Bethany C. Morrow: Speculative Fiction Author on Exploring Memory, Identity and Awesome Con 2024

Rob Lee: Welcome to The Truth in This Art. Your source for conversations at the intersection of arts, culture and community. A space for real conversations where people, well, sound like people. I am your host, Rob Lee. Thank you for tuning in, sharing and subscribing this podcast. Continue to do so. Help us out. This episode is brought to you by AwesomeCon. That is Washington, D.C.' 's Comic-Con. I'll be there. Will you? Today, it is my pleasure to welcome my next guest, an influential voice in speculative fiction, celebrated for her thought-provoking novels that weave together themes of identity, memory, and social justice. Please welcome Bethany C. Morrow. Welcome to the podcast.
Bethany Morrow: Thank you so much for having me.

Rob Lee: Thank you for coming on. Thank you for making the time. And, you know, we were chatting a little bit beforehand, so I'm going to, like, compartmentalize that a little bit. I'll say, yeah, so back to the movie conversation we were having. But for starters, one of the things that I aim for in this podcast is giving folks the space to share who they are authentically. So I did the sort of cut and paste online amalgamation of a bio, but for you, could you share who you are, introduce yourself in your own words before we get into the deeper conversation?

Bethany Morrow: That is hilariously difficult and that is probably going to be one of the most like that's going to be one of the most frustrating questions only because as authors and here's something that I think people genuinely don't understand, even if they're my age. I'm 42 years old and internet started in earnest when I was in high school. And we learned pretty quick, you don't put your whole self online, right? So I mean, at first we're meeting people online. I mean, I'm going to the mall to meet people that I've only talked to in chat rooms. So let's not even talk about that terror. But like, once you realize, once the gravity begins to descend upon us of what this is and what this allows, we don't put our whole self online. So there are a lot of people who, I think because I like a lot of people in my generation, know how to seem whole on social media, are like, I know exactly who this person is. I mean, unfortunately, I've had people tell me that they know exactly who I am. And I'm like, beloved, but you don't. And it's for my benefit that you don't, it's for my safety that you don't. So I will tell you probably some similar stuff that you have seen on social media. I am married. I have a son at Howard University that I'm very proud of. He's a classical voice major. I'm a mama. I raised him in Montreal, Quebec. We're both, I'll say, I'm from California. He was born in California. Sorry, baby. But like I said, I think I said I'm a quad roller skater. I'm looking at my skates right now. So making sure I bring that up. I mentioned to you, I am a Planet of the Apes stan. I love speculative literary is kind of my home. Novella is what I consider to be a perfect format. I think there are a lot of people out here who think they're novelists because they don't realize that everything doesn't have to be a novel and you don't have to write novels to be an author. So I like to give intimate tidbits that help you know something about me and feel a connection to me without actually telling people all of my business.

Rob Lee: I love it. I love it. And the writer thing is coming through heavy, which I appreciate it. Right. You know, like I'm I'm thirty nine. I just turned thirty nine. So I definitely I get it. I get it. And it's you know, I encounter it sometimes like I'm really like big. I take up a lot of space like I'm tall. And, you know, with it, people will see me from like a distance. It's like, oh, beyond the horizon there. There goes Rob O'Hare. And it's one of those things where… And I don't know, maybe because I saw like the Cillian Murphy thing recently when he's talking about he prefers those real connections. So he doesn't just with people anymore. Yeah, I feel that. And I want to have that deeper connection, because, you know, as I said, you know, before we got started, I was like, I'll probably see you at the con. Yeah. I'm going to make it my business to see you at the con because we're changing and sharing in this moment. And a lot of times folks don't see that. So I'm just going through the doldrums. It's like I'm not doing the superficial conversation. I'm going to ask you questions you've asked before, but I might ask them differently or, but we're connecting and that's the sort of the intent and the goal. So to your point around like, I can't put all of my stuff out there. I'm going to be able to answer that question myself. I was like, yeah, I'm Rob X. It's like, that's not at all.

Bethany Morrow: There's part of me that as an author, I mean, what people should understand is I am sharing the most authentic part of myself because I'm an author and because I'm a writer and because my writing interrogates the American imagination and sometimes indicts the American imagination. And it's a cultural contribution. And I understand that as somebody whose degree was in sociology, this is not Entertainment is entertainment, and entertainment is wonderful, but it's not just entertainment. So I'm very much putting myself in this context of, like, I understand my place and my role in this society as an artist, and I'm willingly doing it. So just because you don't know the details of the minutiae of my life does not mean that you don't know, hopefully, my heart and, hopefully, my character. But in terms of what street I live on and stuff, beloved, People really want to know these things. And I'm like, no, no.

Rob Lee: I'm on Mind Your Business Avenue. Exactly. But you're right. And, you know, and I'm going to go into this this next question, because I'm very curious of where sort of the journey begins in fiction and writing and sort of like, what was that like? But the one thing I definitely want to throw out there is Yeah, I totally relate. I totally get it. When you're you're sharing doing this, right? Like it's almost like the spoon feeding of things. And, you know, like I would listen to interviews with like Sam Esmail. He's like, everybody wants to know something. He's like, I can't tell you what the thing is. And I apply that to even doing this. Like folks will ask me, can you spoon feed? Who do people that you talk to and why are you talking to them? Who is the audience? And somewhat defensively, I say, do I find them interesting? That's the audience. Right. People I want to talk to. Those are the conversations and to, you know, dog pilot, if you will. It's you know, you can't fake you can't fake authenticity. You can't fake like interest. It's hard to fake interest.

Bethany Morrow: And it's possible for some of us.

Rob Lee: So that's that. And, you know, if I'm like, I don't really care about this work, that's a good interview, but I don't really care about this work. It's going to go in the people that I really like. You know, they don't really need to know about me and me saying like, hey, I like black artists. I like I like fiction, I like things. Yeah. You can hear it in the interviews. You can hear it in sort of the folks that come on. So. For you, where, where did the journey start? Like, was there, you know, looking back, was there something like when you were like a young person, like super young, like you were reading and it kind of laid the foundation or even watching it kind of laid some of those foundations, some of those even maybe even the mortar of the foundation for you or where, where does the story start for you?

Bethany Morrow: What's really interesting about this is like this is a very so so we get trapped in sort of narrative styles and conventions, even when we don't know it. And for good reason, OK, I'm not again, I'm not trying to talk down to anybody as a student of sociology. We do this for a reason. It simplifies the world around us. It allows us to quickly make sense of things and sort of quickly categorize things. But because of that, we'll sometimes approach artists uh of any of any kind and ask them like where did it start as though there was a start and the thing for me is that I can't answer that question because it it's um it's an incorrect framework for me I nothing started it always was and I think it it conveys this sort of assumption that non-artists usually have, and that's who we're usually making these interviews for, the listener, is typically somebody who enjoys and has an interest. And many of them will be artists, but a lot of them won't be. And so it'll make sense to them to say, where do this start? Because you start going to school at some point. You start a hobby at some point. So that makes a lot of sense to people. But for me, that kind of suggests a sort of intentionality in beginning something where for some of us it was an inevitability. It was simply this is who I've always been, this is what I've always done, because not everybody waits until someone introduces the concept of writing something down. Some of us were writing stuff down and then somebody told us what we were doing. So I remember in It couldn't have been past second grade. I used to, we had free write. And we would get these, I just love the appearance of them. It was an odd dimensions of these colored spiral notebooks. And we would get one. And I think my first one was probably orange or yellow. I have a memory of it being orange or yellow. They were primary colored notebooks. And our teacher would give them to us during free write. And then I was like, what happens when I fill this up? Nobody else filled them up, apparently. So I kept getting new ones, which I can't completely remember what color my first one was. But I was the only person actually writing during free write, apparently. Everybody else was allowed. Eventually it was like, Okay, read quietly. Okay, play that like that tabletop football, you know how we used to fold the paper and write, play that quietly. Okay, okay. Right, exactly. You know exactly what we're talking about. You know, everybody was given all of these little concessions, like, okay, well, as long as it's quiet, just the point for the teacher was, leave me alone. So I kept getting so there was just there were plenty of these books to to receive because nobody was actually using them and I was writing stories in them. And now at the time, you know, like a lot of artists, I was a complete plagiarist. But because I'm a Black girl, it wasn't quite plagiarism. It was more of a remix because I was taking stories that I liked, that I was completely absent from, and I was writing myself as the main character of those stories. This is early, early elementary school and I remember my teacher taping one of my short stories to the top of my desk and when my parents came for back to school night, you know, very excitedly being like. this is what she does during her free time. And her thinking that my parents not having a big reaction was like, oh, these Black parents, not encouraging. And I was like, ma'am, you are not the first person to be forced to listen to my short stories. These people are well aware of what I've been doing. So I don't, you know what I mean? This is like if you asked a kid, when was the first time you went to recess? I don't know. It was something that I always did, and it seemed completely natural to me. Riding bikes, and reading, and making video book reports, and all of that stuff is just normal stuff to me that I was doing the entire time. And I honestly, until junior high, didn't know that it was any, there was any difficulty or any intentionality necessary in being an author. I thought I already was. Like I was already, I'm like, What? I'm doing it.

Rob Lee: No, thank you. Thank you. Wow. Because here's the thing. You touch on that. It makes me think of sort of these moments or what have you. But you think of like, this is the moment where this began, the construct idea, right? And then it's just like, no, there's other stuff even before that, like they're in makeup stories of movies I've never seen because I wanted people to be interested in what I had to say. Exactly. I'm like, I've never seen this movie, actually. And it was like Guyver from 1992 or whatever. And, you know, but when I got to this this sort of point of doing this, I can remember sort of when a certain phase of it happened. Mm hmm. you know, I can go back to like high school and thinking of pulling out the recorder and just, you know, you know how people would do these superlatives end of the year yearbook stuff. I would because I was a troll. I was a little bit of a heel. I would say most of y'all are not going to be here next year. So can you say your story in this microphone since you're not going to be able to, you know, stay because your grades are trash? That was the energy I was on.

Bethany Morrow: That is hilarious because I had a voice recorder. Again, any I am a I'm a historian. I mean, before I'm an author, I'm all of these other document, like, documenter type of identities, because I was a journalist since I was eight years old. I remember I have my first journal. I have all of my journals. But don't worry, they will be burned. So if any of you come looking for them. Not today, Satan. I was journaling. My family is very big into taking pictures, which is why, I mean, I just had somebody come to my house and be like, I've never been in a house with this many pictures on the wall. And I'm like, look, that's that. I came by very honestly. My family has always been like that. You take pictures of moments and of people that you enjoy, and you put them up. So I've always been recording, and I think of fiction very much the same way, partially recording myself and partially recording the society that I'm observing, particularly the parts of it that they think they're hiding. But I had a voice recorder in junior high and I really just, it was just, I was always recording my friends. I was, it was, it was, there was no point to it. Sometimes it obviously got crass and ridiculous because, because, I mean, I've always had the kind of, I feel like I've always had a little bit of a either 12 year old boy or just like stoner kind of sense of humor. So It's ridiculous. And if I had to listen to it back, which we always did on double speed, it would be, it would be a lot. It would be cringe, but I love that sort of thing. And I was, and I guess that's how people knew me because what was strange to me is nobody else was doing it. So I brought a voice recorder every day because I'm like, who, who is collecting like these moments? Why is nobody collecting these moments? I don't know. Um, so that is amazing to hear that you, that you shared in that. Then I went on to be a newspaper in high school, was the senior editor of the newspaper and stuff. Any time there's a chance to record the moment that I'm living in, the society, the culture that I'm living in, I've always been about it.

Rob Lee: That's great. And that's really sort of what I aim for in doing this. And before I move into this next question, You know, I've heard the thing of, oh, you're an anthropologist. I was like, you're an archivist. You're a documentarian. And it's just like, it's naturally there. And I think it's something about it. You have this question about sort of that childlike wonder. And I think that's what we're poking at of, you know, when you just do it to do it, it's just there. You're not thinking about it in that way. I find when other folks start anointing things, it's like, you're the person writing the Wikipedia page, not me.

Bethany Morrow: I'm just doing the thing. Ask me how many times I've been to my Wikipedia page.

Rob Lee: I've been there a lot, but no.

Bethany Morrow: Listen, the only thing I know is the one time that I went, which somebody, I think the person who made it sort of just nudged me to be like, oh, I made your Wikipedia page. And I was like, well, this is woefully incomplete and some of it inaccurate. But I didn't say a word because I'm like, that's none of my business. It's none of my business.

Rob Lee: But you guys are doing. Right. So I want to ask this before I start asking about specific works. Is there a conversation? It kind of is a good piggyback. Is there a conversation, a book or a film that significantly impacted your perspective on creative work, like macroly speaking? Like, you know, like when I do this, I go through maybe old interviews because, you know, we're all plagiarists, right? I go through all interviews, you know, these old interviews with people that I was like, Oh, I like the way that you do this. Like I used to have like Jane's Lipton questions. Like I used to have one. What's your favorite curse word? That was a rapid fire question. And it's really something I lifted from from elsewhere. And the perspective was getting into the thinking or even Austin books or Rafi Perez books of I want to get into the thinking, not the typical. So tell me about your work. I want to thinking that goes into the work and reading some of those books gave me perspective that gave me sort of acknowledgement that that perspective was worthwhile. So was there a book or conversation maybe that you had or some form of media that kind of gave you like, like that impacted your perspective or kind of like said, Hey, you know what, you should be doing this. This is a good idea to kind of keep going and going in this direction.

Bethany Morrow: Again, it was inevitable, so nothing, nothing had to inspire me to do it and nothing was going to stop me from doing it. But in terms of moments that I remember. Thinking oh so yeah somebody is already somebody is doing this, because the thing with being a black artist number one people in order to hide white supremacy and to hide anti blackness are perfectly willing to w or crown you the first or the only or whatever. And unfortunately, a lot of us have gotten into the habit of accepting those titles and accepting that designation, which doesn't make sense for people who care about our ancestry, doesn't make sense for people who care about the people who came before us and what it costs for them to come before us. I know Toni Morrison seems very recent, and of course, she is. She was just with us. But what she was doing when she was doing it was still Was still not welcome and it's still you can see that in the plethora of interviews that we watch with her where somebody is always trying to Take hold of her and shift the perspective and shift the narrative Into something that's familiar to them and something that they that they that allows them to continue being the center of the universe So like I will both say that what I do and how I do it was inevitable and it wasn't going to be stopped But that doesn't mean that it wasn't fed and it wasn't encouraged. And the reason it was inevitable to me was because people were before me because people were already doing it. I don't need to be the token of anything. So looking at stuff like. I remember the first time I encountered Toni Morrison, which was actually in high school, thank God. I wish it had been earlier, but I'm very pleased to have been able to study it in a very serious IB English IV class, where we were trained and taught to look on it with reverence, to approach it with our brains on and understanding how serious her literature was. Because I was only one of maybe one Black students in that class. So to learn it in a context of like, everyone needs to understand how important this is, was like, I'm here for it. It was very dope. And also that particular teacher, Mr. Guy Roberts, identifying that I understood some of the intricacies that the other students weren't. And he literally asked me, he was like, do you want to come up here and explain this? When we got to something, I was like, sure. And so that understanding that I had that she was writing to me and that I did have a closeness to her work that allowed me some insight that the rest of my classmates could benefit from, that entire experience was amazing. But when I read her voice and I heard her voice, something that had been said to me a lot of times was, you have such a classic voice. You have such a classical voice. And, you know, you can write authentically, you can write in your own voice. And I was like, this is my natural voice. Like, what are you talking about? So when I read Toni Morrison for the first time, it was like, No, that's her natural voice too. Okay, so I'm not crazy. You're trying to force me to be different than I am, and I'm coming into contact with somebody who this is who she is, this is how her voice comes out, this is what her prose sounds like, and she doesn't make any attempt to dialecticize it or make it something that's more palatable to you, particularly given the fact that her books are entirely, almost entirely, with the exception maybe of Paradise, people with Black people. And yet this prose is so, I mean, it has that sort of James Baldwin misleading simplicity on a sentence level where the undertow is so strong that you're overwhelmed before you realize what's happening. Like that kind of clean, beautiful, again, misleadingly simple, but extremely intricate prose. And I loved that and I was always drawn to that, but I do definitely remember people trying to give me quote-unquote permission to talk like myself, quote-unquote. But again, I was in Christian school, I was in private schools, I was in special programs, and I distinctly remember a teacher also, you know, asking my dad if he was writing my papers for me. That's just good old-fashioned anti-Blackness. So I remember that moment. But before that, my dad had gotten really, really fixated on Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale. And so he went out and bought every single one of her books. And so I, with these Costco cinnamon cookies, I read all of the books that he bought. I remember my favorite one was Mama. I remember reading Disappearing Acts. I mean, I have actual olfactory and sensory memories associated with reading those books because I always had a snack. while I was reading it and absolutely was not written for 12, 13, 14 year old but it was a Black woman writing about the everyday lives of Black people and again somebody doing that like it Like, it's just something you can do, allowed it to be inevitable to me, instead of feeling like I must write for Black people. Somebody was already writing for Black people. Not enough somebodies were breaking through, but somebody was always writing for Black people. So I didn't have to feel like there was this great burden on me to be the one to, like, come on. Like, we've been doing this. We've been doing this.

Rob Lee: Because the expectation, I think a lot of times I encountered doing this. So we have to do so many other things that aren't really what we're doing per se. And, you know, I've heard the, oh, can you use your real voice? It's like this is the thing that I do. Why did that accent come from? You're not from Baltimore, right? It's like, I'm from East Baltimore. I've been here all 39 years. What are you saying to me? And, you know, and now, granted, sometimes it is the is the homies in the community might say sometimes I butchered up a little bit more, but my voice is my voice. Right. My interests are my interests. And, you know, sort of my references are my references. This makes me up as an individual. And I used to do a podcast. And if I if I still have it on a drive, I'll share it with you because I think you might find it interesting. I did it with one of my buddies. He's a safe beige, as I call it, light-skinned brother. And we had this podcast called Unofficially Black. And we would do things like just as real, just black dudes. And we would get told often by folks that are more black than us, that ain't black. It's like, I'm black and I'm doing it.

Bethany Morrow: There you go. Listen, let me show you. Let me teach you how to interrogate yourself, too, because people have this idea that every Black person is a walking sociologist, is walking with a PhD in social science and all that kind of stuff. And the issue is white supremacy is relentless. It destroys white people and it absolutely turns Black people inside out. So the difference, of course, being I can have grace with the person who's not intentionally feeding me the poison. So with Black people, it's just, hey, I want you to interrogate the smallness of your own self-definition and who benefits from you having that small definition and who instilled that small definition in you. So, you know, so a lot of times Black people it's just like, like you said, well I'm Black and I'm doing it, right? All right. So that should be the end of that conversation.

Rob Lee: I love that. Look, that's going to be a caption. Right. So let's see. Let me see what I have left here. Because I have definitely, I got a few specific and then a couple of awesome cons. So I'll move into more of the specifics. So you're known for doing a lot of interesting things.

Bethany Morrow: I like that. Put the sentence right there. You're known for doing a lot.

Rob Lee: But, but, you know, the you see sort of the, you know, bestselling author and adult and young adult novels. Are there different considerations that are made based on the audience? Is it sort of like, I think this fits more and sort of towards this audience versus this. What are your considerations when you're you're putting together work, when you're you're writing that as it relates to an audience?

Bethany Morrow: I like that question because I do think that it's important for people to understand for me and I'm not speaking about being an author of young adult and adult i'm talking about being bethany see morrow as a young adult and adult author for me my natural voice my natural home is adult. And it's adult. I used to say speculative literary, and now I will say something has to function like a speculative element. And I found that horror does that. I found that historical does that. But something has to function like a speculative device. So that's my natural place when I think of stories. When stories come to me, they are default to the adult audience, blah, blah. And the only time that they're not is when it's something to edify a young Black person. That's an intentionality. That is saying, I am not simply crafting um a story i'm not i'm not only um being true and authentic to a concept a character and a construct which are my three c's always of writing um but when it's for young adult it's because i have something to give them hopefully uh with song below water it's very much about giving language um Because a lot of Black kids, of course, we have to have a wisdom, unfortunately, that surpasses our years. The adultification of Black kids is not a myth when you're constantly facing microaggressions. And I just want to remind the audience, microaggression doesn't mean small. It's micro versus macro. It means it's a microcosm of what you're seeing on a macro scale. It's a systemic Assault so it's not a small infraction it's a microcosm of the macro infraction that's that's ongoing, but they don't always unusually they. They know it when they see it, but that doesn't mean they know how to defend themselves. And it doesn't mean that they know what to make of it. And it doesn't mean that they have the fortitude to resist the drive and sort of the requirement to believe the lie and to put themselves second. And when I'm writing for a young adult, it's because I'm hopefully edifying that particular population. it has an active desired outcome, which adult does not have for me. It's no less rewarding, but it's a responsibility that I take seriously and I don't do it lightly. If people are wondering why I can say there's a chance I won't ever write any more young adult, it's because the reason that I write young adult is quite specific and unless I feel that I can do something necessary or something essential and craft a beautiful story and work with, you know, with my craft at a certain level, then I personally am not drawn to do it. There are certain people who every story they come up with is young adult and that's just what they write and where they write it and it's no deeper or shallower than that and that's fine but that's not me. So three back-to-back gave people the impression that I was Just brighten young and I'm like, no, I was doing something specific with each of those and obviously starting with my anthology and my and my short story that I contributed to the anthology that I that I edited all of that was for a very intentional purpose because there's a need and and they're deserving and I'm not going to. watch an entire generation be gaslit into thinking this country has made more headway and is giving them more liberty than it actually is.

Rob Lee: I mean, I'm over here going through and I'm like, so, you know, we got to give you your points or what have you. I mean, look, like NPR best book. Come on. Let's let's let's let's be real. And I that's a really well thought out answer. I really, really appreciate you giving us that that extra context and flourish, because it is a thing like, you know, I could just do this. You know, with no consideration, no extra thought. And it's just like, well, that doesn't come natural to me. What does come natural to me? And really thinking about that into that that consideration. And the other thing that you did in that answer, which I really appreciate, is you made my job a little easier. You kind of like one of my later questions already. And so. So much appreciated there. So I want to ask about because I keep seeing sort of it's a small book with big ideas. So I got to ask about them a little bit. So what was the sort of genesis around? And I hate that word, but I'm going to use it here. What was the genesis like this sort of that initial spark? And I know that everything is inevitable. I'm titling this The Inevitable Bethany Seymour. But What was the sort of genesis around mem or what have you? Because I'm very curious around memory and identity and whenever I see any sort of media that's around memory, because look, the moment that I can't remember things and I have an element like memory, I guess that's a thing. When I started losing my memory, I was like, look, mm-mm. So I want to hear some of those thoughts.

Bethany Morrow: Oh, absolutely. So, Mem, I am so, so, so, I remain so pleased that that is my debut because if you want to know who I am as an artist, that is the greatest encapsulation. It's a speculative literary novella with a historical element that has so much to do with misogynoir, with anti-Blackness, with with what it means to love across those lines and how far you go to honor somebody else's understanding before you must insist on the truth and insist on your own. And I probably have never even described it that way before, but it's a book, because it continues to, thank God, because it continues to be relevant and continues to be talked about, I continue to be asked about it, I get the opportunity to keep considering it over and over again, which I very much appreciate. But that book, I started, I've written two young adult science fiction manuscripts back to back. And I am always thinking, as soon as I know everything there is to know about a story, I'm thinking, where, where am I going? What am I writing next? What's the next? I have to have something that my brain is using as a background program. And I wanted to go home, basically, because I was A little exhausted so for me again if I'm exhausted i'm going to go to the literary section and hopefully to there's no such thing really in bookstores as a speculative literary section so you got to just know what you're looking for but i'm going to go to a colson whitehead's zone one or or anything by james baldwin is it's good enough for me or um you know you're just returning to let's say um for me if i was going to say like to me this is very much Is speculative literary but Octavia Butler speech sounds the short story in in blood child that's where I go home and when I. I know the concept is where stuff starts for me. So I was literally laying down for a nap on August 5, 2011. I know this because I got so tired of not remembering exactly when something started that I wrote it down. Because like I said, I'm a journalist. And I was thinking of how sad it is that science fiction is not as or sorry, science is not as interesting as science fiction to me. and my lived experience example of that was dolly the sheep when i was in elementary school the cloning of dolly was a huge conversation we were constantly talking about it we're listening to updates about it and of course i am a child in a starcher household so i'm thinking that like oh my gosh they're about to bring out an equal size and aged She to show us that they successfully clone something. And then it's like, here's an embryo. And I'm like, wait, what? Um, that's just a genetic twin. Like, what are you? That's not a clone. So I was like, what makes a clone? Oh, by the way, just shout out to multiplicity. By the way, I was obsessed with that movie. Nice. I love you, Michael Keaton, forever. But I was very upset as a kid. I felt betrayed. I was like, this is wrong. These are liars. Adults are liars. So in 2011, I was like, what is it to me that constitutes um a clone then and for me it's about identity you have to be a clone must be the same person it can have um it can have markedly different just like you know flapping of a butterfly's wings you can have the same person go a couple of different ways to great effect and great difference for sure but the foundation has to be the same it has to it we have to start as one thing, and then if we diverge, we diverge. But because I'm a speculative writer, it was like, okay, so what if cloning was only about memory? What if the purpose of cloning was to save memories? And then, you know, if I can, I try to make things unsettling. So it's like, well, what if cloning was simply a byproduct of trying to get rid of memories? Like, if it was And that's what Mem is. Mem is a book about an alternate history, Montreal in the 1920s, although the story sort of starts in the early 1900s, in which scientists have devised a way to extract unwanted memories. And because of the gravity, really, of memories, and what they are, and how important and integral they are, to do so is to create an entity. all its own, which is a MEM, obviously short for memory. And these MEMs are really just keepsakes. They just house this one particular memory until it expires, basically, until it runs out. But the source, the human who had the Oh, gosh, I love when I just drop words and make myself sound super intelligent. The person who had the procedure done is called the source. And once the meme has been extracted, they no longer have access to that memory. They don't remember that memory. And as in capitalistic societies, yes, it started out because we want to extract unwanted memories. But when we realized that there was a possible entertainment aspect to this, which is that these memes, the only thing that they should be able to do is to relive and recite the original memory. So, okay, maybe I'll take out a memory that I actually do like because I can have it perform. I can, you know, they can do live performances and readings and that sort of thing. And obviously, because it's a capitalistic society, the only people who really have access to this technology, of course, are the wealthy. And so the difference occurs and the problem occurs when the first mem of a woman named Dolores, which means that this mem's first name, her initial name, is Dolores extract number one. She is not operating like a mem. She does not she does not fit the description of a mem. She knows that she's alive. She knows how long she's been alive. She has all of the memories preceding the memory for which she was extracted, and she creates memories after she was extracted. And so she begins with a bit of celebrity, of course, because it's like, this is a mem that can do something that no mem can do. And then at the start of the book, we are following her as she's being recalled back to the vault, which is sort of this underground dormitory where mems live and die, or sorry, live and expire. And because she's been allowed to live out in the outside world, because she's had this kind of celebrity, and because she obviously does not seem to be a mem, she seems to be a person, how far is this going to go? And who decides whether she has the right to her own life? And that's, yeah, that's mem.

Rob Lee: I mean, look, I'm sitting here like, you know, every I'll put it this way before I move into this last real question. Awesome question. Whenever I'm hearing sort of like you can get sort of the story when you're hearing it from the author, you're getting the flourish. And I'm sitting here like my my my science fiction mind is like salivating. So I see like other and I'm not going to do that thing of like, yeah, you know, this reminds me of this because that's But it definitely gives me that feeling of the sort of inner sci-fi guy that is like, oh, sure. Like, I'm a Philip K. Dick guy. Yes. I would just sit there and I used to work at a Catholic college. I would just sit there in a library. I was like, there's something weird about what I'm doing right now, reading sci-fi in a Catholic institution. I was like, but I break rules. This is what we're doing. And just going through it. And I used to be one of those people that would get frustrated because I read slowly. And I'm like, nah, nah, I need to change it. Like I'm always tinkering, right? It's like, the way I can do it is just audio book. I'm an audio guy. It's like blowing through, consuming it. And then I can make those references. And I don't know, I start seeing things in that. And I would just say random things just to people, just to see like people I work with that know me. I'm like, yeah, where's my electric car? Where's my flying car? It's like, are you reading Philip K. Dick? It's like, don't worry about that. Don't worry about what I be doing. Where's my stuff? You know, I. It's great. All right. So this is sort of the last question. And one of the reasons we got connected, and I'm so excited and happy that we did get connected because it goes, it transcends this. It goes past this. But one of the things that's coming up is AwesomeCon, DC's Comic-Con. Can you share, like, you know, what you're looking forward to? Have you have you been before? What are you looking forward to?

Bethany Morrow: I was there last year, not as an author, despite the fact that they tried to rope me into sitting down and like signing, because I was there as a friend of loyalty, the bookstore, my beloved Hannah's bookstore. So I was just there for that reason and obviously to buy stuff. But then I did Rose City Comic Con last year, which is in Portland, which I absolutely loved. It was absolutely amazing. And so the, obviously the group that organizes both of these then reached out and asked me to do Awesome Con. And then obviously, you know, my friend's bookstore is the, is the bookstore of it. So Christina lets me know, like, I told them that they needed to get you to come because I had like, refused to do it last year. because I was like, I'm here to have fun. I'm sorry, I'm not at work. So I'm very much, I'm looking forward to being there for work. I'm looking forward to being on panels. I'm looking forward to, you know, speaking to and actually signing for readers. Rose City was amazing because we did not, the bookstore, and shout out to Sean Speakman, love him and his family. He was operating the bookstore for Rose City and they did not, they weren't able to get mem. And obviously at a comic con somebody while i'm on panel is going to bring up men and is going to ask me questions about it, and so there are a bunch of people that was like really. Seriously, like this book is not available so on the it must have been the third day somebody comes back. having gone to Powell's and gotten them and brought it back to the to the con for me to sign because they're like, I was not going to not get this one. So I mean, I love I love speculative readers. I love the conversations. I love the questions. Yeah, so I'm, I am so, so looking forward to it. I literally got to see both Rogue and Gambit last year, which is me and my husband's alter ego. So I was like, we took pictures with them. It was amazing. So we are Rogue and Gambit. Yeah, so I'm, as you can hear, I'm an idiot, dork, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I do have to do a plug really quickly because you just now said you're into audiobooks. We are talking about sci-fi, we're talking about especially the blackness of science fiction and ancestral magic and all that kind of stuff and sci-fantasy. My girl Ella McKinney, who you probably know as the author of Blade So Black and also the author of the Nubia Real One graphic novel that I believe won the, oh gosh, let me not say the wrong thing, is it the Eisner? And then she's got two more books coming in that. She's the one who kind of rebooted Nubia for DC in the, I think it's the Future States, the comics that they were doing. Anyway, so LL and I were asked by Rome to do an original audio drama called Morning Glory which then was purchased by Spotify and they turned it into an audio book and that is currently out so you have to get into you have to get into Morning Glory. It is about a sister set really it's three sisters and a first cousin because we're gonna it's gonna be black blackie blackie black okay cousins or siblings too, all right, and they are the, they are a part of a black family that has the last black funeral parlor in the area and they also, you know, they have this ancestral matrilineal magic and it helps the community keep boo hags and such in line, but there's been sort of a, their family has had this legion after them since the time of their ancestor glory and The magic has always passed to the next daughter of that woman. And there's only ever been one daughter. And now, of course, this generation, there's three daughters. Stuff is going wrong. Legion is coming. And it was just such a blast. And audio drama, for me, was like, oh, I could do this every day. Having an audio production basically make your script sound like a movie. I was not ready when Legion started talking, when the demon voice started. We listened to it together. We were jumping. It was like, okay, all right. Oh, you're gonna score my scenes as well? You're gonna hit the emotional notes? It is everything. So if you haven't listened to Morning Glare, you absolutely need to listen to it.

Rob Lee: It's funny you mention it. I just subscribed on Spotify because I'm a dude on Spotify Premium. And I definitely had it up on your website, too. So I was like, what is this?

Bethany Morrow: I'm picking up what you're putting down, sister. Yes, it is. I love it so much. Hopefully we will be asked to do a second season because we have in mind stories for a second season. So we will see.

Rob Lee: I mean, if you ever need a giant podcast personality. Listen. Look, I'm just saying.

Bethany Morrow: Look, we've met now. We've connected now.

Rob Lee: All right. So I got I got it. And thank you for that. And we also we do we do the shameless plugs at the very end as well. So definitely tap back on at the end. So this is the last couple of things I want to do real quick. So and thank you for giving me that sort of feedback around like awesome because, you know, I enjoy the cons. And like I said, before we got started, I've had a relationship. with the con over the last like number of years. And it's truly a great experience to go there. I'm not just saying that as a person that's working with them. It's like I've gone beforehand, even before this relationship. And it's great. You know, I go there. I always like bring other people. I'm like, hey, you know, you should go to awesome con, right? Yeah. And it's that it's like I like being around fan, fanboys, fangirls, fan, everyone's. Yeah. And, you know, having having like you say, you and your husband are Gabby and Rogo have here, you know, via my partner. I don't know who she looks like. She looks like a Bratz doll. Like, that's just what her aesthetic is. It's just come on. My hair is pink and I'm like, I'm an ogre. I don't know what to tell you. And I was like, I don't know where this goes.

Bethany Morrow: I mean, I kind of love that. I ship that an ogre at a Bratz doll. Hell yeah.

Rob Lee: But so here's the rapid fire questions I got for for AwesomeCon, because I think or rapid fire questions I have generally, but the first one is for AwesomeCon. And I think that, you know, especially when you're working, as you were touching on, that it can be long days. So this is the first question I got for you. Coffee or tea on AwesomeCon morning? What do you anticipate for yourself?

Bethany Morrow: That is hilarious. Do I get to say neither for rapid fire? Because I don't drink coffee. And I do not I don't and I don't have a story of coffee killing my father. You guys I just don't like I just don't drink coffee. It smells amazing, though. So you can keep carrying it around me. I promise it'll be an ice water in the morning. Okay. I can't.

Bethany Morrow: Okay.

Rob Lee: I mean, I'm a coffee snob. So the next question is going to be, so what you taking your coffee?

Bethany Morrow: That's amazing. And you will be happy to know that I can't disappoint you because there is no coffee. So I will have a watermelon hint water. All right. It's flat water with no sweeteners infused with watermelon essence. That's what I will have.

Rob Lee: See, when I'm drinking water, which I do, I do drink water. I'm not one of those people like I don't touch the stuff.

Bethany Morrow: Your kidneys and your organs. Hope you're not saying that.

Rob Lee: As my partner's kid would say, yo, why you drink spicy water? I love Topo Chico. I love just regular Topo Chico. It's just something extra in there.

Bethany Morrow: It's nice when it's nice. It's nice when it's nice. But living outside of the United States and always having to say flat water, If I ask for water, I need your default to be spring water, guys. I need you to not be coming over here with the spice when I just asked for water. I'm so tired of it, Europe. I'm tired of it. I need you to do better. Water is flat. That's a good answer.

Rob Lee: All right. See, this this one is a softball. And I want to save the funny one that I added while you were talking earlier. I had I had a good question. I was like, I got to ask you that. So here's here's this next one. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? It's kind of a, you know, but.

Bethany Morrow: This is so difficult. And I'm the type of person, if you ask me what my favorite is, you're going to get favorite today, OK? And it's the same way with superpowers. You ask me for what superpower is going to be today. Right now, it would be teleportation, because I don't actually like flying until I'm actually next to the clouds. In which case, I'm like, oh, this is the purpose of flying. I get to be near my clouds. But other than that, I don't like flying. And so I would absolutely love, and as somebody who likes to go places, would love teleportation. As long as I could grab somebody and of course thereby take them with me. We don't need to talk about the science of that, just understand that that's how my superpower works.

Rob Lee: That's a great answer. I like the thoughtfulness in that answer. You know how in Deadpool, not Deadpool, in Daredevil, how he's the man without fear, what have you. I want to be the man without failure. That's not quite a superpower like his, you know, not being fearful of anything.

Bethany Morrow: Listen, my speculative literary mind has an immediate reaction to that. Are you sure?

Bethany Morrow: Are we sure? I think you're, I think you're underestimating the necessity of failure in development and growth. Are we sure?

Rob Lee: See, this is, this is what happens. I have a sense of what it is as an Aquarius, right? I'm an Aquarius. So I always need someone to rein in my BS.

Bethany Morrow: Are we sure we want to take failure out of the equation, beloved? I'm going to ask you to, I'm going to ask you to meditate on that. I'll ask you to meditate on that.

Rob Lee: It's like that meme, it's like, you sure about that? You sure about that? All right, this is the last one. So you were mentioning earlier about your dad's books and, you know, sort of, what is it, Tony Morrison?

Bethany Morrow: No. Terry McMillan. My dad's obsession with Terry McMillan, yeah.

Rob Lee: And I noticed a snack sort of accompaniment with it. So, you know, if you were to make a suggestion for one of your works, what would be the accompanying snack with it? So it's like, hey, you should read this, but also you should probably have an ice cream. What's the snack combination for one of your works?

Bethany Morrow: I sort of like fundamentally forgot food existed in my work. Just same way, same way as if you come into my work and you're like, give me a detailed, I've had editors be like, can you please just describe one person? And I'm like, no. Um, but, but other than hair for the young black girls, I will give you all of the black hair love. Um, and, and just, you know, I completely geek out over, over black girls hair. But, um, the interesting thing that began to happen is that supper book clubs. began to choose my book, Mem, which is so interesting because there is a marked lack of food in that book. And the only real thing that I even put in there was for the express purpose of being like, remember when y'all ate nasty shit? So the thing that Nurse Nettie and Elsie, which is the name that Dolores Extract No. 1 chooses for herself, the thing that they eat is Neapolitan and custard, which is the kind of grossest but most common thing I could find to think about, because we used to have this 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook, and it was just an assault on the senses, just the pictures, and it was really just an anthropological study in like in white people just like so much creativity and so little taste um so just because you put something in in a gelatin tin does not make it edible all right um so This is such a hilarious question to ask me, because I could tell you what people have chosen to pair with my work, which I'm like, good for you. Elfie loves going to the movies. And so they always do some sort of very elevated popcorn type thing, which I love. I'm like, do you? Somebody did a deviled egg recipe for, I have no idea where they took that inspiration. There are no deviled eggs in that book. When they explained it to me, I remember being like, oh, I see that. I don't see it anymore. It had to be the book.

Rob Lee: I don't have a memory of seeing that.

Bethany Morrow: I don't have a memory of seeing it. In A Song Below Water, I know that they're eating a particular kind of sandwich that I just remember from the West Coast. I remember like, you know, it had alfalfa sprouts on it and, you know, it had avocado on it and it had, and a multigrain bread and stuff that sounded really good. But honestly, I so infrequently, until let's say like so many beginnings, because, oh, you know what, there's quite a bit of food. Well, no, let me say there's two scenes with food. I cherish her. So many beginnings. The point of that was, of course, as a historical, and we're on Roanoke Island during wartime, and we're talking about what's available and not available. You know, what we would have been eating because the Civil War is ongoing. They do make a molasses apple pie. They eat shad fish, which is known to be ridiculously bony, and so it's a very embarrassing fish to serve and eat in front of a new person, which they do sort of at the beginning of that book. But listen, whatever you find is probably gonna be much more palatable because when I encounter food or when I think of food, 50% of the time at least it's a troll. So like, I would not go to my books for cookbooks, all right? Like, let me direct you to the Skyrim cookbook and that will probably be more appetizing. Yeah, there's barbecue and burgers and stuff and coleslaw in Cherish Farrah. And there is my favorite sort of like pasta, but I don't eat a lot of pasta. So it's one that I particularly like with ricotta and whatever. But yeah, I'm… me talking like this actually makes it sound like there's more food in my books than there is. Whatever you find to eat while you're reading my book is probably fine.

Rob Lee: I love it. I love it.

Bethany Morrow: That was the longest.

Rob Lee: I love it. I prefer the honesty. I like it. Like, you know, you know, I had one of those, you know, like again, as I was saying earlier, my science fiction inner, I was going to say something very different, but my fiction thing was tickled. I was put it out. And you mentioned like molasses, apple, what I was just like, say, say more. I didn't want to.

Bethany Morrow: Yeah. That, that is one thing that, and when my editor, when she sent me the past pages, she sent me molasses, apple pie cookies. She basically found or concocted a recipe. And I was like, if my reward for actually occasionally including something that sounds good is that somebody makes it for me, I'm like, I can deal with that. I loved that. Shout out to Emily Settle for sending me them cookies.

Rob Lee: That's a great way to end it and close out. And thank you. This has been… This has been delicious at the end, I'll say that. But this has been very, very robust, very, very rewarding. I feel like I've gotten smarter in this interview, which is great.

Bethany Morrow: You're going to find out in about five minutes that it's all an elaborate ruse.

Rob Lee: I'm going to drink some Topo Chico, and just like, oh, right.

Bethany Morrow: Yeah. Spicy water to wake you right back up.

Rob Lee: Bethany was right. This spicy water's got to go. I need flat. Flat is where the intellect is at. So with that, I want to do two things. I want to, one, thank you for coming on and making the time to chat about your work and, you know, kind of give us a little bit of a primer for AwesomeCon. And two, I want to invite and encourage you to, you know, let us know, you know, sort of that that shameless plug, you know, like social media, website, any projects that are coming up that we can you want to share in the final moments. The floor is yours.

Bethany Morrow: Absolutely. Well, as I like to tell people, I would really appreciate if y'all would eat what's already on the table. Listen, I'm always, and I came out with three books in the course of like nine months in 2021 and 2022. And it had people thinking that what I was trying to get them to do was constantly ask me about what's next. And I was like, beloved. Don't be greedy, eat what's on the table. So again, I write adult and young adult ranging from contemporary fantasy to speculative literary to historical to social horror, which is what Cherish Ferret is. I did this amazing horror fantasy. Morning Glory that Spotify has released that I co-wrote with L.L. McKinney. I would love for you to engage with any and all of it. You can pre-order my books through Loyalty if you are coming to AwesomeCon for me to sign. I will be on multiple panels over that weekend. I think I have a panel every day at AwesomeCon. would love to meet people and sign books, because I cannot guarantee which ones they will actually have on site. So if you want to make sure that there's one of them that you get, you can go to BethanyCMorrow.com, my website, to see a refresher on what all of my titles are. I also have the award-winning anthology. It was the 2020 ILA Social Justice and Literature Award winner, Take the Mic, for which I was the editor and the contributor. I wrote my marching band short story. in there that I'm very happy about. I cannot believe it took me that long to write about marching band. But I'm just excited to meet people at Awesome Con.

Rob Lee: That was dope. Thank you. And definitely follow follow through, folks. You know, get those books, get those signed things. You never know what's going to be there. You already had that experience. You were touching on earlier. And, you know, I'm out here looking at my my situation, too. I got to do my loyalty situation, too, because I need to have something on hand.

Bethany Morrow: You know, you got to make sure you have what you want, because things move quickly at cons and I will sign books that you that you bring from the outside also. So I mean, nobody ever needs that reminder because they always bring they always bring something anyway.

Rob Lee: Here's my journal. I'm also a journalist. Here's my journal. Can you sign it?

Bethany Morrow: You know, absolutely. And yes, I can.

Rob Lee: And there you have it, folks. I want to again thank Bethany C. Morrow for coming on and sharing a bit of her journey with us. And a big shout out to Awesome Con for helping bring this together. And I'm your host, Rob Lee, saying that there's art, culture, and community in and around your neck of the woods. You've just got to look for it.