Science fiction author Lavie Tidhar is a busy man. He’s had two novels published in 2011 and will see two more this year. Along with his longform fiction, Tidhar fills his time writing short stories, editing anthologies and websites, and, of course, hanging out on Twitter. This month, science fiction publisher Angry Robot is putting out the third book in his Bookman Histories series, The Great Game. But for those of you who have yet to discover the first two, you won’t need to go back to the beginning, The Great Game is one of those few sequels that can be read as a standalone novel.

Infused with steampunk elements, The Great Game is an interwoven, alt-history tale of espionage, often with the feel of an old spy novel. Historical and fictional characters — Oliver Twist, Bram Stoker, Houdini, Jack London, and Frankenstein to name a few — mingle on the streets of Victorian-era London as a “secret shadow war” wages on between humans, a ruling class of lizards, and automatons.  

My love affair with movies may have begun with, though not necessarily at, the Paramount Theater in my hometown in Virginia. It’s no accident that the Paramount shared its name with a Hollywood studio; in the early days of the movies, studios owned theaters throughout the country, a practice eventually stopped because of antitrust laws. The Paramount in my hometown was built in 1931, when theaters were palaces, or anyway designed to resemble palaces, so as to treat the little people, then in the grips of the Great Depression, to a fleeting sense of grandeur. The grandeur of the Paramount had dimmed by the time I first saw a movie there forty years later, though the marquee alone, with its hundreds of blinking bulbs, thrilled me as a child whenever I glimpsed it from the backseat of my parents’ car. It made me think of the nightclub marquees I’d seen in Elvis Presley movies on T.V., quick establishing shots that cut to Elvis performing onstage for girls who, driven wild by the music, spontaneously danced on tabletops and spent the night in jail after the inevitable brawl. There were no such clubs where I grew up, as far as I knew; the Paramount was as close as I could get. From the ticket booth, just below the marquee, a long, wide corridor with a slight incline led to the concession stand and, just beyond that, the theater, and to walk the length of the corridor, ascending step by step, was to have a growing sense of anticipation. The carpeting was dark red, almost burgundy. The only light came from tiered chandeliers with dangling glass beads, and, on either wall, there were gilded-framed murals of powdered-wigged, eighteenth-century aristocrats, shades of Gainsborough. In later years, before the Paramount went out of business (it’s since been restored and reopened), tickets were sold inside at the concession stand, where, when I was child, posters of movie stars were sold: Brigitte Bardot in black leather on a chopper, Raquel Welch in the fur bikini she wore as a cavewoman in One Million Years BC. Victoria Vetri, a Playboy Playmate of the Year, likewise appeared in a fur bikini as a cavewoman in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, the first movie I remember seeing at the Paramount; and Vetri, as well as Welch, stirred things in me that, as a Christian child, I wasn’t sure were right with God.

Many of you already know Richard Cox, since he has been a part of The Nervous Breakdown since January 2006. His posts have started many interesting conversations, including some about magic, rage, and even being human. Recently I sat down with Richard (I can’t even call him that…his name is Richrob!) to discuss the upcoming release of his third novel, Thomas World. The conversation found its way to ants, love, and even (unfortunately) the Eagles.

Zara Potts: How on God’s green earth did you come with the concept for Thomas World, Richrob?

Richard Cox: The idea arose from a blog I wrote on MySpace, actually. I had this sudden idea one morning and wrote the 1,000-word piece in about 40 minutes or so. I’d been looking for a new idea for a few months because my publisher decided not to buy my third novel, and I wanted to write something fresh. After all the conversation this post generated, I realized I might be able to turn the idea into a novel.

All this is in 40 minutes? So it was a short story originally?

Yes, a rare moment of true inspiration. It was a speculative non-fiction piece about ants. Mechanical ants.

Yes. The ants. The concept of the ants made me very sad.

In the book the ant farm is a video game sort of like Sim City. But in the blog it was a mechanical ant farm.  You would set up some moral rules the ant civilization would try their best to live by. But I realized while writing that the most fun part of the game would be to confuse the ants by programming their biological urges to conflict witih the set of rules you expected them to honor.

So really, you’re talking about playing God?

Sure. And what emerged from thinking about the ant farm was that a possible creator for this world must either have a very cruel sense of humor, or else he’s just not very good at being a creator. And that idea led me to learn more about Gnosticism, which at its heart is the idea of our world being conceived by an imperfect creator. An all-powerful, loving god who causes so much murder and tragedy is difficult to understand. But if you remove the all-powerful bit, the world makes a lot more sense. He’s trying his best, he’s just not very good at his job.

So, what did you decide? Mean God or Incompetent God? Or no God at all?

Well, my answer drives the plot of the book and is revealed in the ending, so I’d rather not discuss it here, ZaraPotts.

You’re such a tease.

Of course. I’m a writer.

There is a lot going on in Thomas World though. You’ve got some major themes going on. Being an insufferable romantic, I particularly liked the love element. In fact your book reminded me a bit of The Time Traveler’s Wife, which technically is science fiction but is really a love story.

Wow. That’s a flattering comparison, since Audrey Niffenegger is one of my favorite novelists. The story definitely started out as a thought experiment, but as I worked through a few drafts of the book, I realized the high concept idea had taken a back seat to the love story. In fact the love story is the central plot in Thomas World. The science fiction element turns out to play more of a supporting role.

That’s unusual in a science-fictioney kind of story. In fact I didn’t feel like I was reading science fiction. Thomas World seems much more mainstream.

It is unusual. And even when love subplots find their way into science fiction, they’re often tacked onto the high concept plot. In Thomas World, the love story is the central story. But that doesn’t become obvious for a while.

As well as the love story, you’ve got all sorts of other things going on. It’s a book that really questions the reality of everything.

I’m certainly not the first novelist to tackle the nature of reality. It’s a familiar area in science and speculative fiction, but you’ll even find it in films like The Truman Show or Stranger Than Fiction or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And you live the idea every night in your dreams. Especially if you’ve ever had a lucid dream, where you realize the dream is actually a dream, you’ve been conscious of artificial reality. And once you realize how easy it is to conceive of any world being artificial, it’s not a very big leap to wonder if this world is real. Like, how do we know someone isn’t playing a video game where you and I are talking to each other? How can you really know for sure?

That scares me.

Why?

That whole concept I find chilling. I like to believe I am in control of my life, which is completely stupid, but a naïve comfort nonetheless.

Okay, but I’ll tell you something else I learned while writing this novel. I don’t think it really matters. My entire life I’ve wanted to know the real truth, like where did the universe come from? How did it get here? Why should it even exist? Just because I’m not religious doesn’t mean I don’t believe there could be something more out there than just what we can see. But what would you do if you found out the truth tomorrow? What if you knew the universe was really a game or a simulation or one of the various religious explanations? What if you found out there was nothing, that it was all an accident? Would you stop going to work every day? Would you quit enjoying the company of friends? Would you stop loving?

No.

Life wouldn’t stop if you knew the truth. And I don’t even think people would stop committing “sins” if they really knew there was a god judging them on their actions. Because biological impulses are too powerful to ignore. If there really is an all-powerful creator out there judging us for the way he designed us to behave, he’s not very cool.

Well many would agree with you on that. But back to the book…I liken it to The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album… a whole lot of different songs that all come together to make an ingenious awesome album. It must have been pretty hard writing it and keeping all the strands together?

One of the most difficult parts to write was to believably convey the disintegration of Thomas’ mind. You would think it would be easy to write about a man going nuts, but to do it without it seeming hokey, or him seeming like an asshole, was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The other themes that emerged or that I tackled, I’ve been writing about those for a while now. Both my first two novels dealt with the idea of illusory reality.

You’re very good at romance too. Was that hard to write?

The difficult thing about writing romance, and by that I mean the act of falling in love, is in real life it is a very personal thing. It’s easy to tell when you have chemistry with someone, but it’s not as easy to describe that to someone else. So to create two fictional characters and find some fictional thing that draws them together, and do that credibly, isn’t easy. The quick glances and the physical proximity, aromas, body language, the shared jokes and discovered commonalities, those things are difficult to convey on the page. At least I find them difficult to convey. When you do it well, you’ve discovered the real magic of fiction, and I think I still have some work to do in that area.

Everyone likes a love story.

Everyone does. And our favorites are the ones most like the love we have felt in the past, or hope to feel in the future. I would imagine if you took a poll of favorite love stories, you would find a wide variety out there. It’s probably the most personal and unique thing in the world, real romantic love. It’s far more fascinating than wondering if the world is real or not.

I agree with you on that. In fact, we’ve had some pretty interesting conversations about romantic love in the past. I particularly liked the theory that people shouldn’t get married anymore – that evolution makes marriage almost impossible to sustain.

I think it has to do with expectation. If the only reasonable expectation you have from marriage is to find a partner at age 21 and produce a stable of children and remain completely faithful to that person for sixty years, if achieving anything less than that is unacceptable to you, then you probably shouldn’t get married. Society is constantly evolving. And each culture is different. There have been times in history when marriage served a more functional purpose, and there have been times when it hasn’t. Or when it hasn’t existed at all. I’m no expert in sociology, but I would guess societies evolve more quickly than accepted behaviors do. And so there is always a bit of a disconnect between what is expected by society at large and what is realistic to the individual. And anyway, marriage is what you and your partner want it to be. it doesn’t have to be defined by someone else’s rules.

Either that or make a rule that you can only marry once you hit 40.

Let’s say at least one partner must be 40. It’s like the opposite of Logan’s Run.

I loved that show. And Blake’s Seven. Which segues nicely into my next question…What’s it like inside Richard Cox’s mind? What would I see if i took a look in your brain?

An EF-5 tornado.

Is that a plane or a storm?

It’s a storm. And that’s a bit like what it’s like for me. I mean, I have a lot of interests, and I like to understand them intensely, so I spend a lot of time reading about something, and then jump to something else, and then something else. I spend a lot of time considering things and analyzing them and trying to understand them, whether it’s a concept from physics or philosophy or about my feelings for someone else. I ask a lot of questions because I’m curious about everything.

But I’m learning, gradually, that it’s helpful to relax a bit now and then. That there’s a lot to enjoy in the here and now. I guess I should listen to the Eagles more. Look at their song titles: “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” “Take It Easy.” I think they might have been onto something. Or maybe they were just high.

You should never listen to the Eagles.

Not even “Tequila Sunrise”?

Especially that. That’s the worst song ever.

What if I sang it to you right now? Would you like that?

Don’t.

It’s another tequila sunrise, starin’ slowly ‘cross the sky…

I’m warning you, Richrob.

He was just a hired hand, workin’ on the dreams he planned to try…

Well, that’s all the time we have today. Please have a look at Richard Cox’s Thomas World, in stores everywhere September 6. Or don’t. Because he’s being a shit and singing the Eagles.

ZaraPotts, you should take it easy.

Goodbye, Richrob!

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.

-Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

There has been a lot of discussion in recent days of what it means to be a gay writer, probably because June is gay pride month. I suppose I tend to see the idea of a gay writer in two ways as it relates to me, sort of like a chameleon with two independently floating eyeballs connected to one brain—to one instinctual purpose. I can see (I hope to see) myself in one thousand years being pored over by a group of eager young scholars at the University of Olympus Mons on Mars. Each would be an immigrant, a muscular mix of Japanese, Ukranian and Nigerian origins. Each would be between the ages of 23 and 35.

Each would lovingly explore every inch of my manhood wherever it pokes through my poems. Nothing would make me a happier immortal. But, before I start taking off my pants, I think I need to distinguish the future practice of scholarship from the present practice of art. I must be an artist before I am adored by the scholars of tomorrow. My interests here are not academic but creative. They are, in very real terms, a matter of survival.

I am not immortal yet. I am still working on my reputation. I must think in more utilitarian terms—in terms of engineering. How does this zipper thing work? Who will help me with my spacesuit? How do I get my ass to Mars? Does thinking of myself as a gay writer today help me in that imaginative mission? I don’t think that it does. Let me see if I can explain why.

There is a kind of Calvinist mist of terrestrial predestination clinging to the idea of a gay writer that crinkles my nose—sort of the way suspicious milk does. When I am at a loss for words and I put a Bic into my mouth, I often ask myself whose foreskin I am nibbling. Who am I teasing, who am I torturing, whose jaded spirit am I boring to death with my dental timidity? I wonder how much the promise of a penis dictates the direction of my pen. Does it? Must it?

Yes, sometimes, especially if I am horny: if I want to write a poem to persuade some cutie on a gay dating site like Manhunt to come over for a fuck session, it certainly does. Believe me, when my dick is in the ascendant, I can out Marvell Marvell. For me, there is a powerful imaginative incentive in a penis. But first and foremost, my loyalty as a poet is to the project I am working on. In this limited case, like Andrew Marvell, getting laid.

I imagine Andrew Marvell probably did get laid for writing ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ I would have been his in an instant. He had me at the word “Had.” But since dear old Andrew is dead, what matters to me now is how his poem works rhetorically and how I can make it work for me as a poet. Can my Manhunt version of ‘Mistress’ obey the rules of Manhunt (300 characters per profile) and its own poetic logic? Do I transcend the transaction on Manhunt and acquire a larger life in the mind of the reader? Does the object of my desire drop by for some real meat?

The object of desire for any author, of course, is the reader. Unless the writer is satisfied to sit at home in the dark and masturbate in front of his computer—peering at porn through the leg holes of the stolen jockstrap he has fastened to his face—which some authors are. To each his own. It is a big universe. There is room enough for everyone. Even for me, I hope. I have other designs and desires. I look at literature as Manhunt writ large. It is a place where strangers separated by vast distances in space and time can potentially connect.

Sometimes, like Keats, I write about Greek ceramics. Sometimes, like Kipling, I write about animals. But I rarely do this on Manhunt unless I am tweaked out of my gourd. I write in different ways for different purposes in different places. “I,” to coin a phrase, “contain multitudes.” I define myself in different ways based on what I am doing. For instance, right now, I am a French heterosexual who suffered from kidney stones. I am Montaigne. I am an essayist. I am assaying myself.

Here is where I think the idea of being a gay writer becomes a kidney stone. It tells us nothing that you or I couldn’t discover for ourselves in a few lines of chat—a poem, a novel, a painting, what have you—but it demands that we relate to each other in a certain way (socially, politically, aesthetically) that we might not feel like relating to each other today. In other words, the painful urethral truth is that one of us is not always horny. The only thing I am—the only thing I shall ever be—in perpetuity is human: ambitious in my dreams and profoundly silly.

Two events in literature are never far from my mind whenever I confront this question of identity. I call them ‘events’ because they take on a larger life in my imagination than many other scenes in literature. The first occurs as Frederick Douglass’s Autobiography, where, before it was codified in legal terms, Douglass establishes an irrefutable claim to humanity through the power of words. He ceases to be a slave subject to the language of his masters. He becomes a man, in his own right in his own person. All of this he did illegally, all without the approval of anyone in the dictionary department at Oxford. He defined himself. It is a very American thing to do.

The second occurs in Mrs. Dalloway where Sally Seton and Clarissa Dalloway kiss. Clarissa and Sally establish the terms of their emotional discourse independent of men. It is a private interaction which takes place in the public sphere of language, in the same way that two soap bubbles may collide to form one delicately shimmering rainbow of a world: a shape not governed by the laws of man, but those of nature. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway might not fully appreciate the implications of what they are doing with that lip-lock, but I think it is a pretty safe bet to say that Virginia Woolf did.

As much as I may admire a poet like A.E. Housman for his stoicism and his classical scholarship—his ability to frame the predicament of the homosexual trying to make his way in a society largely hostile to his erotic and emotional needs is almost unparalelled in its grim clarity—I must disagree with my old friend in one vital particular. After reading Frederick Douglass and Virginia Woolf, Housman’s poem The Laws of God and Man no longer holds true for me:

I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

My world is different. We have been to places like Mercury and Saturn. We have set spacecraft down on Mars. We once left footprints on the Moon, transforming its surface forever. In the same way, Virginia Woolf and Frederick Douglass have enlarged my understanding of what may be possible for me as a writer—where I might take myself and my readers. The only immutable laws—the only laws of God which I am prepared to recognize—are those governing the behavior of atoms. The laws of man may be rewritten by anyone with the courage to apply his talents in a new way.

When I suggested a few days ago that I would start to think of myself as a ‘cocksucker’ instead of a gay or queer writer, I had more than an evening of bukkake with fifteen frisky fratboys in mind. I was toying with an idea: a new way of looking at my identity—the relationship between my artistic self and the received understanding of what it means to be a gay writer. I asked myself the question: how does labeling myself a gay writer advance my imaginative interests? Does that innocent adjective ‘gay’ expand or restrict my horizons?

Then I started fooling around with my keyboard. I wondered what would happen if I lost the adjectives—gay, queer, pansy, cocksucker—and became (in my own mind anyway) ‘a writer.’ I asked myself if I—a mere poet—had the right to make such far-reaching editorial decisions. It is my future we are talking about, so I think I do. But how would that act of grammatical emancipation occur? Did it just occur? What have I done with my delete key? Have I, in a sense, without quite realizing it, just become the master of my own destiny?

I am not a man to mince words, though I am always happy to allow my thoughts to mince and swish wherever they wish. Cock sucking I understand. Cock sucking is an art. A cocksucker I can evaluate. This one has depth and ingenuity: he is a Leonardo. This one has teeth: he is a Caravaggio. This one might need a clean t-shirt before we are finished: he is a Pollack. Cock sucking all comes down to technique.

Gay, then, is what? Rather vague, in my opinion. A lemony gray. A word. Not even a verb. An adjunct professor. An adjective apt to be pushed around by nouns. The meekest of modifiers. What is its precise value to me as a poet? I appreciate its use in the publishing industry as a marketing tool. Gay is a cheerful sounding bibliographical category—much better than War or Warts. Queer is cool because it gives a nice edgy feel to a grant application. Each term has a specific political utility, in the way symbolic donkeys and elephants do.

The trouble for me is that I am not a symbol. I am a person. I am a member of the human race. I am Montaigne, Frederick Douglass, and Virginia Woolf all rolled into one—with a bunch of other people thrown in besides. I am me. The words gay and queer tell me nothing concrete about who or what I am, what I will do with myself tonight, or how I will get to Mars.

Here, I think, I must come out of the closet entirely. I am a deeply deranged and perverted individual. I am always casting about for some new thrill. As much as I look forward to the eternal tongue bath I will receive from those muscular studs at the University of Olympus Mons—it is better than being forgotten or neglected, certainly—I know what it feels like to be kissed by men. I must have kissed millions. What gets my glans glistening and my fingers moving across my keyboard is a different—some even may call it a sick—desire.

You see, even though I am on Manhunt editing my profile, even though there is one especially well-endowed Dominican daddy IMing me right now, even though I might well IM him back very shortly with my phone number, where I hope to wind up in the future is not at an orgy in Washington Heights, or in a library, but in a popular lavatory on the Tharsis Plateau.

I picture a quiet apotheosis occurring in a locked pink stall located inside a glittering spaceport built some distance from our hypothetical Martian University. I want to find myself buried in a book, an electric, highly eclectic collection of Humanity’s best. I want to be secretly read with pleasure. I want to be zippered inside the backpack of a freshman—some sexless, but culturally bi-curious exchange student on his way back to Andromeda for spring break: someone for whom the emotion of love was an alien mystery.

A mystery, that is, until he—let’s call this little conundrum a ‘he’—ran into me.

‘Amazing technologies, deviant desires.’ Map these onto 19th century America, throw in some hardscrabble characters and a strange journey that cuts across time and space, and you’ve got Enigmatic Pilot, the second installment in Kris Saknussem’s Lodema Testament. This is a seductive, enfolding trip of a novel, an audacious yarn that nods to the New Weird and tips its hat to the evolving traditions of Steam Punk, but owes much to the ghosts of Melville and Samuel Clemens, whose spirits, like the enigmatic script at the center of the story, illuminate the pages with the queasily addictive light of true lies. More than just a subtitle, this ‘tall tale too true’ takes up where Saknussem’s cult hit Zanesville leaves off, or rather before it begins, not so much a prequel as the source code. It is more accessible, less obscure, even more darkly hilarious, and packs quite a haymaker. If Saknussem has matured, he most certainly has not mellowed.

Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd, the mysterious antecedent of Zanesville, is a six year-old mixed-blood genius with a towering ego and a libido to match. In 1844, his misanthropic dabbling forces him and his eccentric parents to flee Zanesville, Ohio, lured westward by a mysterious letter from Texas. It is thus that they find themselves in the great American fray. With the frontier closing on the century like a curtain, Lloyd finds himself center stage amongst a cast of Melvillian burnouts, Poe-ish zealots and Whitman-like dreamers. Prosthetic hands, glowing eyeballs, gibbering mooncalves and a mysterious abolitionist called Mother Tongue—it all comes crashing down on the boy when an experiment with manned flight goes hideously wrong and Lloyd must come face to face with, as his Creole mother says, ‘“ where yer mine true ends and de worl’ begins.”’

Stare into the void for long enough, Nietzsche said, and it stares back. Only then—where the reflection in the broken mirror stands up to what can’t be fixed—that the heart’s journey can continue. At the heart of both Enigmatic Pilot and Zanesville, is both a ghost and a terrible crime, unspeakable, a crime that in the Lodema universe represents much more than loss of innocence. Because, for this writer, no true American dreamer is innocent, and manifest destiny is just another word for dirty deeds done dirt cheep. No, for Saknussemm, a far greater loss than overvalued innocence is soul—that capacity for reinvention and renewal that, after an assault, is often the first thing to go and the hardest thing to get back. It is in such a way, on the fecal streets of antebellum St Louis, that Lloyd Sitturd loses his soul, only to find it rewritten in the scars of a runaway slave girl called Hattie.

Signs and scars. These are the recurring motifs throughout this astonishing novel, which conceives of them as one and the same. The act of writing is an act of scarring, a bleeding tattoo performed on the flesh of the world. As the Sitturd’s journey unravels from St Louis to Independence with secret societies in hot pursuit and vigilante gangs lying in wait, where imploding androids and other blackly hilarious horrors lie strewn across their path, Lloyd feels caught up in something both organic and mechanical—‘not quite meat and not quite metal,’ a spiralling schematic reminiscent of the machine he pilots over St. Louis. Hieroglyph, tattoos, scribble, musical scores, diagrams, patterns and code pulsate on the pages and push this narrative forward and back, west and east, toward the end and always in the direction of a new beginning as febrile, as truly fantastic as anything in print today. Which all seems to suggest that the most enigmatic pilot of all is some strange amalgam of writer and reader and the most thrilling flights are those which where the destination is anything but manifest. Welcome to Enigmerica.

I’ve long trumpeted (most recently in “50 Observations on 50 years of Nigeria, part 3″) the marvelous efflorescence of young Nigerian writers, and especially Nigerian women writers, both in Nigeria and in diaspora. I’m not much of a reader of novels, but I waste no time getting stuck into any new work by Adichie, Oyeyemi or Okorafor. Nnedi Okorafor is the author of the novels Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature) and The Shadow Speaker (winner of the CBS Parallax Award), and the children’s book, Long Juju Man (winner of the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa). Her latest novel, Who Fears Death (DAW Books), was released in June. Her forthcoming novel, Akata Witch (Penguin Books/Viking Press), is scheduled for release in 2011. Nnedi was also a finalist for the Andre Norton Award (The Shadow Speaker), the Essence Magazine Literary Award (The Shadow Speaker), the Kindred and Parallax Awards (Zahrah) and the Golden Duck Award (Zahrah and The Shadow Speaker). Nnedi is working with Disney to produce a chapter book in the Disney Fairies series, tentatively titled Iridessa and the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog.

Nigerians generally thrive in bubbling calabash of language stew. It’s a country with dozens of major languages, and hundreds of minor ones, where almost everyone speaks one or more indigenous languages as well as Nigerian Pidgin English, and many speak Standard Nigerian English as well. It’s a country with a large diaspora whose children soak in language from all over the world. As a reader I find that a lot of this linguistic energy makes its way into Nigerian writing, and when the writing turns to the fantastical, the result can be magic upon magic. I found this to be the case with Nnedi’s most recent novel, Who Fears Death. The sumptuous mélange of language captivated me, and inspired me to interview the author.

You are certainly a trendsetter in African literature. Have you had any indication that your style and genre of writing might be growing among Nigerian readers?

I hear from many Nigerians who have read Zahrah (especially since it’s the only one of my novels published in Nigeria). I even got an email from a young man who was born dada¹. He said that reading Zahrah the Windseeker “changed his life” (He’d always viewed being dada as a negative thing because that’s how his family viewed it).

Some of my essays on African SF and Fantasy also seemed to have sparked some general chatter about amongst Nigerians. Also, there is an anthology called Lagos 2060 that will be published by DADA book in 2011 (I’m supposed to help with the final selection process). It is a collection of science fiction short stories set in Lagos fifty years from now. I like to think that what I’ve been doing helped to inspire this anthology.

In another interview, you wrote: “I didn’t feel like people from my own ethnic group being annoyed with me for not writing only about them or with any group saying “Well you got this little detail wrong, etc.” I hope you take my questions about how the realities of Nigeria informed your fantastical vision in the spirit of genuine curiosity, but more importantly, I’m wondering if you’ve had experiences of writing about Igbos and having critics focus wrongly on peccadilloes.

I take no offense at all. There are aspects of [my 2010 novel] Who Fears Death where it was VERY important that I got things right. It’s not “inaccurate” per se. It’s looking through a distorted mirror. And I want people to understand that. I want people to use their imaginations a bit while staying grounded in reality. This may sound contradictory but it is not.

Your description for the art of a true sorcerer, “bricoleur” really struck me as a perfect expression for the sort of magical practices common in Southern Nigeria. I’m curious if you remember how that characterization came to you.

I started writing Who Fears Death while I was in the throes of my PhD program. I was reading some literary theory (by Claude Lévi-Strauss) when I came across the term. My twisted mind shifted it to a magical concept. As you said, it just made sense.

I was struck by your use of the idea of twins as bringing luck to a town, which of course is the opposite of traditional attitudes in southeastern Nigeria (including among traditional Igbos) where twins were considered a curse.

I wanted to flip that traditional idea of twins being evil in Igbo culture. Plus in Yoruba culture, twins are a blessing. Plus the Yoruba have the highest instances of twins in the world². I was playing with many things when I brought twins into the story.

Several times you mention the characters playing a game of Warri, and considering the folks I’ve known from that town, I been imagining it as a bout of the dozens, with each participant trying to best each other with a “yo mama” joke. Clearly you meant to leave the actual game to the reader’s imagination, but I’m curious whether you imagine Warri as a game with props (i.e. as a card game) or otherwise (e.g. like charades or thumb-wrestling).

Warri is an actual game; it’s old and originated in Africa³. See here. It has many names. I purposely used the Caribbean name of it because I like to complicate things. . And yes, to describe the game would have taken too much time. It’s one of many terms in the novel where I hoped the reader would google if she or he felt the need to.

Clearly the setting is outside current ethnic distributions but were you conscious of the ethnicities you ascribed to the names of characters? For example, while the names of most are not obviously Hausa/Fulani, they definitely have that sound, while the protagonist’s name, Onyesonwu, is such a clear bell of an Igbo name (the reason for which is hinted at in one particularly keen passage). I did also notice that the names of ancient and mysterious things often come from Igbo in your book (“enuigwe”, “mmuo”, “Ani”)

I took names from all over Africa, not just Nigeria. Sudanese, Tanzania, oh, I can’t even remember all the places I took from. When it came to the magical system in the novel, that was mostly Igbo, thus the names are Igbo.

This question is a grab bag. I love languages and words, and I love how you seem to have drawn so richly from sounds of words across Nigeria, and beyond. As you say in the interview I quoted earlier, “Still, the novel IS true to a LOT of real traditions, cultures, etc. I just combined a lot of them.” A few of the names and expressions you used struck me right away, and I’m curious if there are any thoughts behind them, or what impressions they made on you that led you to adapt them. “Banza” (Hausa for “bastard” and a classification of the Hausa City-States). “ewu” (Igbo for “goat”), “yeye” (Yoruba expression for “worthless”), “ogasse” (seems based on “oga,” the Pidgin for “sir”), “alusi” (Igbo deities), “ifunanya” (Igbo for “love,” along the lines of Greek “erotas”), “ta!” (as a harsh warning, deriving from Hausa), “kwenu” (iconic Igbo interjection used at meetings of the people). And any thoughts about Igbo words such as “ifunanya” and “kwenu” which are almost impossible to translate.

Wow, you caught them all! I’m impressed, but not surprised since it’s you. Yes, “banza” means “bastard”. That was on purpose. It is the town where one of the novel’s central characters gives birth to her children while she is unmarried. It is also a place where a culture has sprung up despite its origins.

When my sisters and I visited Nigeria as kids, in the village, the children there would call us “ewu”. We didn’t know what it meant but the way they said it, well, we knew it was an insult. To this day whenever I hear the word, it feels like a terrible word to me (mind you, I also have a fascination with goats…the eyes!). So when I was writing Who Fears Death, that naturally became the word used for children of rape like Onyesonwu. The sound of it (and personal baggage it carried for me) felt right.

“Yeye”, that was me being quietly obnoxious. “Yeye” can mean “worthless” or “useless”. These girls are having their clitorises cut off. It is treated like it is worthless. Plus, I like the sound of the word as opposed to “vagina” or some of the more vulgar terms.

“Ogasse” came from the Igbo term “Oga”. The Red People speak with a lot of S’s in their language, so this was an evolution of the term in their culture.

And the rest of the terms you’ve mentioned, your definitions are spot on. One man who studied Igbo told me that ifunanya is the closest word the Igbo language has to love but it is not a direct translation. There is no word for “ifunanya” in English. I took that idea and ran with it.

Do you find yourself hoping that readers such as me, who have the experience with the Nigerian soundscape to appreciate this rich use of languages pick up on it, or do you treat it as a bit of quiet-as-kept secret sauce for developing a rich, fantastical vocabulary in your writing.

Both. I very much hope that Nigerians (or those deeply familiar with Nigerian culture) will pick up on all of this. However, at the same time, for those who won’t, I just hope that it’ll add that African element to the genre of fantasy that is sorely needed. I’d love to see someone else to use my enhanced concept of “ifunanya” in his or her work.

I notice that in your use of Igbo, sometimes it’s more northern dialects, and sometimes southern. My hometown is southern Igbo, but my children tend to have northern Igbo names (which sometimes brings slight disapproval from other southern Igbos), because there seemed so much more richness from which to pull names. Any thoughts on how the different dialects of Igbo strike you?

People from different dialects are always teaching me Igbo. So I get it all mixed up. That’s a HUGE part of why it’s been so difficult for me to learn Igbo. All this comes out in my work. It may drive people nuts but a lot of things I do drive people nuts, so I’m not losing any hair over it.

You refer back to Zahrah with a reference to The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide, which I’ve always found one of your most fascinating inventions, and one which you tend to slip into many of your stories. Was it a particularly early and thus cherished idea of yours.

The field guide was indeed an early idea. It was inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the fact that as a kid I had many fields guides that I loved.

The Greeny Jungle Field Guide is information. An infinite amount of information. It is very very sturdy. And it’s written in a voice that I enjoy slipping into. You’ll see it show up in more of my future works.

I laughed aloud when I read the bit where you referred to motor scooters in towns as “okada”. Nice touch. Did you know that slang for motorcycle taxis was taken from an old, no-frills commercial Nigerian airline that was popular in the 80s?

No. That’s some good information. I’d always wondered. I just know okada very well. My cousin almost died on one, I see people almost die on them all the time in Nigeria, the streets are flooded with them there, they annoy me, but they make sense (in a country that has been corrupted by oil, ironically fuel/gasoline can often be scarce. So an okada is logical…sort of). I had to throw that term into my novel. I hear they’ve been banned in Lagos. That’s interesting.

You sprinkled a few mentions to one of my favorite fantasy novels, Amos Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard, in your story. Any words on his work, and how it might have influenced you?

I didn’t find Tutuola until I was fairly established as a writer. However, when I did, I was delighted. This was early African fantasy (despite the controversy about his poor English and the fact that he was writing folktales). In Who Fears Death, Tutuola’s stories have become part of the religion/history. The Palm Wine Drinkard is part of the Great Book. I believe this is how religious narratives begin, with great stories.

In Who Fears Death the concept of the spirit world, as “wilderness” is key. It reminds me of Amos Tutuola’s bush of ghosts, or the world of the Abiku spirit in Helen Oyeyemi’s Icarus Girl. Clearly the idea of a spirit world that’s a thin veil over our own is a natural one to Nigerians. How has this idea crystallized in your consciousness?

Traditional Igbo belief insists that the spirit world rules the physical world, NOT the other way around. This makes much more sense to me. Who Fears Death is, in many ways, a reflection of my own spiritual beliefs.

How would you describe a masquerade to a foreigner? Would you focus on the physical show or on the mystical implications?

Both. But I’d start with the mystical aspect first because that is the base. The masquerade comes through the termite mounds into the physical world. Then it manifests as what we see.⁴

Have actual memories of experiences with masquerades inspired any of your stories?

Simple answer: Oh my goodness, YES!! I blogged about this here (“Never Unmask a Masquerade”).

I often tell people about the complexity of Igbo culture in its combination of empowerment of women with marginalization of women. How do you deal with this dichotomy in your profession and work?

I insist on being myself. I am strong-minded and independent. I do not draw my self-worth from a man (not to say I don’t like men…heh I think they’re great). I am creative. I am interested in the old Igbo ways. I am an agnostic. I am not a Christian. I respect my elders. I have a deep near irrational reverence for education. I don’t normally drink alcohol, but I’ll take a sip of palm wine. I’m comfortable around people who speak loudly. I can cook Nigerian dishes, but do NOT assume I will cook for you because you are a Nigerian man. I enjoy cooking. I am a mother, but even my daughter knows that I am equally a writer and a professor, too.

If you are familiar with Igbos, you would look at all I’ve just listed and understand that some of what I am is (culturally) VERY un-Igbo and some

of what I am is Igbo. So be it. It’s ok. Oh, and let me add that blood is blood. No matter what I do, I am an Igbo.

I have been very pleased at the number of great young Nigerian writers emerging internationally. What contemporary Nigerian writers do you enjoy?

All of them. There are many and they are all great. I’m not copping out at all. I’m serious. Whenever I need a book that I will like, many times it’s merely a matter of finding a Nigerian author. Atta, Adichie, Iweala, Abani, Habilon, Akpan, Azuah, Imasuen, Oyeyemi, the list is long.

Your books have gone from Zahrah, clearly in the young adult genre, to Shadow Speaker, a little less so, to Who Fears Death, clearly for the mature reader, and of course a children’s book, Long Juju Man in there as well. What drew you originally to YA, and what do you think encourages you to such diversity of age audience?

I love a good story. I’m not concerned with the category. I will read YA or adult as long as it’s a good story. The same goes for my writing. I write. If the main character happens to be young, so be it. If the main character is old, same response. I really don’t differentiate between the two. That is my publishers’ and book distributors’ job.

❧❧❧

Black & white and color drawings of Arro-yo the windseeker by Ross Campbell.

Drawing of Nnedi Okorafor by Gbolahan Adams

Following footnotes by Uche Ogbuji.

¹ Dada, more casually a Yoruba name for curly-haired baby girls, is also a mystic tradition with echoes across southern Nigeria of babies born with natural dreadlocks. They are considered sacred messengers, and inviolate, but as you can imagine, that can have a somewhat alienating effect on a child. Some Nigerians, especially in post-colonial times have, as Nnedi mentions, have come to view dada children in a less positive light.

² There has been much speculation and even some scientific enquiry into whether the extraordinarily high twin rate in Southern Nigeria is caused by the staple diet of yams (proper yams, i.e. Dioscorea, and not sweet potatoes, which are strangely called yams in the US). The town with the highest incidence of twins in the world is Igbo-Ora (a Yoruba town, despite the name), near Lagos. See: “The Land Of Twins” or “Nigeria boasts world’s twin capital”.

³ As my question indicates, I was not aware of this name for a game with which I’m of course very familiar. I’ve always called it by its Igbo names, Okwe or Nchorokoto, or the Yoruba name, Ayo. Interesting to learn how far this game, which shares elements with Backgammon, and at least in Nigeria is traditionally considered an analogue of the cosmos, has spread beyond West Africa.

⁴ I also discuss masquerades, and include a few videos, in “50 Observations on 50 years of Nigeria, part 3.”

I am a cellrunner. There’s no doubting my obsession and ability to plug in as I head out on a city bus to write and steal juice from the bent steel city.

Resembling a modern day sci-fi novel sub-character with my spiky mini faux hawk and buggy black square glasses, I look out the bus window into the urban juiced-up decay. I tighten my backpack and the laces of my dirty petroleum shoes. I’m hungry to step off.

The bus brakes wheeze. Neon surrounds the projects. Billboards light piles of bricks and bottles. Casinos shine on dirty streets and faces of addicts whose cheeks turn yellow in street corner lamplight. I can see it all as I step off the bus and fumble for the writer’s equivalent of a laser blaster converted to look like a suped-up .357. At least that’s what I imagine as I pull my iPhone out of a black pocket in my Vans backpack and text blast, forming paragraphs that don’t originate from pen and ink or a laptop.

My only problem? Battery power. Cell juice. I’m down to sixty-seven percent as my fingers work the touchscreen.

But like some old addict once told me who sat with steely eyes and neon rims: “Seek the juice and you will find it.”

No need to write and write until your cell battery drains. You’ve got to be obsessed with recharging, always have an eye along the gutters of the horizon line for a place to charge—to cellrun if you have to.

Go ahead. Stand plugged in and write like a madman while you’re taking juice. Electricity burns into your phone.

God knows I need it.

I take a walk down a melting city sidewalk, enter an outdoor mall with big fancy facades and valet parking and immediately scan for outlets. I find them on trees—coiled and tied to the bases, hidden behind mall planters and along the walls where light-up signs should be plugged in. I see them in moviehouses where stand-up video games or neon-glowing kiosks used to stand. They’re obvious in most Starbucks, and hidden in some. They’re in casinos and fast-food joints, along strip mall walls and by stages in parks—if you can pry a lid and get to the holy juice. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, they’re right under your ass. Just look beneath your chair wherever you are.

I’m a writer and this is what I do: I take a bus or a long walk out into the juiced-up urbanscape. I have a cord and plug in my pocket. I have confidence and anxiety that in a world where batteries fail and diminish almost as soon as you charge them, I can juice up to one-hundred percent, fingers whizzing across the touch screen.

And then it’s magic, right? Words form. Paragraphs. Storylines. Characters. This mobility allows me my own inner escape velocity where I’m strapped into an iPhone rocket that soars where writers with cumbersome laptops have wet dreams of being free.

It’s no different than what Matt Baldwin wants to do: bust out some memoir for The Nervous Breakdown from an iPhone App. Probably from the top of a mountain. Or while harpooning the great white novel with a cellphone in his teeth. I tried and failed. But Matt hasn’t given up: “Yeah I’m going to email Brad and Greg about it. See what they say. Would be awesome if we could input directly.”

I can take my device to rocky crags on the seawall in Dana Point, where one slip is a smashed leg between tons of boulders. I tap out a novel chapter and watch the surf send maddening swells that smash fishermen against rocks. I sit by a Ferris Wheel in an upscale mall, plugged in if I have to, or walk down Las Vegas Boulevard and tap out a novel, knowing I can duck into a casino and maybe stand around in the lobby, connected to the very same juice that’s sucking money from drugged up slot junkies. They can’t get away from spinning video screens where even Trekkies pay homage to virtual Bones.

Laptop junkies are like cellrunners of a minor variety, sitting in libraries, airports, coffeehouses, restaurants, and car washes—wherever they can get a free hotspot—and surf the net and write their caffeine-buzzed B-movie scripts and novels. They can play World of Warcraft and eat a scone.

But they’re confined, and more addicted to pseudo-social environments and fancy paperboard cup holders with green logos. They want to check in on Foursquare, and Yelp about the barista, and gulp away their Saturday mornings before smoking out over lunch saying, “I wrote my novel today while some pretentious yuppie soccer mom gossiped about her kid’s perfect teeth and bloodlines. It was a bitch.”

A true cellrunner can take to the streets with an iPhone, a cord and a plot.

A true cellrunner doesn’t need anything but to get out of the house, to write on the go, and shove that cellphone in his pocket and look for the next outlet.

More juice, please.

He can walk and write and look up at jets and clouds and type a novel while walking down stairs and slipping in a doorway. People will think you’re texting your girlfriend that you don’t have. But you just keep writing.

I became a cellrunner in Las Vegas, starting in those very same Starbucks, sitting like another lonely writer masturbating to my own shitty prose along with twenty other desperate men in the same emo-run coffeehouse on Rainbow Boulevard that’s just like the emo-run coffeehouse on your street. I couldn’t write on my Samsung Instinct. Sure, I always wanted it charged. But I wasn’t cellrunning by any stretch of the word.

When I got my iPhone that all began to change. I wasn’t writing on my phone yet. Just texts and emails and worthless Facebook updates. But I immediately got obsessed with finding places to charge my phone.

My epiphany began on a lonely day at the movies.

I’d just seen some forgettable flicks at The Orleans where I moviehopped and sat texting as Jake Gyllenhaal forgettably swashbuckled his way through CGI Persia of the ancient world. I left the theater and spotted an outlet by a wooden bench. I didn’t think twice and jammed my plug into the wall, attached my phone, and sat there juicing up where some old Ms. Pacman game probably once sat sucking electricity like some kind of energy whore.

Afterward, I juiced up wherever I could. My sonnenreise was just as acidic and energy filled as a land of lemon blossoms. But this meant a new kind of fragrant awakening: real mobility and an addiction to seeking out juice when cell power reads only thirty fucking percent. Gotta keep it up. Gotta juice up. Gotta find the outlets when you can, where you can, and stay mobile and keep writing. In Las Vegas, Bakersfield, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Huntington Beach. And in Dana Point, where I asked a man who carried plastic bags filled with worldly goods if I could juice up under his seat in McDonalds.

He gave me a look of wonder then said, “Sure. I was just leavin’.”

“The worker said it’s the only outlet, man.”

“Oh yeah. That is the only one, guy.”

He looked like he hadn’t bathed in three years. But somehow he knew about the secret juice beneath his chair. He glanced at his friends and they all stepped into the coastal fog hovering outside the door.

I got on my hands and knees on the dirty floor, plugged in and started to write. When I was juiced up I continued to tap right into the fog and out toward the sea.

*NOTE: This piece and my last two posts have been written entirely on an iPhone.

I. 1987

I’m eight years old and everything is different.

We live in a new house, one we moved into after my mom finished divorcing my dad and she and her boyfriend G. sold our old one. This one has an extra bedroom where G.’s daughter can stay with us on his visitation days. My little sister and I have to go to a new school and make new friends.

The reasons for the move are never explained to us. My mother simply lets G. slip into the void left by our father and place his firm disciplinarian hand on the tiller of our lives. All the rules we now follow are his.

Nothing I do seems quite good enough for him, though he never actually says so. The disappointment and disgust are veiled in perpetual comments and criticisms. There is always a shake of the head or a disdainful grunt whenever he sees me in the yard with my toy dinosaurs instead of skinning my knees in a game of street football with the older boys up the block. The way, I am endlessly told, that he did at my age.

One late Saturday evening when he and I are home alone I take a couple of my favorite dinosaurs out in a far corner of the back yard to play. The damp soil clings to my shoes and when I come inside to watch TV I track some on the couch without noticing.

When G. sees it he shouts my name and lunges at me. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t touch me, but his arms corral me in on either side and his face is less than an inch from mine. Once at dinner he let me sip from his beer, and now his breath smells the way it tasted. I retreat as far back into the cushions as I can.

“What is this?” he barks, pointing at a spot on the couch where my shoes have been. “You got mud on the couch.” I steal a glance, and just see some loose dirt, which could be brushed off with a swipe of the hand and not even leave a stain. “What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Don’t you think? Or are you just a dumb animal?”

He demands an answer and I don’t know what the right one is, so I just say, “I’m sorry.” When I do G. cuffs me across the face with his open hand. The shock of the blow winds me up into a ball of raw fear, too terrified of further punishment to even think.

He stares at me for a long minute. “Clean it up,” he growls, then returns to whatever he was doing elsewhere in the house, leaving me alone again. I sweep the dirt up into my hand and throw it out in the back yard. Then I go huddle in the corner of my room farthest from the door with my favorite paleontology book. The words slip around the page a little bit when I try to read them.

Because I believe G. parents with my mother’s full consent, I don’t ever mention it to anyone.

Not long after G. and my mother get us kids out of bed early one morning and have us dress in our good clothes. We go down to a botanical garden, where a Justice of the Peace marries them. G. is now my stepfather, his daughter my new slightly-older stepsister.

Afterwards we take a family trip to Disneyland. At one point my mother takes me aside and informs me that it would really make G. happy if I started calling him Dad.

II. 1989

I’m nine years old, almost ten. A dental abnormality requiring surgery has been discovered in my upper jaw, and I’m wearing a set of uncomfortable braces intended to space my teeth out enough so they can operate. I’ve become that kid who never really smiles when adults are around and who prefers to play by himself behind a closed bedroom door.

It’s early spring and we’re moving again, this time into a house we’ve bought in the eastern part of town. The entire upper floor is a single master bedroom with a walk-in closet and bathroom.

We have a sort of picnic celebration in the new empty house the day before move-in, sitting around eating pizza cross-legged on blankets and inflatable mattresses. My aunt and uncle are there with my little cousin, who is almost two. He’s recently started walking, and toddles around aimlessly with a big smile like it’s the best thing in the world.

After lunch we kids are sent up to the master bedroom to play with the few toys we brought with us while the adults drink beer and talk amongst themselves. The girls entertain themselves by improvising dances to the pop music station playing on my stepsister’s little radio and by doing somersaults and other acrobatics. My stepsister, who is taking gymnastics, demonstrates her handstands.

On impulse I tickle her during one of them. She collapses in giggles just as my cousin toddles past, pancaking him to the carpet. He starts bawling, and my aunt, like any first-time mother, comes running at this sound, whisking him downstairs. My sisters follow, telling the adults about what I did.

I wait until all the crying and fussing from the living room quiets down before slowly approaching the stairs.

G. is waiting for me halfway up, in a wide stance so I can’t rush past, his arms outstretched to either wall. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, quietly. His voice reminds me of unsheathed knives, flat and cold and hard and ready to hurt something.

I know enough about alcohol at this point to know that G. is drunk, even though he never stumbles or slurs like the drunks on TV. I’ve seen him drink an entire pitcher of beer by himself without effect.

He takes me into the walk-in closet, and here he rips into me, about how I’m just a horrid, loathsome kid, rotten through and through, for daring to do something like that to a little boy. He prods me into the far corner with his finger, advancing as I retreat until I’m backed up against a wall that still smells of fresh paint.

This time I don’t even finish saying “I’m sorry” before he thumps me across the face so hard my head bounces off the wall and I slump to the floor. Because I am prone to nosebleeds I know the taste of my own blood as it seeps from my sinuses into the back of my mouth. I sniffle, trying to keep it in, because I’m sure he’ll kill me if I bleed on the new carpet.

He thinks I’m starting to cry. “Fucking baby,” he spits at me before he goes downstairs, leaving me in the back of the closest.

After I’m sure he’s gone I go into the bathroom to clean myself up. My already-tender gums are bleeding too, little red rivers seeping between the braces. Because there are no towels I have to dry my hands and face on my shirt.

I go back into the closet and stay there until someone calls up that it is time to go. No one really speaks to me. I’m sure they’ve all been talking about what a bad kid I am.

III. 1991

I am eleven years old, and on perfect trajectory towards becoming a teenage malcontent. My family considers me humorless, mostly because I don’t laugh at G.’s incessant teasing. I almost never speak around adults.

Standardized aptitude testing has revealed a higher than average intelligence in me, and I am shuffled into advanced education classes at different schools every year. No one ever explains what this means to me, or asks if it’s what I want.

I have no social life to speak of. Because I change schools so frequently I no longer really bother with making friends, as I know I’ll lose them once the academic year is over. When I am bullied at school I simply take it without fighting back, as I am conditioned to believe I deserve it.

At home I spend much of my free time in my room reading science fiction novels and comic books or building models, mostly sailing ships and spacecraft. My interest in prehistoric life has taken a backseat to space travel and adventure stories, and I spend my allowance money on the supplies to build these tiny vectors of escape.

G. is showing more and more gray in his hair, and has taken to working out more frequently. He swims laps in our pool most mornings and runs a few miles around the local park in the evenings. He’s mounted a basketball hoop over the shed at the far end of the yard, and sometimes drags me out there to shoot hoops with him.

One afternoon he comes into my room without knocking, as usual. His basketball has gone flat and he’s looking for the handheld bicycle pump I won at a school raffle. It came with a needle attachment for inflating athletic equipment, but the one time I tried to use it the needle detached inside the ball and I needed pliers to get it out again.

I explain this when I hand it over, but G. brushes my warning away. This is common; even though I am frequently told how smart I actually am nothing I say is treated with any merit.

I return to sanding down the mainmast of the two-cannon pirate sloop I’m working on. I barely have it fitted to the deck when I hear G. roar my name from outside. He storms back into my room, clutching the ball in his hands. Just as I predicted a half-centimeter of the needle is poking out from the rubber seal.

G. shakes the ball around like he wants to throw it at something, angrily sputtering about how he thought I meant something other than what I said. “I told you so!” I blurt without thinking. It’s the first time I have ever back-talked to an adult.

The ball launches out of his hands like a cannonball and hits me square in the face, immediately sending a gush of blood out of my nose. Either the ball or my flailing arm sends my model crashing to the floor.

I clutch my hands to my face and double over on my desk, expecting a rain of similar blows to crash down on my back and sides. The warm blood pools between my palms and my face.

When I open my eyes G. is gone, having taken the ball with him. Out my window I can see him in the backyard, sitting on the diving board and taking long pulls out of a bottle of beer. His face is unreadable.

I know that I did absolutely nothing wrong and yet was punished anyway. As the blood drips out onto the plastic drop cloth on my desk I begin to understand for the first time that I do not deserve the treatment I am receiving. And that I should not have to take it.

The next spring I tell my mother I want to start taking karate lessons.

It is a phenomenon that began the first month we were “trying.” While on vacation this summer in Quebec we were seated in a restaurant and my husband started laughing – above my head hung a large, rather grotesquely vivid painting of hugely pregnant woman in a red dress. As I anxiously awaited the day when I could pee on an informative stick, they only seemed to multiply. One would be standing beside me in the elevator, another would follow me onto the subway. It didn’t help that we live in a neighborhood that seems, in certain seasons, a kind of hothouse experiment in human fertility. There it was – there were pregnant women everywhere.

Now that I’m pregnant myself, I seem to see even more of them then ever, though my feeling towards them has changed. Before I knew I was pregnant I felt them taunting me with their fertility. “Why this old thing?” the beach-ball-bellied jogger in Prospect Park seemed to say, “It’s my fifth!” Then there were the tired-looking moms-to-be on the subway who would all but shout, “Hey you, you unpregnant, totally-normal, no-one-extra-living-in-your-guts plebeian – give me that seat!” Now, on the other hand, I see them all as cohorts, as if we were sisters in this bizarre hobby of ours. I find myself staring inappropriately at midsections. I’ll get all excited by a rounded stomach only to realize upon further examination that it’s plain old pudge, my interest in its carrier suddenly flatlining. A normal, I’ll tell myself, disappointed. Not in the club.

It is, for me, a silent club, since I don’t actually know any other expecting mothers other than a few scattered coworkers and the attendants of my prenatal yoga class, (none of whom I actually really speak to, mind you). Which is probably the very reason why I feel such kinship with this imagined clique. Do I really have anything in common with the chic Midtown business lady balancing her belly on stilt-like Manolo Blaniks? Probably not, though that doesn’t stop me from having to fight back a strange desire to run up to her and say, “Hey! Does it seem like you can feel your belly stretching sometimes? Are your nipples practically purple? Are you growing fur all over? Oh my god me too!” It really is so strong sometimes I almost can’t resist it, though I am generally not that kind of overly-solicitous, making-small-talk-on-airplanes kind of person at all. And yet, I worry that one of these days some rounded neighbor of mine is going to find herself assaulted. “Hey!” I will scream, pawing at her arm as she reels back in alarm. “I am also growing a tiny human! HOLY SHIT ISN’T THAT SO WEIRD? CAN YOU BELIEVE OUR BODIES CAN DO THAT?”

At the very least, I am thankful that the tiny human still lives inside, where she can’t yet be embarrassed by me.