Author Spotlight on Erhu Kome

The delightful Erhu Kome has stopped by my blog for a short Q&A.

Many of us as writers have that defining moment when they realised that this is the thing you want to do. What was your moment?

My second year in uni. I was studying a course I didn't like. My mind was completely gone from it. When I wrote my first collection of short stories, it was the most satisfying and joyful thing I ever did.

You're stuck in an elevator with me and you've got 15 seconds to tell me about your book – go!

The Smoke That Thunders is young adult fantasy novel about a girl whose life is changed forever after she meets a magical red fox.

What are the three defining works of fiction that you feel people should read if they want to understand you better?

The Concubine by Elechi Amadi, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and any book written by Agatha Christie, lol.

What are some of the themes that are prevalent in your writing?

Family, Courage, Friendship and Love

Why does storytelling matter?

To me, storytelling matters as I am able to share the history, mythology and culture of my people, the Urhobo people, to people who have never heard of us. 

Storytelling matters because it brings the world to people wherever they are. I didn't have to move from my hometown to see other parts of the world and to know its people. Storytelling matters especially to kids to engage their imagination, improve their vocabulary and entertain them in a way no other medium can.

Who is Erhu when you are not writing? Tell us a little bit more about what you do in your spare time and what some of your other interests are.

I'm a mom of two so Mommying is technically my main job, lol. I use my spare time to do my writing and I read in between. My kindle has been a game changer because my daughter likes to tear out pages of any book I'm reading. I also watch a lot of anime. I just finished the first season of Solo Leveling and I loved every second of it. I also like trying out new foods and working on DIY home projects.

Author bio:

Erhu Kome writes stories centered around her Urhobo tribal roots, with a mix of myth and magic. She is the author of The Smoke That Thunders and Not Seeing Is A Flower, a novella shortlisted for the Nommo awards. She is an Anime enthusiast with a soft spot for any tv show or movie that will make her laugh. You can follow her on Instagram and TikTok @erhukome .

Among the stars with author Caldon Mull

African speculative fiction author Caldon Mull has touched down for a little Q&A to share a bit about his recently released Preacherman, which is book four of his Sol Senate Cycle. 

Can you tell me more about the story seed that sparked off this series?

The story seed is based around an initial inspiration from something I had read at University by Arthur Keppel Jones a long time ago, which was essentially a future projection. I already had written South African-flavoured SF shorts and novellas by then, but I didn’t have an underlying archetype. So I worked on that for a few decades until the ‘Diaspora’ section is the last, furthest point in this journey. I've always liked an outsider POV character, just enough to provide some friction between the reader and the character for those 'ag siestog' moments.

I think it is better to think of the series as linked standalone books or a 'braided' set, that focus on telling the story of an ordinary person going about their lives, when the story happens. I have always used allegory to tell stories and so Preacherman is as much a story of a young immigrant and his family making good. Skills in being able to see the value of disused goods and opportunities in business as an outsider, or maybe being able to bring fresh investment capital into stagnant markets.

Rama’s journey has elements of tragedy, opportunity, frustration, family and sexual complications as much as any present-day immigrant. ‘Diaspora’ allowed me to focus on specific ‘Mundane Science Fiction’ genre stories like these, yet being able to tell those stories from an entirely different perspective. Preacherman is the latest in this Storytelling project, keeping it firmly in the Speculative Fiction realm.

To keep the element of the MSF genre, all the titles follow a counting game list of professions like ‘Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief…’ but each one, obviously looks very different from expectations.

All of us have our favourite authors who set them on their path – who are your literary luminaries and how have they inspired you?

I have a long list, but here goes. JRR Tolkien always near the top, beautiful writing that always inspires a sense of hope. John Brunner and AE van Vogt were all about the big ideas. Van Vogt’s writing mechanics of dream-wake-write is a technique I use relentlessly (for better or for worse, to be sure). Philip K Dick for his kaleidoscopic social commentary. Ursula K Le Guin, Geoff Ryman, Nick Wood, Andre Norton, Storm Constantine, Clifford Simak, Samuel R Delany, Tanith Lee and Gene Wolf all for beautiful moments, excellent prose and the novum of their words. Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch… must stop now! I read voraciously for decades.

In a nutshell, tell us about some of the themes in your series and what readers can expect when they pick up book one.

Diaspora picks up on Humanity pushing out through Space as hard as it can, as far as it can, and where cracks can appear. Weatherman tells the story of the Cyber-enhanced Esteban on Mars in the mid-23rd Century who gets asked by his boss for some extra-curriculum work. The theme here is between tools and their makers, and which view of a culture has more merit. There are self-actualization underlying themes. 

Ferryman tells the story of Tick-tock, the Digital Twin of a San that has been uplifted to the Dwarf Planet Sedna to provide a very specific duty. The tool/maker theme continues, but the more his mind strays from his tasks, the less things make sense. The theme of the human ability to upskill and adapt, and to make sense of change are explored. There are self-awareness underlying themes. 

Poliismxn tells the story of Sancha who has gets slapped with Jury Duty to investigate the corruption of the ruling Council. The theme here is around how humans invariably use better tools and better methods for the same base ends. On the surface everything looks like a Utopia, but Sancha is forced to expose the rot and deal with it. There are self-doubt underlying themes.

Preacherman picks up on the running theme but does centre ‘cultural amnesia’ where society tends to distract itself from what is really important to survive and quickly falls into the same well-worn potentially disastrous comfort rituals. There are self-acceptance underlying themes.

Have you had any incidents on your path as an author that have confirmed this as a calling for you? If the internet had to vanish overnight and civilisation ended, would you still tell stories?

I think so. My physical career has been linking people and things like your ATM systems, and your online banks and your cell phone towers, I’ve travelled to many rural places all over the world listening to local people’s stories, telling my own and looking at what that synthesis would look like. Some of my early stories are handwritten letters posted to myself from the middle of nowhere, where months later I would get home to recompile them and figure out what I was saying then. I think stories are important to tell, even ugly and cautionary ones. However you can, no matter what.

Who are you when you're not writing? Tell us about the things you do beyond the written word.

Eish. I think that I’m a very different person when I’m not writing or working. I’m socially awkward and blunt outside of a social structure, so my casual acquaintance can be a bit much for many people. I like being physically and mentally active. I have Protea Colours for Mind Sports, was a MTN Trivial Pursuit National Champion for years, and I like classic cars and Regulation Rally. I did a lot of outreach work for the underprivileged in various organisations for years while I was in South Africa, as well as a lot of role playing convention work for ICON and GENCON through many universities. I like social rituals like a weekly pub meeting with a group of people at a local place, or people-watching while I’m mentally processing something. I think that once I can understand every living being on the planet, then I can die happy.

You've got fifteen seconds to tell your favourite film director about your series – how are you going to sell the idea to them?

Wow! Okay, think Robert Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’ in Space… with androids and cyborgs and polysexual post-human relationships in alien vistas. Make it smutty with ordinary people from these places and throw in some cringe as they figure things out. Please collaborate with Ridley Scott on cinematics. #hotandroisabs, #weirdaliens, #astoundingplaces, #establishmentblues.

See Caldon Mull's books over at Amazon.

Meet Gaia Sol, author of mythological romance

A huge welcome to author Gaia Sol, who's here to talk up her most recent release, Echoes of the Gods, an epic mythological romance (that's the best way to explain it).

Everyone's journey as a writer starts somewhere. When did the bug bite you and what did you do about it?

I’ve been an avid reader since childhood, and wrote little bits of made-up mythological stuff while in school, but it was only in 2013 that I seriously put fingers to keyboard to write stories on Archive of Our Own (AO3). That forum was my introduction to the heady world of fanfiction and slash fiction. 

Many were the nights I stayed up way past my bedtime, swept up in long, complex, layered, sultry and absolutely amazing M/M stories. Unfettered by commercial considerations or critical voices, the writing on AO3 was wildly imaginative and free-flowing, and the talent on display blew my mind. With no background in creative writing, I’d never thought about writing fiction before. But Ratatouille’s Gusteau must have been perched on my shoulder as AO3’s kindly animated ambassador, whispering “Anyone can write”, because that was a turning point in my life.

Shielded by a pseudonym, I finally took the plunge and started to post fanfics. Over the next three years, I wrote eleven stories, some short and some novel-length, in both contemporary canonical settings and AUs. There was a mythological AU, a Camelot AU, and the final story in 2016 was a 126K-word Crusades-Robin Hood crossover AU. The AU stories really allowed me to let my imagination run free, and were, admittedly, original fiction that used TV character names to pull in readers. 

It was incredibly freeing and joyous to be able to explore everything I hadn’t known was inside me, and to write, without fear of judgment, the stories I wanted to read. Truly, those three years were among the most creatively productive periods in my life. I remember using every available minute to write: on the train to and from work, during lunch or coffee breaks, and sometimes even during meetings, if only to scribble an idea in my notebook. Sigh.

I reworked the mythological story and published it as Echoes of the Gods (the first edition) in 2017. 

Who are some of the authors who have been massively influential on you, and why?

Two of my favourite authors are CS Pacat and Madeline Miller. Since I cannot distil their talents into an elixir and drink a bit every day, I’m trying to study what I love most about their work and implement it in my own writing.

CS Pacat’s Captive Prince trilogy is my favourite series. I’m in awe of all aspects of her writing, from the economy of her prose to her ability to subvert tropes to her off-the-charts skill with subtext and foreshadowing. Capri’s heroes were complex, conflicted and simply unforgettable, with sizzling power dynamics and DEFCON-12 UST. She’s a master of the long game, and it was thrilling to experience the deliciously slow unfolding of layers of political intrigue and childhood trauma and sexual undercurrents over three books. I’m seeing that happening with her latest series, too. An auto-buy author, for sure!

The Greek epics are particular favourites, and when reimagined in Madeline Miller’s lyrical prose, they are elevated to a different level. Even her choice of narrators—Patroclus and Circe—was inspired! Circe, in particular, was an education in writing strong women and their relationships, with men, of course, but especially with other women. I admire her sumptuous, figurative language (but never going purple) and her ability to wring the full gamut of emotions out of me, breaking me towards the end and then mending my heart (and the characters’!) with some of the most memorable final lines I’ve read.

Both these authors have mastered the art of invisible writing, as Pacat calls it. And their immersive, evocative prose might be deceptively uncomplicated in construction, but leaves such strong, lingering impressions that I’m lured back for another reading, and another, and another.

Self-publishing is not for sissies, and I need to commend you on the dedication and investment you've made in Echoes of the Gods – what has been the most challenging aspect of the process? And what's made your heart sing?

Thank you! And thank you for recognizing that it’s not easy. 

My self-publishing journey has presented a combination of internal and external challenges. 

This might seem hyperbolic, but I must quote the tagline for the movie, Alien: In space no one can hear you scream. That’s how self-publishing sometimes feels to me: like shouting into a void, a really lonely undertaking with no guarantee of a happy ending. I missed the sense of community that AO3 engendered, the feedback loop of chapter-wise comments, and the energy of engaged readers. Fortunately, I made a few amazing friends there who have cheered me on in my efforts. And my husband kept me going. He's like Telemachus in a sense: a stoic, staunch supporter through all my (mis)adventures. ?? 

My biggest external challenge has been getting noticed. I’m rather introverted, so the typical exuberant social media interactions don’t come naturally to me. As a result, readers who might enjoy this sort of story probably don’t even know it exists! I hope this feature, which is a perfect avenue for someone like me to get the word out, goes some way towards remedying that! Thank you for that! 

On the bright side, I just love the idea behind Echoes. Even at the fanfic stage, the concept felt fresh, exciting and somewhat unique, and I knew that, given time and massive effort, it could evolve into an epic novel. And when the central, unifying idea came together, I’m pretty sure I squealed with joy. 

I’ve had this cinematic vision of the whole thing playing out in my mind, and trying to capture that vision in words has been agonizing, but also extremely satisfying. I would love to be able to transform Echoes into a graphic novel someday, because I feel it lends itself to that format, with the different mythologies, some big and fraught scenes, the vast and diverse cast of characters. Oh no. I drifted into dreamland there...

Another highlight was the instructive feedback from my top-notch editors. It was like going through creative writing university in a year! That, I think, was the best monetary investment I made with both editions, for myself and for readers. I want to put out a product that’s worth the readers’ money, and something I would buy myself.

Collaborating with my super-talented friend for the cover and seeing it evolve over countless iterations into what it is now—all vibrant blue and white, and teasing clues to the plot—was incredible. 

I’ve learnt so much more going through the process this second time. I should probably blog about my experiences with Canadian self-publishing. 

You mentioned that the novel was previously published, and you’ve done a fair bit of revising. How has the novel changed since its first incarnation? 

Love the wordplay! 

Echoes first came out in late 2017, after which life happened, leaving no time or mental space for writing. When the words began to flow again in early 2023, I chose to reincarnate (lol) Echoes to ease back into writing. I felt there was so much more to explore in that world. I had, in those intervening years, dedicated time to learning more about the craft of writing, and also revisited the editorial feedback on the first edition. Armed thus with new and revived information, I gave Echoes a ruthless read-through, essentially ripping it apart and putting it back together with what I hope comes through as deeper characterizations, more intricate myths and stronger world-building. 

The second edition is over 20K words longer. The myths and adventures exist in service to the characters, and perhaps a little bit for their own sakes as well! Shara is still the protagonist, but Yngvi is a much stronger deuteragonist with his own motivations and inner conflict, and his own hero’s journey. The insta-love and miscommunication tropes (holdovers from my days of writing fan fiction) are gone. Instead of alternating the PoVs, I made Yngvi the primary narrator, so that Shara could retain his mystique while giving us his viewpoint in fewer and very specific chapters.

It was a lot of fun playing with myths, making each escapade personal to the heroes, and introducing new characters in each pantheon. The adventures are all connected, and key off a single triggering event whose aftershocks ripple through the worlds. The cast of characters is wider this time, with new gods and mortals showing up to thwart and aid Shara and Yngvi on their quest.

Overall, I’ve tried to make the second edition a richer and more cohesive composite of myth, mayhem and manly men, and a whole lot more fun!

You've been quite ambitious by mashing up a bunch of different pantheons, ranging from the Old Norse through to the ancient Egyptian, Near-Eastern, and ancient Greece – which ones are your favourite, and how did you get them all to play nicely?

I’d been aware of the similarities between different mythologies for a long time, but it was only when I started experimenting with alternate universes that I realized it was possible to feature more than one mythology in the same story. I’d never actually considered that this was an ambitious concept until it was pointed out to me. But it clearly was, especially for a newbie writer! It was bloody hard! However, scaling it back in any way would not have done justice to the vision I had. So it was probably for the best! 

To prepare for the second edition, I threw myself back into researching myths, legends and ancient symbols, poring over books and websites, seeking out lesser-known deities and nuggets of connection that could be played with to fit into Echoes, either as myths themselves, or as world-building. YouTube has some amazing channels that were supremely edifying (such as Crash Course Mythology and Mythology & Fiction Explained). I had to bone up on the Babylonian/Sumerian pantheon, which was unfamiliar to me, and also revisit the Norse, Egyptian and Greek legends.

The Babylonian parts were a lot of fun to play with, given it’s not as mainstream a pantheon as the others. I loved reading up on those primordial gods and their family drama. 

The mirrored pantheons, with deities organized by domain of divine influence and rolling up to a head honcho, and the mirrored myths woven around them offered a perfect set-up for a multiverse story. But I needed to figure out how to put my own spin on it and make it relevant to my characters. I’ve also focused more on world-building in the new edition, so that, through the heroes’ eyes, readers can experience the differences between the worlds in terms of divine dynamics, social frameworks, clothing, climate, funerary practices etc. If these worlds were to drop a hint, they’d quote U2’s lyrics: We’re one, but we’re not the same.

The majority of the story was methodically planned, but some aspects did emerge serendipitously. I do hope my plantsing has succeeded in getting the whole thing to hang together!

Echoes of the Gods has enough scope for a follow-up. Have you got something planned?

Although Shara’s and Yngvi’s story has ended and a dedicated sequel isn’t on the cards, I do have a nascent idea for a trilogy that could be set on one of the unexplored worlds of Echoes of the Gods. That way, they could make an appearance and continue their adventures alongside the heroes of the new story. That would also be a Punarjanman story, based on reincarnation and rebirth, concepts that fascinate me. 

What do you love best about writing? I've always seen the process as being a delicious 'kopfkino' to borrow from the Germans. 

I think creative writing has revealed a different side to myself, one that I’d never thought I possessed. 

My corporate job in finance and technology entailed near-constant analysis and business writing, which is far less dreary than it sounds. 

Writing fiction, however, has tapped into another part of my mind. It’s rather the opposite of the job. Clarity and concision are prized in the kind of business documents I produced (because the smallest unclear requirement could cause budgets to balloon and executive heads to explode). But fiction benefits from deliberate and well-executed ambiguity, and taking time with characters and situations. It was quite unsettling in the beginning to have to fight my logical, analytical self and need for clarity and my instincts to get to the point. I had to learn to get comfortable with uncertainty. But now, it’s fantastic when I can let my imagination run wild and concoct loosely connected images, scenes and concepts, and only later bring in the planning and organizing side of myself to gradually pull something cohesive out of the fragmented mess. I really need more of those productive episodes! I’m also eager to draw more on the Indian myths and epics in upcoming stories.

Where can people follow you on social media and/or subscribe to your newsletter?

I’m not active on social media, but here are a few places I hang out / lurk. I do hope to become more active online in 2024.

Find Gaia Sol on Goodreads.

Author contact: 

https://www.goodreads.com/gaia_sol 

https://www.gaiasolwrites.com/

https://twitter.com/GaiaSol_writes 

About the author:

Gaia Sol lives with her husband in Toronto, Canada. Her adventures in creative writing began with a 9K-word story in 2013, as a much-needed diversion from her day job in finance and technology.

Over the next three years, she wrote longer and bolder stories that explored her love of myths and legends—from Camelot to Robin Hood to the Holy Land—and even the parallelism of ancient mythologies. That last one eventually became Echoes of the Gods which she published under the pen name "Gaia Sol" to combine the Greek and Norse mythological equivalents of the Sanskrit meanings of her real name and surname (she was very pleased when she came up with it).

She's now researching India's myths, cultural past and heritage to plot her next story. If her muse cooperates, she will publish that novel sometime this decade.

Universal Buy links 

About Echoes of the Gods:

Peace has endured in Yggdrasil since Loki, prophesied nemesis of the gods, was captured. And wardens, like Yngvi, are entrusted with the essential, but mundane, duty of ensuring he stays imprisoned. Seeking other avenues of excitement, fancy-free Yngvi sets his sights on a beautiful young stranger in Midgard. But when Loki breaks free, unleashing his ruin on Asgard, and Yngvi is framed for his release, the usually easygoing young soldier realises how fragile the peace really was.

Shara, the enigmatic stranger, appears to have a perturbing connection to Loki, and to the circumstances of Yngvi’s disgrace. Yngvi confronts Shara and learns that an insidious killer is behind the fall of Asgard, and that Shara alone may hold the key to redemption. Realising that they can help each other, the two men embark on a quest across the stars, onto strange new worlds and into perilous encounters with new gods, monsters…and their own conflicting feelings.

As they close in on their common enemy, Yngvi and Shara must face the frailty of their fledgling bond, and of life itself—because their choices have consequences greater than they ever imagined—as they unravel the shocking past that threatens the future of every world.

Author spotlight: Eugen Bacon

I'm super excited to have Eugen Bacon stop by my blog for a quick chat. Some of you may have heard that her novel Inside the Dreaming is releasing soon. So, here goes!

You have a Tweet length to tell the world about your writing (280 characters) – and go!  

Curious, playful, provocative, poetic, cross-genre, cross-cultural. Text shapes my silence. It shouts my chaos. I feel safe when interrogating complex and unsettling themes. My approach to the compositional space is with a sense of urgency where writing is an active speaking from a place of knowing, or unknowing.

If you think about what has led you to becoming a writer, what are some of the key milestones that stand out?

A love for text from an early age—how and why stories: why the zebra… / how the crocodile… / when the hyena… / what the monkey… 

My father, the values he instilled in me, and a wonder about things beyond comprehension. 

A deep fondness for musicality in text, hence my attraction to Toni Morrison. 

Doing a PhD in writing and discovering literary theorist Roland Barthes, who found pleasure in the text; uncovering features of the ‘rhizome’ that philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaboration with psychoanalyst Felix Guattari produced in A Thousand Plateaus (1987), where the rhizome ‘has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’. I see rhizomes every which way in my text: deviation, plateaus, interconnection. A distortion that is whole. 

Which cultural objects have resulted in massive ‘aha’ moments for you? 

Drums. Folklore. Spirits. Masks. A close affinity with water, nature, language, rhythm.

When I write, I read text out loud—how it sounds, what is sees, the shape of its flow is important. It’s like a ditty in my head, I just know when it feels right. 

In your own work, do you ever indulge in intertextuality?

Yes. There’s a deep connection between texts, hence my crossing genre and writing across forms. Mine is a betwixt kind of writing. Perhaps that’s why I’ve taken naturally to prose poetry—literary vignettes on the everyday, the cousin of a poem and flash fiction, words and imagery enmeshed in art and metaphor. 

I learnt balance from Barthes, for whom text is a multi-dimensional space where things are made and unmade, where language is infinite, and literature deepens or extends language. 

Do you hope your writing sparks change in your readers, and if so, what would you like to see?

I like to think of the author as an agent of change—if not for the world, for themselves. I borrowed an understanding of the power of literature from existentialists like Simone de Beauvoir, who understood how a story and its characters interact with each other—how they are a bridge to inside out: an author or reader’s self-understanding and experience of the world they live in, or are creating. 

Inside the Dreaming is releasing via NewCon Press in December. You have no more than a 100 words to tell someone who's never heard of you or your book before what it's all about and why they should read it.

There are multiple points of intersection in blackness. Inside the Dreaming is an African Australian story, black speculative fiction that’s a murder mystery and an origins tale. Ivory Tembo, the detective assigned to the case, has secrets of her own that make her uniquely qualified to face a killer that’s far more than human. And it’s linked to the death of a man with twin souls, wrath of the gods, a new habitat. This origins story is about finding who you are. It’s a fiction that’s literary and cultural. A speculative tale that is a mystery and a history.

Bio:
Eugen Bacon is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing.  Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted or commended in national and international awards, including the Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Award, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Her creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide, and 2020 sees the release of two prose poetry chapbooks, three collections and a novella—Inside the Dreaming by NewCon Press, UK.

Author Spotlight: Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

Today I'm featuring prolific Nigerian writer Marvel Chukwudi Pephel for a quick Q&A.

ND: How does your environment and local culture inform your writing?

Marvel Chukwudi Pephel: Thanks for having me, Nerine Dorman. To say the least, I have always wanted to connect with you on the basis of your being a wonderful speculative fiction writer. To your question now: Well, it's obvious that one's environment can influence one's writing. But I don't set out to write an environment-influenced or culture-influenced piece. However, their latent influence cannot be denied. Being a Nigerian, I try to let some aspect of my local culture in; but this cannot be forced. At least, I have learnt this from my years of experience. I let my writings decide for themselves if they want to wear the cloak of my environment and it's local culture. Consequently, the effect is that not all my writings reek of my environment and local culture. So, if not for local names, it might be difficult to tell if the piece was written by an African (Nigerian in this case) or if it was written by a Westerner. And I think this is quite reasonable; for one's imagination should not be confined to the quarters of local culture or its environment thereof. So, in a nutshell, my environment and its local culture has no choking determining hands on the neck of my writing. My subconscious determines when my environment and its local culture should inform my writing; and how they do inform my writing when the situation necessitates it is by making me look at stories about my people that need to be told but which have somehow remained untold.

ND: What do you love best about poetry?

MCP: As a writer who started writing poetry first, I must say that (good) poetry is the foundation of wordly beauty. At an early age, I was exposed to various poets and various forms of poetry. There was Gwendolyn Brooks who wowed me with her poem "We Real Cool". There was Pablo Neruda who set my ambition on higher ground. There was Shakespeare who built worlds of impeccable beauty with his poetry. There was also Wole Soyinka who sat on a cliff in my mind and pointed me to the uncharted territories deep beneath the waters of poetry. I am grateful to all the poets that have affected me in one way or the other. Now, what I love best about poetry is the fact that it is an embodiment of compact beauty. Nothing beats the ability to express an idea in few words nor does anything beat the tingling sensation good poetry gives to the brain. Another good thing is that readers and writers of poetry lead happy lives when they choose to avoid their lives growing moss from the vicissitudes of life. Poetry helps in easy articulation, and I wonder if there is anything more satisfying than this on the intellectual scheme of things.

ND: How has your writing changed your life?

MCP: The truth about writing is that it is therapeutic. Well, my writing has changed my life as much as my life has changed my writing over time. Writing has opened my eyes to the many hidden treasures life has to offer, and has taught me that the more you write the more you care about the humanity of people. It has changed my life so much that I can stay calm when things are not going quite well; and don't we writers face a certain kind of uncertainty when we are at work on a project? If we can endure and persevere, sometimes for years, before finishing up a masterpiece then same endurance and perseverance can be applied to our individual lives. I think writing is an art that can only be practiced by the patient. No one in a hurry has ever produced a work worth reading. My life has also changed my writing. The fact is that my life has always revolved around the appreciation of nature and beauty, and this informs my writing to a large extent. And recently, this appreciation has been growing in exponential, epic proportions. Well, I was taking a walk the other day when I passed through a certain shop popular for its advertisement. This shop sells dogs. I love pets, but not dogs. But this particular Chihuahua sat in its kennel staring so cutely as I walked by; so cutely I felt it was tugging at my heartstrings. So palpable a tugging I returned for it the following day. And now, who's writing a short story featuring a chihuahua named Bliss? Me!

ND: Tell us about your speculative fiction; what are some of the themes that you uncover and elaborate on?

MCP: Speculative fiction is like a darling to me. It offers readers the chance to experience new worlds, which is quite important. In fact, my first fiction to be ever published is a speculative fiction titled "Girl, Blue Eyes, Boy". This particular story gave me quite a tough time. The first version was a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, but it got rejected twice. It was my essay into fiction-writing, so I was quite sad and annoyed. But I didn't allow myself to be discouraged. Rather, I locked myself in my room and tried to see what was actually wrong with the story. I tried so hard till I fell asleep. A sleep I am quite indebted to; for every unnecessary bit of the story presented itself when I woke up. I quickly edited out the fantasy with satisfaction and sent out the story to Africanwriter.com. Within a short space of time, I received a response; and it turned out to be my first acceptance for fiction. Since then, I have written many more with themes ranging from space travel to alien attacks to time-travel to cybernetics to love and many more. My spec fic can be found on the African Speculative Fiction Society's database, which collects published works of speculative fiction written by Africans.

ND: If there was one thing your current self could tell your younger self, as a writer, what would that be?

MCP: Well, that would be a succinct advice: "It's normal to be uncertain. It is uncertainty that fans the flames of creativity. The progress might seem slow, but wishes can be horses for whoever has the magic of belief.

Marvel Chukwudi Pephel is a prolific Nigerian writer who writes poems, short stories and other things besides. His works have appeared in various media. His poetry was selected for the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology and the Austrian Haiku Association's Lotosblüte 2018. His short story was shortlisted for the 2019 Sevhage Short Story Prize. His poem titled "Ogene" appears on 10,000 socks printed in Sweden and to be distributed across the world. He is represented by Van Aggelen African Literary Agency. 

Here is a link to his most recent speculative fiction at Kalahari Review.