Interview: Astounding Award nominee Simon Jimenez

Congratulations to Simon Jimenez, who is nominated this year for an Astounding Award! Not a Hugo, but awarded at the same ceremony, the Astounding Award is given to the best new writer whose first professional work was published in the last 2 years. 

Jimenez's debut novel, The Vanished Birds, was also nominated for the Locus award and was shortlisted the Arthur C. Clarke award.  In the space opera future of The Vanished Birds, faster than light travel is done through "pocket space". Much of the story revolves around freighter captain Nia Imani, who spends  months in pocket space while 15 years pass for the rest of us.  With time literally flying by, the chapters jump forward and backward in time, allowing the reader a larger view of Nia's universe. And what must it be like for Imani? She enjoys what she does, but everytime she touches down planetside, 15 more years have passed - children are adults, adults are older, elders have passed away.  And soon the crew of Nia's ship have new crew member - a mysterious young boy.   Their  life is peaceful for a few years . . .  until everything goes pear shaped.

Reviews of The Vanished Birds have compared Jimenez's it to the works of Samuel Delaney and Ursula K. Le Guin, with many reviewers calling it the best debut of 2020.  

Jimenez was kind enough to have a short chat with me about his inspirations behind The Vanished Birds, how long it took to write this ambitious novel, among other topics. Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: Welcome to Nerds of a Feather! Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Simon Jimenez: Sure! My name is Simon Jimenez, and I am the author of the sci-fi novel The Vanished Birds.

NOAF: What were your inspirations behind The Vanished Birds?  

S.J.: The emotional core of the book was influenced by my insecurities and obsessions surrounding time, aging, and intimacy, but a lot of the genre-level inspirations came from Simmons’ Hyperion series, Bester’s The Stars My Destination, and a ton of other seminal works that were not necessarily sci-fi.         

NOAF: Nia's ship travels faster than light, through pocket-space. For every 15 years of our time, Nia and everyone on her ship only experiences eight months. What does that do to a person, to barely grow old as their friends and family age and die? How has Nia's lifestyle affected her?

S.J.: I imagine it is a very isolating experience - probably has some emotional parallels to the classic tales of immortal beings doomed to watch countless lovers and, as you said, family and friends, grow old and pass on without them. There is a power to aging slower than others, but also a loneliness. The idea of mortality might be a constant and looming presence. It would also warp their relationship with nostalgia, and reminiscence.

Regarding Nia, this is a lifestyle she opts into – it doesn’t change her too dramatically, I don’t think, but rather further cements her already self-isolating habits.  

NOAF: Who was your favorite character to write in The Vanished Birds? Which character was the most challenging to write?

S.J.: My favorite character to write was Sartoris Moth, a verbose socialite who is dropped into a situation that is out of his depth. He likes words, and talks a lot, which makes him easy to write.

The most challenging to write was the boy around whom the novel pivots. He has an unusual backstory - one that is not immediately relatable. It took me time to get comfortable writing him.   

NOAF: How long did it take you to write The Vanished Birds? While you were writing the book, what surprised you the most?

S.J.: From the first chapter to final draft submission – say a little more than three years?

In terms of surprise, this may sound glib, but while writing the book I was most surprised by my capacity to actually write a book. Before then, the longest thing I had written was maybe thirty, forty pages. Writing more than a hundred seemed impossible. 

Turns out it just takes time.

NOAF: What's next for you? Do you have any new or current projects you can tell us about?

S.J.: I am finishing up a mythic fantasy novel called The Spear Cuts Through Water. It should be out spring 2022.

NOAF: Thank you so much for chatting with me!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Davis Liss, author of The Peculiarities

As I was reading the promotional blurb for David Liss's new novel The Peculiarities, everything sounded fairly straight forward (for supernatural sci-fantasy values of straight forward) until I got to the phrase "leaves are sprouting on Thomas's skin".  And with those six words I was hooked, and immediately emailed Mr. Liss's publicist and requested an interview. The Peculiarities hits bookstore shelves on Sept 7, and promises an absurdist romp through through Victorian London, where Thomas seeks a magical cure to his ailment. . . while saving the family business, avoiding supernatural murderers, and following proper etiquette.  Historical fiction, comedy, surrealism, body horror, and that cover?  I. am. intrigued!

Liss is known for his historical fiction thrillers and novellas for adults, his Randoms series for middle grade readers, and a number of comics project including Black  Panther, Mystery Men, The Shadow Now, Angelica Tomorrow, and The Spider.  His first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper (2000), won the Edgar award for best first novel and the MacAvity award for best first mystery novel, and Liss has been publishing ever since.  You can learn more about Liss and his work at his website, davidliss.com

Liss was kind enough to indulge my curiousity about the man who grew leafier.

NOAF: A young man stuck in a tedious job contracts an illness that makes leaves sprout from his skin. I have to say, you had me at “grows leafier”. What can you tell us about your new novel The Peculiarities?

David Liss: For most of my life, I've been interested in historical magic, by which I mean magic as it was actually practiced by people who truly believed – or at least hoped – what they were doing was working. Specifically, I've been interested in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was an organization that emerged in the late 19th century, during a time when many people believed science had nearly reached its pinnacle, and everything had already been learned or would be learned soon. I find it fascinating that in this world that imagines science as triumphant, you have a group of mostly white, mostly male, mostly affluent people – that is to say, people who benefit most from the illusion of global progress – wanting to see beyond scientific truth. On top of that, they develop a school of magic which, for pretty much the first time in human history, is supposed to be widely accessible. Magicians had always hidden and obfuscated their secrets. The Golden Dawn wanted to spread the knowledge and the ability to obtain it.

I've long been interested in writing a novel about Golden Dawn magicians. The Peculiarities includes a number of real historical people, but it takes place in an alternate world in which Golden Dawn magic works, and the fact that it works is new. In other words, something has changed during the late 19th century and the world, for reasons unknown at the beginning of the novel, has become a much more magical place.

This is a very long answer, so maybe a shorter one would be that The Peculiarities is about a young man whose family hates him and who is turning into a tree. After a great deal of thought, he decides maybe he should try to do something about that. It also includes scary rabbits.

NOAF: What are the “Elegants”? Such a beautiful word, but I have a feeling the answer is going to be scary.

DL: The magic in this novel is mostly based on the magic people believed they could really perform, so it is fairly low key. No one is shooting energy bolts from their hands to teleporting from place to place. On the other hand, there are some bizarre transformations and manifestations happening all around London. One of these is the Elegants, a well-dressed, monstrous couple who wander around the city murdering people and cutting out their organs. They are generally believed to be responsible for the crimes previously attributed to Jack the Ripper.

NOAF:  The Peculiarities is a historical fantasy, filled with magical ailments, supernatural creatures, and a few real people. What research did you do for this novel? During your research, did you come across anything especially unexpected?

DL: I did a great deal of reading about the Golden Dawn as well as organizations and movements that preceded it, such as the Rosicrucians and Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical Society. On top of that, I read biographies of Golden Dawn members as well as their own writings, if they had any. I think the thing that surprised me most was the relative gender equity of the Golden Dawn. The formal leadership was all male, but unlike the traditional English club, with which the organization seemed to have a lot in common, women were members and often the informal intellectual leaders.

NOAF: Which scene in The Peculiarities was your favorite to write?

DL: When I was planning this novel, I had a lot of fun coming up with the bizarre creatures, curses, transformation, and circumstances that I wanted to inhabit the world, but the truth is I love writing the character scenes the most. The moments I most looked forward to writing were when characters have interesting conflicts or make important discoveries about themselves or those around them. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed writing the real-world magician Aleister Crowley, who, in my research, often came across as unpleasantly arrogant and self-absorbed. Yet it turned out that writing someone so arrogant and self-absorbed was super fun. 

All of this came together in a scene where Thomas, my protagonist, is dragged by Crowley to a brothel that specializes in women horribly transformed by the Peculiarities. While he's there he encounters some people from his past, and he learns shocking information about his family. Any time I can combine big character moments, emotional impact, and fish-women in a single scene, I'm happy.

NOAF: You mentioned on twitter that you studied and dissected Anne Perry's books to understand why they worked so well. What was the most interesting thing you discovered during that process?

DL: In our culture, we often praise certain kinds of successful people – like entrepreneurs or athletes – for working hard, but we expect creatives to be inspired geniuses who simply "know" how to produce great art. The first time I tried to write a novel, in my early 20s, I discovered it was hard and concluded that I wasn't cut out to be a writer. When I tried again, about ten years later, I'd come to understand that writing was primarily about craft. There must be some native talent, like in music or the visual arts (two fields in which I have zero native talent), but that "feel" for the medium is really just the first step. After that is all about understanding the form, the reason why certain kinds of characters or plots or styles work or don’t work. 

Once you peek behind the curtain and see how and why fiction works, it's still really, really hard, but at least you know how to try to proceed. Stumbling with the lights on beats stumbling in the dark.

NOAF: Your award winning debut novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, was published in 2000. How have your writing habits changed (if at all) since then? Has your view of the publishing world changed since then?

DL: I don't know that my habits have changed all that much. I still work five days a week – more if I'm trying to finish something or a project has a lot of energy. The only real difference is that I've leaned into the fact that I'm a morning person. I wake up most days between four and five a.m. and get to work immediately. My creativity shuts down a little bit after around noon, so I tend to try to get as much done as possible in the early morning and save the rest of the day for research or side projects.

NOAF: You've written historical fantasies and thrillers, science fiction adventures, YA, comics, and horror. What so far has been your favorite type of fictional world to play in?

DL: Oh, man. You can't ask me that. Honestly, I like it all. I mentioned earlier that what I really enjoy is writing strong character moments, and you can and should do those in any genre or story-telling medium. I definitely love the kinds of weird and wonderful elements you can add into the mix in genre stories and comics, but I don't feel like I need those elements to have a good time once the writing starts. I think those things are more fun when it's in the planning stage. And part of what I enjoy about my career is the variety. When my first book was in the production pipeline, my agent and editor were pushing me to immediately begin work on a sequel, but I was afraid if I did that, it would be harder for me to break out and write other kinds of things. I feel fortunate that I've been able to get away with experimenting as much as I have.

NOAF: What books and or short stories have you read lately that you really enjoyed?

DL: My favorite genre is what I like to call "messed up people further messing up their already messed up lives." Two books I recently read that fit the bill are The New Me by Halle Butler and Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. I also love old-school style space opera, and I'm currently reading and enjoying Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. On the non-fiction side, if I'm not doing research, I love issue-based books with a first-person element. I've recently read and loved On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger and Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin.

NOAF: Thank you so much David!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Hugo Nominee Interview: Lynell George

It is with great joy that I welcome journalist Lynell George to Nerds of a Feather.  Her book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler (Angel City Press 2020) is a Hugo nominee for best related work.  George is a Los Angeles based essayist and journalist who was able to meet Butler at a number of book-ish events over the years.  A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky was born out of George's time spent with Butler's archives at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and explores how Butler thought about the world, and how she shaped herself. 

Of science fiction, Butler once said it was "a handful of earth, a handful of sky, and everything in between."  Using photos of Butler's ephemera, A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky allows the reader a glimpse into the every day world of a very private writer, for example how Butler found inspiration in daily mundane things like riding public transportation and hearing snippets of stranger's conversations.  A must-read for fans of Butler's work, anyone interested in how a writer gets from "here" to "there", how a writer shapes who they want themselves to be, will be interested in this book. 

George's articles and essays have most recently appeared in the L.A. Times, LMU Magazine, High Country News, and LAist, and she is the author of No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels and After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame.  She is the recipient of a 2020 Distinguished Journalist award and has won a Grammy.  You can learn more about George at her website, Lynellgeorge.com.   She was kind enough to answer all my questions about her four year journey writing A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky,  what surprised her along the way, and more. 

NOAF: Welcome to Nerds of a Feather, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Lynell George: I am a writer. I’m a longtime journalist by profession and have covered a wide range of beats —arts and culture, literature, social issues, human behavior and hard news. I grew up as a curious reader. I still am today. I was born and raised in Los Angeles.

NOAF: Congratulations on your Hugo nomination for A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky. What inspired you to write this book?

LG: Thank you very much. After spending many hours in Butler archive at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, I became very interested in Butler’s daily routine and rituals. Everyone’s creative life looks different. There are no set rules and I was fascinated by how Butler began, so very early, to sketch out what it would look like to have a creative life. She planted the seeds very early, just dreaming on the page. She worked with what she had. Humble objects: Hand-me-down books, repurposed journals, recycled scrap paper. She haunted the library for riches. I found it extremely inspiring.

NOAF: In 2016, you participated in a project celebrating Octavia E. Butler called Radio Imagination, organized through the Los Angeles arts nonprofit Clockshop. Your submission was “Free and Clear”, a posthumous interview with Butler. What's the connection between “Free and Clear” and A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky?

LG: “Free and Clear” was a jumping off point for me. With that piece, I stitched together Butler’s own words to create a first-person narrative. Part of her writing ritual was asking herself questions that time, or research, or a conversation with someone might answer. Some questions became more complex over time. Some questions haunted her and she’d ask them everyday. So I looked at those patterns and questions in her daily life – what she wrote down in those diaries and journals and on her calendars—and looked at the ways in which she attempted to answer them. 

I decided that the shape that the “posthumous interview” should take would not be me, the journalist, asking questions, but Butler asking and responding her own queries, considering her own themes, talking out loud. The road to A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky branched off from “Free and Clear” because I could still “hear” Butler talking about the daily rituals– the new questions and new answers she’d involve herself in day after day in the books she was writing. 

 “Free and Clear” allowed me to hear how her mind worked. Being inside another writer’s process, in such a vivid way, was complicated. And visceral. I carried her worries, regrets, curiosities and joys with me. I knew I wasn’t finished with Butler. I knew that I wasn’t after a biography; Gerry Canavan’s had just come out with his deep dive into her life and work and I as aware that there were biographies in the pipeline. Instead, I was very interested in a very particular sliver in her path toward “self creation.” The archive gives you a sense of her day-to-day rituals, how much he had to struggle through to find the space to even begin to write. 

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky was a way to visually chart the process of her writing life. What tools did she need? What did she touch everyday? Her notebooks, her journal, her bus pass, her library card… Each chapter takes one of those objects to tell the story of her routines, rituals, roadblocks, repeated affirmations that gave her the focus she needed to become. Writing for a living isn’t simply about what happens on the page. It is about how you arrange your life, the ingredients you need to do so. It’s about drive and commitment. it’s It would be helpful to anyone who was attempting not just a creative life, but attempting something unusual or difficult.

 

NOAF: How long did it take you to write A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky? What was going through your mind while you were researching and writing the book?

LG: I spent about four-plus years in the archive and began the first writing back in 2019, then finished up a draft in the summer of 2020. During the early research, I was just trying to get a sense of the archive, which is quite large: About 400 boxes of materials that include her drafts, diaries, newspaper clippings, and datebooks. You get a real sense of a writer’s life and the attending obsessions. It was familiar and also very specific to Butler. As I moved through, I was often aware that this experience— although I was “in conversation” —was nothing like “interviewing” someone. In a certain way I was walking with her through her day, looking over her shoulder as she paid her bills, read the newspaper or coaxed herself through another draft of a short story.

NOAF: Your read your way through the Octavia E. Butler archive at Huntington Library. What was the most interesting thing you came across while you were going through the archive? 

LG: So much. So hard to pinpoint. But one thing that struck me was her photography—he landscapes and streetscapes in particular. Some of it was to help her in her own research and enable her to be detailed in her descriptions of place. (She drew maps as well.) I wanted to know more about the images and would like to go back and spend more time looking at that work. She had an interest and a talent in photography. It was something, at one point, she considered as an alternative career path.

NOAF: What do you hope readers will get out of A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky?

LG: That there isn’t really anything “romantic” about a writer’s life, though movies and books sometimes tell you otherwise. It’s tough, tough work. Everyday it means staring down your fears and your demons. As Butler said, writing meant being alone with your thoughts – all of them. She didn’t put a lot of stock in “inspiration”, she believed more in habit. Relied on it. Sitting in the chair and writing the sentence and the next sentence. Getting it out of your head and on the page. I hope it will demystify the process and remind people that there are good days and harder days. Keep going.

NOAF: Octavia E. Butler spent most of her adult life in Pasadena CA, and you have lived in and around Pasadena and Los Angeles. Did you ever get a chance to meet her? What was she like? 

LG:  She lived in Pasadena and then later, after college years, in the city of L.A. I used to see her at her book signings at bookstores. She didn’t read text at these events, she’d talk about her books and the process of writing them and would be open to questions. She was always kind and generous with her time. The last time I saw her, she gave the keynote at the “Black to the Future Festival” in Seattle. I had hoped to see her again to interview, but that didn’t happen. She died just a couple of years later.

NOAF: Who are some of your favorite writers and artists? Why does their work speak to you?

LG: I love this question because I read different people and different forms for different moods or feelings. When I was just starting as a journalist and just beginning to write about race and hierarchies I gravitated to James Baldwin’s nonfiction. He helped me understand precisely what an urgent reported and personally observed essay could do. I learned how to think on the page with his work. I love Toni Morrison. She was one of the people my mother revered and was inspired by. In copies of her books I still find my mother’s notes about memories that a particular passage of a novel unlocked in my mother’s memory. 

I reread Gwendolyn Brooks’ gorgeous novella “Maud Martha” before I started writing A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky. It was the sort of mood that I wanted to be drifting in as I was writing, sitting with someone through their good days and bad days. I’m also inspired by photographers, like Roy DeCarava and Dawoud Bey, who take us deep into the intimacies of Black life. More private, over-the-shoulder moments that show us grit and grace. Music too: So much music, too much to name. But sometimes, I’ll put on something to transport myself to another time and place, to let the walls, floors and ceilings fall away.

NOAF: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Hugo nominee John Wiswell

 

It's been a great year for author John Wiswell.  A first-time nominee, his Hugo nominated short story "Open House on Haunted Hill" won the Nebula and is a Locus and World Fantasy Award finalist.  

The title of the short story makes you think you're going to get a haunted house story. And the house is, sort of haunted. More so, it's lonely. The house wants a family to love. And it wants to be loved by a family.  Having recently been in the housing market myself, I've walked through plenty of houses that were in need of love. But none of them called to me the the way 133 Poisonwood Ave calls to Ana and her dad.  Don't get me wrong, I love a haunted house story, but what I love more is stories like "Open House on Haunted Hill". I've read more than enough stores about families in search of a home, and stories about people who love things.  Give me more warn hearted stories about homes in search of a family, things who communicate their love in the only ways they have, and parents whose hearts go supernova and break at the same time as they watch their children.  

John Wiswell has been publishing short fiction and non fiction essays since 2015 and his work has appeared in Nature Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Weird Tales, Fireside Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Cast of Wonders, and elsewhere. To give you an ideal of his recent output, in 2020 he had over a dozen peices published and will have over a dozen pieces published in 2021.   You can learn more about Wiswell and his fiction at  his blog The Bathroom Monologues, or by following him on twitter where he is @Wisell. 

Have you read "Open House on Haunted Hill" yet?  if not, I'll see you back here in ten minutes for the interview.

NOAF: Congratulations on your Hugo nomination (and Nebula win!) for "Open House on Haunted Hill"! I love that this story is about a lonely house that's looking for a family. Where did you get the idea for this story?

John Wiswell: This story was actually originally hyperbole. I love Horror; I read it, watch it, and play it almost every week. But I seldom actually write it because my disposition and creative processes skew in other directions. I eat darkness, and then spit out rainbows. I was trying to explain this to some friends at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, and gave the absurd example, "If I tried to write about a haunted house, it’d be a story about a haunted house that’s lonely and just wants someone to live in it."

My problem was that the writers around me loved this idea and begged me to write it. After enough of them encouraged me, I figured I’d try on the train ride home. Little did I know what it would turn into.

NOAF: As readers, we get to see just the edge of this beautiful relationship between boisterous Ana and her father. It's got to be tough for her dad, every time he looks at Ana I'm sure he sees her mother. What can you tell us about how you developed their characters – Dad with the podcast and Ana who is looking for ghosts?

JW: As soon as I realized my house would be courting a family, I knew there would be a dad. I feel there aren’t enough fathers who deeply care about parenting in SFF. We could use a hundred more Alan Grants, as it were. Luckily, the dad came with free character traits. Him being exhausted emotionally and physically were natural to his circumstance, and his skepticism felt equally natural as a counterpoint to the house. He was very obliging to me, as a character. He became what I needed almost as readily as he tried to become what Ana needed.

Meanwhile Ana was the wrecking ball. If she was going to challenge her father, then she was going to do it with energy. She was going to be funny, at least to us. She was going to love dinosaurs and the Hulk – destructive things. Which, the reader could take as standard kid stuff, or as an outlet for the anxiety she feels having recently lost her mother. Before the end of the first draft, her behaviors counterpointed her father the same way her father counterpointed the house. I liked playing with the three of them that way.

NOAF: “Open House on Haunted Hill” won the Nebula for best short story. What went through your mind when you learned you had won the Nebula?

JW: I learned the moment that the host read the title and my name. I’m grateful that I had a few seconds off-camera before they put me on the stream, because my eyes were bugging out of my head. Stories revolving around this kind of warm heartedness can be tough to publish, and don’t often win awards. And the magazine that took the chance publishing "Open House on Haunted Hill," Diabolical Plots, had never had a story nominated for a Nebula before. So it all felt impossible to me until I had to give the speech and thank everyone. In those ensuing minutes, I felt I had touched the community in the way it had touched me. I needed to thank them for it. I hope that came across in the speech.

NOAF: How excited are you to be nominated for the Hugo?

JW: It was my first Nebula nomination, and it’s also my first Hugo nomination. So, it all feels pretty unreal. I keep thinking, "You’re not famous enough to be nominated for that." But the Hugo voters really cared about this house and this family. It warms my heart. It’s encouraged me to keep writing more stories like this and "Tank!" and "Silhouette Against Armageddon" and "8-Bit Free Will."

NOAF: When you're working on a short story, how do you know it's “done”? How do you know you're done tweaking the story and it's ready to be submitted to magazines for publication?

JW: It’s always at least two drafts. Sometimes it’s many more. But what tells me it doesn’t need another?

If I love reading the opening out loud, that’s the first check. It can make me laugh. Or it can convince me that, if I were reading it for the first time, I’d have to read on to find out more. But it has to elicit a strong reaction.

And when I sit down with the entire draft and read it through, if I feel it goes across a proper arc, that’s another check. It can be a story about a theme, or a personal growth arc, or something else, but the backbone of the arc has to be there. Nothing needs to get in the way of that arc. If it’s done, then I’ve cut everything that interrupts that. In my head, as I read, I can usually tell if it’s a smooth arc.

The final check is whether I love how it ends. I don’t have to love everything in the arc. But that ending better pay something off for me.

If it does all that, then it’s off to the markets! I’m finishing some new shorts as of this interview. Hopefully you’ll get to read them soon.

NOAF: You've published short fiction steadily since 2015. What have you learned along the way? Are there things you've learned about what editors are looking for or how to hone your craft in a specific way?

JW: The most important thing I learned about editors is they want different things. PodCastle is more likely to give a chance to a funny story. Strange Horizons is a good home for queer stories. You pick those sorts of things up by reading magazines for years. And I think that kind of reading is why I love writing – I love contributing to the body of stories out there. It lets you know what’s been done to death, or maybe even what’s popular but that you’d like to subvert around. SFF short fiction is partially conversations within communities. If you feel lost, you can reorient yourself by asking what you’d like to say to the community.

What else have I learned?

Well, rejection doesn’t matter that much. Your story can be rejected at any phase of submission for a thousand different reasons that are out of your control. What matters is if you’ll keep submitting your stories everywhere you can, and if you’ll keep writing new stories and honing your craft. That’s what you have control of.

If you have time to sit around refreshing your inbox waiting for a response to a story submission, then you have time to start writing a new one. I promise writing a new story is a better usage of your time.

Keeping a list of every story, character, and theme idea you have is wise. If you ever feel like you don’t have anything to write, dive into that list and build something.

Most importantly, build a group around yourself of people who will support you when you’re down. Family. Friends. Peers. People who can read a paragraph of your work and tell you it’s cool and keep going. People who can rewatch Galaxy Quest with you for the 900th time to cheer you up after rough news. You have to take care of yourself, and we have to take care of each other.

NOAF: What are some of your favorite themes and/or ideas to write about?

JW: The easiest way to make me care about fiction is to make your character care about somebody else. 133 Poisonwood Avenue wants people to love, and the father loves his daughter. Frodo or Samwise going alone to Mt. Doom would not be as compelling; you’re crying because they made it to that horrible place together. So I’m drawn to writing about what people can do for each other. Sometimes it’s about rescuing someone, but there are even more stories about how we support, uplift, and enable each other to grow.

Also I clearly have a thing for humanizing monsters. Blame it on my childhood of rooting for Skeletor, Captain Hook, and Jason Voorhees. At this point I’ve written about a sympathetic haunted house, an angry skeleton, a tentacle monster, a werewolf, an alien invader (*and* an alien robot), a demigod, an utahraptor, a civilization of body-warping parasites, videogame monsters, and a literal tank. Soon I’ll have a novelette in Uncanny Magazine, "That Story Isn’t The Story," from the point of view of a familiar. Some other time I should tell you about the monstrous novel I’m writing…!

Though you can also see those stories as various explorations of being othered. I’m disabled, and certainly "Tank!" has some allegories for disabled experiences in there. I’m also ace/aro, and looking at love in different ways definitely comes through in a lot of my work. It’s cathartic to take a character who is expected to act violently, or otherwise whose existence is viewed as undesirable, and twist them. To have those characters instead behave completely opposite to the dominant culture’s expectations. Or just to set them at an angle, and let them explore why the culture is trying to push them into a certain niche.

NOAF: Who are some of your favorite writers, and why is their work important to you?

JW: It’s hard to overstate the importance of people like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Rumiko Takahashi, Tom Holt, and Ursula Vernon in keeping humorous SFF vibrant. Oh, and God bless Rumiko Takahashi for doing so many dozens of weird riffs on love and how it malfunctions; I feel like she was a guiding light to me as I started sussing out how I felt about love myself. Inu Yasha, Ranma ½, and Urusei Yatsura all wound up very meaningful to me.

Related to that, authors like Martha Wells and Vina Jie-Min Prasad have been pillars of normalizing warmhearted fiction; their stories that aren’t necessarily about humor, but are about compassion and kindness feeding directly into their plots and themes. Murderbot is easily one of my favorite book series for just that reason. Prasad is also one of my favorite active short story writers, among Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, P.H. Lee, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. I could talk about great short stories all day.

I’m also a huge sucker for writers who do very deep dives into their characters’ lives and histories, and how their complicated contexts affect their unique roles in plots. Gillian Flynn, Stephen King, John Ajvide Lindqvist, and Caitlin Kiernan are some favorites. Oh, and everyone was shaken by R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War, right?

NOAF: It's been like two years since I read The Poppy War and I am still recovering from that book! John, thank you so much for this interview. With what's all on the horizon for you, you are just. Getting. Started.

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Neil Sharpson, author of When the Sparrow Falls

Photo credit: Ste Murray

If you love cold war thrillers, if you're intrigued by AIs, if you're looking for your next favorite read, this is the interview for you!  In the world of When the Sparrow Falls, there is an entire planet where AIs are everywhere. They sounds like us, they look like us, but they are smarter and stronger. And there is the Caspian Republic, the last place on earth where AIs are not allowed.  That's not to say that AIs have never snuck into the Caspian Republic and passed for human . . . 

Sharpson's impressive debut novel was born out of a few real life disasters, a love for Le Carre, and a stage play that grew too large for the stage. The play was The Caspian Sea, and it became When the Sparrow Falls, a Kafka-esque novel that's funny in that Vonnegut sort of way, available on June 29th from TOR.  Click here for information about the virtual book lauch.  

Sharpson lives in Dublin and enjoys watching and ranking as many Disney and Marvel movies as he can get his hands on, watching all the cartoons, and writing of course!  You can learn more about him at his website and blog, unshavedmouse.com,   and follow him on twitter at @UnshavedMouse.

We chatted over email about his process to convert a stage play into a novel, what it must be like to live in the Caspian Republic, and how the story came together.  And of course we found time for some fun stuff too!  Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: Congratulations on your novel, When the Sparrow Falls! Where did the idea for this book come from, and what is the significance of the book's title?

Neil Sharpson: Thank you kindly! The first germ of the idea that would become Sparrow came about when I saw the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which is still one of my favourite films. It was my first exposure to Le Carré and I was instantly hooked on the whole aesthetic. I wanted to write something set in a world like this; foggy streets, foggier morals, enemies behind every rain-slick wall and very quiet, very meticulous men very quietly and very meticulously destroying each other. But I’ve always been terrified of getting details wrong so I decided to set my story in a country of my own creation rather than a real Eastern Bloc nation. That’s where the Caspian Republic came from. I had the idea knocking around in my head for a while and then an actor friend of mine asked me to write her a dialogue for an audition. That became the scene where Augusta Niemann calls Nikolai South into her office and gives him the Xirau detail and with that I was away. Writing the play was actually a very difficult process and I ended up putting it down and picking it up again over the course of six years. 

A lot of stuff happened in those six years; Trump, Brexit, a global surge of nationalism and toxic nostalgia and all that ended up getting baked into the play as I wrote it. As for the significance of the title, well, that would be a spoiler so I’ll just say that it’s a reference to Matthew 10:31 where Jesus tells his followers that God knows when a sparrow falls so not to worry, because they are worth more than “many” sparrows. It’s one of my favorite passages because it’s at once very comforting but also really hard not to read as Jesus throwing ridiculously petty shade.

NOAF: In the story, the Caspian Republic is the last bastion of humanity. No AI's (except a few special visitors) are allowed into the country, and the Republic is in a permanent cold war with the rest of the world. How does that affect the populace of the Caspian Republic, to know that their cold war will never end? What kind of society do they live in? 

NS: It’s pretty damn awful. It’s not quite as hellish as, say, Oceania, but definitely on the level of present day states like North Korea. In the beginning (around 56 years prior to the start of the novel) the Caspian Republic had a somewhat bohemian spirit and a commitment to artistic expression and equality between human beings. But that became eroded steadily over the decades and now it’s a decayed, intellectually exhausted, brutally repressive state sustaining itself through sheer, bloody-minded refusal to die. 

That said, life is by no means equally bad for all of its citizens. A high-ranking party member living in an affluent neighborhood in Ellulgrad (the capital) for instance, will have a life a million miles removed from one of the native Azerbaijani, who were dispossessed from their lands when Caspian was formed. One thing I wanted to show in the book was how plenty of people in Caspian are free to voice dissent and criticize the ruling party and the security services, as long as they are the “right” people. However, by the time the novel begins there have been harsh trade embargoes placed on Caspian and even the “right” people are starting to go hungry. Which is why Lily Xirau is invited into Caspian, and how our story begins.

  

NOAF: When the Sparrow Falls was adapted from your stage play The Caspian Sea. What was that process like, to take a stage play that is all movement and dialog, and adapt it into a novel? 

NS: It was an absolute joy. I’ve always struggled with structure but when I set out to write Sparrow I already had the structure laid out for me as well as most of the major characters, themes, etc. The first draft only took me three months because all the hard work had been done by that idiot patsy, Past Neil.

NOAF: While you were adapting the play into a novel, where there any scenes that had to cut entirely? Were there any scenes that aren't in the play and were created exclusively for the novel?

NS: The novel is to all intents and purposes the play with some extra characters and sub-plots, a lot of extra world-building, backstories for most of the main players and resolution to several mysteries that were left ambiguous in the stage version. The biggest change, without a doubt, is that my favorite character, Sally Coe, is entirely absent from the play.

There is one scene in the play that is not in the book and that is because it’s the only scene in the play where Nikolai South is not present and so, since the book is told first person from his perspective, there was no elegant way to include it. It’s a scene where Lily wakes up in her cloned human body and a nurse helps her learn how to walk and navigate in the physical world for the first time. It’s a scene I really like, and shows a slightly snarkier side to Lily while also showing how other natural born humans such as the nurse view the Caspian Republic (they’re not fans).

NOAF: What was your favorite scene in When the Sparrow Falls to write?

NS: The scene in the Morrison Hotel where Grier and South get to enjoy a good meal and actually start to bond as they go over the death of Paulo Xirau. Just a scene I felt really came together nicely.

NOAF: Now for some fun stuff! Which Marvel movie is your favorite?

NS: MCU? Thor: Ragnarok. Any Marvel movie? Into the Spider-Verse. Any comic book movie? Into the Spider-Verse. Any animated movie? Into the Spider-Verse. Any movie? Into the Spider-…

NOAF: Who is your favorite character from Futurama?

NS: Oh come on, how is that even a question? It’s obviously Doctor John Zoi…ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD.

NOAF: ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery. 

Interview: Kerstin Hall, author of Star Eater

When Nommo award finalist Kerstin Hall said she was writing a dark fantasy, she wasn't kidding. A short story that became a novella that became a novel, Star Eater is a harrowing story of inherited power, magical bloodlines, political intrigue,  and who can sacrifice the most.   Oh, and ritualized cannibalism. 

After the death of her mother, Elfreda joins the other acolytes in the Sisterhood. A nun-bureaucrat-priestess, she's about to learn more than she ever wanted about how the government of this floating city works. And she wants out. When another nun asks her to become a spy, Elfreda leaps at the chance, thinking this could be her way out.  Head over to Tor.com to read an excerpt of Star Eater.

Based in Cape Town, South Africa, Hall's work has appeared in Strange Horizons and Fireside and the anthology Terra Incognita, and she is the author of the novella The Border Keeper.  She has worked at South African literary magazines and is a first reader at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. You can learn more about Hall at her website kerstinhall.com, or by following her on twitter where she is @Kerstin_Hall.  Hall was kind enough to answer a bunch of my questions about the world of Star Eater, the worst possible way to acquire power, and the joys of a fancy pen and nice stationary.

NOAF: As a Sister, Elfreda is a guardian of the nation of Aytrium. What exactly does a Sister do? How do they do it?

Kerstin Hall: Aytrium is a continent suspended over a monster-plagued wasteland — so one of a Sister’s most important functions is to keep the continent floating. This is achieved by means of hereditary magic passed from mother to daughter.

Given their fundamental role in safeguarding the continent, Sisters also wield tremendous sociopolitical power, and their Order controls every branch of Aytrium’s government. Within that system, Elfreda is a minor but enthusiastic bureaucrat; she researches alternate food sources such as bugs and mushrooms.

NOAF: Elfreda doesn't want to be a Sister. Once you are in that Order, is it possible to leave?

KH: Oh no, all Sisters are born into the role. Elfreda resents this, but also recognizes that the Sisterhood serves as her nation’s only defense against the eldritch creatures below.

NOAF: A magical bloodline, spies and deception, cannibalistic magic. What is the significance of the title, Star Eater?

KH: The Sisterhood practices ancestral worship, and the titular ‘Star Eater’ is the woman who first raised the continent of Aytrium into the sky.

NOAF: Cannibalism? Yikes. Where did the idea for that come from, and how is it worked into the story?

KH: Like all Sisters, Elfreda is a cannibal. Not in a “fava beans and a nice chianti” sort of way, but her magical power is derived via endocannibalism. She’s not thrilled about this.

When I was originally planning the novel, I was thinking a lot about power and its costs, and I wanted to extend that consideration to the magic system. Like: what would be the worst way to acquire power, and then how would using that power be justified?

I landed on: “eating your family members in order to prevent the obliteration of your society.”

NOAF: You wrote on your blog that Star Eater started out as a 30 day writing sprint, and that your first shot at it was, well, a first draft. What was the story's journey from that original manuscript to the final finished book?

KH: The 30-day version of Star Eater was a novella, which was technically the expansion of a short story idea for a now-defunct publication. It just kept getting bigger!

I don’t know, every time I got to the end of a draft, the story felt incomplete. So I would go back to the start and rewrite it. And five years later… well, I hope it’s finished now! It’s gone to the printers, so it had better be!

NOAF: You're a first reader at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. As a reader of slush, can you offer any advice for writers who are submitting to short story markets? Can you offer any advice to people who want to become slush readers?

KH: I love Beneath Ceaseless Skies!

Because there’s such a diversity of markets, audiences, and writers, I’m not sure I can offer much in the line of global advice. But I will say that rejection is usually the price of admission — in most circumstances it’s better to submit and fail, than not submit at all.

For people wanting to become slush readers? I highly recommend it, but invest your time wisely. I’ve been badly burned working for unprofessional publications, and walked away from those experiences with considerable bitterness. Value and safeguard your time, and if you’re unhappy, quit.

NOAF: What do you enjoy most about writing? What frustrates you?

KH: I’m not a fast writer, although I used to be. That frustrates me. I wish I could throw out a finished draft every six months, but unfortunately that’s not happening right now.

On a positive note, I enjoy most aspects of writing, from worldbuilding to character development to prettying up my prose. And on a purely mechanical level, I also like using nice stationary. I’m an absolute sucker for a fancy pen.

NOAF: Thank you so much Kerstin!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery. 

Interview: the Editors of Life Beyond Us

International science fiction about how life could evolve on other planets, plus short science essays? Yes please!  Lucky for us, the Life Beyond Us project fully funded on Kickstarter earlier this year!  Life Beyond Us in an anthology of science fiction about the possibilities of life on other planets and non-fiction essays on finding life elsewhere, edited by Julie Nováková of the European Astrobiology Institute  , Lucas K. Law of Laksa Media, and Aurora award winning author Susan Forest.   

Life Beyond Us will include short fiction by Julie E. Czerneda, Mary Robinette Kowal, Geoffrey A. Landis, Rich Larson, Lucie Lukačovičová, Premee Mohamed,Tomáš Petrásek, Arula Ratnakar, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Bogi Takács, and more!  The kickstarter reached a number of their stretch goals, which means the editors are now neck deep in planning for the open submissions portion of the anthology.  If you're sitting on a short story about searching for (and maybe finding) life elsewhere in the universe, the submissions window opens soon!

The European Astrobiology Institute was founded in 2019 to connect astrobiology research with the space industry, and promote international collaboration and education.  Laksa Media is a Canadian publisher that focuses on issues-related general fiction and literary experimental fiction with a company mission to give back and pay it forward.   The editors of Life Beyond Us were kind enough to do a group interview with me, and take me behind the scenes of putting this anthology together,  running the kickstarter, and what their next steps are.  I could talk forever about how fascinating I find this entire project, but you don't want to hear me blather, so let's get to the interview!

the editors Susan Forest, Lucas K. Law, and Julie Nováková

NOAF: Lucas, Susan, and Julie, please introduce yourselves and tell us a little about yourself. How did the three of you meet?

Susan Forest: Lucas and I met while volunteering for our local writers’ convention, When Words Collide. When he determined he wanted to start up Laksa Media, he asked me to co-edit one of his first two publications, Strangers Among Us. It was such an amazing experience working with Lucas and Laksa, I signed on to co-edit the next books in his social causes anthology series. I met Julie through Lucas, when her story, “Screen in Silver, Love in Color, Mirror in Black And White,” appeared in our third anthology, Shades Within Us. This is a beautiful, nostalgic story exploring what it means to have courage when faced with the terrors of ethnic cleansing. I was thrilled when I heard I might have the chance to work with Lucas and Julie on Life Beyond Us.

Julie Nováková: I met Lucas and then Susan while contributing to their anthology Shades Within Us. If I remember correctly, “Screen in Silver, Love in Color, Mirror in Black and White” was my first solicited story in English, and I'm still grateful for the opportunity! When I was thinking about whom to contact about the Life Beyond Us project, Laksa Media immediately seemed a good choice, because they publish brilliant anthologies with an underlying mission each time - and in the current case, it's science literacy. One of the Life Beyond Us authors, Eric Choi, with whom I discussed the seed for an idea for an astrobiology-themed SF anthology already at the Dublin Worldcon, suggested Laksa Media too; the choice was clear! I'm happy that Lucas and Susan liked the idea and dived into the project with such enthusiasm and so many ideas.

We've never actually met in person with Lucas and Susan yet - which just shows you the advantages of the modern world! Before the internet, such collaboration would have been unbelievably more complicated and slower, if not next to impossible. I do hope we'll meet in person in the future, though, once it's reasonably safe to hold large international conventions again.

Lucas K. Law: My parents often say, “life is a journey of connected coincidences when one takes the first step and then another.” I started Laksa Media originally for other purposes (but it didn’t go anywhere). As an editor, I wanted to do a certain type of anthologies, but no publisher was interested in emotional and character-driven subject matters (such as mental health/mental illness, caregivers/caregiving, cultural identities, social discriminations, ageism). Too niche to sell. Too difficult to market. However, I don’t get discouraged so easily (my parents taught us to face challenges head on), and maybe a bit of naivety regarding publishing helps too. So, rejections from other publishers gave birth to Laksa Media as a publishing company and its guiding principles. It took four years before Laksa Media released its first title. By then, I knew Susan and her background enough that I was comfortable to ask her to co-edit Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts. So, one title leads to another. For the anthology Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders, I wanted a Central European perspective and I thought Julie would be a perfect choice for the theme (I had read her story in Clarkesworld a few years back).

I didn’t know the tidbit surrounding Eric Choi’s suggestion. What a coincidence! I am glad Julie and EAI contacted Laksa Media for Life Beyond Us. And here we are.

NOAF: The European Astrobiology Institute is a consortium of researchers, educators, scientists, and other outreach stakeholders. Why publish an anthology of fictional stories? Your organization is based around science fact, so why publish fiction at all?

JF: Fiction often inspires us to become interested in a topic and seek the facts. If you ask scientists, engineers, science communicators or artists working with science, you'll find that many were inspired by science fiction. It lit up their imagination, drove them to pursue the reality of what had seemed so exciting in fiction - and science is immensely exciting in both fiction and fact.

EAI's mission is not just to facilitate astrobiology research in Europe and beyond, but also support informed policy making, science communication, education and outreach. Apart from activities such as seminars, exhibitions or summer schools, it also means reaching out to a wider audience and trying to get science across the bridge in a fun way. Narrative and emotion work wonders with our brains; they can help us commit facts to long-term memory and make more connections.

Using science fiction in sci-comm is not particularly new, but the combination of SF stories and science essays is a more innovative approach within it.

NOAF: I was most intrigued to learn that the anthology will also include short non-fiction essays as well! What are the essays about? How did you get scientists involved with this project and what guidance (if any) did you provide to them about the types of essays you were looking for?

JF: Each essay accompanies a story and follows up on the scientific (but also social and ethical) themes present in it. We tried out this concept in a short e-book anthology of reprint SF and original essays, Strangest of All, released under Creative Commons last spring. There, though, all of the essays were written by myself (zero funds for a proof-of-concept, after all), and it's enriching to have more perspectives from the expertise as well as personal point of view. Some essayists are starting the work now, some will shortly; for accompanying some stories, we're yet to find the ideal person, and of course for the two stories from open submissions we'll be able to do this part later on. It's important that the essayist not only knows their field as a scientist, but can write and communicate science well, and if needed, also take it further, to its ethics or social implications. 

Science is extremely relevant for our society. We depend on it to a large extent, yet we often see dwindling interest or even anti-science movements. Astrobiology is a great field for increasing interest in STE(A)M and science literacy in general, because 1) it's so popular (who wouldn't want to learn if there's other life in the universe, perhaps even close to us?), and 2) it's very interdisciplinary and naturally joins fields as diverse as astrophysics, biochemistry and philosophy. It prompts us to make connections between fields (such as what effect a star's activity has on planet formation and evolution, and chances of life) and also provides the underlying fundamental questions that make most of us, not 'just' scientists, care about the involved fields. Of course, that also makes astrobiology prone to media misinterpretations or bubbles sometimes - but that's exactly what we can avoid by supporting science literacy and critical thinking.

Interior Illustrations

NOAF: The Life Beyond Us anthology was crowd funded through kickstarter and extra funding unlocked stretch goals such as translated international science fiction. Kickstarter is an emotional roller coaster! Why did you decide to go the kickstarter route? What did you learn along the way and what do the next few months look like for you?

JN: Since the project is so ambitious, it's also expensive - a huge book with pro-paid stories by award-winning authors and essays by scientists, with a beautiful cover and an illustrated edition… Waiting for a grant to cover all or most of the expenses might take a year, or possibly many years. We decided not to go that way and use Kickstarter instead. Though all of us had previous experience as backers, it was the first project any of us created. It took months of preparations beforehand, and still we were surprised by many things, such as much less initial media coverage despite the number of sent out press releases, contacted podcasts, pitched articles, etc.; that turned completely the opposite way near the end of the campaign, when multiple articles came out.

Another thing we didn't expect was such a huge popularity of the illustrated edition. In hindsight, it's completely understandable - it's just mesmerizingly beautiful! But we expected far more e-books and 'experience rewards' being selected, with fewer hardcovers and illustrated hardcovers. We learned . . . to improvise! No, really, especially as a first-timer, you might analyze dozens of other campaigns and still be very much surprised. All three of us worked hard on the kickstarter, and I'm glad our collective effort paid off and we were able to reach not just the already amazing translated SF and Brazilian SF stretch goals, but also open submissions. In truth, I had hopeful expectations for one stretch goal, more hope than actual expectation for two, and reaching all three just amazed me in the best possible way. The coming months are filled with backer surveys, story editing and organizing the open subs window, which is open from July 1 to August 20. The guidelines will be posted as a kickstarter update of Life Beyond Us shortly.

LKL: When Julie mentioned “Kickstarter” in mid-January 2021, I paused for quite a long while (alarm bell immediately set off). I was (I am still) in the middle of several year-long projects, and I knew the Kickstarter campaign would take at least a month of intensive monitoring and participation, plus more to come when it ended. Susan and I are also getting ready for the promotions and publicity of our next anthology (Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories, Laksa Media, August 2021). Furthermore, crowdfunding has never been on Laksa Media’s schedule or agenda. But Julie assured me they have a team to support the Kickstarter campaign and they have been planning this for a while. (Julie and her team have been wonderful to work with. So are the authors. Having Susan and the Laksa Media team help tremendously.) It took more than a month before I agreed to take this project (and being an engineer, I have a soft spot for science). Laksa Media is extremely selective with its projects. Once committed, we are in it for a number of years. For example, Laksa Media recently signed with Canadian National Institute for the Blind to do an audiobook of Shades Within Us (an anthology project started in 2017). And, for the next few months, we are working on its Large Print version.

I believe Life Beyond Us needs a home because of its mission (education and science literacy), and crowdfunding allows both EAI and Laksa Media to bring it to life. The Kickstarter campaign has been definitely a roller-coaster ride (and this is in the midst of a “dead” computer and “dead” car during the campaign). So, the next step begins…

SF: As the others said, I had not been involved as a Kickstarter organizer in the past, but I had a recent experience as an author whose story would be included in a different Kickstarter project (Shapers of Worlds, Volume II) if it funded. So I passed on the lessons I learned to Lucas, hoping he and Julie could use some of the same strategies. I was blown away by all the beautiful artwork and web design, and the interviews Julie conducted with the authors, and the amazing rewards offered. Lucas did a hero’s job tracking down outlets where we could let people know about the Kickstarter, and I wrote a bunch of emails both to people I know in the writing world, and cold-emailing people Lucas had researched, hoping to spread the word. So, each of us brought different talents to the effort and--yes, I checked the numbers every day, wondering if we’d fund, then getting blown away by reaching all three stretch goals. Now, it’s time to roll up our sleeves, because the next phase of the work, choosing two more stories, is coming!

NOAF: Thank you so much Julie, Susan, and Lucas! I can't wait to see the anthology, I know it's going to be amazing!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery. 

Interview: Sue Burke, Author of Immunity Index

photo by Daniel Lewis

Sue Burke is an author and translator who has lived in Madrid and Milwaukee, and currently resides in Chicago. Her newest novel, Immunity Index, comes out on May 4th.  She is also the author of the novels Semiosis and Interference,  her short stories and non-fiction articles have appeared in Asimov's, Clarksworld, Slate, Tor.com, Supersonic, and elsewhere, and she has translated multiple novels and short stories from Spanish to English. Along with many translators and linguists, her dream is to talk with aliens. 

Her forthcoming novel, Immunity Index, takes place in the not so distant future on Earth, yet much of what happens feels like it could have happened in the last year: a pandemic that leads to uncertainty and chaos, scientists racing for information, political protests, and people realizing that anything can be weaponized.  And since Burke writes science fiction, there are also secret sisters, a woolly mammoth, and a whole population of clones who are sick of being treated like second class citizens.  If you're a fan of Orphan Black and What Happened to Monday, you'll likely enjoy Immunity Index.

Burke was kind enough to chat with me about where she got the ideas for this novel, how to stay safe when you've just found your secret siblings, that the customer is not always right, her hopes for the future, and that even megafauna get hangry from time to time.  To learn more about Burke and her fiction, translation, and non-fiction, visit her website at sueburke.site, or follow her on twitter at @SueBurkeSpain.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: What can you tell us about your new novel Immunity Index? What's the elevator pitch?

Sue Burke: The United States is on the verge of a mutiny, human clones are second-class citizens, and three young women discover they are clones and sisters. When a sudden epidemic produces chaos, a scientist begins to unravel what’s really happening. Each of the women must fight to survive. One is an essential worker who hates her job, one is a rebellious college student, and one is caring for a genetically engineered woolly mammoth doomed by the chaos. Amid the mutiny and epidemic, their quest for freedom will lead them to each other. 

NOAF: Secret sisters, a geneticist studying illegal technology, and a deadly virus. What inspired this story, and how did all those elements get into the story?

SB: The initial central question of the story is identity. What makes us the same and different? Some of it is genetics, and some of it is life experiences. What makes those differences stand out? People show their true nature in a disaster. Because the story is about genetics, I brought more genetics and more disaster into it. The elements posed a lot of questions, and the story resulted from one set of answers.

NOAF: When the three women meet each other and realize everything they have in common, how do they react to learning who they are? Are they surprised? Had any of them been suspecting this truth? Is there any sisterly bonding that happens?

SB: The women manage to find out about each other well before they meet, but as a kind of sisterly bonding, they also don’t contact each other to keep each other safe. I don’t want to say much more and give away the plot.

Each one reacts differently, though, because they are different people. Life prepares all of us to deal with surprises in different ways. The same thing that seems like a disaster to one person can be an opportunity to another. What if you had a sister you never knew about? Your reaction would depend on everything that has happened to you so far.

NOAF: Who was your favorite character to write? What made that person so interesting to you?

SB: One of the sisters works in customer service, and I’ve done that too. She must be subservient and pleasant to all the customers all the time … until, in the chaos, she can finally speak her mind. She says things that I and every customer service worker have always wanted to say.

NOAF: I hear there is a woolly mammoth in this book? Tell me more!

SB: Two words: charismatic megafauna. These are the big animals that we love to love, like tigers, elephants, whales, and gorillas. What could be bigger and more lovable than a six-ton hairy mammoth? I realized that I could bring one back, at least in fiction, so I did. But I had to be honest about it. This would be a demanding, cranky beast that would eat everything in sight, need constant care, and do poorly in captivity. Still, he captures the heart of one of the sisters, and eventually, she gets to ride him!

NOAF: What is your writing process like? Do you plot everything out ahead of time, or do you just start writing and see where the story goes?

SB: Many writers praise the creative, organic exhilaration of “pantsing” or writing by the seat of their pants without an outline, uncovering the story as they go along. So, I thought, I’ll give it a try. It didn’t work for me. My first draft was limp and only half as long as it needed to be. Nine complete re-writes later, I had the final version of Immunity Index. And I learned a lesson. Planning saves time and trouble for me, although maybe not for other writers; whatever works is the right method for you. Now I’ve gone back to my old ways. I use an outline detailed enough to serve as a roadmap, and I discover a lot of interesting sights and stops along the way.

NOAF: You were recently at the virtual Capricon41 Science Fiction convention, and you hosted a few panels. On your blog, you mentioned that the theme of the convention was “Creating the Future We Want”. What is the future that you want? What do you hope to see in the next 5 years, the next 20? 

SB: I would like a quiet future. Slow but sure, we work through our problems. We make decisions that save us from dramatic disaster. People get opportunity, equity, and a chance to be their best and to lead good, productive lives. We bring climate change to a halt, and we live more lightly on the Earth.

I don’t actually expect this to happen, though, at least not in the next five to twenty years. Instead, I hope for noise — good noise, to paraphrase the late Senator John Lewis. Most of all, as we create this future, I don’t want to leave anyone out. We’ve done that in the past, and we’re living amid the wreckage.

NOAF: Thanks so much Sue!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery. 

Interview: Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Author of Son of the Storm

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Nigerian author Suyi Davies Okungbowa, author of the highly anticipated Son of the Storm, to Nerds of a Feather. If you are an avid reader of online short fiction, you've likely come across Okungbowa's short fiction and essays at Tor.com, Lightspeed, Fireside,Apex,Omenana, Strange Horizons, and the anthologies BreatheFIYAH,  People of Colour Destroy Science Fiction and Year's Best Science Fiction.  His debut novel, David Mogo, Godhunter, came out in 2019. 

I've been intrigued by Son of the Storm since I first heard about it: a West African inspired world, scholars who can't leave well enough alone, secret histories and ancient magics, a woman from a land that doesn't exist, terrifying beasties, political scheming, and the exhausting emotional labor of having to explain and justify yourself. That ticks a lot of my  boxes, how about you?   The plot of the novel follows scholar-jali  Danso, who is supposed to be preparing for his upcoming wedding and a career as a storyteller.  And then Danso meets Lilong, who hails from a place that shouldn't exist.  Son of the Storm features complex characters, sprawling world building, discussions on how history informs our present, and explorations of privilege and power.  

Okungbowa was kind enough to take me behind the scenes of Son of the Storm, we discussed the trilogy's inspirations, my fascination with how people interact with Lilong, what life is like in Bassa, where Okungbowa got to have some fun in the manuscript, and more.  You can learn more about Okungbowa's work at his website, SuyiDavies.com and or by following him on twitters where he is @IamSuyiDavies.  If you're interested in the virtual book tour of Son of the Storm, click here for more information and event registration. 

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: Congratulations on your forthcoming novel, Son of the Storm! What's the premise of this book?

Suyi Davies Okungbowa: Son of the Storm is the first in The Nameless Republic epic fantasy trilogy, and it’s set on the isolated continent of Oon, which is inspired by various West-African empires of the middle ages. It follows Danso, who’s a clever scholar in Bassa, the greatest city on the continent. But he’s too clever for his own good, and gets his nose into things he shouldn’t, two of which spark the events that drive the novel. First, he re-discovers and inadvertently memorizes the long-lost journal of a mad Emperor that speaks of long lost magic and non-existent peoples. And then he also stumbles upon Lilong, a warrior from an island that should be extinct. These discoveries set things in motion that could be the rise of Bassa and the continent, or the fall of both. Especially when Esheme--Danso’s betrothed, but also a fixer’s daughter--gets caught up in these events.

NOAF: What were your inspirations behind Son of the Storm? What were you thinking about while you were writing it?

SDO: This book, and in tandem The Nameless Republic as a series, was born of my desire to tell stories that drew on those I’d heard about the history of Benin City while growing up there. I realised, over time, that there was a shared connectedness between the stories of kingdoms and empires and trade and conquest that orbited my city, my country, my continent, and many of those stories had been cut off after colonial influence. They were already wonderfully fantastic in nature, and it was only a matter of time before they inspired me to write one of mine.

But more importantly, I wanted to tell a nuanced story, one that showed the complexity and messiness that comes with fighting for land, resources, power. I didn’t want a story that just paints over the dominant forms the fantasy novel comes in with an airbrush that says “Generically African.” I wanted a people who were morally grey in their own way, who didn’t separate neatly into a good/bad dichotomy. I wanted to tell a story that could be Oon’s alone. So while there is the strong influence of West-African concepts and cultures and languages and ideas running through the story, this is really a story about the people in this particular world, their many challenges, and how they struggle to survive them.

NOAF: I was so struck by the mention of a character who comes from a set of islands that are thought to not exist. Obviously Lilong came from somewhere! How does that work in a story, where a character says “I'm from this place”, and other people maybe think she's lying because in their worldview, that location doesn't exist? 

SDO: To start, I’m sure Lilong would punch anyone in the face who said that, haha. But really, most of the reactions are less of, “You’re lying,” and more to the tune of confusion or perplexity. “Huh? Are you sure?” Probably followed by, “Tell me what that’s like.” To Lilong, that would probably translate to, “Convince me that where you come from is not as they tell us it is in the stories.” And then she has this burden of trying to correct all these impressions, and after a while, being the spokesperson for a whole people in this way tends to weigh on a person.

I personally could relate to this aspect, having moved around a bit and met many people who, after a bit of a chat with me, discover I’m Nigerian and then go, “Huh.” I watch them try to frame the “Convince me” question in a variety of ways. It’s fascinating, balancing that weight each time: I want to educate you, but I also don’t want to be that spokesperson, you know?

Anyway, in Lilong’s case, they’d mostly just try to murder her, because folks from where she’s from are supposed to be “savage.” But it never ends well for those folks, hehe.

NOAF: What is the culture like in Bassa? Danso is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, but what might have the rest of his life been like in Bassa, if he'd never met Lilong? 

SDO: Danso is a jali, a Mandé word (French-influenced alternative: djéli) for the more commonly known concept of a griot. This means he’s a professional storyteller, and has spent a large part of his life learning to be a sort of scholar-historian. He has a gift for memory, so is poised to become one of the greatest. Most of his life has been spent between the University of Bassa, the jali guild, and meetings at Bassa’s Great Dome. In Bassa, this is quite the elite life, as only the highest castes are allowed to practice the art.

But Danso also simultaneously belongs to the lowest caste, where folks of mixed heritage end up. So he gets to experience the other side of Bassa as well--discrimination, injustice, limited access. His life is uniquely complex in this way. If he’d never met Lilong, he would probably have become married to his betrothed, Esheme, and lived a probably unfulfilling life. But of course, the moon gods had other plans.

NOAF: So, I heard some unreal creatures and terrors show up. Can you tell us a little more about that?

SDO: I’ve probably said this in the promo, so I can say it here: there’s a lightning bat. A fearsome, massive beast with the ability to control lightning and track folks carrying magical stones. So, er, not the kind of beast you want to encounter. Which means, of course, I would be remiss not to have to make my characters encounter said beast, wouldn’t I?

NOAF: What was the most fun part of Son of the Storm to write?

SDO: Building the world, to start. I had such a swell time asking myself of Oon, the kinds of questions every worldbuilder would: why would they do this instead of that?

Mixing and matching fictional and real-life reasons in my answers to these questions, so that the line between both became blurred, was fun. Also, writing those characters who only appear once or twice but spice up the page whenever they do--Danso’s triplet uncles come to mind--is always fun. 

NOAF: What books and short stories have you been enjoying lately? Have you got anything to recommend to our readers? 

SDO: I recently read Djèlí Clark’s new book, Ring Shout, which I found super intriguing. Much of its overtones reminded me of Lovecraft Country, but Ring Shout is its own thing, and I’m unsurprised it was swiftly optioned. I’ve been slow-burn reading Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts, and that is a heavy book emotionally, yet robust in ideas and uplifting in other ways. Lastly, I’ve been reading a lot about how boats were used in West Africa, as I work on Nameless Book #2. Expect to see some voyage on the waters, then!

NOAF: Thank you so much Suyi! 

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.