character Edmund shares how because he “will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death.”
I wondered what it would be like for a person who felt that way about living in a structure like St. Walburga (renamed Umoja House in my story), a person who lived as a fish out of water neither wanted or able to want what she deserves, who never belonged and so lived a little in love with death but equally feared it. What would happen if that longing for death led to disaster for someone they loved? Could either of them get past the guilt inflicted by the past and find redemption in the present? Thus A Little In Love With Death was born.
Do you find inspiration in your own life for your writing?
Normally not so much, but in one of my latest projects, Kwanzaa to the Rescue, my experiences as a seminarian at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan and my first pastorate in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn play important roles in the backstories of my hero and heroine, a married clergy couple whose marriage is on the rocks.
Tell us about A Little In Love With Death.
Buy it online.
A Little in Love With Death is my first attempt at a dual time or slip time story. It tells the story of Sankofa Lawford who claimed she'd been brutally attacked by a ghost but no one believed her, not even the man who said he loved her. Ten years later an assault on a new victim brings her back to Harlem to a mother going mad, a brother at his wits’ end and a former love who wants a second chance. Sankofa longs for her family to be whole again, for love to be hers again, but not if she must relive the emotional pain created by memories of that night.
Mitchell Emerson is convinced science and reason can account for the ghostly happenings at Umoja House. He resolves to find an explanation that will not only satisfy him but earn back Sankofa’s trust and love. Instead, his own beliefs are shaken when he sees the ghost for himself.
Now reluctant allies, Mitchell's and Sankofa's search for the ghost reveals seventy years of lies and decadence revolving around her mother being more than a little in love with death. What they learn at first draws them together but the more they uncover, the more their discoveries pull them apart. As their hopes for happily ever after and dispersing the evil stalking Umoja House slip beyond their grasp, Mitchell and Sankofa find an unexpected source of help: the ghost itself.
Above: Inspiration for the house in the story.
Words of advice for fellow writers in the trenches:
Find things outside of writing that bring you joy and helps you bring joy to others. Writing is such an isolating and internalizing activity that when rejection comes we tend to take it as a rejection of us instead of the work. Having other things that affirm us reminds us that our lives are bigger than the words we put on the page.
Excerpt…
For the last hour Sankofa Lawford blinked through a haze of tears at her mother’s stricken face. She held the glassy-eyed woman’s hand and tried repeatedly to get her attention. No gesture stilled the older woman’s incessant rocking. No words penetrated her intonation of the same awful phrase.
“Them that tell don’t know and them that know don’t tell.
Them that tell don’t know and them that know don’t tell.”
Wanda Lawford suddenly stopped rocking and stared in Sankofa’s direction.
“Sankofa?”
A bright glint of glee shone in Wanda’s gaze. Hope struggled for a foothold in Sankofa’s heart then slipped as a death head’s grin contorted her mother’s once beautiful features. With a grip made strong from madness, she pulled her daughter’s hand to her chest and leaned in so her lips pressed against Sankofa’s ears.
“A word to the wise is sufficient. Have you been wise?”
Her hissed warning parodied whispered confidences mother and daughter had shared in the past. Sankofa kissed away a tear from her mother’s cheek.
“Yes, Mama.” She swallowed the lie with a smile. “I’ve been wise.”
Wanda Lawford cupped her daughter’s face and smiled too.
“Good. He shouldn’t have gotten you then, but if you’re wise, he won’t get you now.”
Sankofa took a deep breath and controlled her sadness despite the wobble of her lips.
“Rest now, Mama. Rest. Okay?”
Wanda released Sankofa’s hand only to grip her own and begin rocking again, begin repeating again.
“Them that tell don’t know and them that know don’t tell.”
Them that tell don’t know and them that know don’t tell.”
Sankofa groped her way toward the door, willed her halting feet toward the sanity of the hospital corridor. She pressed a hand against her chest and leaned backed against a wall.
Sad-faced flower-carrying visitors brightened frowns into smiles before entering the rooms of their loved ones. Nurses’ aides delivered lunch on rattling carts. A call for Dr. Li to come to the nurses’ station sang through the air. The tang of Lysol assaulted her from the room across from her mother’s where orderlies cleaned up behind a happy return home or a sadder departure to the morgue. She lifted a silent prayer of thanks for these small handholds on normalcy.
“Jesus, have mercy. ”
