We've Got Some Catching Up To Do

Four months? Yes! Just over four months until my debut novel, I’LL MAKE A SPECTACLE OF YOU, is published on November 18, 2025.

ICYMI, please pre-order! Here’s the link to purchase from a Black-woman-owned bookstore. Here’s the link from my publisher.

And here’s the cover:

I love this cover endlessly. I stare at this cover and the cover stares back, etc.

Let’s talk in-depth about this cover. Here are five things I love about it:

1. The fictional church in the background is Jonesboro African Baptist church in Jonesborough, Tennessee (yes, the town later changed the spelling). Established in 1796, it is the first Black church in the region and has served as a haven for many Black people throughout the years.

The church, now lost to time and abandoned high in the hills, stands on the grounds of Bricksbury University, but it predates the school by 30 years, and has the secrets to prove it.

2. The cowrie shells! Hoodoo practitioners believe these shells possess or aid in divination and protection, among other intentions. Our main character, Zora Robinson, has placed them around her college dorm, along with other amulets and wards, to warn her of danger.

3. The red sky. If blue skies and sunshine equal happiness, these skies are an omen of obsession and death.

4. The roots growing out of the church. No spoilers, but I’m happy with the conversations I’m having in this book about sacrifice and what Christians owe themselves versus what they owe God.

Other religious crisis questions found in I’LL MAKE A SPECTACLE OF YOU include:

Do you owe Him your life as you are living? What about your death? Should even your death honor Him? And should God punish you for your transgressions, or should you beat Him to it and punish yourself? Why does He put temptation on your tongue and expect you to somehow refuse to taste it?

Zora wrote a well-received paper and adapted it into a speech titled “Deconstructing the Centuries-Long Respectability Politics Plaguing the Black Church”. Do with that what you will.

5. The skull. It’s cool as fuck.

My everlasting thanks to cover designer Lisa Marie Pompilio and cover artist Mike Heath.

As I said, we’ve got four months to go. This feels like a good time to introduce myself properly.

My name is Beatrice Winifred Iker (they/them). I now live in New Hampshire, and I’m from Southern Appalachia, specifically, Knoxville, Tennessee. I identify as an Affrilachian. Researching my specific genealogy and Black Appalachia broadly are lifelong loves of mine.

I have roots up and down Appalachia, and I spend a significant amount of time reading 19th-century newspapers, census’, death certificates, and other primary documents. Sometimes my book ideas are inspired by what I find, but most of the time, I’m just doing it for the love of the game, ya know?

I read tarot. All the time.

This is the first picture I’ve taken of my 30+ tarot deck collection. I’m very proud of it.

Unpictured is my Hoodoo Tarot deck, which I never photograph for ancestral reasons. I’ll discuss Hoodoo in a future post.

I can’t remember my adult life without tarot. It’s always been there. Even when I forget it, or I get frustrated by a message, or something else, it’s always there, eager, ready for me to return.

I’m the person you call for a late-night tarot card pull. To be honest, these are my favorite calls. Few things fulfill me as much as my loved ones’ trust and belief in me, as well as the messages I receive.

I love fragrance—with the right intentions, lotion, body butter, body oil, body mist, and perfume are forms of glamour magic.

Since I live in New Hampshire, spring and winter are optimal times to wear all my favorites: a lotion/body butter, followed by body oil, perfume, and a perfume rollerball or perfume oil on my pulse points. This is a daily routine I use inside my house, just for me. When I go out, though, people do say I smell good!

However, New England summers and autumns are oppressively humid, and I’m forced to cut back to only wearing a light lotion and spritzing a few sprays of a perfume that projects.

Yes, it’s summer currently, and I'm already looking forward to winter. I thrive in wintertime.

Summer/Autumn scent combos:

Spring/Winter scent combos:

A little bit more about I’LL MAKE A SPECTACLE OF YOU, in graphic form:

Yes, Zora is a lesbian, specifically a stud, who is ready for a good time in grad school. She’s very single after pausing her dating life for a few years due to chronic overtime work as an Archives Technician, and she’s ready to mingle.

It was important for me to write a woman who wanted sex but who wasn’t driven by that desire. Zora is driven by her ambition as a historian and in the belief that her work in collecting Black history is imperative for her people. She desperately wants to protect her community by preserving history that has been—or will soon be—forgotten.

Zora wants to protect history and wants to get off. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

What else am I working on?

Well, not SPECTACLE, as it has now undergone several rounds of copyediting, proofreading, and other revisions.

You may know that I write short fiction and in other age categories, but here’s the rundown: it’s my mission to add my art to the canon of Black literature and to help as many others as I can along the way.

Part of that is writing fiction, but much of it is non-fiction. My first picture book, celebrating Charley Pride, America’s first country music superstar, is scheduled for release next May. I hope to sell at least two other nonfiction projects this year—one picture book and one middle-grade book. Cross your fingers for me!

In older age categories, I’m working on more horror, mystery, and a sweeping historical fiction novel set in post-Revolutionary Boston. These won’t be ready for editors until next year and beyond, but I’m always tinkering.

Longer-term projects are a memoir-in-verse and a nonfiction collection of Affrilachian essays.

Again, please pre-order I’LL MAKE A SPECTACLE OF YOU and request it at your local library. It helps so, so much!

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