I've loved all your novels. They're colorful and fun, and there's something incredibly comforting about a fictional world where all the characters are lesbians, whether heroes, villains, authority figures or bystanders. Was your inclusion of Mimi in Bobby Blanchard and Beverly in Dolly Dingle a deliberate attempt to diversify a very white cast? Do you think we might get a novel with Beverly as the lead someday?

Monica Nolan Thank you, Tuulia! Yes, I definitely included Mimi and Beverly as characters to diversify the all-white cast. Diversify is probably too strong a word--they're tokens of diversity and deliberately so. They act as reminders that the world isn't all white, but the books hardly represent an accurate picture of mid-century America's actual racial diversity. The stories are told from the point of view of protagonists who have all the obliviousness (at best) of the white middle-class of that era, and part of the fun of the series for me is showing that gradually changing. Obviously (given this long-winded answer) this is something I wrestle with and I don't think I've gotten it quite right; for example I think I probably should have tried to show that Francine's clientele was more diverse than the girls at the Magdalena Arms and that the Knock-Knock Lounge was more diverse still. I love the idea of Beverly as a lead character! She has a lot of potential, what with her crankiness and reformist zeal.

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