Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley Podcast By Vanessa Riley cover art

Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

By: Vanessa Riley
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Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels.

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Episodes
  • Not What They Voted For

    Not What They Voted For
    Mar 17 2026
    My husband, a retired military man, doesn’t talk much about his service.But when he does, he’s careful—measured—about the details and the conflicts he may have witnessed.I did get him to share a little about evacuating citizens during Hurricane Katrina.But then (Saturday) I got a call while I was on the road in Baltimore.A woman who had been his office mate…a navigator who became a pilot…someone he once flew with on a check ride to…She had a beautiful laugh—the kind that filled a room.Always encouraging. Always steady.She died this weekend.She—and her crew—became casualties of a U.S. war.I just came back from a quick dash to Baltimore.I spent time in a beautiful bookstore, wandered through a wonderful library system, and got to greet Maryland readers—people who love stories the way I do.I brought work with me.My next novel is brewing.But I didn’t touch it.Instead, I let myself be wrecked by Kin by Tayari Jones.Because I needed escape.Not distraction—escape. The kind that reminds you why stories matter when the real world feels like it’s unraveling.Right now, I’m living in a dichotomy.On one side, there’s the book world—my world.Deadlines. Promotion. Strategy. The constant push to get our stories into as many hands as possible.On the other side… there’s everything else.Every time I leave my house, gas costs more. It has jumped from $2.65 to nearly $3.90.Every headline feels heavier than the last.And now, we’re in a war I didn’t want—a war I didn’t vote for.Let me be clear—I support the troops. Always.But that does not mean I support everything that puts them in harm’s way.Because this isn’t abstract to me.My husband—retired military—flew with a young pilot.She sat at the desk next to his.She is now a casualty of this war.This isn’t policy.This is personal.When things get heavy, I put my feelings in a box. I believe in compartmentalization.Put your grief in one box.Your anger in another.Your ambition somewhere else.It’s how I’ve survived rooms where I knew I wasn’t valued.Rooms where people smiled politely while quietly wishing I’d disappear.And yes—sometimes you smile to keep from crying.Sometimes you grin and bear it because the future matters more than the discomfort of the present.I thought I was good at that.But this?This is harder.When things were impossible for Jacquotte Delahaye and Sarah Sayon in Fire, Sword, and Sea, they turned to fire. The wish to burn it all down and clear away the rubbish, that they were presented. That feeling must be universal. I am very tempted to point out to those who enabled this hellscape why they need fire. It might feel good to curse out the people who deserve it.You’ve watched the news. I’m sure some very choice words have come to mind.But that’s not me.I have faith, a moral compass, a soul that won’t be damned because of enablers.Which means I enter rooms—and exit them—with grace, poise, and dignity.I will not let anyone steal that from me.Racism will not stumble me.Misogyny will not humble me.And those who don’t value stories—especially stories about history, power, and women—will never shut me up.So I will not let them win by becoming something I’m not.Nonetheless, let’s not pretend. Let’s open the compartment where the rage is.The world feels like it’s on fire. Self-inflicted fire.There’s a part of me that wants to point fingers.To call out everyone who said, “both sides are the same.”Everyone who reduced complex decisions to a single issue.Everyone who believed nothing truly bad could happen.Because now we are here.We are off the guardrails.And maybe—just maybe—these are the consequences people needed to feel, and unfortunately, they must bear witness to the blood that has been spilled.“Vanessa, you are being hyperbolic. No one wanted this.”Are we sure?Many of us have been talking about book bans and hiding history. Yet must they see an executive order force the National Park Service to dismantle the panels depicting enslavement at the President’s House on Independence Mall?“Oh, that’s a one-off, and now the panels are back.” So a cleanup on aisle nine makes everything better?And let’s look at the rest of the cleanup items.People say they voted for lower gas prices.But prices in Atlanta climbed from $2.65 to $3.85.Some say they voted for no new wars.But now we have Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025—striking nuclear facilities in Iran.And Operation Epic Fury, launched February 28, 2026—starting a war.And the cost?A strike hit Shajareh Tayyebeh, a girls’ elementary school, killing at least 175 people—the majority schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12.Thirteen U.S. service members are dead.At least 200 are wounded—many with traumatic brain injuries, burns, and shrapnel wounds.A nation’s leader—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—was killed in a precision strike,along with generals, officials, and their families—hardening resolve ...
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    14 mins
  • The Vicarious Vicious Keyboard

    The Vicarious Vicious Keyboard
    Mar 10 2026
    What if I told you the most dangerous weapon most of us carry… isn’t a gun or a knife?It’s a keyboard.Millions of people every day wake up, pick up their phones, and step into a strange theater of human behavior—where cruelty spreads faster than truth, outrage travels farther than kindness, and strangers feel emboldened to destroy someone they’ve never met.And the worst part?For some people… it feels good.That rush. That attention. That viral moment.Today I want to talk about the dark side of something we all do.The Vicarious Vicious KeyboardHuman nature is something I study.It’s one of the tools I use to make my characters feel real—solid… and undeniably human.People aren’t perfect. So my characters aren’t either.Sometimes they want to do something selfish. Something indulgent. Something that brings them no real benefit at all.And that impulse? That foolishness?It speaks to the heart of all our pent-up reckless desires.After all, don’t we love reading about things we’d never do ourselves? Not in the real world.Things we lack the guts—the raw courage—to do?I remember the first time I learned the word vicarious. It was on one of those weekly vocabulary lists in school. You remember when we had homework, and Mom would drill you on the list, while she cooked.Vicarious—adjectiveAccording to the Britannica Dictionary, vicarious means experienced or felt by watching, hearing about, or reading about someone else rather than by doing something yourself.Light bulbs flashed. Thunder rolled.I understood this. My life changed a little. Suddenly I had a word for something I’d always felt but couldn’t name: and the dangerous desires of the human heart had a vehicle.That thrill of experiencing something through someone else.I can be an astronaut. I could be a Duke. I could be a NASA mathematician. I could be a hockey player. I could be a cowgirl riding backwards on a horse. Anything, even a serial killer.But like most things… we in the digital age take things too far.We don’t know when to stop.And the internet—well, the internet makes it easier for us to keep going.Yes, social media and endless scrolling. I’m look at you.Have you ever put up a post and suddenly—miraculously—it get clicks? I’m talking serious clicks.Once I made an IG post about the imagery in the Sinners movie poster; it reminded me of Ernie Barnes and his iconic painting The Sugar Shack—the same painting immortalized on Good Times and on Marvin Gaye’s I Want You album cover.“That swirl of limbs.That sense of joy, rhythm, resistance.The juke joint as sacred space.”Well, that post—that simple observation—went viral in April of 2025.Almost a million views.Over ninety-five thousand likes.And I’ll be honest… it felt good.It had me checking the app again and again like an addict. Refreshing. Watching the numbers climb. For a few moments I even wondered—what could I do to capture that magic again?I liked that rush. If I could do it again, I would. But that’s the magic of viral.A scroll through threads or a dash through Twitter will show you the posts with the most likes are often vile or viscous.Some of the most toxic posts go viral. The same feeling I had checking art comments must be the same for those who post hate or speech about harm.Are people willing to chase the clicks even if it means posting cruelty?Are these fiends, checking their toxic feeds for engagement? Does negative attention spur them to post something even crazier?Is there a craving for attention, so strong that negativity will do.Have we grown so safe behind a a keyboard that we lean in at a greater propensity to bully?Or is it something darker—something more insidious? Does the hurt inside bubble up until it spills out online?Do endorphins kick in when the crowd joins the pile-on.Let’s be honest—every nasty thread post or tweet can’t be a bot.I keep asking myself: what’s in it for someone to be that hurtful? That’s the part of the vicarious journey I don’t get.But I do see the consequences:Actors doing their jobs—playing fictional characters—suddenly have to issue statements condemning racist or homophobic harassment from so-called “fans.”Any given day on Twitter—and honestly, I don’t recommend it—you’ll see people wishing harm on others simply because they didn’t like a character… or because someone attended an award show.This newfound comfort with cruelty makes me wonder if our lives have become so hollow that we now live evil vicarious lives, victimizing others with a keyboard?When I was writing Jacquotte Delahaye (Fire Sword and Sea), I had to wrestle with her darkness.She’d endured terrible things, the cruel deaths of people she loved. Betrayal. Loss.And I had to walk a fine line. I don’t do trauma porn. I believe we write of violence without hurting or triggering readers, if at all possible.For Jacquotte, I wrestled with her resolve to survive and achieve her dreams with her...
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    15 mins
  • Shut Up and Write

    Shut Up and Write
    Mar 3 2026
    Every time the world feels unstable, and an artist dares answer an interview question, we get the same memo: stay in your lane. Entertain. Distract. Don’t dare analyze what’s happening. Don’t name it. Don’t challenge it. Shut up.I’m sorry to inform you—I’m not your minstrel on demand. If you’re big mad about that, go sit in the corner and think about why.Art has always been political. Perhaps your outrage is the real performance. So maybe, you need to quiet and listen.Shut Up and WriteIn February 2018, Fox News host Laura Ingraham responded to comments made by NBA superstar LeBron James with a phrase that ricocheted across the culture: “Shut up and dribble.”She was reacting to an interview James gave alongside Kevin Durant, in which he spoke not only about basketball but about race, leadership, and the lived reality of being a Black man in America. Ingraham dismissed his words as “barely intelligible” and suggested that someone “paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball” should keep his political opinions to himself.But here’s the thing: the minute you ask a Black person about their experience in America, you are no longer asking about “just sports.” You are asking about history. You are asking about citizenship. You are asking about survival. And you are asking for our truth.When you tell him or her or them to shut up and dribble, what you are really saying is:Perform. Entertain. Produce. But do not speak.That phrasing doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It echoes a long American tradition—of Black bodies celebrated for talent but silenced in intellect; commodified for labor but dismissed in leadership; applauded for artistry but censored in analysis. From minstrel stages to modern arenas, the script has too often been the same: dazzle us, but do not disrupt us.And yet, LeBron did not shut up.He went about his business—on and off the court. He used the moment to amplify conversations about injustice, education, and opportunity. He built schools. He funded scholarships. He made sure that his platform included not just athletic excellence but civic voice. When he was told to shrink, he expanded.I guess that is what unsettles people. Not that LeBron dribbles—but that he keeps speaking.So on Threads, Twitter, pretty much all your parasitical streets, I hear authors being told a version of that command:“Just shut up and write.”Don’t talk politics.Don’t analyze power.Don’t interrogate policy.Stick to romance.Stick to fiction.Tell us about dukes and wagers and stolen glances, but do not dare connect the past to the present. In my June release, A Deal at Dawn, some readers are dying to know if the Duke of Torrance survives a chronic illness Black communities still suffer from today, but many more want to hear about the hurt-comfort caregiving in his bathtub or his foot fetish.In Fire Sword and Sea, some want to hear about the hijinks of women cross-dressing as men but forget about the systems of government that oppress them and force them into piracy as their way to survive.And since I’ve been writing to you weekly, I’ve gotten those nasty little emails telling me that I should stick to writing historical fiction and leave politics alone.To those folks, what the heck do you think I have been writing all along?When I describe women rising up in hostile systems, about enslavement and trafficking, about corrupt leaders, white supremacy, about diseases neglected because they ravage Brown bodies—I am writing politics. I’m writing about policy. I am writing about power. Corsets and cravats and crowns never dilute the truth.You cannot celebrate the art and forbid analysis.You cannot applaud the talent and mute the testimony.You cannot consume the culture and silence the creator.The expectation that artists remain apolitical is itself political.It says:We want your labor, LeBron, not your leadership, JasmineYour imagination, Micheal B, not your insight—DelroyYou are for entertainment, forget the lived experiences that got you here.But identity is not something I can toggle off between chapters. When you ask me about my work, you are asking about my worldview. When you ask about my characters, you are asking about justice and injustice as much as you reading for love.And love is power, and it is always political.We are living in times that feel combustible. Many are waking up to realities they once refused to see.They don’t know who to trust. They want words of comfort. But where are you going to get that? You told me to shut up and write.Writers, creators—moments like this, it’s easier to retreat—to binge-watch comfort shows, to lose ourselves in manuscripts, to hide in deadlines and drafts. I, too, would love to stay in my rom-com era. I would love to focus solely on shenanigans and happily-ever-afters. But even I can only binge-watch MythBusters, hockey, and Bridgerton for so long.So no, I cannot just shut up and write.I must write. Writing is my blood ...
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    12 mins
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