Author Interview: Little, Brown and Company and...

Little, Brown and Company and the Talk City Network are proud to present our special guest for tonight, Nalo Hopkinson, the winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and author of the newly released novel Midnight Robber

Thank you, Nalo, for joining us today in Talk City!

Nalo_Hopkinson: Thank you! I'm very pleased to be here—pleased to be able to be contacting people from my home, since I've just spent the last four days on the road touring "Midnight Robber"!

What kinds of books did you read when you were growing up?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Most fantastical works. Everything from comic books to Homer's "Iliad." My father was an actor, playwright, and poet. My mother worked in libraries. So books were everywhere, and I pretty much read whatever I could get my hands on.

DeeDee: What is the meaning or derivation of your name, Nalo, if I may ask?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Nalo comes from Africa, from Guinea. My brother and I were named after the lead dancers in the African Ballet.

Barbara: What was the first story you wrote—do you remember?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Yes, I do! I was a poem in blank verse...VERY blank verse! It was a science-fiction poem, a pun on the phrase "Nothing can sustain life forever." Actually, that was probably the second story I wrote, now that I think about it. I was about 15 when I wrote that one. But before that, at about age 10, I wrote a vampire murder mystery. It involved lots of blood and a Catholic priest. I remember my father reading it and saying, "Nalo, this is very nice. Is there anything bothering you?"

Samantha: Who do you like to read?
Nalo_Hopkinson: That's becoming a tough question to answer. In my apartment I have probably 8 bookshelves and lots of book crannies, and it used to be that I read or tried to read everything on my bookshelf. That's no longer true, because I don't have the time and I'm finding and buying cool new books faster than I can read them. Samuel Delany is an eternal favorite. I've read and still read a lot of the feminist SF writers, and I'm thrilled that Elizabeth Lynn started writing again. I read a lot of non-fiction about social theory.

Michael: How did you first become interested in writing science fiction as opposed to other kinds of literature?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I always read something fantastical, whether it be Shakespeare's plays or folktales, and while I was still a young teenager when I was done for the day with school I would go to the library where my mother worked and wait for her to finish work. To keep me occupied she would give me her adult library card, so it was an easy graduation to go from books such as "The Borrowers" to adult science fiction and fantasy. Since I was living with a writer, and surrounded by other artists—people who were story-makers of one kind or another—it was easy to wish that I could be a writer, too, but it was something that was very daunting for me to think of doing. It wasn't until 1993, when Judith Merrill showed a group of young Toronto writers how to workshop their own stories, that I started writing fiction.

Incognitia: What is your favorite book of all time?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Just one? LOL I can't pick any one! "Dhalgren" (by Samuel Delany and William Gibson) comes to mind, but give me ten minutes and I can name a book every few seconds. There are too many good books to have just one favorite.

Sally: There are many definitions for this: the difference between science fiction and science fantasy: What is yours?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I don't define the difference between them. I didn't even know that it was a point of contention until I attended the Clarion Workshop in 1995. But I can give you my definition of science fiction and science fantasy—I'm currently thinking of them as a body of literatures that interrogate the ways in which humans manipulate our environments. And that manipulation might be material, in terms of making tools or machines to change our lives; it might be rituals or laws, belief systems—whatever it is human beings were never satisfied with letting well enough alone. And science fiction and fantasy talk about how we investigate or change our realities.

gail38: If you weren't writing, what career would you be doing?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I would be a silversmith or an ironsmith! Before my writing started to sell I took a two-week introductory workshop to silversmithing. I still have some of the pieces I made, and I discovered that I loved playing with fire and I love melting metal.

Quizno: What is your philosophy for life?
Nalo_Hopkinson: What? Just one? That question would have to be way more specific before I could even begin to answer it. :-) It depends on the circumstances—what it is that's happening around me, which philosophy I bring to bear on the problem.

Dean: As a fellow Canadian, do you agree with Robert J. Sawyer that while the U.S. is the primary book market, a good author is a good author, and gets published, no matter where they live?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I agree that the U.S. is the primary book market for science fiction on this continent. I agree that a good author is a good author. But many good authors do not get published. And there are biases in every industry. I'm not confident that just being good is enough to get you published.

Herb: Your first novel, "Brown Girl in the Ring," is said to have had a "richness of language." To what do you attribute your language skills to prompt such praise?
Nalo_Hopkinson: What I've done with the language, both in the first novel and in "Midnight Robber," the new novel, is a very familiar technique to a lot of post-colonial writers. We're talking about parts of the world that had a language imposed on them, and where the people then went and used and subverted that language to make it serve their own needs. Caribbean people have done this; people from the continent of India have done this; Scottish writers have done it; indigenous people from all over the world have done it, and that's half an answer. As to where I get my sense of wordcraft, I think that comes partly from having had a poet for a father for thirty-three years. It's given me a keen sense of the rhythm of language and, in fact, there are certain pieces where my final draft is to read the work aloud and see how the words flow.

Martin: Why did you write this novel in Creole? What Creole is it?
Nalo_Hopkinson: "Brown Girl in the Ring" is not written in Creole. Some of the characters have Caribbean accents. Some of them speak in a Trinidadian vernacular, and some of them are Jamaican. My new novel, however, "Midnight Robber," has a narrator who speaks in a blend of mostly two Creoles...Jamaican and Trinidadian. And even the main narrative of the story uses Caribbean expressions, primarily Trinidadian and Jamaican, and probably a very little bit of Guyanese. Those were the easiest for me to draw on because those are the countries in which I lived in up until age 16.

Leticia: C J Cherryh says, "If you can stand the thought of not writing, don't attempt a career as a writer." Agree or disagree?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I disagree. There's no reason why you shouldn't try. I have often asked myself if I'm one of those people who HAS to write. I don't know what the answer is. I like having written. I like getting my voice and my ideas out there. I suspect if I weren't doing it through writing, I'd find another way, but it wouldn't be the same for everyone. I have friends for whom writing is an itch they must scratch daily or they get really cranky! And I suspect there are people for whom writing is either a job or a career. All of those are good reasons to write.

Betty: Do you have a routine to your writing? A special time of day, place? Do you listen to music? If so, what kind?
Nalo_Hopkinson: LOL I wish I had a routine! I'm trying to establish a routine! I have a routine of writing-avoidance, in which I do anything else but write! And when it gets to where I'm doing the tasks I hate the most, I know I've hit the bottom of the barrel. Someone in my writing group phoned me one day and asked me what I was doing. I said, "The dishes." He said, "Oh...got a writing deadline, have you?" LOL I am trying to get a routine going. I've discovered that I write best early in the morning when my energy and enthusiasm are still high. Unfortunately, that's usually when I turn on my email. But I have my whole apartment set up so that it is very easy to start writing every day. My computer is right outside my bedroom door. I do not listen to music because it scrambles my brain to try to do two things simultaneously. I have not owned a television for about six years, so it's very easy for me to sit down in the mornings, theoretically, and start writing. Some days that ever happens!

Pennypacker: Do you know how your stories will end when you start? Or does the story "write" itself?
Nalo_Hopkinson: No and no. I don't know how they will end. I kind of think that if I knew the ending I wouldn't feel like I wanted to write it, because in my mind the story would already be told. But I don't think that the stories write themselves. Everybody's different. For me, I have to go through a process of writing a little bit, figuring out where it's going, and then writing a little more, until I get to the end. And often the ending is a surprise to me. The one exception so far is the third novel that I will be writing for Warner Books. For the first time in my career as a fiction writer I've sold a book based on a proposal, so I had to design an ending. And the challenge to me now will be to write something that I already know the ending of.

Marty: Do your characters 'surprise you', and evolve in directions you didn't expect?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Definitely! When I started writing "Brown Girl in the Ring" the character of Mami was originally Ti- jeanne's mother. But she changed all on her own. LOL Characters have popped out of nowhere and said essentially, "I have a place in this story, too."

Mike: How important do you think ego is to an author?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Now there's another stumper! I bet that is from the same person who wanted to know my philosophy of life! Those are really deep questions that could each take an hour just for themselves. But I'm going to take a stab at the ego one. I think everyone needs an ego in order to guide their own life. What's important is that it be a healthy ego, one that has a sense of when its desires take priority and when they don't. And so, for a writer, yes, I think ego is important. But I think it's important for a four-year-old, too.

Colin: What inspired you to write such a highly inventive and imaginative novel?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Hopefully, I wouldn't be inspired to write an uninventive novel. If you're asking where did I get the ideas, it comes from the kinds of tools I was given, as I've grown and come to the place where I am. And that was everything from one parent with a classical education in literary traditions, to the fact that I lived in countries with such a rich and diverse history, to the fact that I really wanted to be Spiderman when I was a kid! And when you throw all of those things into the mix and knit them together, hopefully what you get is original and interesting.

Hunter: Was it difficult to create an entire world so completely different from our own?
Nalo_Hopkinson: It's not that different from my world, and again, I'm not sure which novel the question is referring to, but yes, it still was difficult, and I think that you always have this clutching fear that you've left out something.

Jeffrey: Do you find the 'business end' (dealing with agents, publishers, touring) of writing a chore? Or do you embrace that part?
Nalo_Hopkinson: It's the first time I'm doing a lot of it, so it's a lot of fun right now, but it's also exhausting! The sheer level of detail can be overwhelming. Whereas before, I would go to a job and know what my tasks were and where they stopped, here I am everything—I am the chief cook and bottle washer. And that can be difficult.

Dusty: Damon Knight says, "Writers...are more inquisitive...more unconventional in their attitudes...and they feel a need to express their inner experiences in a form that can be seen, heard, or touched." Does that description fit you, do you feel?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I'm always driven to contest any statement that expresses itself as an absolute. So when you say, "Writers are..." I'm immediately thinking, no they're not, not all of them. I have a neighbor, a building superintendent, who is way more inquisitive than I am. I wish I had her sheer passion for knowledge! I think the description sort of, kind of fits me. I'm not sure how a writer expresses something that can be touched. A potter expresses something that can be touched. LOL But I'm very wary of saying that I'm more inquisitive or more anything than anybody else. I just happen to have found a good outlet for my own expression.

Thurston: Why embed three fictional folktales in the middle of a futuristic narrative?
Nalo_Hopkinson: That's a very good question! The original piece of writing out of which "Midnight Robber" grew was a 'folktale' that I wrote. When I started wondering about the young woman I had created in that 'folktale', the story I created around her was a science-fictional one. I don't see any contradiction in combining an oral folk tradition with a highly- technological world, because that's how our world looks right now. We haven't abandoned all our traditions just because we can now make computers, so I tried to create a world that had the same kind of historical richness.

Thalia: What kind of culture shock did you experience in moving from the Caribbean to Toronto at age 16?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I did experience some. It's the kind of question I feel I always need to foreground because it sounds to me like the questioner is asking me which of my experiences go into my writing. And I feel I need to point out that I have written fiction. I am not, and have never been, the little girl in "Midnight Robber." I have never had a piece of nanotechnology embedded in my ear. But a writer's experiences can inform her writing. I do know what it's like to go suddenly from one physical environment to another, another very different one. And I tried to convey some of the flavor of that experience in "Midnight Robber."

Otter: Why does the technology in the novel have different names than we're used to?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Because it's being invented and created by a different nation. Technology in this part of the world is largely driven by North America, and we tend to use metaphors from Greek and Roman mythology to characterize it. We name our space ships 'Apollo'. We name our communication devices 'telephone'. I began to wonder what paradigms for technology a nation might use if they weren't using Euro-Classical ones. So, in "Midnight Robber" people communicate through a 'four-eye', which is a Jamaican word which means 'seer'. The operating systems for their houses are called 'eshus'...after the West African deity who could be everywhere and see everything.

Wanda: Having now had your second book published, looking ahead hopefully to many years of publication ahead, do you feel you are where you want to be in terms of your career, your life, your personal accomplishment?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Yes, I do! In fact, I didn't know that it would happen so quickly! I've got a list of things I would like to accomplish, and some of those have happened in wonderful ways and are giving me the impetus to keep me trying to achieve the others.

Frank: Having written about nanotechnology, just how DO you feel about it? Especially if it were used in an invasive form in our bodies (even if for good)?
Nalo_Hopkinson: A heart transplant in invasive. So, if it's something that keeps you alive or improves your life, then I think it's up to the individual whether they think it's invasive or not. As to how I feel about nanotechnology, I'm a little skeptical whether it will be a technology available to everyone, which is what the visionaries hope.

Scott: Have you been on tour yet for "Midnight Robber"? Or planning one? When? Where?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I have been on tour. I got home at midnight last night. There are other appearances that I will make this spring, however, and I can list some of them for you. On March 6, I will be at MIT in Boston, reading with Connie Willis. On March 9, I think, I will be at Smith College in North Hampton. I also intend to go to the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts in Fort Lauderdale at the end of March (Octavia Butler is the guest of honor). I will also be attending two colleges in New Jersey around the beginning of April. And in August I will be one of the authors on an authors cruise going from Florida to the Cayman Islands. Steve Barnes and Tananarive Due are two other SF writers who will be part of that cruise.

Grace: Do you have a website?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Yes, I have a website. It was designed by my partner, David Findlay, and the URL is www.sff.net/people/nalo We're still updating it, but there's good information on it.

Opie: Do you think the Internet will change the way books are published/written/read?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Yes, I do! HOW it will change them will evolve over the years. Already it's possible to download a novel from the web onto an e-book. I believe that will change the publishing industry, and perhaps change who's in charge of it. As to how books are read, that may have to be a paradigm shift. E-books are probably much like the experience of reading a paper book, but not everyone has access to that technology.

Ron: It's gratifying to hear you say you don't have a routine, don't feel compelled to writing habits, yet have managed to produce two published works. Any other words of encouragement for us fledgling writers out here?
Nalo_Hopkinson: Yes! It's astounding to me that I have been able to produce two book length works. I'm not certain how that happened. Time seems to change quality when you are working on something as long as a novel. A minute can last for hours. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you can accomplish the work of months in days. What works for me, while I still don't have a routine yet, is to know that I will keep throwing myself at that computer. And whether that means that I write for 5 minutes or for 50, it means that I've written something. If you keep doing that regularly, you will write something. Just keep putting yourself in front of your notebook or your keyboard or whatever means you use to create text, and do even a little bit of it. It adds up, like dropping marbles into a jar.

Our time is almost up, Nalo. Thanks for being with us! Any last thoughts for our audience?
Nalo_Hopkinson: I'd like to talk again to the person who asked me about advice for writers. I would say develop your own inner editor. Learn to look at the work you've written and try to see where it's not working. And to calmly try to address that. A piece of bad writing doesn't make you a bad writer, so you shouldn't be afraid of it. And I just want to say thank you for giving me the chance to be here!

Many thanks to our audience and especially to our special guest, Nalo Hopkinson.

Posted with permission by Talk City, Inc. Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.