Clarence A. Haynes knows books. Which is to say that he doesn’t just write them, but actively cultivates them. He’s established himself in middle-grade nonfiction with his 2022 authoring of “The Legacy of Jim Crow,” and has made his mark in science fiction by collaborating with actor/producer Omar Epps to co-author the teen fiction companion works “Nubia: The Awakening” and “Nubia: The Reckoning.” Meanwhile, as a freelance editor, he regularly burnishes the offerings of fellow writers.
“The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” is Haynes’ debut as an adult fiction author, and at a time when “Sinners” has trained our imaginations on the artistry of Black-genre fiction film, along with some fresh worldbuilding steeped in the supernatural, it couldn’t be splashier. I Zoomed with Haynes recently to celebrate the official June 2025 release of “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” and explore his process and passions in this cultural moment.
AmNews: Let’s imagine that you’ve written “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery,” but you haven’t sold it yet. You find yourself in an elevator with a publisher, and you suddenly have an opportunity to pitch the manuscript. What would you say? Go!
Clarence A. Haynes (CAH): I would say I’ve written urban fantasy, and what I’m also coining is a glam horror novel that focuses on a high-powered publicist who has a secret mystical past. She has a connection to an Afro-Latine medium in the South Bronx who runs a botanica, who’s queer, and who’s having, I guess you can say, intimacies with a ghost. The book goes into what their mysterious connection is about. The big core conflict of the book is that the realm between humans and ghosts — the barrier — is failing, so ghosts are finding it easier to create havoc in our world. It’s very sensual, but also spooky, disturbing, disconcerting, a fusion of things, a genre mashup in some way, but also a fusion of sensibilities.
I’m also paying homage to my home city, New York. I’m originally from the Bronx. Paying homage to the African diaspora. Paying homage to Latinidad. My family’s from Panama. Paying homage to my roots and paying homage to powerful Black and Brown women with this particular type of protagonist.
AmNews: I would have bought it right there on the spot [laughter].
I know you’re a freelance editor and veteran of the publishing industry, right? So how much of your experience in the industry is actually reflected in “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery”? You said that the protagonist is a publicist, which intersects with the publishing world. How much of your experience in the industry is the narrative infused with?
CAH: The title character, Gwendolyn, works with creatives in a variety of contexts. She works with actors, musicians, fashion people. Not necessarily the book publishing world, but ,,, my experience as an editor and my experience and my years in the industry … helped me understand how to balance honoring my ideas, the core ideas of the story, with what I know would need to be there for readers.
I do think authors, once we know that our book will reach general audiences, have to take into account what those audiences, what their experience will be, as they’re immersing themselves in our worlds. I think that approach and that perspective comes from being an editor for so many years, because as an editor, we’re sort of the front lines, we’re meant to represent future readers. That’s something that I feel really informed my writing, that awareness.
AmNews: Is there anything about the publishing industry written into the plot? Are there any industry insights or dirt?
CAH: No, I didn’t really do too much with the publishing world, because it just didn’t feel like that’s what the story was. Certainly, some of the characters, like Fonzie, the medium who runs the botanica, are very literary and books are his world, but he’s not someone who has insider knowledge of the publishing industry.
AmNews: You’ve co-authored “Nubia: The Awakening” and “Nubia: The Reckoning” with Omar Epps. Would it be fair to say that you have some kind of attraction to stories that are not of this earth?
CAH: Absolutely. In terms of what I’m interested in, as far as my career, I want to do what we call — the big umbrella term — speculative fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mythology, or things that dabble in that a bit. That’s where my heart lies. In terms of my publishing career, I’ve been able to edit a wide variety of genres, but in terms of my personal interests, I always feel the most at home with what I call the fantastic.
With “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery,” one of the things my publisher and editor Krishan Trotman and I were aware of was, can I create a bridge to readers who don’t necessarily think of themselves as fantasy or horror people? What are ways that I can shape the narrative so that someone who might be a big Tia Williams reader, for instance, would say, “Oh, there are Tia Williams elements here, but then there are also fantastic horror, weird, spooky things as well.”
AmNews: Where would you say that impulse comes from to write speculative fiction? What’s the backstory, what’s the inspiration for that? And what does speculative fiction allow you to do that perhaps other genres or devices do not?
CAH: That’s a great question. I was a voracious reader from when I was very young. I started with comics, and comics incorporate so much superhero stuff. It’s all about the fantastic and otherworldly on the regular. Even when, for many years, I wasn’t into comics — I’ve been back into them more recently. The prose novels I’ve read, and the film, and TV projects I like to watch that give me the most joy are the ones that always seem to fall under the speculative fiction umbrella.
I just think that in speculative fiction, you can explore ideas and ways of life, and modes of being and philosophies. If you are strictly only dealing with the “real” world, there are limitations. [With speculative fiction], you can really just play with all sorts of stuff, things that can serve as a metaphor for a lot of what we’re dealing with in the real world. I think that’s what makes it so compelling for so many people: I can go out there and present ideas and narratives that just feel really fresh and new to me.
AmNews: How compelled were you to create allegories and metaphors?
CAH: I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the mystical system that I created, in some ways, references real-world spiritual traditions — West African beliefs, the orishas, and particular types of practices. I wanted to draw upon that, but I would say more primarily, the book is an exploration of how a character who is traumatized by the past is forced to confront that past, so the mystical systems, the supernatural systems, based on real-world spiritual traditions, were constructed in ways that force the characters to confront these things, both for Gwendolyn and Fonzie. It was a process to do that — to do worldbuilding that allows characters to explore painful parts of their history and parts of real-world history that we know have been quite dramatic and destructive. It was also something I wanted to use to honor my roots and my heritage and how I grew up.
AmNews: You talked a little bit about comic books and other inspirations. Are there any other ideas or writers you find sitting in the back of your head as you write?
CAH: There are a lot of them, actually, but the two who are probably most prominent are Octavia Butler — trailblazing writer in terms of sci fi, speculative fiction, Afrofuturism — and Toni Morrison, just in terms of her attention to the exquisiteness of her language. I’m realizing when I revisit her work, how she doesn’t waste time. She’s not particularly repetitious or unnecessarily meditative. She says what she needs to say and moves on. I don’t know if I caught that when I was first reading her work.
As we’ve been getting the word out about the book, I also realized that a lot of people may not know that a lot of the book is connected, or at least portions of it are directly connected, to real-world Panamanian history. For instance, the 1989 invasion of El Chorrillo to oust Manuel Noriega from power,. [My] immigrated way before that happened, but in terms of my roots in that area, I wanted to pay respect to that.
AmNews: How do you feel about the idea that the popularity of “Sinners” gives you an opportunity to market “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” at a time when people are now perhaps more primed for the Black supernatural? Do you feel like that’s mad annoying, or are you not mad at that at all?
CAH: I’m not mad at it at all. I mean, it’s advantageous for “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” because I think someone can easily just say, “Hey, it’s an Afro-Latine ‘Sinners!’” [laughter]
AmNews: There are worse things to call it, right [laughter]?
CAH: Or an Afro-Latina Contemporary “Sinners,” right? I’m appreciative of that opportunity, but what I’m most happy about when it comes to “Sinners” is just what it means for “Sinners” itself. I’m so happy for [Ryan] Coogler and his team, and just what it means for this type of film. I’ve never quite seen anything like it, for this type of film to do so well, and then what that means for his career, and how he can get certain things greenlit now. In terms of our overall community for Black folks, then, what that means is that we can do a bit less explaining. We can just be like, “You saw how that thing worked really well over there?” And people are like, “Right, okay.”
AmNews: Do you feel like that’s the case with “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” as well? That “Sinners” puts you in a position to have to do less explaining?
CAH: We’ll see. I don’t know yet, Mark. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be connecting with readers. Based on some of the conversations I’ve had with early reviewers and readers, it does seem like it’s getting that sort of spark where people are like, “Oh, I’ve never quite read anything like this,” or “Oh, wow, he actually put this and this in what’s supposed to be an urban fantasy novel. He put in all of this stuff about our community, about Black folks and Latine folks, that I’ve never quite seen presented in this way.”
I’m realizing the similarity that “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” has with “Sinners” is they’re both genre mashups and they are both stories that at some point switch. “Sinners” starts with being very character-driven, very much about the history of place, geography, the brothers, their relationships, their journeys. It doesn’t really become about the vampires and how the vampires connect to the overall story until the second half.
“The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” is similar. The mythical stuff, the scary stuff — it’s there, it’s coming, but the first half is far more about the characters and their backstories and how they’re dealing with what might feel like more familiar issues and problems.
Then the sort of mystical drama and the action really hit in the second half, so I think, I’m hoping, readers will be a bit more prepared for that.
AmNews: “The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery” is set in New York, right? Brooklyn in particular?
CAH: Actually, it’s set throughout New York, but the two main characters, Gwendolyn and Fonzie, live in Harlem and the Bronx, but things happen in Brooklyn and Queens as well.
AmNews: There’s something in there about the Brooklyn Museum, right?
CAH: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I live close to the Brooklyn Museum and I kind of wanted to do something where the New York I know and love, and sometimes struggle with, is front and center. One of my publishing colleagues noted that New York itself is a character in the book, and that was important to me.
AmNews: Is there anything beyond that that makes New York, in your estimation, a compelling character in its own right?
CAH: So many things. One of my favorite things about New York is that there are people from all over the world here. Even though I would argue that there are so many communities, and still so much separation, segregation, but once you get folks who are mixing it up in terms of where they work, having to take public transportation, where they shop, where they go to be entertained, I just think it creates something that’s quite unique and beautiful. For the novel, the New York that I really wanted to pay attention to was this New York that was created by Black folks, whether they’re Black folks who have had roots in America for generations from the South, to Black and Brown immigrants or the children of immigrants, which is where I come in. The lens through which I view New York is what I wanted to present on the page, so it’s a particular type of sensibility when it comes to everything, from how you move through the streets, to fashion, to food, to language, to humor. That’s what I wanted to get in there, so, yeah, it’s a particular lens. Sometimes it’s a lens with the changing demographic of New York in which I remember these things just being in the ether and now sometimes I feel like I need to search a little bit for them.
AmNews: To what extent are you sort of sitting in front of your computer and these images and these characters are coming to you, and to what extent are you trolling the streets of New York and you’re seeing stuff happen and that’s giving you ideas?
CAH: Thank you for the question. It’s both. Some of it’s in my head, some of it’s in my heart, and my memories that I’m drawing from.
Some of it is exactly what you said, like being on the street and then paying attention to what feels the most compelling. Sometimes, the most compelling can be the most repulsive, like the vermin problem in this city, so the main character, whenever she has a big event, she absolutely refuses to take the subway because she can’t deal with the rats. That’s inspired by what I deal with every time I get on the subway …
AmNews: That’s real!
CAH: Yeah! Also, paying attention to styles of dress. The main character — how she presents herself to the world, it’s really important to her, so I think, initially, there’ll be an assumption that, Ah, this is someone who is glamorous, and perhaps there’s going to be a judgment that she’s on the shallow side, but the more you find out her history, then you begin to understand why certain styles of dress, why presentation is so important to her. For me to make that work, I pay attention to what folks are wearing, I pay attention to attire I find to be elegant and alluring and beautiful. It’s really a mixture of walking around and absorbing things and what’s in my heart and what pops up in my memory and shines.
AmNews: Is there anything else for the uninitiated? Most people reading this interview will not have had a chance to read the book yet. Is there anything else you want to signpost — something that they should look out for without giving away what happens?
CAH: Yes. Two things: One is, pay attention to details. Details matter. Sometimes it may seem like I’m presenting what I hope will be perceived as a rich scenery to help the reader immerse themselves in the world. With some descriptions. I’ll eventually reveal why certain details are specifically important.
Then, there is a lot of desire. I think one thing that’s important to me as a writer, and then what is coming through from some early readers, is that it’s a sensual text. Even though it’s spooky and there are things that definitely would be considered part of the horror genre, It’s also pretty sexy. I wanted to explore how characters navigate their sensuality and their desire if they have stuff that’s unresolved from their past.