(Richard Z. Santos, Yodassa Williams, Alia Volz, Sonia Hamer, Chad Abushanab, David Laidacker-Luna, Viktoria Valenzuela, Tori Cárdenas, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Annie Shepherd) Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Here’s Day Three!

Published Date: January 26, 2023

Transcription

Michaeljulius Y. Idani:

Welcome to the AWP 2020 Podcast by Blooms Day Literary and Effing Shakespeare. Hosted by Kate Martin Williams, Phuc Luu, and Lilly Wolf. Narrated by Michaejulius Y. Idani.

Phuc Luu:

My father would call all the freaking time. I could be diffusing a nuclear bomb to save Houston, Texas, and my father would call.

Kate Marin Williams:

Phuc. What's my password?

Phuc Luu:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I can't get into my email.

Lilly Wolf:

How do I reset the VCR?

Phuc Luu:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Lilly Wolf:

How old's your cat?

Phuc Luu:

She's three.

Lilly Wolf:

Aw.

Phuc Luu:

Yeah.

Lilly Wolf:

They're the same age.

Phuc Luu:

Yeah.

Lilly Wolf:

They should be playmates.

Phuc Luu:

I know.

Lilly Wolf:

They should be friends.

Phuc Luu:

It's really hard for cats...

Lilly Wolf:

Put them in preschool together.

Phuc Luu:

(singing)

Kate Marin Williams:

Chickens. Chickens. Chickens. What wasn't fun was the pecker chicken.

Lilly Wolf:

Oh, what?

Phuc Luu:

Oh, my word.

Lilly Wolf:

This sounds like a lot of fun.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's a woodpecker chicken. And my friend producer Larry, is going to recreate what sound we heard at 4:00 AM this morning.

Hey, it's AWP Day 407. It's day three. Is it day three? Yes. It's Saturday. It's book fair day. There's lots going on. And we have the Richard Z. Santos in our happy little corner studio today.

Phuc Luu:

In the booth.

Richard:

Hi. Thank you.

Kate Marin Williams:

Hi, Richard.

Richard:

Hi. I'm excited to be here.

Kate Marin Williams:

Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming today.

Richard:

Thank you.

Kate Marin Williams:

You have a new book out.

Richard:

I do. My first book, March 31st from Arte Publico Press. It's called Trust Me. It's a novel. I'm really excited about it.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's really, really cool. I want to know a little bit about it.

Richard:

It's set in Santa Fe. We've got a couple of point of view characters. The main character is an East coast political hack whose career is basically over. His previous candidate ended up in prison. He almost followed him into prison.

Kate Marin Williams:

Like you do.

Richard:

Like you do.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh man,

Richard:

Nobody wants to hire him.

Kate Marin Williams:

Wait, where would you get the idea that a political figure might end up in jail?

Lilly Wolf:

That's crazy.

Richard:

Just a pure imagination. No, I mean, I used to work in DC and I took a job.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

Political job in Santa Fe, which is the same trajectory this person goes through. He stumbles into corruption and danger, whereas I mostly stumbled into breakfast burritos and lots of turquoise.

Lilly Wolf:

That's a good one.

Richard:

One. But also dealing with some local people here who are on the ground or having their own struggles with family and mortality and just weave some of their stories together.

Lilly Wolf:

So the political hack is one point of view. And then who else is in there?

Richard:

There's another character named Gabe. So the guy coming in from the East Coast, he's hired to do public relations because this group has bought some land from a Native American Pueblo and they're going to build a major airport in Santa Fe. Santa Fe has a tiny little airport that's very sweet and it's very cute. It's not very functional. So they're trying to build a new one. The problem is just before the book starts, they find a skeleton on the construction site and since it's a Native American pueblo that throws everything in a disarray, and so they want to bring him out to help navigate some of this.

But with construction stopped, that impacts the other character, Gabe, who's just kind of scraping by in his fifties, but still trying to live like he's in his twenties. Inherited a house from his dad and just likes to drink a lot of beer. He's got a friend who he enjoys doing mushrooms with, and he has a vision, and that vision tells him that he's about to die of bone cancer. And so he feels the crunch of actually trying to get his life together, which is hard because he is out of work.

Kate Marin Williams:

Right on. When you sit down to write, is that a consistent thing for you to do multiple POV, third person, or is it first person? Haven't read it.

Richard:

Third person.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay.

Richard:

Yeah, I'm different. And there are two other POV characters on top of them. Yeah. You know what? I guess it kind of is. It just sort of happened that way.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, yeah.

Richard:

My second book is, I have a complete draft of it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, cool.

Richard:

And it also has four different POV characters.

Kate Marin Williams:

You just have lots of people bouncing around in there, huh?

Richard:

I guess. I don't know. I mean, it also gives you a lot of troubles because what if they all sound the same and then that's boring? Or what if they're all too different and then everybody hates all the characters except for one? I don't know. I give myself a lot of problems.

Kate Marin Williams:

What if you get bored?

Richard:

What if, yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

If you get bored, you switch to the other guy.

Richard:

Exactly.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

So I think that's the benefit.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a personal affinity for collecting the mottos of airports. Could So could we go on a weird Kate tangent here? Do you know what the super cute airport in Santa Fe's... Was it Santa Fe, the airport? Do you know their motto?

Richard:

Yeah. No, I don't.

Kate Marin Williams:

So Knoxville's is "You're good to go." Which strikes me as like, "Get the hell out of here."

Richard:

Yeah. Go. Go now.

Kate Marin Williams:

And there's like rocking chairs in the terminals and I don't know why I find that really amusing. So I need to find out what the Santa Fe airport motto is.

Richard:

It's really tiny. It's very like Charles Lindbergh landed there a lot.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, yeah.

Richard:

So it basically still looks the same way.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

Whereas the Albuquerque airport is also tiny, but big for New Mexico. And everything is trimmed in turquoise paint and kind of that fake wooden vigas.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

And just kind of architectural flourishes, I guess that's nice.

Kate Marin Williams:

Well, the Santa Fe airport is really sweet. "Connecting you to the world!" With an exclamation point.

Lilly Wolf:

Oh, no.

Kate Marin Williams:

And then right afterwards it says in all caps, "IN INCLEMENT WEATHER CONTACT AIRLINES DIRECTLY."

Richard:

And by the world they mean Denver and Houston.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

And there's like a couple flights, I think to El Paso.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, good.

Richard:

And that's about it.

Lilly Wolf:

You know, it's the enthusiasm that counts.

Kate Marin Williams:

See what I'm saying? This is fun. I like airport mottos.

Lilly Wolf:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. I've got questions about your previous life in politics. So what is easier teaching American high school students or writing speeches and working on political campaigns?

Richard:

They're surprisingly similar.

Kate Marin Williams:

Ooh, I want to hear it. I was hoping. I was hoping.

Richard:

They become these obsessive, they're not just jobs. They're like, you're calling.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, both things?

Richard:

Both things, right.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay.

Richard:

And the people drawn to both tend to be all in. People don't, at least not good teachers and not good campaign people. They don't just do it halfway. Right? They're there all the time. They work the longest hours. They don't take breaks. When they go on vacations they're still thinking about work when they do take vacations. And the downside is kind of the same too. It's exhausting. It's all consuming. It really does kind of grind people down. That's partly why I left DC because I looked around and I was like, "There aren't a lot of happy 50-year-olds that are still doing this. There's some rich ones, but I don't know if they're happy. And I think unfortunately, we all had those high school teachers that were the same thing. They were five years from retirement.

Phuc Luu:

Yep.

Richard:

Just sit down, shut up, do this work. I'm just trying to get out here. So that's a downer. But it's true. But I guess the upside to that too is that people really are committed to it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

When you're working in politics, you want to change the world. You know that your ideas are the best ones and your candidates are the right ones.

Kate Marin Williams:

You want to connect your candidates to the world. Like the...

Lilly Wolf:

Connecting you to the world.

Richard:

To the world.

Kate Marin Williams:

Send them through the Santa Fe airport we are sponsored by.

Phuc Luu:

Sponsored by the Santa Fe airport. Connecting you to the world.

Kate Marin Williams:

Connecting you to the world. Via four flights at 2:34, 7:00 to 8:30.

Phuc Luu:

El Paso, Denver, Houston.

Kate Marin Williams:

So back on the train of your book. We're kind of getting... Yeah, that one.

Lilly Wolf:

Book talk.

Kate Marin Williams:

So, we were curious, how did you find your way to Arte Publico? How did you get with them?

Richard:

It was a wild story. I wrote and rewrote this book at least three complete drafts that looked totally different. And I would just keep tearing it down and I would show it to people and they'd be like, "No, this is not good." And they would make me tear it down again. I had a draft that I was like, "Finally I am done." And I showed it to Tim O'Brien, who was one of my professors at Texas State, and he sent me back notes on the first 75 pages that made it very clear that I was very far from done. He just shredded it completely. But it was amazing. And those notes pushed me through the final draft. But still, I had sent it to 50 agents and I got tons of encouraging rejections, but they were all rejections. And I put it away and was happy. I was happy. I was like, fine, whatever. Every writer has the desk drawer book and this is mine. Cool. I'd already started another one.

Kate Marin Williams:

If you could see Richard's face just now. "Cool."

Richard:

They probably heard it in the way I said, "Cool."

Lilly Wolf:

That's very good.

Richard:

That's what my students here all the time too, by the way.

Kate Marin Williams:

Cool. Hashtag cool.

Richard:

And then Arte Publico won the National Book Critic Circle Lifetime Achievement Award last year. And I was like, "Oh. Okay."

Kate Marin Williams:

Hey, hey. Nice work.

Richard:

And I saw that they've opened some missions and I was like, "Okay, this is actually the last time I'm going to inflict this on anybody." And they wrote me back within a month saying that they were on board and wanted to do it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Nice.

Richard:

And now here we.

Kate Marin Williams:

And did you throw a little party?

Richard:

Tiny little party, but mostly it was just confusion and uncertainty.

Kate Marin Williams:

Santa Fe airport.

Richard:

At the Santa Fe airport.

Kate Marin Williams:

Sorry.

Richard:

No, but it's exciting. And the editing process has been good.

Kate Marin Williams:

And you went with them unagented.

Richard:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

And just, yeah. Sometimes that's really great to have that kind of editorial relationship and just get right into it. Get right to it.

Richard:

Yeah, they've been really good to work with. The edits I got back are great. Really tightened up the book. We chopped out 10,000 words, which I think it needed.

Kate Marin Williams:

Nice.

Richard:

And so I feel good about that.

Kate Marin Williams:

Very, very cool. What's next for you?

Richard:

I'm going to be doing some work for the Writer's League of Texas, helping them plan their agents and editor's conference in June if we're still having conferences in June.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's really cool.

Richard:

So, that should be fun.

Kate Marin Williams:

I heard that you're going to start working for Trump too, right?

Richard:

(laughs).

Kate Marin Williams:

On his campaign.

Richard:

Back into politics. I've been tempted every year since I left DC it's like, "Maybe I should go back."

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, is it still kind of itchy?

Richard:

Yeah, I think so. But not so much that I'm ready to go back.

Kate Marin Williams:

I imagine you probably didn't get much writing done.

Richard:

Usually not, except for the one... I think to a certain extent my career as a writer is thanks to the Obama Clinton primary fight in 2008 because I was hired by the AFL-CIO to help do their political outreach to their members.

Kate Marin Williams:

Dang.

Richard:

And I was hired at the beginning of February, end of January. It was after the New Hampshire primaries.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Richard:

Because historically they've had a candidate by the beginning of March. And so the AFL-CIO would know who they were endorsing. They would go from there. So I was hired to help do that, except it kept going and going and going.

Kate Marin Williams:

So, you couldn't prep anything because you didn't know which way it was going to go? Dang.

Richard:

There were a couple of months, there's at least two months where we were kind of laying the groundwork and working through some ideas.

Kate Marin Williams:

So you're like, "Do do do..."

Richard:

But we had a lot of free time and I wrote several stories.

Kate Marin Williams:

Nice.

Richard:

And stuff there.

Kate Marin Williams:

I love it. Well, I hope to see your star continue to rise. It's so good to know you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Richard:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Kate Marin Williams:

We are here with Yodassa Williams.

Yodassa Williams:

Yes.

Kate Marin Williams:

And we are going to talk about all kinds of things. We're going to talk about YA literature. We're going to talk about black girl magic. We're going to talk about wardrobe design.

Yodassa Williams:

Fantasy.

Kate Marin Williams:

I mean, we're going to hit it all.

Yodassa Williams:

I like it. I like it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. I just saw your beautiful new book that's coming out May 2020.

Yodassa Williams:

Yes. I'm so thrilled. I have completed my debut novel, it's coming out May 19th of this year. It's called The Goddess Twins.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yay.

Yodassa Williams:

It's a young adult fantasy about identical twins who discover their goddesses when their mother goes missing.

Kate Marin Williams:

So it's about you and me.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah. So, it's true life.

Phuc Luu:

Based on True Story.

Yodassa Williams:

It's based on my real life story.

Phuc Luu:

Yodassa and Kate Martin Williams.

Yodassa Williams:

This is me coming out as a full on goddess. True story, though. It is inspired by a summer that I had in 2006. So my family is Jamaican, and I have relatives in London that my mom reconnected with after years of not even knowing where they were, just knowing they're in London.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

So in 2006, she sent me to London to stay with my family for two months.

Kate Marin Williams:

What? Oh my goodness.

Yodassa Williams:

And literally it was the summer of my life.

Kate Marin Williams:

Wow.

Yodassa Williams:

Before then I had been very quiet, introverted, shy, typical writer style. But that summer when I met my cousins, which they were amazing, amazing individuals, they really pushed me out of my shell. They were like, "What's on your face? You want to say something, say something, cousin." And I was like, "No, it's not nice." And they're like, "Who cares about nice? Just say what you think." And I was like, "What is this world I'm allowed to be who I want to be?"

Kate Marin Williams:

Whoa.

Yodassa Williams:

And they encouraged me to dress up. I got a nose piercing that summer.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

I was dying my hair. We were going out and dancing. I was kissing boys. All the things. They just showed me that I could be bigger than who I was.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my word.

Yodassa Williams:

And after that summer, I came back home. I remember my mom literally couldn't recognize me from the airport. She was like, "What? Who are... What did you do?"

Phuc Luu:

"Who am I picking up?"

Yodassa Williams:

"What's in your nose? Why is your hair pink?" But yeah, I credit that summer with really getting me out of my shell.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh. How old were you?

Yodassa Williams:

I was 15, 16.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my word.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

What a dream.

Yodassa Williams:

It was definitely one of the most inspirational times in my life. And so this is kind of a fantasy snapshot of how that summer felt to me.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

I feel like I became a goddess then.

Kate Marin Williams:

I want to go read it right now.

Yodassa Williams:

Yay.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's so super exciting. What was it about fantasy that led you to the genre?

Yodassa Williams:

Oh, growing up. So my dad is a huge fantasy nerd himself. And loved Dune from the original books, the original book series.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

God Emperor of Dune, Children of Dune. I read those books because they were in my library from my father.

Phuc Luu:

Oh, wow.

Yodassa Williams:

And growing up, we would watch the Dune series and he's a very like, "Oh, this scene, this scene, you got to watch this part. Oh, watch what he does here." And just very into it. And I love the Never Ending Story, and...

Kate Marin Williams:

I love The Never Ending Story.

Lilly Wolf:

Yes.

Yodassa Williams:

I just loved fantasy stories. I loved seeing characters discover magical powers and discover another realm. And those just always felt so, I don't know why, but real to me.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Yodassa Williams:

So growing up, I grew up in Ohio.

Kate Marin Williams:

Me too. No.

Yodassa Williams:

Wild.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Lilly Wolf:

What? You didn't know?

Phuc Luu:

You were in Ohio.

Kate Marin Williams:

Guys. I was born in Ohio. I just really want to be sisters with Yodassa.

Yodassa Williams:

We're going to figure out how we're related. We'll figure it out.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay. All right. I was born in Columbus, but I did not grow up there. We moved to Houston.

Yodassa Williams:

I was born in Cinci. Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my God.

Yodassa Williams:

But I always felt like a transplant. Even in school. People are like, "Why you talk a white girl?" And all of that stuff.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Yodassa Williams:

I'm very black girl magic. So I was just confused how people took me.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Yodassa Williams:

And I felt like, "Okay, I'm an alien or something." I'm supposed to discover really where I'm from because this is not it.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's not here.

Yodassa Williams:

So, I would always connect with those stories of people discovering their magical ancestry. And I'm like, "Oh, I know that's going to be my story." So yeah, I was always drawn to fantasy, loved reading fantasy books. Obviously the Harry Potter series was really inspirational to me. But I always felt like, "Where am I in these characters?"

Kate Marin Williams:

Right.

Yodassa Williams:

Where's the person that looks like me, that feels like me, that's in this situation? And I feel like for a long time I was looking for that book and searching for that book. Thank God for Octavia Butler.

Kate Marin Williams:

Right.

Yodassa Williams:

But still in a lot of ways it wasn't young adult enough of the coming of age story.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yodassa Williams:

So it was actually in 2014 that I had a huge, I call it my creative renaissance. So I had worked in fashion and even gotten my master's degree in fashion.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh, how cool.

Yodassa Williams:

Who I wanted to be a fashion CEO. And I was in the industry and it was breaking me down. I was mentally and physically falling apart from the stress.

Kate Marin Williams:

Mm-hmm.

Yodassa Williams:

And so one of my best friends was like, "Come with me to Burning Man." And I was like, "What is that crazy thing?" So in 2014, I went to Burning Man, and that was the change that I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have this story inside of me. It needs to come out. It's powerful. It's so much more important than me sitting and pushing numbers on an Excel spreadsheet to make a company money."

Kate Marin Williams:

Right.

Yodassa Williams:

I need to write this story about black magical girls. So since 2014, I started...

Kate Marin Williams:

Like actual black girl magic.

Yodassa Williams:

Literal black girl magic. I saw the story at Burning Man. Then I was like, "I've been suppressing this story that I know I want to see in the world."

Kate Marin Williams:

And that was 2014.

Yodassa Williams:

That was 2014. And then the past six years I've been writing this novel.

Kate Marin Williams:

So you just waved your magic wand. And boom, here's the book.

Yodassa Williams:

And now there's a whole book out. And I'm so proud of it. And it represents a lot of my family. There's a grandmother character that they meet who's like straight Jamaican OG. She speaks to them Patois, which I even wrote out the Patois and had my mom check the Patois because I wanted it to feel really real of the Jamaican culture. And it's a snapshot of my cousins. The cousins that I met in Jamaica are literal characters in this book. So in so many ways, it really is my coming of age as a fantasy story.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. That's so cool.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you.

Kate Marin Williams:

How did you find your publisher?

Yodassa Williams:

I'm so grateful. So, I actually had come to AWP, I think it was a couple years ago, 2018. And that was around the time that I was kind of finished with the manuscript and I was like, "How do you know when you're ready to send it out and get it on?" And so I got the advice that somebody gave me that they were like, "Look at publishing contests because they have a date and then you can make that date your date that you're done and start sending it out to agents." Things like that.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's like the AWP tip of the day, I think.

Yodassa Williams:

I loved that.

Kate Marin Williams:

For our listeners. Yeah.

Lilly Wolf:

Finish the book.

Yodassa Williams:

Finish the book, find a date and be like, I am done by this date. And I'm not moving backwards.

Kate Marin Williams:

Deadlines have huge amounts of power.

Lilly Wolf:

This is true.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah. So I found this contest through, She Writes Press. They were looking for books that had a multicultural spin. And I was like, well definitely this is it. And so I let that date be my final date. I applied to the contest and I started sending it out to agents that I had met at AWP or through online research. And I hadn't heard anything. I was getting a little hits on my query, but a lot of "This sounds really great, but not what we're looking for, but thank you so much and good luck." And then I got an email from She writes Press that I was in the top five of their contest selection. And I was like, "What the heck?" I was like, "Now it means I got a decent manuscript." So I was overjoyed by that. I was like, "Oh my gosh, top five, it means my manuscript is decent enough to get an agent, hopefully."

And then months went by and I just assumed I didn't get it. And then this is the crazy part. So I get an email from them saying they have picked their winner and it's not me. So I was like, "Okay." But they said, because my book was so YA and they were looking for a more adult women's book to choose for She Writes Press, but they shared my book with their YA imprint, which is Spark Press and Spark Press loved my book and wanted to publish it. So Spark Press was willing to honor the contest winning for the She Writes Press contest, but for them.

Kate Marin Williams:

Nice.

Yodassa Williams:

So I won the contest by not winning the contest.

Phuc Luu:

Whoa.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's how you do it, folks.

Yodassa Williams:

Absolutely wild.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Yodassa Williams:

So that's again my advice. Even if you're like, "Oh, I'm a little bit not, you know, what they're looking for." Go ahead and send it in because you don't know who's analyzing it and reading it at the end of the day. And they might be like, "Oh, this isn't a hit for this. But I know where this novel could land."

Lilly Wolf:

Yes.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Yodassa Williams:

And I had no idea that my novel was going to land at Spark Press. But I'm so grateful for applying to the contest and them seeing something in my work.

Kate Marin Williams:

Very cool. No two publishing stories are alike.

Lilly Wolf:

Exactly. Yours is fantastic.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you.

Kate Marin Williams:

Unlike, Yodassa and me who are exactly alike. I'm just going to keep returning to the same joke today. Just the one joke.

Lilly Wolf:

How was growing up in Ohio?

Kate Marin Williams:

Growing up in Ohio was amazing. I don't know what's happening.

Lilly Wolf:

Okay. Well I wish people could see how awesome your hair is, first of all.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you.

Lilly Wolf:

It's like a purple gradient. It's beautiful.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you. It's the color of my soul.

Kate Marin Williams:

There you go. There you go.

Yodassa Williams:

Bright purple.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, that's great.

Yodassa Williams:

Going pink.

Kate Marin Williams:

So you still do... you called yourself a wardrobe wizard.

Yodassa Williams:

Yes.

Kate Marin Williams:

And you still do fashion and you still are in that world. How do these two intersect? Do you find yourself writing about it or?

Yodassa Williams:

Oh yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

There's just magic all across the board.

Yodassa Williams:

Oh, thank you. It's funny because yeah, when I realized, I was like, "I have these two really strong passions, fashion and writing."

Kate Marin Williams:

Both very creative.

Yodassa Williams:

Very creative. And people were like, "You need to pick one and you need to only do one." And I was like, "I feel like both fulfill me so much. And I feel like one day, one day I tried to describe it. I was like, I'm a storyteller with both words and clothing.

Lilly Wolf:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yes.

Yodassa Williams:

Because I love to tell stories with clothing. Right now I'm doing this bright pink animal print thing and I just feel like it matches my hair. And I'm a vibrant character. So I love working with styling. I work with individual clients who need their wardrobe updated.

Kate Marin Williams:

Authors.

Yodassa Williams:

Mother of the bride.

Kate Marin Williams:

If you're doing a reading.

Yodassa Williams:

If you're an author.

Kate Marin Williams:

Reach out.

Yodassa Williams:

And you want to step up your game. I can definitely help you with wardrobe.

Kate Marin Williams:

You cannot... Yes. You don't know how much as someone who publishes authors, how many questions we field in that vein. What about this? Should I do something like real on the nose or should I go out do, which I love to field those questions, but I could just forward them to our new staff member at Blooms Day Literary.

Lilly Wolf:

Kate's twin.

Kate Marin Williams:

A fashion consultant from Ohio.

Lilly Wolf:

A new fashion stylist.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah. And it's interesting too, opportunities have just come abound as I've just been like, "You know what? I kind of decided I don't want to work industry fashion." I want to work with people. I want to work with projects because I found working in the industry is really soul crushing for me. Yeah. To say the least. So yeah, I've just been open to opportunities that come up. I've worked with musical artists on setting up wardrobe for their tour.

Kate Marin Williams:

Amazing.

Yodassa Williams:

Two years ago I worked on an independent film that was shooting in the Bay Area. That's actually right now on Netflix.

Kate Marin Williams:

What is it?

Yodassa Williams:

It's called Freshman Year. I was the lead wardrobe stylist. So I'm telling everybody...

Kate Marin Williams:

Get out.

Yodassa Williams:

You need to see this movie and look at the clothes.

Kate Marin Williams:

That is so cool.

Yodassa Williams:

I chose the clothes.

Kate Marin Williams:

So cool.

Yodassa Williams:

And yeah, I'm actually about to go back to the Bay and work on a commercial project with a friend who's an artist and she needs a visual match to her artwork that's going to be in the background. And so I'm choosing the wardrobe and we're working together to collaborate on it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Wow.

Yodassa Williams:

So I really love working with wardrobe styling and I feel like it fuels also my writing, working with people. I love people watching and seeing their idiosyncrasies and seeing their characteristics.

Lilly Wolf:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

We don't do any people watching at AWP.

Yodassa Williams:

None at all.

Kate Marin Williams:

There's like none. None here. We do dog watching.

Phuc Luu:

And I look away.

Kate Marin Williams:

Dog watching.

Yodassa Williams:

There were some cats too.

Phuc Luu:

Oh really?

Yodassa Williams:

Not real cats, but fake cats.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, huh?

Yodassa Williams:

At the Kickstarter table.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

They have a fake cat.

Kate Marin Williams:

I've walked a hundred times. I'm like, "Oh my God. There's a ghost."

Lilly Wolf:

Is it like one of those that moves and meows when pet it?

Yodassa Williams:

Yes.

Lilly Wolf:

Oh my gosh.

Yodassa Williams:

I just like watching people interact with it because some people are afraid. Some people are like, "Yeah." Some people are like, "What?"

Lilly Wolf:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

I would like to award Kickstarter with the best booth of AWP.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a whole apartment almost.

Kate Marin Williams:

Could we give them like a sanitizer trophy? Be like, "You win. All the rest of us..."

Lilly Wolf:

You get the hand sanitizer.

Kate Marin Williams:

"Defer to your, like, it's like a couch and there's a rug in there. And some bookshelves.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah. They really set up.

Kate Marin Williams:

And the cat.

Yodassa Williams:

They really set up.

Lilly Wolf:

Go take a nap there.

Yodassa Williams:

It is. It's like a whole apartment.

Kate Marin Williams:

I'm going...

Yodassa Williams:

In San Francisco it would be $400,000.

Kate Marin Williams:

I will also bestow you with the fashion award of AWP.

Lilly Wolf:

Oh my gosh. Totally. Totally.

Kate Marin Williams:

Thank you. Aw, thank you guys.

You're the best. Thank you so much for coming on this show.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you for letting me talk about my book, for letting me talk about my passions. I also want to just leave a little note of dedication. So this book is dedicated to my cousin Chanel. She is...

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:27:04]

Yodassa Williams:

Book is dedicated to my cousin Chanel. She is, as I talked about, one of my cousins that I met in London originally, she's one of the characters, Liberty, and she recently passed away. It was really sudden, and I'm so grateful that she is immortalized in my book. I'm doing my best to try to go to London and be a part of her funeral. But I just wanted to leave a little note and say, this is dedicated to Chanel and definitely for artists. I think there's something magical about putting people you love in your books so that they can live forever.

Speaker 1:

Chanel live on forever.

Yodassa Williams:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Thank you so much.

Yodassa Williams:

Thank you. This is wonderful.

Kate Marin Williams:

Hello. We are here for an interview with.

Alia Volz:

Alia Volz.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yes. And she has a debut memoir called Home Baked, and I'm so excited to talk to you about it.

Alia Volz:

Thank you. Yeah. Happy to be here.

Kate Marin Williams:

And it comes out four 20.

Alia Volz:

It does.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's genius marketing.

Alia Volz:

It's our entire marketing plan.

Kate Marin Williams:

I mean, it practically writes itself. It's the entirety of the plan.

Alia Volz:

It was the least surprising email with the most number of exclamation points I've ever received in my life.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's quite a...

Alia Volz:

My editor's like, I've got it.

Kate Marin Williams:

You're like...

Alia Volz:

This is it. And I'm like, I know. I was expecting this.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay, so tell us what your book is about.

Alia Volz:

So my folks had the first high volume cannabis edibles business in San Francisco in the 1970s. They were baking and distributing like 10,000 brownies a month in an antique wedgewood oven all over the city and then.

Kate Marin Williams:

Underground. Yeah?

Alia Volz:

Very underground, very illegal, very popular. These are disco days. So it's like Harvey Milk and Sylvester, and that this whole vibrant, crazy crowd was into it. And then AIDS hit San Francisco very hard, and the community that surrounded this started to die off. And so the business Sticky Fingers Brownies became part of the dawn of medical marijuana. So the book is about the transition from party drug to panacea or dealer to healer. That whole transition that marijuana has made in our public consciousness, which happened vis-à-vis the AIDS crisis.

Kate Marin Williams:

Wow. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

And then it's through the lens of this DIY funky family bakery.

Kate Marin Williams:

How did you know that it was going to be this kind of hybrid where you're talking about heavy social issues and also personal history?

Alia Volz:

Yes. I didn't know that.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay.

Alia Volz:

It took a long time. My book journey has been long and winding. It started out as an oral history because my family, they tell great stories.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

So I started recording the stories just to preserve them.

Kate Marin Williams:

You started recording them?

Alia Volz:

Yeah. I started my mom and especially my mom.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

She's a great storyteller. So she was having a health issue, actually, and I started recording because I thought, I want this in her voice in case things go awry here. And then I started getting curious about it and recording other people in the family business. And then it branched out, and then it's their customers and the customer's customers and the growers. And then eventually I found myself interviewing a former SFPD police sergeant, and I was like, okay, now we've jumped the truck because I was raised not to talk to cops. That was real. But so it was originally an oral history, which shopped in 2009, did not sell at the time. A lot of editors said that cannabis was just too much of a niche market. It was only going to interest a few aging hippies. That has obviously changed.

Kate Marin Williams:

That's hilarious.

Alia Volz:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

No, selling $4 coffee will never catch on.

Alia Volz:

Right?

Speaker 1:

No, never. But bottled water, people drink that for free. Never.

Alia Volz:

Yeah. So I mean, it really speaks to how much cannabis culture has changed. Now, it's big business. It's the green mush. So I picked up the project again after leaving it alone for a while, and at that point was really interested in the historical context and wanting to make it, ultimately became a hybridized. And just using the memoir istic voice as an excuse to get to things that interest me a lot more seventies and eighties in San Francisco were fascinating. It's so juicy to write about.

Kate Marin Williams:

Sure. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

And the memoir's just a way in and a way through.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. That's fantastic. For listeners who are also writers, which is a lot of them, you're a MacDowell Colony fellow.

Alia Volz:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Can you talk about what that's meant for both in terms of writing critique, but also support?

Alia Volz:

Oh yeah. MacDowell was transformative for me, in part because my book shopped while I was at MacDowell. So I got there and was doing the last rewrite on my proposal with a new agent, my new agent. And it was dreamy. It was a really deep, uncomfortable dive, and it was great to have this solitude and support. And that was the first two weeks. And then the second two weeks, the book was on submission. And the community at MacDowell, so many of the other writers who had been there had already been through that process of having a book on submission. And so that was invaluable.

Kate Marin Williams:

So you're clutching at the tables and they're like.

Alia Volz:

It's crazy making, yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Alia Volz:

It's crazy making to be on submission. So that was really great. But also having artists in all fields is inspiring in so many on levels, but that same kind of feeling of your career could possibly launch or it could tank. And this is the moment, is something that functions across genres or across mediums, I mean to say. And so that community was really wonderful. You go and you isolate during your studio during the day, and then at night everyone has dinner together. And then you all hang out and play bizarrely ping pong until all hours and get up into it again. But it was really important for me.

Kate Marin Williams:

Was that a concert, I mean, obviously it's a concerted effort, but how did you find your way there?

Alia Volz:

To MacDowell? I applied and crossed my fingers and eyes. I don't know.

Kate Marin Williams:

Hoped like hell. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

Actually I got in through the waiting list.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay, cool.

Alia Volz:

Yeah. So that does happen. I was wait listed and then I got pulled off of it, and the timing was just perfect. It was just when I needed that kind of environment and residencies. They've also done Ucross.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay.

Alia Volz:

And later in the editing process and did a whole revision there.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, that's good.

Alia Volz:

Just the deep dive that you can do at a residency combined with the support and community and being removed from the home environment. All of that I find incredibly inspiring.

Kate Marin Williams:

I think that's a really helpful note. What are some of the memoirs that you maybe look to as influences? The other pot brownie memoirs.

Alia Volz:

I have never read another pot brownie memoir. I think I'm pioneering a new sub genre here.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's going to break up.

Alia Volz:

Well there is however, a memoir of a guy who is the child of an East coast super high volume, super big time weed smuggler. And his name is Anthony Dokoupil. He's also a CBS anchorman.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay.

Alia Volz:

You see is he's got one of those perfect faces that you see sometimes in the morning. And his book is called The Last Pirate. And it's kind of similar to mine in that it's more about his father and his father's career and about policy and the culture at the time than it is about his child's life. The other one that I drew a lot from is Bridgett Davis', the World According to Fannie Davis.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, okay.

Alia Volz:

And that's our subgenre is the mom war.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, yeah.

Alia Volz:

And have you read that?

Kate Marin Williams:

No. It's sounding more and more familiar when you're talking about it.

Alia Volz:

It's spectacular. So her mom was a numbers runner in sixties and seventies, Detroit.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yes. I heard the blurb for this.

Alia Volz:

She's fabulous.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

She was supposed to be here.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

And we've become friends of a sort since then.

Kate Marin Williams:

Cool.

Alia Volz:

And yeah, she was kind enough to blurb for me. But our books are really similar in that way, in that it's so much more about the social issues and the world surrounding this underground community that's illegal and it's criminal and it's secretive. You grow up hiding it, but at the same time you know that your mother's work is good for the community, you know that what they're doing is right even though you have to hide it.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah. How complicated.

Alia Volz:

It is.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's the same for you, and it's the same. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

How cool. Very cool. What's been the weirdest moment for you at AWP 20? She said as a doxin walked by. I just saw a little doxin.

Alia Volz:

Discounting now.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

So last night. So I've been organizing a lot of things this year. And of course everything went to hell in a hand basket, but it's also been really fun.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

I'm kind of liking the chaos. I think I'm...

Kate Marin Williams:

We keep hearing that.

Alia Volz:

I'm a child of chaos anyway.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

And I just am digging it. I think this is weird. My favorite AWP.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Alia Volz:

Because we're all, nothing is going according to plan,

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we just had to roll it with it. Right?

Alia Volz:

You can't be uptight. It's not hot. I mean, you'll just collapse and...

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, absolutely. We went to a reading last night and our penultimate reader was up there talking about kids and drunks being the last truth tellers. And at about five minutes later, a toddler wandered in from the playground because we were at this open air restaurant and there was a playground and a kid wandered onto the stage and then our reader just read the rest of his piece to the kid. And it was this moment of kismet. Yeah.

Alia Volz:

That's Magical.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah, it was really great.

Alia Volz:

So last night I had curated a reading for memoirs that was supposed to take place at this nice cocktail bar downtown. And unrelated to death cold 2020. The events guy at this place started ghosting me about two weeks before the conference.

Kate Marin Williams:

The worst nightmare.

Alia Volz:

Yeah. And I couldn't get a confirmation from him or anything. And the voicemail boxes were full, and I couldn't find out if we had a venue. And when I got here on Wednesday and went to kind of confront him, and he all of a sudden wanted a $500 deposit that he hadn't asked for in December when I booked it. So we got into a yelling match and I lost my venue, but I ended up seeing that Memoir Mondays had booked this bookstore and they pulled out. So I called the bookstore and the guy's like, sure, we'd love to have you. Okay. This bookstore is, it's called Dead Tree Books.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

Alia Volz:

It's lovely, lovely guy in a totally bizarre part of town really far away. And it's all paperbacks. All of his books are $3 and they're like musty fusty paperbacks and this place, and the place is full of boxes and it's basically somebody's living and it has this feeling.

Kate Marin Williams:

It was a barn cat that wandered around.

Alia Volz:

Wow. Yeah. It's really, really, really, really funky. All the signs are written in ballpoint pen. It was really trippy. So I get there and I've cajoled all of these people into reading, half of which were not originally scheduled. And I'm like, what have I done? And he, he's set up all these falling down collapsing chairs and funky couches in a circle, and it looks for all the world, like an AA meeting. Wow.

Speaker 1:

Oh my word.

Alia Volz:

What are we getting into? So people start getting there and everybody looks stunned and terrified. And we ended up with 20 people. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's great.

Alia Volz:

Which seemed like a decent turnout.

Kate Marin Williams:

Sure.

Alia Volz:

I mean, of course that includes the readers and their spouses.

Kate Marin Williams:

It counts. Look, it counts.

Alia Volz:

We're all sitting in a circle. And I think because it had that meeting feeling, the readings were really, really personal. People changed what they were going to read and picked a really heavy part. And there were tears and it was kind of half therapy session.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh my God.

Alia Volz:

Half reading. And it was cool. It was like, what is going on? This is so bizarre. It was so weird.

Kate Marin Williams:

I love it.

Alia Volz:

But I like that I...I don't know. I think it's fun.

Kate Marin Williams:

You couldn't have planned that because it totally would've failed.

Alia Volz:

Could've gotten on stage and done the usual thing.

Kate Marin Williams:

Sure.

Alia Volz:

And this was not the usual thing.

Kate Marin Williams:

AWP 20, not the usual thing.

Alia Volz:

Not the usual thing, yeah.

Speaker 1:

At all. Oh, that's such a great story.

Kate Marin Williams:

What's next for you? Did I just ask the question that seniors in college don't want to be asked?

Alia Volz:

Oh my God.

Kate Marin Williams:

You're about to graduate. What's next?

Alia Volz:

Oh my God.

Kate Marin Williams:

Your book's not even out and I'm asking you what's next, which is terrible. Tell me to shut up if that's not the question.

Alia Volz:

Well what do you mean?

Kate Marin Williams:

Like, are there new projects in your head? Or where are you going for lunch? Either one of those questions is fine.

Alia Volz:

But I don't know. My book launches in four weeks, and so that's very stressful. The PR machine is kicking into whatever degree it's going to kick in. There's some radio and stuff like that, and I have a lot of touring planned, and meanwhile, the entire world is bathing in Purell. So I don't know if any of the things that I have imagined in my next few months are actually going to happen.

Kate Marin Williams:

But the good thing is readers are still reading and finding their way to books that they like.

Alia Volz:

I'm going to do a virtual book tour.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Alia Volz:

It's going to work.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's going to work. I have a good feeling.

Alia Volz:

Yeah.

Kate Marin Williams:

We're going to stay up. We're going to stay positive.

Alia Volz:

I don't know. I'll cry later.

Kate Marin Williams:

Okay. You know what, it's been a pleasure to get to know you.

Alia Volz:

It's been really nice talking to you. Thanks for having me on.

Kate Marin Williams:

Thanks for being on the show.

Daniel Peña:

Welcome to the Blazer. We are here with Sonia Hamer student in the UH Creative Writing Program. She's here to talk about fashion. Who are you wearing?

Sonia Hamer:

Let's see. Forever 21. Big fan.

Daniel Peña:

Yeah. What are you about?

Sonia Hamer:

What am I about? Well, right now, got oranges. I'm all about citrus. Zinc.

Daniel Peña:

Dig it. Why citrus?

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah, it helps you. It's good for your immune system.

Daniel Peña:

And we're here at the AW book festival. Just kind of small this year because the Coronavirus scare. And what do you think of the whole thing? That whole situation?

Sonia Hamer:

I mean, I definitely understand people's hesitation and fear, and I definitely understand the criticism. I didn't lose that much by coming here because I'm staying with my sister. She lives in San Antonio.

Daniel Peña:

It's almost like we're at the last day at festival. First day everyone's doing the elbow bumps, today everyone I feel like is just hugging. But there is something kind of like a radical I trust you as. Don't get me wrong.

Sonia Hamer:

Great.

Daniel Peña:

We're spreading it.

Sonia Hamer:

Oh yeah.

Daniel Peña:

It's happening. But there is something kind of nice about being just like, you see someone and I trust you, fuck it, man. I'm just going to hug you.

Sonia Hamer:

Oh yeah.

Daniel Peña:

And it feels like, I don't know.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah. That's why I don't make people get STD tests. Sorry. I haven't said. I trust you.

Daniel Peña:

We're at AWP. That's the last virus we should be concerned about. All right, so what else are you about? So zinc, you're about the health you're about, and you get this great, have this citrus dress on, actually.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah. Yeah, because I don't have to... I'm pretty sure that I don't have to eat the oranges for them to work.

Daniel Peña:

Yeah.

Sonia Hamer:

I think just the orange color will scare away any virus.

Daniel Peña:

It's so bright.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah.

Daniel Peña:

Vibrant. Yeah.

Sonia Hamer:

Oh yeah.

Daniel Peña:

It's springtime, man. So, so talk and to the end of virus. This is my last question. What's your favorite virus?

Sonia Hamer:

Oh.

Daniel Peña:

We talk about bacteria phages.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah, bacteria phages are cool. They like latch on to the bacteria. If their DNA in there, just hijack. I mean, that's all viruses work, but the bacteria features are a cool little shape.

Daniel Peña:

What are the shape? I'm not.

Sonia Hamer:

Like a little geometrical casing at the top. And then they've got this little stock and legs.

Daniel Peña:

Oh, cool.

Sonia Hamer:

They used to, yeah.

Daniel Peña:

Oh, those are those things.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah.

Daniel Peña:

I've seen those octagonal or hexagonal things with the, oh yeah. Are you really? Did you study... were you a biology nerd or were you like?

Sonia Hamer:

I am a lot of different kinds of nerd.

Daniel Peña:

Yeah? Do tell.

Sonia Hamer:

Well, I play a ton of Dungeons and Dragons.

Daniel Peña:

Do they have bacteria phages in there?

Sonia Hamer:

You know, definitely could. I will consider that for my next character. Just like a giant bacteria phage, like casting, casting spells or whatever.

Daniel Peña:

Yeah.

Sonia Hamer:

Yeah.

Daniel Peña:

Cool, man. Well, Sonia Hamer, thanks so much for joining us on Blazer.

Sonia Hamer:

No problem.

Kate Marin Williams:

I'm really excited to get to talk to David Laidacker Luna about Fiesta Youth.

David Laidacker Luna:

Yes.

Kate Marin Williams:

Welcome to the show.

David Laidacker Luna:

Thank you so much for having me, we really appreciate it very, very much.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yes.

David Laidacker Luna:

So it's great to be here. My goodness.

Kate Marin Williams:

We appreciate you being here.

David Laidacker Luna:

Thank you very much.

Kate Marin Williams:

Tell us about what you're doing.

David Laidacker Luna:

All right. So Fiesta Youth, we are a LGBT Youth Organization here in San Antonio, Texas. We cater to 12 to 18 year old youth here in the city and outside of the city as well, because we have kids that come over all the way from Corpus Christi all the way from South Texas. We have a weekly programming every Tuesday night at our home location here in San Antonio at Woodlawn Point, which is right across the street from Jefferson High School. It's a perfect location.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, good.

David Laidacker Luna:

So all of our youth can come right after high school, right after school and do some homework before the meeting actually starts.

Kate Marin Williams:

Oh, nice.

David Laidacker Luna:

Yeah. But we are here this week, so happy to be here this week to be able to showcase our organization to all the attendees that are coming here and all the university presses and just everyone that's in attendance here. It's so great to welcome everybody from all over the country here to our city and showcase our organization, showcase the city in and of itself. We're just very, very happy to always welcome people into our city. And Fiesta Youth loves to be a part of that.

Kate Marin Williams:

San Antonio is a great city.

David Laidacker Luna:

Thank you very much. I believe so too.

Kate Marin Williams:

We have experienced nothing but love and care and generosity of spirit at every turn. And you can't say that for every city.

Alia Volz:

No, no.

Speaker 1:

We were very happy coming in here and just the first night just going out onto town and the people were just so generous and so welcoming coming here to the convention center, whatever help we needed it, they'll escort us, take us through, answer all my crazy questions, even let our intern Lily ride on the cart to the restroom.

David Laidacker Luna:

That's great. That is the kind of city we are.

Kate Marin Williams:

 Yeah.

David Laidacker Luna:

We are very welcoming city and we're one of the tourist destinations, so of course we have to cater to that, but it's not even just being a tourist destination, it's also, it's just the city that we are.

Kate Marin Williams:

 I think it's the people.

David Laidacker Luna:

It is. We love people here in San Antonio. We are a huge, diverse city. A lot of people don't realize how diverse we are and how welcoming we are, and we just thank everybody for coming down and accepting us and having a great time. Because I'm seeing all the pictures.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

David Laidacker Luna:

And all the posts and all the, between Facebook and Twitter and TikTok, everything.

Kate Marin Williams:

Yeah.

David Laidacker Luna:

I mean, it's everyone having a really, really good time. People are realizing that the Alamo is in the middle of the city.

Kate Marin Williams:

It's just right there.

David Laidacker Luna:

It's just right there.

Kate Marin Williams:

What is doing there?

David Laidacker Luna:

People don't realize they think it's a little bit outside the city, but nope. It's right across the street from