Fantasy and horror can be a way of grappling with these kinds of overwhelming topics, just as romance can. There’s a cyclical nature to these things. Things that were evil in the time they were done were known to be evil, despite what people try to tell you, and were done anyway in the names of white supremacy and profit. It was a way of processing the emotions I’ve experienced while writing historical romances set in America, and researching and seeing all of the horrible, flat-out evil things done to Black, Indigenous, Asian. Why did you want to tell the story in this way? When No One Is Watching blends social realism and a strong social justice critique with elements of fantasy and horror. The book covers one of her interests, gentrification in Brooklyn.”) His reply answers your question too, lol: “Yes she is the author of the book. (Note: I just received a forwarded email from my father, in which one of his friends asked if I had written When No One Is Watching. So, this is specifically personal to me, but it’s also something that is unfair and pisses me off in general which is often a factor for why I decide to write certain things. My parents own a home that they’ve put 20 years into but have to sell it due to the absolutely unfathomable increase in property taxes. One of my first memories of moving to Brooklyn after college was seeing a Black man on the stoop, holding his child and arguing with his landlord, asking where he was supposed to go if he couldn’t afford the rent there.
Everywhere I’ve lived as an adult, I’ve seen the effects of gentrification. I’ve wanted to write about it for years, in part because real estate and home ownership-who gets to own and who gets to keep what they own-is one of the major forces in American society and the results of the ways in which those forces are guided are often overlooked or attributed to other sources. What made you want to write about gentrification? That combination remains in her debut thriller, When No One Is Watching, as Sydney, a Black Brooklynite, begins to suspect that the gentrification of her neighborhood may be the result of a sinister conspiracy. Alyssa Cole’s work has always had two common threads: a social conscience and a central love story.
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