I woke up at 4:30 this morning; my new novel was percolating and I could hear my characters’ voices but I wasn’t willing to get out of bed and sit at my desk. Instead I finally got up around 8am and made a plan to walk back over to Bronzeville. We were there yesterday on our Chicago Mahogany tour but it’s different when you’re actually walking along the streets you want to study. After months of not writing, it feels good to have my process just “kick in.” Our guide yesterday, Shermann “Dilla” Thomas, mentioned just as an aside that we ought to look up Aldine Square—I think it was while we were parked in front of Louis Armstrong’s house. I complied and was surprised to learn that such a swanky address was simply abandoned by its wealthy residents. It happened over and over in Bronzeville, with landlords turning mansions into flats for working class people and then refusing to maintain the overcrowded buildings—which led to demolition. We made quite a few stops on the tour but once I got home, all I could think about was Aldine Square. And once I had time to explore the Oakland neighborhood’s history, the novel began to take shape. Our negotiations with Random House have fizzled out so I’m no longer focusing on Book #5. The prequel will follow Ma—Lavinia “Vinny” Robinson—as she first discovers magic and stumbles through a gate that leads to Palmara. So far I’ve got Sis and L. Roy Jenkins in the cast of characters; I need to work on my outline now before all the ideas in my head disappear. I know the novel will end with the racial violence of 1919—the Red Summer. I think Ma’s father was lynched in Alabama; she and her mother and grandmother are live-in domestics for an elderly White woman who hasn’t followed her elite neighbors out of the rapidly transforming neighborhood. Aldine Square eventually became home to Black migrants fleeing the South in the middle of WWI. Today as I was walking around, I tried to imagine what the area might have looked like in 1919…the greystones would have been standing but Aldine Square was torn down to build the Ida B. Wells housing projects—and those have since been demolished as well. There isn’t much that was erected in their place, just a few modern middle-class complexes. There are so many empty lots in Bronzeville—all tidy and well-maintained, but a glaring reminder that the city hasn’t replaced the affordable housing it destroyed over a decade ago. By the end of the novel, Ma and her family are facing eviction…it’s amazing how easily I can see the parallels between her childhood and Jaxon’s! After my walk I stopped at Yassa to rest a while and pick up lunch; I took a Lyft home just in time to meet with Canadian kid lit scholar Jeffrey Canton via Zoom. What an honor it is to have such a brilliant reader analyze my books! Jeff is like a detective—he finds all the clues I’ve scattered throughout the series and recognizes the intentional choices I make in the interest of inclusivity. I said I wouldn’t do another series but I can see this book about Ma having at least a sequel of its own…uh oh! For now I’m just happy to be writing again and giving myself parameters and wandering the streets looking for signs of a city that no longer exists…