Chilufiya Safaa is a romance novelist whose books put a fresh twist on African and African American love themes and allow readers to examine what they thought they knew about African and African American people. In this episode, we talk about Safaa's first four novels, A Foreign Affair, Passionate Encounters, The Art of Love, and Stay the Night, which were all published by New York publisher Kensington Publishing, her fifth and sixth books, Stolen Dreams and Bittersweet, that were independently published. Safaa also talks about her relationship with Vivian Stephens, the writing coach for her first three books and about her career publishing traditionally and self-publishing.