October 29, 2024 • 63 mins
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to author, comedian, and teacher Alex Jennings about New Orleans, music, the legend of Stagger Lee, the practice of signifying, The Phantom Tollbooth, the X-Men, and much more.
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Unknown (00:01):
If this goes on, don't panic, bringing hope To the
world through speculativefiction.
(00:22):
You Hello
and
welcome to If this goes on,don't panic. Today, we have
(00:45):
author Alex Jennings with us.Kat, how are things going with
you? Things
are going really well. I'mhaving a lovely day. My
girlfriend has come down for afew days or come up from
Atlanta, awesome. And we havethe book launch for rumor has it
on this Tuesday.
(01:05):
Awesome, awesome. I'm reallylooking forward to reading that,
to be honest.
And so how are things with you?Oh boy,
this week has been wild, wild,wild, wild, wild. Oh gosh. I
mean personal stuff, which Iwill talk about, work stuff,
which I'm not going to get into.On top of that, I had my black
(01:26):
belt test this week. Yeah, yep,that was I took the second half
yesterday, and I am sore ashell. Oh
my gosh, I bet. But do you havea black belt? Now,
I don't know yet. I don't knowif I passed, but I think I did.
I think I did pretty good. Idefinitely think that test was
intended for somebody 20 yearsyounger than me. Yeah. So I'm,
(01:52):
like, aching right before thisphone call. I just took a
handful of Advil. I'm like, ohgod. I just can't, barely even
move.
Oh, dude, it doesn't get anybetter.
I know, I know. I'm kind of gladthat I hit my black belt now.
Yeah,
I do want to point out it wouldhave been much more impressive
(02:13):
if you'd done it say at the ageof 70 or 80. That's
true too. That is true.
Absolutely, 100% true. Oh boy.What else is going on? So we're
working on the website, the newwebsite for the podcast. So
that's happening
with our cool new logo that wespent we're so excited to unveil
(02:37):
to the world. I'm
trying to get this website donebefore this logo has been
hanging out for too, too long,yeah, but we're working on it
behind the scenes. When we get amoment, we also have transcripts
going on. So we've got, finallygot, somebody on board to help
us clean up the transcripts thatwe had put together. Yeah,
because they were, I mean, youknow, I had said even called AI,
(03:01):
but transcription services arelike, services, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Like a good startingpoint, but they are usually a
mess.
That's it. No, you've got tohave a human being go over them,
or else they're just incoherent.It's like, auto generated
subtitles, yes,
yes. 100% yes. And then theother Oh, I kind of have a
(03:21):
little bit of a bigannouncement. I don't even know
if this is how official This isyet. I well, I guess I've sent
emails about it. So I'mofficially joining the board of
Parsec, which runs theconfluence con in Pittsburgh,
yeah. Oh,
nice. Yep, yep, yep. I will be aconfluence next year. Yes,
yes, yes. And I will be a memberof the board. So you know,
(03:47):
we will help me.
Well, I look forward to hearingyour adventures in nonprofit
management, because, as youknow, I have many stories and
opinions about Yes,
they will not be on the podcast?Probably
no, that would be a separatepodcast, yes,
but it'll be interesting. ScottKnowles been asking me to be on
(04:09):
for years now, and I keeptelling him no. Finally, after
this last year, I was like,fine, fine. I will join because
there was just not that. Therewas any huge problems or
anything. At confluence, therewere just some things that I was
like, you know, I think it wouldbe better if we did this, and we
it would be better if we didthis. Other thing, you know,
(04:30):
to get you, you form an opinion,and then they're like, Yeah, you
should join the board. You canget your opinions enforced. Yes.
So
hopefully they will be good, oneof which is more COVID
enforcement, because, as anEverest person you know, like it
really annoys me that con thatconferences suck at that. Yeah,
(04:50):
so, yeah. Anyway, we shouldprobably get to our guest.
Should absolutely get to ourguests, because I am so excited
about our. Asked. And as youknow, I came and I was like, we
have to interview him, because Ilove this book so much. So yes,
let's please start Yes,
absolutely, absolutely, okay. Sowe will be right back with our
guest, Alex Jennings. Okay, andwe are back. Alex Jennings is a
(05:17):
comedian well, and I will beasking about that for sure,
educator and award winningauthor whose writing has
appeared in current affairsmagazine, pseudopod and new sons
volumes one and two. He is aninstructor of popular fiction at
stone coast MFA program, as wellas a columnist for The Magazine
(05:37):
of Fantasy and Science Fiction.His debut novel, The Ballad of
perilous graves, was released byorbit slash Red Book in 2022 we
will definitely be talking aboutthat some his fiction and poetry
have been shortlisted fornumerous awards, including the
Ernest J Gaines award, the RayBradbury prize for speculative
(05:58):
fiction, the Locus Award forbest debut novel and the World
Fantasy Award. He is the winnerof the 2023 Compton crook prize
from the Baltimore sciencefiction society. He lives and
works in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.As of this publication, he has
lost 135 pounds and counting.Find out more at www dot. Alex
(06:20):
jennings.net
welcome, Alex. Hey, thanks forhaving me. Absolutely,
absolutely Kat. So, as Kat kindof mentioned already, you know,
I ask every now and then, youknow, we I drop in on Kat and
Diane or other co hosts, like,hey, is there anyone that you
guys are interested in? Andshe's like, we have to get this
guy. Alex Jennings on this bookis amazing. Well, it
(06:42):
is. I appreciate that so much.It really is. And,
yeah, I can I just start askingquestions Alan, because doing
absolutely, I mean,
well, I mean, I,
I love this book because it'ssuch a big, sprawling city book,
and you have multiplecharacters, and you have kind of
(07:06):
plot lines running in parallel.And it, I think one reviewer
mentioned that the reader has totrust you to kind of get kind of
that you will deliver sense,which you do in this kind of,
like amazing, wonderful way, andI love that. But I also know, as
a writer myself, sometimes it'shard to keep track of that
(07:27):
stuff, and so I'm just curiouswhen you were writing, kind of
like, how did you keep How didyou make things? How did you
keep things straight? Uh,
I would keep notes of like whocharacters were and what their
relationships were to eachother. And then I don't know,
(07:49):
like I just, I just tried tokeep track while editing. And
then my editor at orbit for thisbook, Nivea Evans was really
helpful, like helping me keeptrack of things and make sure
that things connect in the waythat they need to good
(08:09):
editor is just such a fabulousaddition to any book, I think,
right. Oh, absolutely youmentioned in the not the
preface, the afterward, butyou're talking about how. Let me
find the line. It's about yourfather who got you, who kind of,
what is it? There's somethingabout he inspired you to write
(08:32):
the blackest fantasy without,kind of, like actually
instructing you to do it. Hereit is, tasked me to write the
blackest fantasy I couldconcoct. And I think that is so
lovely. Can you talk a littlebit about that? Oh, yeah.
Well, my dad used to readfantasy novels to me and my
little brother when we werelittle. And, you know, he read
(08:52):
The Hobbit and The Lord of theRings to us, and especially the
Lord of the Rings has a lot oflike, black is evil language in
it. And you know, he put thebook down one night and said, I
wish there was a fantasy likethis, where everyone was black
(09:14):
and the darkest one, theblackest skin, is the hero. And
yeah, that really stayed with meall my life. When I started
working on this book, not onlydid I find myself working toward
that, but without realizing it,I dropped a fictionalized
version of my father at that ageand as the protagonist, Perry
(09:39):
graves. And it's kind of my loveletter to both my family and
adopted city that I love. Sothat's
fabulous. And that really comesthrough, really comes through.
And
music, I would say, too, becausewe're so much about music in
here. Oh, absolutely, when Ithink one
(09:59):
of the. Fun things about it is,when I was kind of researching
for the call, I ran across theSpotify playlist that you did to
go with the book. Oh, yeah, I'mlike, Yeah, that must have been
a lot of fun to put together. It
really was. I listened to a lotof music while I write and while
I was writing this book, I waslistening to a lot of New
(10:21):
Orleans music. And it really, itreally helped. And originally,
all of the songs in the bookwere actual songs by New Orleans
musicians. And, you know, afterI sold it, my editor was like,
you know, you know, you can't dothat, right? You're gonna have
(10:41):
to redo all the songs. And so Idid, and I seems to have worked
out pretty well,
yeah, but irritating that youhad to do that. I mean, I guess,
like it was, it was a reallyinteresting question as to
whether I could capture theproper feel for the songs that I
(11:02):
love so much, then animate thecity, and, you know, give a
sense of the rhythm and themelody on the page. And it seems
to have worked for people. And Iwas really happy to have the
chance to do that. Awesome.
Actually, I have a questionalong those lines, if you don't
mind me asking, and if you don'twant to do this, we can strike
(11:22):
this. But, um, first of all, thesongs, which are also
characters, had some reallyawesome names and some really
awesome personalities. Forexample, you had one named
Stagger Lee in there. Yeah, Iwas wondering if you could
describe what some of thecharacters sound like as songs.
Okay, so Stagger Lee is a verypopular character of black
(11:46):
folklore. He was a real personwho committed a murder at the
turn of the 20th century in EastSt Louis, and so he's he's kind
of entered into black culture asthe subject of toasts songs, you
know, like he's there a lot ofmurder ballads about him, and he
(12:08):
just keeps popping up andpopping up and actually Stagger
Lee is one of the few charactersthat I actually have an exact
voice for that's like, kind ofdifferent from my own. And so
let me see. Let me see if I cando this on the phone. I haven't
tried it in a long time, but Ido it when I read the book Alan,
(12:31):
fabulous. So sadly, it kind ofsounds like this. Well, it's
fabulous. I have to hold mythroat in a very specific way
to, like, get that exactresonance. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's
got to be amazing when you'rereading. But,
yeah, check out the, check outthe versions of stagger Lee's
(12:52):
song. Dr John has a great one,and there have just been so many
over the years. Hey, I'm writingthis
down just, just, so, you know,so I don't forget. So you would
say he's kind of like a folksong. Then kind of like a, yeah,
he's like, he's a blues song.There are a lot of jazz versions
of the song as well, and thereare some slightly more
(13:13):
countryside ones. And there areour little bits and pieces of
his myth that appear in sometoasts and not others. And, you
know, like it fits in perfectlyto New Orleans music, because so
many New Orleans musicians havedone versions of that song, and
there are myths surrounding NewOrleans musicians as well. So he
(13:35):
really fit right in.
Oh, that's that's sointeresting. This is maybe
somewhat of a non sequitur here.But as a musician, you know,
it's interesting to see whatsongs pop up over and over again
in like, what parts get takenfrom some songs then mixed into
others. Just very fascinating,right?
I'm fascinated by the feature ofblack storytelling known as
(13:59):
signifying, because it's it'spart of storytelling, but also
part of jazz, especiallytraditional New Orleans jazz,
where you take bits and piecesof things and then elaborate on
them, put them in a new contextand make them your own. And you
(14:21):
know, I really wanted this storyto be informed by that. You
know, I read the signifyingmonkey by Henry Louis Gates,
which is a fantastic book aboutstorytelling in the African
diaspora, and it just reallycaptured my imagination, and,
like, defined some things that Ihad noticed about stories told
(14:45):
like in my family, in mycommunity, and it was, it was
extremely helpful for thewedding of this book. Yeah,
so interesting. I was justlistening to a podcast this
morning about Little Richard andapparently, and I can't.
Remember the names of either ofthe songs, but Led Zeppelin,
their drummer, took the drumintro from one of Little Richard
(15:07):
songs and put it into one of theLed Zeppelin songs, because he
was a huge fan of littleRichard's drummer, so he wanted
to, like, have, like, a little,you know, like, call out to him
in one of the songs. And it'slike, of course, it's like a
super famous song from bothmusicians. You know,
I love that kind of stuff. I'mlike, I'm, I'm an obsessive
music nerd myself. So I'll, I'llgo looking for little samples
(15:32):
and bits of songs to find wherethey were lifted from. And like,
now, with the way the internethas grown and changed, that's a
lot easier than it used to be,but I remember, like, hunting
for the source of the sample tothis song, the 900 number that
came out, like, I think, in the80s or 90s, and like, it took me
(15:55):
forever to find out that'sactually from a song by one of
James Brown's proteges calledunwind yourself. And it's like
the first three seconds or so ofthe song, and somebody stretched
it out to an entire track. Andit's just like, I love it. I
love it so much. I love huntingthings. Oh,
(16:18):
James Brown has been borrowed solike, geez, any, any 90s hip hop
song, like, all of Wu Tang, Ithink is James, oh, a lot. Yeah,
yeah. That's so cool. That'scool. I think writers tend to do
that a lot too, you know, youknow, like, Who do you borrow
from? Who were some of yourinfluences?
Oh, so many. I mean, at itsheart, like, my book is
(16:42):
blaxploitation PippiLongstocking adventure, you
know, so like taking thatcharacter and recontextualizing
her for Central City, NewOrleans, in a fantastical
version that's post Katrina,that was kind of where the story
began. And I grabbed little bitsand pieces from all over,
(17:06):
especially from like, musichistory. Like, a lot of the time
when I was writing this book, Iwas studying New Orleans music,
like both in college, and then Iworked with the New Orleans jazz
orchestra as their copyconsultant for a while. And so
just seeing that's cool, yeah. Imean, it was a, it was a really
(17:27):
fascinating time. And, like,there's just so much information
out there. Like, Little Richardwas here for a long time. He
would, he would come back to NewOrleans a lot after he blew up
as well. And he was good friendswith, like, one of our sainted
figures of New Orleans music,James Booker, and they used to
(17:48):
have a great time together, likeriding a pink Cadillac up and
down Canal Street and likeyelling at people on the street.
And I love little stories likethat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.You have traveled a great deal,
and I believe you were born inGermany and have wandered around
(18:09):
a good bit, and you mentionedNew Orleans as your adopted
home. Can you talk a little bitabout what it is that draws to
you at New Orleans, because itseems like such a fabulous city
to be writing and settingspeculative fiction in. I
mean, it really is. I My fatherwas a diplomat. Like in the 60s,
(18:31):
the State Department had thisbig farm program to get more
black Foreign Service agents todo diplomatic relations with the
countries in Africa that weregetting their independence. And
so he got into the ForeignService in like 67 and stayed in
until 2001 so I was born inGermany, grew up in Botswana,
(18:55):
Surinam, Tunisia, the UnitedStates. And you know, I came
down to New Orleans on a whim in2003 with my late brother, and
it just really reminded me a lotof paramerivo Surinam. There's
like a very Caribbean feel toit, something very sort of old
(19:16):
world about it, like it says,it's as weird and almost out of
place, as French Guiana is inSouth America. And it just, it
really spoke to me. So wedecided to move down here. And,
you know, we, we came in thesummer of 2006 like, almost a
(19:38):
year after Hurricane Katrina,and the city was really hurting
then, yeah, but I felt acceptedby it, and it's, it's the first
place I've been able to put downwhat feel like real roots before
night, you know? But before Ilived in New Orleans, home was
(19:59):
wherever my family. Was. And youknow, most of my family are in
the DC, Baltimore area, but NewOrleans became my home. And you
know, even though I moved toBaton Rouge in January, it still
very much feels like home. Andmy partner and I are here almost
every weekend, because we stilldo stand up in the city and so
(20:21):
many of our friends are here,and the culture, it's just, it's
just really hard to pullyourself away from. And we love
it so much. Nice.
You mentioned that you do standup. And the defining mood of
this novel, to me is really kindof joyful. I mean, there are
scary parts to it, you know? Imean, the main bad guy is pretty
(20:43):
scary, right? There's, like,zombies walking around and
stuff, right? There's definitelyelements of horror and stuff in
here. But ultimately, I thinkit's a very, like, a very joyful
book. Why was it important toyou? And I guess this is
assuming that you did itintentionally. Why was it
important for you to includethat as the primary mood? Well,
(21:09):
I wanted it to mirror blacknesswrit large. Like there are,
there are a lot of difficultiessurrounding being black, there's
a lot of oppression, there's alot of heartache, but there's
also this alchemical processthat, like, turns that pain into
(21:36):
joy, or at least runs a vein ofjoy alongside it. And so like,
while my life has been difficultbecause of my background, it's
also been very joyful, like justthe the camaraderie, the sense
of community, the focus on ourfamily, the the joy of
(21:56):
rediscovering our history andcreating culture of making
something out of nothing isextremely, extremely important
to me. And if I'm, if I'mwriting a book about the city
dearest to me and the peopledearest to me, then that has to
be the overwhelming mood. That'slovely,
(22:17):
lovely.
I have a question, which is inthis, this kind of coming from
the publishing angle, you havechild characters, right? You
have Perry and brand brandy asas half of the kind of carrying,
I think, a huge amount of thebook. How did you avoid getting
this book billed as ya?
Well, it was not easy to keep itaway from that. But when I when
(22:43):
I first spoke to Nidia at orbit,she understood the book as an
adult story and wanted to frameit as an adult fantasy. So he
suggested adding in more adultPOVs, and actually, Casey had a
(23:05):
much, much smaller role in theirearly drafts and the version
that I sold, and she told me tobeef it up and actually grow the
book As a whole into a kind oflarger standalone story that
would serve as sort of a micdrop, you know, like, I do have
(23:27):
more stories to write in thatworld and possibly with those
characters even, but I wanted tomake sure that if I was, you
know, hit by a bus before Icould do something else, that
this book left it all on Thetable.
Yeah, I picked up on that, too.Kat, I I almost felt like there
were two completely differentbooks here melded together. When
(23:50):
you're reading the chapters withPercival and brandy, right?
Especially at the beginning,it's like, it's very
imaginative, very like fun, youknow, all this weird stuff
happening, right? Very magical,right, very fantastic. And then,
and then you get to Casey'schapters, and they start, they
(24:12):
start a lot more grounded,right? And a lot more serious.
Blood character.
I mean, a lot the mood is moresomber. Yeah, right.
It was very interesting how yougradually pull them together.
And something I noticed, and Idon't know if you do this on
purpose, is the um, the firstchapter where you have Casey in
(24:36):
in with Percival and peaches andbrandy, is the first time. Is
the first chapter where peacheshas, like, ever been hurt,
right? Yeah. Couldn't help butnotice that. And I was like, oh,
so like, I guess where I'm goingwith this is it was really an
interesting structure in thatway they keep flipping back and
forth. When I started readingwith the kids, point of view, I
(24:57):
was like, Oh, I could just givethis to my my son. To read, you
know what? I mean, like, thiswould just be totally in line
with everything they're reading.And then it flipped over, and
that was interesting. And thenit was very interesting how you
started bringing it together,and how that affected the
characters and even the world,you know, right?
I mean, one of the things Iwanted to do with this book was
write a fantasy novel for thekid I was when I was 10 or 11,
(25:22):
and like, you know, at thattime, I was reading things aimed
way above my head. I was readinga lot of Stephen King. I was
reading stuff and, you know, Ialso, one of the things I loved
about the children's literaturethat I read as a boy was a sense
of danger, like a sense that ofbad things possibly happening,
(25:47):
and the fact that triumphing oraverting disaster was something
with real states, you know. So Iknew I wanted to have that edge
in there. And as for Casey,meeting with the kids for the
(26:09):
first time after peaches ishurt. It wasn't entirely
conscious, but I know that thetimes in my life when I've
experienced like a lot of painor a lot of trauma, what allowed
me to heal and what allowed meto continue on was the
camaraderie with the peoplearound me, both bio family and
(26:34):
chosen family, and how we'reable to lift each other up and
have each other's backs whenThings go wrong. So it was very
important to me to have thatsensibility in here too. So
I also love Pippy long stocking,and when I found this
transfigured version of her inthe book, I loved it so much.
(26:55):
But why Pippi long stocking?Alex?
Uh, for a couple of reasons. Forone thing, when I moved to New
Orleans, there were a lot ofstories in the news and on
social media about kids who wereforced to return to the city
without their parents and sortof take care of themselves and
(27:15):
fend for themselves while theywaited for their parents to be
able to come be with them. Andthe first thing that made me
think of was Pippy longstocking, like living in that
house by herself, with all thoseanimals, dads out sailing the
seven seas. And so that had methinking, what if Pippi
(27:38):
Longstocking was a little redbone girl living in Central
City, New Orleans, and the restof the story grew out of that.
That's so fabulous. Yeah,
she's such an interestingcharacter. It's also very clear
that you like comic books.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Tell us about your comic bookInfluence and then tell us who
(27:59):
your favorite characters are,oh,
geez, okay.
I I first became enamored ofcomics when I was, like, three
years old. My older brother, HT,would just tell me about stories
and things that happened in thein the Marvel and DC comics that
(28:20):
he read, you know? And my oldersister taught me to read when I
was four, and the first thing Idid was pick up the copy of
Uncanny X Men, the issue whereMadeline, prior first uses her
telekinesis to hold back. ScottSummers, I beams, and he asked,
(28:42):
you know, all this time, he'ssuspected that she's somehow his
dead wife, well, his deadgirlfriend. And, you know, at
four years old, I'm readingthis, I'm like, Look, I don't
understand any of this, butwhatever is happening, like, I
dig the emotion. It's, it'sreally cool. And I just want to,
(29:03):
yeah, this for like, forever. Sothe X men have always been super
important to me. And in fact,like, I'm really big on Afro
futurism, and I feel like theera of the X Men that just
ended, where they were allliving on the island of Krakow,
and they had done away with thethe heroes versus villains
(29:27):
mentality, just trying to, like,survive and and carve out a
world for themselves, with thehuman race always gunning for
them like that. That reallyresonates with me, and there's
just so many great stories here.I'm also super in love with
(29:47):
Miles, Morales, the other SpiderMan. Love character, love
everything that he can even playthe video game. I love that. I'm
also a huge fan of Jakeemthunder in the DC universe, who
(30:07):
has his, you know, genie insidea magic pin, and his his magic
word when he hits the plunger tosummon the genie. Is so cool. I
really love that. And like, infact, I allude to that in the
book a couple times. I've alwayswanted to write a Jakeem thunder
(30:29):
Maxi series, like 12 issueslong, and see if I can elevate
him to the a list of the of theDC heroes. Yeah. Like those.
Those are, those are my veryfavorites. But I also love Black
Panther. Oh, there was a comic Awhile back, I think, written by
(30:49):
Dwayne McDuffie called the crewthat was like the white Panther
war machine. I think Josiah Xand like a few, like a bunch of
black characters operating inthe Marvel Universe trying to
(31:11):
solve street level issues. Ilove that so much.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I lovethe fact that we are in an age
now where superhero movies havejust amazing special effects and
can, right, often live up tosort of the glory of reading it
when you're a kid, right? Andit's just like, everything is so
(31:32):
freaking cool.
Yeah, yeah, that like seeingthat first Avengers movie like I
had waited so long for that.Yeah. I just loved it so much
to have, I presume. Have youdone any comic writing? Because
you, I would think that would bea great I mean, it sounds like
you would be a good fit for it.
I've done, I've done a littlebit of comic scripting, of,
(31:54):
like, my own projects. I haven'tdone any stuff for, like, the
big two or anything yet. Thecomic project that I have is not
out yet, but I think it's goingto be a lot of fun. Oh, cool.
And I would love to, I wouldlove to do more of that. I
really enjoy it. I've done alittle podcast scripting.
There's kind of a secretproject. It's going to be out
(32:16):
next year. I think that, I hopepeople will really dig. Oh, one,
I got to do something with oneof my, like, favorite
franchises.
Oh, cool. I'm guessing that youcan't talk about it yet. I
mean, I think I could talk aboutit. It's a like, my thing was
always that I love Aquaman and Ilove the Submariner. But and
(32:42):
their world, and, like, theirwhole deal didn't really make
sense, yep. And so I find myselfthinking like, okay, so they're
from Atlantis, but the historyof Atlantis and like the way the
story originated from likeSocrates and Plato, didn't
(33:06):
really make sense, because itdescribes Atlantis as being like
a full fledged, like Greekstyle, city State almost 11 and
a half 1000 years ago, whenthey're like, that just didn't
exist. So I came up with theidea that, like, oh, maybe time
(33:30):
is broken somehow. And there wasa world where there was an
Atlantis back then, butsomething terrible happened to
make that not true anymore inOWL, right? And so, like, I also
put a huge Afro futurist spin onit. So instead of Atlantis,
(33:50):
it's, it's the undersea kingdomfrom The Ballad of perilous
graves grand lado. And you know,it also involves, like, an elder
god and eating time. And I thinkit'll be a lot of fun. Oh, that
sounds fabulous.
(34:11):
I mean, you know, Elder God, yougot me there for sure. Yeah,
I haven't, I haven't seen a lotof Afro futurism meets elder
gods in in Donald's, yeah, yeah.
That sounds interesting. Thatsounds really interesting. Cat.
I know some of your yourfavorite characters are x men
(34:31):
too, correct.
I love, I love the X Men. IYeah. I think I started reading
just when, like, uh, ChrisClaremont was starting to write
them, and it was the ClaremontJohn Byrne team up, and the
artwork was very beautiful. Butthere was also the Phoenix
storyline was one that I alwaysspoke to me thought was amazing.
(34:54):
Yeah, that was so good. That wasso good. Yeah, maybe one day
we'll get to see it adaptingproperly.
Thought, Oh, that would be socool. God yes, it really would.
Lips to God's ears, as we say,right?
So I'm fine. I'm finallycatching up and reading the fall
(35:16):
of x. I do kind of wish theKrakow era had gone on forever,
but I've got to get caught upand see where everything lies,
especially now that Gail Simoneis writing and yeah, like,
that's very important to me,because I love Gail Simone's
work, yeah,
yeah, no, she's done someamazing work, and I think it's
going to be looking like whatthe first issue has come out of
(35:39):
hers, right?
The first two issues are out. SoI bought that, and I bought the
collection of fall of X and riseand powers of x. You know, when
I was back east this last week.And so I'm about halfway through
reading that, and it's not, it'sit's doing it for me. Yeah,
(36:03):
yeah,
I'm gonna have to make a trip tothe comic book store, I can
tell. Yeah. Well,
two questions for you. Numberone, we'll just start with this
one, because this is going to bethe more controversial question,
how do you feel about the Marvelmovies now, like, do you like
the trajectory? You know, whichone's your favorites? You know,
(36:28):
give us your opinions. I knowyou have them. Being a comics
fan, there's
still, there's still a lot tolike there. I like what they've
done with most of thecharacters. I feel like the
formula that they were goingwith for a long time is not
working as well anymore, and sothey've kind of got to establish
a different direction. And like,they had a lot of issues that
(36:50):
were beyond their control, likeputting so many resources behind
like the rise of Kang and that,like the whole job, major
situation and all of that. ButI'm really hoping that they can
figure out a way to freshenthings up and reinvent
themselves. I mean, I likedDeadpool like I liked that, but
(37:17):
you know, a lot of the othermovies right now aren't really
doing it for me, and so I wantto see more weird, oddball
stuff, like, I want to send morestuff like the werewolf by night
special. Yeah, let's some ofthose awesome. Yeah. I mean, it
was so good, and we just haven'theard anything about it since,
no, right? And I'm, I'm stillwatching a lot of what they put
(37:39):
out, yeah, but I'm I'm notwatching it as closely as I had
been before, and like, my firstlove is, is and will always be,
the comics, like, that's what Icare about. Yeah, yeah.
Second question for you is, haveyou ever met zigzag Claiborne?
I have not met him yet. Like,we've corresponded a little bit,
(38:03):
and I want to work with him assoon as possible. Like, I love
his positivity. Yeah, I love thestuff that he's always saying on
social media, and that's beforeyou even get to his brilliant
writing and editing. But no, Ihaven't met him yet.
We're talking about this beforewe started, before you were even
on you're your work actuallyreminds me a lot of what was the
(38:26):
name of his brothers? Ofbrothers up?
Yeah, yeah. I've heard that, andI love the comparison. I
appreciate that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Youreally went all in this question
I had for you. Zig is prettymuch a regular on the podcast.
We have mine all the time. Wewere talking to him about the
(38:49):
about the brothers jet stream,and he had mentioned that it was
kind of his everything but thesink book, right? Where he just,
like, threw everything in there,right? I really feel like your
book was like that in a lot
of ways. Oh, it was,
as Ed already mentioned, thereare definitely horror elements,
right? You've got superheroelements. We've got, like Matt,
just straight up magichappening, right? Yep, you know,
(39:12):
why did you decide to just throweverything in there? And then
also, because I know this couldbe a problem in publishing. I
mean, zig even told us that wasone of the problems that he had
with the brothers jet streamsbooks. People were saying there
was too much in there, you know,how did you approach that when
you were shopping the bookaround? Well,
that's a good question. I i didpresent it as, first and
(39:39):
foremost, a contemporaryfantasy, because that's what
mattered to me most. But it wasalso, it was also sort of
modeled off of things like thethe major comic universes, like
they have so much going on. Likethey they skip genre to genre
very easily and quickly. You.Got space opera elements. You've
(40:03):
got more traditional fantasy,you've got sort of science
fiction. You've got contemporaryfantasy. So I wanted to create a
world where there was a sensethat anything could happen. And
I wanted to include all of thethings that gave me gee whiz
moments of wonder as a kid, andthat's, you know, that's robots,
(40:27):
that's flying saucers, that'sHidden Kingdoms, like all, all
of that stuff. And then I justwanted to make it a love letter
to everything that fired myimagination.
Yeah. Zig is also a huge comicbook fan, just so you know, and
he is the exact same opinion onthe the Phoenix comic or the
(40:51):
Phoenix movie. Yeah. Do youremember that conversation? Yes,
I just, I feel every reasonablefan,
I've never come across anybodywho is happy with it honestly,
yeah, yeah, that's
what any reasonable fan, it'strue. I am a reasonable there
have
to be people out there who thatwas their very first exposure to
(41:16):
any of those concepts. And now,like, I bet, there are people
out there who have imprinted onit, and then, like, in 20 years,
they're going to be talkingabout how great it was. Oh,
yeah.
Oh, I bet. I bet naming theiryou can find any weird thing.
What you saying? I said namingtheir child gene. Yeah. Shout
out for the fact that theparents of the kids are so
(41:40):
involved in their lives, asopposed to a lot of times when
we have kind of, like fantasychildren, and they're just sort
of latch key kids, or theparents, or was it Lemony
Snicket has kidnapped them, orwhatever?
So it was, was that a deliberatechoice?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean,like, I grew up largely in the
(42:02):
80s, so in some sense, I was alatch key kid, but my parents
were all also always veryclosely involved in my life as
well. And you know, since thisis since this is a story that's
kind of a tribute to my family,like I had to include the
parents as well, for sure. Ithink that's
really lovely. And it's one ofthe, I mean, one of the things I
(42:24):
like about this book is it justgot so many things that are
interesting and unusual, andkind of you look at it from
different angles, and it just,it has something new to show
you. I mean, I don't, I don'tteach at the college level, but
this book makes me wish that it,I did so I could assign it and
make a bunch of students read itand talk about that
is really sweet. Thank you. So,yeah, yes, I could
(42:47):
100% see that, that it wouldmake a
hell of a good like, a lot of alot of classes have been using
it, and I always appreciate thatgood. It's, uh, yeah. Like, the
idea behind it was that, like,like, sure, I would have loved
for it to have been a giant bestseller or whatever. But more
(43:09):
than anything, I wanted toinclude enough in it that it can
be looked at in a lot ofdifferent ways, so that years
down the line, like people wouldstill be discovering it and
buying it and getting into theworld, because those were the
books that I loved best.
Have you thought about doing agraphic novel adaptation of it?
(43:31):
I have orbit
has the graphic rights. I alwaysfantasized about Kyle Baker, oh,
doing a calming adaptation.Because I just, I love his work
so much, like both his, both hisMarvel and DC stuff and his
indie stuff that was so, sogood. So, yeah, that would be,
(43:55):
Oh,
that would be amazing. Thatwould be amazing. Well, tell
orbit to get on the stick. Sellthe right.
We all know publishers payattention
when authors call up and demandthings So absolutely, what is a
question that nobody has askedthat you wish people had asked
about the book? Oh, wow.
(44:16):
Um,
I thought people might ask me,which of the fantastical
elements like come directly frommy life and which were
completely made up whole cloth?Because there, there is some
stuff for my actual life.There's a there's a character
(44:38):
who has a habit of speaking tothe dead and like, that's
definitely something in myfamily. Oh, interesting. Okay,
it's, it's Casey's mom and I, Ihave the same attitude towards
it that Casey does like I I knowmy mom is not like, lying, and
she's not nuts or anything.However, I don't go. All the way
(45:01):
and like, think of myself assomeone who believes in ghosts,
you know, yeah, stuff like that.Somebody asked me a question I
had never expected the otherday. He asked me if the preacher
(45:21):
that appears toward the very endof the book, might be Milo from
the Phantom Toll Booth all grownup. Oh, I really, I really
appreciated being asked likethat. I asked about that because
that is the only, that's theonly person who's ever
(45:42):
approached you.
So is it? Is Milo? Ah,
yeah. I guess I'll, I guess I'lladmit that. Like, yeah, the idea
is that is my we're all grownup, and he's, he's been on a lot
of further adventures that havechanged him a lot. And maybe,
maybe he's not the best guy atthis point.
Yeah, yeah, I could see that,you know, the road ages you and,
(46:06):
well, that's awesome. It'scanon.
Now it's canon. That's it.
I was debating on whether to sayanything about that publicly,
but I
found it very interesting thatyou mentioned Phantom Toll
Booth. So much in here. I justhappened to be reading that book
to one of my sons, and I'd neverread it before. We're not very
far in. We're only like two orthree chapters in. But you know,
(46:30):
what was your relationship withthat novel in particular? I
mean, I really loved it as akid, both the book and the film
out of tension, and it was, itwas one of the few books written
specifically for children that Ireally got into after I was
saying eat. And it's just it'skind of stayed with me over the
years. I've thought about itoften, and I really, really,
(46:54):
really love it and willing to,yeah, you know, place that love
and Perry, that's awesome.
I mean, I think that's awesome.One of the nice things about
being a writer is being able topay homage to all the sort of
influences that have touched youin the books that you really
loved. And I think then thatlove shows in the book that you
(47:16):
are writing as well. That was
what I was hoping for. Yeah.
Yeah. For me, that was just verysurprising to be, oh my god. I
just happened to be reading thisbook right off my kid. But it's
happening here. It's one ofthose weird, what do they call
that? You know, strangesynchronicity, synchronicity,
that's it. Yeah, exactly. That'sit, yeah, oh man,
(47:38):
yeah. That's one of my that'sone of my favorite things about
storytelling period is those,those synchronicities, like that
moment when you see an unusualword for the first time, and
then you start noticing iteverywhere, like that. That's
the stuff I love the best.
(47:58):
Yeah, that's what I think isgonna happen with Stagger Lee,
now I'm gonna start being like,oh my god, there's dagger. Lee,
oh my God. Because I'm a hugemusic nerd too, and I had never,
I'm obviously in a verydifferent direction. If I have
not heard of Stagger Lee, right,so it'll be interesting to see
where his name, oh yeah, he'saround.
He's definitely around. Uh, JohnHorner Jacobs wrote a horror
(48:24):
novella involving Stagger Leesome years ago called, I think
that one was called a lush andseething hell. I know it was
packaged along with anothernovella, but it is really
fantastic. I love that guy'swork.
Where is it? Great. He is sogood. Yeah, that
was a pretty popular one. Iremember hearing about that
(48:44):
quite a bit. Actually, I thinkthat was during my new horror
phase. Okay, well, we aregetting towards the end, so we
should start wrapping this up.So what is bringing you hope
right now? Alex, a
lot of things being able to makeprogress with my health in a way
that I never have before, likebeing in my 40s, like it's not
(49:08):
so much the weight loss, it'sthe it's the other things that
go along with it that are thepoint for me. You know, music,
music brings me a lot of hope,the way, the way stories play
out in our world, I have a lotof hope, like hope from family.
(49:29):
My dog, karate Valentino givesme a lot of help. And then my
partner in catchy chibuiza. Andjust like being able to laugh,
like as as a comic, like one ofthe most important things we do
is laugh together, and, yeah,most those are things giving me
help right now.
(49:50):
Okay, this is off the beatenpath, but I gotta ask you, like,
what, when did you decide to bea comic? It just seems like so
hard, like I can't. Ah, man, Iam. Yeah, that is the opposite
of my personality, you know,like, I could never stand up
there by myself and do that.Like, I've played in bands, I
could do it with a group ofpeople, but I could never stand
up there and, like, I don'tknow, it's just, it's very
(50:13):
brave. Well,
I mean, I've kind of always beeninto stand up and I think I've
always been a bit of a performeron some level. But in like,
toward the end of 2012 or 2013 Igot called up on stage at an
improv show. And, you know, Igot laughs doing that, and I
(50:36):
really liked that. And so therewas an open mic at the same
theater a little bit later, andI went up and told like, two and
a half jokes, but I got laughs.And that's Narcotizing man like
that, that feeling of gettingthose laughs from a room full of
strangers. And so I just keptdoing it. I took time off in
(51:00):
2017 to, like, get back to thenovel and finish it up. But you
know, since my partner and Ihave been together, I've been
getting back into it more, and,like, now I'm co producing a
show in Baton Rouge, and we'restill not going up quite
regularly, but I am going up andI am writing, and it's there's
(51:23):
nothing else like it like, forone thing, there is so much
waiting involved in publishing.But stand up is about instant
gratification. Setup, punchline,yeah, tag, you get the laughs,
right? Then you get all yourcookies. You keep them, and it
is magical in a similar way tostory in that like I have had my
(51:50):
back go out before I've gottenon stage and been in tremendous
pain, and then by the end of myset, in like 510, 15 minutes,
it's gone, all gone. And that's,that's really, that's really
important to me. I do
think there is a lot ofstorytelling involved in in
(52:10):
stand up too, you know,obviously shorter stories, or
maybe we'd say flash if it waswritten down or something, you
know what I mean. But, uh,right, yeah, there's definitely,
because that hook at thebeginning is usually some kind
of story about your life orsomebody you know, right? And
then you kind of build up tothat joke,
yeah. And also, like, I talkabout this a lot in my teaching
(52:31):
work, but like, the manipulationof beats and like getting a
specific response out of anaudience without being
completely direct about it, thatthat fascinates me, that's
always fascinated me. So that'sone of the things that's drawn
you to comedy. The next bookthat I'm working on is set in a
(52:53):
version of the New Orleanscomedy scene.
Ooh, exciting. That's
how is this in the is this inthe Percival Graves or the
perilous graves universe orseparate? I
would say that it is contiguous,but they're not in the same
world. But has anyone from thisworld or that world crossed over
(53:15):
into the other like, Yeah, I'dsay so. So while
we're talking about it, whatelse? What else? What other
projects do you have coming upthat you want to tell everyone
about?
Well, I just had a I had a storycome out in bourbon pin in July
that I'm very proud of, thatpeople seem to still be
discovering bourbon pin 33 thestory is called fat kids. And
(53:37):
then I believe my column is outin the new issue of f and NSF.
It's a speculative Poetry Reviewcolumn, because I'm also a poet
and I I love awesome reading,thinking and writing about
poetry. I also have a reviewcoming out in the future issue
(54:03):
of Uncanny Magazine. But I'm notsure which issue exactly, and
those are the most pressingthings other than the novel. I'm
worried.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Andwhere can everyone find you?
Online? You can findme@alexittings.net
on Twitter. That's the one thingI'm willing to dead name under
(54:28):
magic Negro, M, A, G, I, C, K,and I'm on Instagram under the
same name as well. And I'm onblue sky social at Alex van der
dot Guinea and yeah, that'swhere I am.
Excellent, awesome, awesome.Well, pleasure having you on so
glad to get to talk to you.Finally,
(54:50):
absolutely. Thank you so much.That was amazing. Thank you.
Okay, that was our interviewwith Alex Jennings before we.
Continue on. Don't forget toshare a podcast on your socials,
whatever those may be, there's areason why cats laughing, but we
(55:10):
are not going to reveal that.Also, don't forget you could
rate and review us. That wouldbe great. Haven't checked those
recently. I really need to goout there and see if there's any
more good reviews. But we've gotgetting a bunch out there, so
we, you know, we could alwaysuse more, though. Well, and if
you've been wondering, go ahead,I was gonna
say, if people enjoyed thisepisode, we have literally
(55:32):
dozens and dozens more with someamazing writers, including the
writer zig zag Claiborne, whoyou heard us mention multiple
times.
Oh gosh, we've got at least twowith zigzag, maybe three. Can't
remember, but yeah, we had somereally awesome guests on. We had
Tanana Reeve do last month. Oh,good. She was phenomenal. I
(55:57):
mean, we've had we've had Marthawells on, we've had Corey
Doctorow on, yeah? Who else havewe had? We've had some good
ones.
We we get the good people,right?
Yeah, yeah. And I'd be honest.You know, some of our most
interesting guests have beensome of the little more obscure
(56:18):
people too. I would highlyrecommend not skipping those
episodes, because, yeah,everybody that we invite on is
super interesting and hassomething to say. So also, we
have our Patreon. If you want tosupport us that way, that's at
patreon.com/if, this goes on,and then finally, and then I'm
(56:39):
done talking about it. We alsohave coffee. That's K, O, f, i,
you can go out there and you canjust search us in the search
bar, we will pop up. And you canjust give us, like, a one time
donation, if you don't want,like, the ongoing monthly thing
that that's involved withPatreon. So,
yeah. So Kat, yes, thoughts,
(57:01):
opinions about Alex in his work,and I
knew he was going to be amazing,and he revealed things about the
book that I hadn't known. So I,I pronounced this an amazing and
very fruitful interview. Yeah,
yeah, there was a lot ofsynchronicity in this book, in
this episode, for me, kind ofweird. I mean, I had mentioned
(57:22):
The Phantom Tollbooth thingearlier in the episode, but,
like some of the music stuffthat's in the book, and I've
actually, I've been to NewOrleans a couple times, and I've
always had a really great timethere. I've been to Baton Rouge
too. Actually, I will tell myNew Orleans story. I went there
with Chris Snyder, who sometimesdoes music for this show, okay?
(57:46):
And so we were down there, andwe were like, walking around,
because this is when we were inour 20s, and we were artiste
sino and writers and whatnot. Sowe went into this graveyard, and
Chris was gonna, like, do somedrawings and whatever. And I was
going to write some poetry,because I was a poet at the
time, right? And so we are justhanging out, and they are
(58:07):
chatting a little bit and doingour thing. And so we go to
leave, and we are locked intothe graveyard. So then this is,
like, 12 o'clock noon. This isnot, like the middle of the
night or something, right? Yeah.And we're like, oh, fuck, we're
fucking locked into thegraveyard, and there's a huge
(58:28):
fence. It was like a 10 or 12foot fence, right? Now, it
couldn't have been that high. Itmust have been like seven foot
or something like that. But it'snot like, it was not like one of
those that you could easilyclimb over, right? Oh, my God.
So we sit around for a while.We're like, What the hell are we
going to do? And we're walkingaround the graveyard. So
finally, we decide we're gonnaclimb on the top of this tomb
(58:51):
and leap over the gate or leapover the fence, which is what we
did. And if I did it now, I'dprobably like, break my leg or
something. But we were in our20s, you know. So we were like,
All right, here we go. In
your 20s, you can definitely dothat sort of thing in a way that
you don't even think about howeasy it is at the time. Yes,
well, that's so you made it overthe fence and you made it back
to your festival.
Yes, we made it over the fenceand back to the festival. But I
(59:13):
always like to tell a story ofhow we were locked in the
graveyard and trapped in there.You know, it was so funny,
because we really panicked for aminute. We were like, oh shit,
oh shit. Like, when do they comeback? We don't even know. Why is
it close to 12? What ishappening?
This is how they get the newcorpses to bury, right,
right? And it was one of the,you know, those, those
(59:34):
graveyards that you always see,you know, in the photos and
stuff from New Orleans, wherethey're above ground, right? And
so there's brown teams and stuffand, but, yeah, it was fun. But,
uh, so what are you readingthese days? Anything cool?
Um, I am reading it. It's ahorror novel called Burn the
negative by Josh winning, whichI I'm enjoying. It is it is nice
(59:58):
and creepy and. And queued upafter that I have I'm so excited
about this. Stephen GrahamJones, don't fear the rate word,
which is the second in hisIndian Lake trilogy.
I know I've mentioned thisbefore, but I've only read two
things by Stephen Graham Jones,one which I was like, Meh, I
didn't really care for and thenthe other, which is probably the
(01:00:20):
most disturbing short story I'veever read in my life. So,
oh yeah, yeah. He had some thatare really he had when he came
to Clarion West, he read thisshort story that was a kind of
zombie landscape story. This guyhad all these kittens basically
tied to his belt, which he woulduse to distract the zombies when
(01:00:40):
they were coming after him,which, wow, it was pretty dark.
It was pretty dark.
That is dark. That's totallydark. I am reading. It's called,
I'm trying to find the fulltitle. Here it is, found an
anthology of found footagehorror stories edited by, oh,
that okay. Oh, it's cool. It'sgood. It's good. Edited by
(01:01:04):
Andrew call and Gabino Iglesias.That's
I, oh, I love Gabino Iglesias.We should have him on here to
interview. Actually, he would be
amazing. We should. I'm writinghis name down so I don't forget.
Yeah,
write his name down. Oh,
it's been really good. So far.I'm only a few stories in but
Josh Roundtree is in here. Idon't know if you're familiar
with him. I like, I likeeverything I've read by him so
(01:01:26):
far, just I've not read any ofhis long works, but most of his
short work. And then I don'trecognize all the names. You
know, I'm not, I'm not as up onthe horror stuff as I am
everything else. But, right? Butit's really great. It's really
great. And then the next thingI'm reading it is, oh, this is
(01:01:46):
for the next episode, becausewe're recording Diane and I are
gonna be recording the nextepisode soon, because I'm trying
to, I'm trying to stock up forthe holidays so I can take
December off. But it's thenightmare box and Other Stories
by Cynthia Gomez, so I'm lookingforward to that
awesome, awesome that should bereally good. Yeah, I've heard
great
things about it from a lot ofpeople whose opinions I trust.
(01:02:09):
So definitely looking forward tothat. Well, I think that's I
think that's it for us, all
right. Well, it's beendelightful. Alan, thank you for
interviewing Alex with me,because I have been so excited
about this interview. Yeah, I
know you have, I know you havein whenever we're doing an
episode that one of my co hostsis excited by I get like, I get
(01:02:30):
like, additional excitement, youknow? I mean, because there's I
get excited, everyone getsexcited. And it's always
awesome. So
awesome. Well, hey, cool is myexhortation to you and our
listeners, yep,
yep. And that's it for us, weare bringing you hope one
episode at a time.
(01:03:00):
If this goes on, don't panic. Isedited and produced by Alan
Bailey. Our theme music is byFather flamethrower. Additional
music is by Christophersnitroski, and outro music by
sable Aradia, Intro by DaveRobinson. A special thanks to
our guest, Alex Jennings, thanksfor supporting us, and we'll see
you again soon. You
(01:03:25):
I believe in unicorns intoplanetary
I believe in unicorns.
If this goes on, don't panic, bringing hope To the
world through speculativefiction.
(00:22):
You Hello
and
welcome to If this goes on,don't panic. Today, we have
(00:45):
author Alex Jennings with us.Kat, how are things going with
you? Things
are going really well. I'mhaving a lovely day. My
girlfriend has come down for afew days or come up from
Atlanta, awesome. And we havethe book launch for rumor has it
on this Tuesday.
(01:05):
Awesome, awesome. I'm reallylooking forward to reading that,
to be honest.
And so how are things with you?Oh boy,
this week has been wild, wild,wild, wild, wild. Oh gosh. I
mean personal stuff, which Iwill talk about, work stuff,
which I'm not going to get into.On top of that, I had my black
(01:26):
belt test this week. Yeah, yep,that was I took the second half
yesterday, and I am sore ashell. Oh
my gosh, I bet. But do you havea black belt? Now,
I don't know yet. I don't knowif I passed, but I think I did.
I think I did pretty good. Idefinitely think that test was
intended for somebody 20 yearsyounger than me. Yeah. So I'm,
(01:52):
like, aching right before thisphone call. I just took a
handful of Advil. I'm like, ohgod. I just can't, barely even
move.
Oh, dude, it doesn't get anybetter.
I know, I know. I'm kind of gladthat I hit my black belt now.
Yeah,
I do want to point out it wouldhave been much more impressive
(02:13):
if you'd done it say at the ageof 70 or 80. That's
true too. That is true.
Absolutely, 100% true. Oh boy.What else is going on? So we're
working on the website, the newwebsite for the podcast. So
that's happening
with our cool new logo that wespent we're so excited to unveil
(02:37):
to the world. I'm
trying to get this website donebefore this logo has been
hanging out for too, too long,yeah, but we're working on it
behind the scenes. When we get amoment, we also have transcripts
going on. So we've got, finallygot, somebody on board to help
us clean up the transcripts thatwe had put together. Yeah,
because they were, I mean, youknow, I had said even called AI,
(03:01):
but transcription services arelike, services, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Like a good startingpoint, but they are usually a
mess.
That's it. No, you've got tohave a human being go over them,
or else they're just incoherent.It's like, auto generated
subtitles, yes,
yes. 100% yes. And then theother Oh, I kind of have a
(03:21):
little bit of a bigannouncement. I don't even know
if this is how official This isyet. I well, I guess I've sent
emails about it. So I'mofficially joining the board of
Parsec, which runs theconfluence con in Pittsburgh,
yeah. Oh,
nice. Yep, yep, yep. I will be aconfluence next year. Yes,
yes, yes. And I will be a memberof the board. So you know,
(03:47):
we will help me.
Well, I look forward to hearingyour adventures in nonprofit
management, because, as youknow, I have many stories and
opinions about Yes,
they will not be on the podcast?Probably
no, that would be a separatepodcast, yes,
but it'll be interesting. ScottKnowles been asking me to be on
(04:09):
for years now, and I keeptelling him no. Finally, after
this last year, I was like,fine, fine. I will join because
there was just not that. Therewas any huge problems or
anything. At confluence, therewere just some things that I was
like, you know, I think it wouldbe better if we did this, and we
it would be better if we didthis. Other thing, you know,
(04:30):
to get you, you form an opinion,and then they're like, Yeah, you
should join the board. You canget your opinions enforced. Yes.
So
hopefully they will be good, oneof which is more COVID
enforcement, because, as anEverest person you know, like it
really annoys me that con thatconferences suck at that. Yeah,
(04:50):
so, yeah. Anyway, we shouldprobably get to our guest.
Should absolutely get to ourguests, because I am so excited
about our. Asked. And as youknow, I came and I was like, we
have to interview him, because Ilove this book so much. So yes,
let's please start Yes,
absolutely, absolutely, okay. Sowe will be right back with our
guest, Alex Jennings. Okay, andwe are back. Alex Jennings is a
(05:17):
comedian well, and I will beasking about that for sure,
educator and award winningauthor whose writing has
appeared in current affairsmagazine, pseudopod and new sons
volumes one and two. He is aninstructor of popular fiction at
stone coast MFA program, as wellas a columnist for The Magazine
(05:37):
of Fantasy and Science Fiction.His debut novel, The Ballad of
perilous graves, was released byorbit slash Red Book in 2022 we
will definitely be talking aboutthat some his fiction and poetry
have been shortlisted fornumerous awards, including the
Ernest J Gaines award, the RayBradbury prize for speculative
(05:58):
fiction, the Locus Award forbest debut novel and the World
Fantasy Award. He is the winnerof the 2023 Compton crook prize
from the Baltimore sciencefiction society. He lives and
works in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.As of this publication, he has
lost 135 pounds and counting.Find out more at www dot. Alex
(06:20):
jennings.net
welcome, Alex. Hey, thanks forhaving me. Absolutely,
absolutely Kat. So, as Kat kindof mentioned already, you know,
I ask every now and then, youknow, we I drop in on Kat and
Diane or other co hosts, like,hey, is there anyone that you
guys are interested in? Andshe's like, we have to get this
guy. Alex Jennings on this bookis amazing. Well, it
(06:42):
is. I appreciate that so much.It really is. And,
yeah, I can I just start askingquestions Alan, because doing
absolutely, I mean,
well, I mean, I,
I love this book because it'ssuch a big, sprawling city book,
and you have multiplecharacters, and you have kind of
(07:06):
plot lines running in parallel.And it, I think one reviewer
mentioned that the reader has totrust you to kind of get kind of
that you will deliver sense,which you do in this kind of,
like amazing, wonderful way, andI love that. But I also know, as
a writer myself, sometimes it'shard to keep track of that
(07:27):
stuff, and so I'm just curiouswhen you were writing, kind of
like, how did you keep How didyou make things? How did you
keep things straight? Uh,
I would keep notes of like whocharacters were and what their
relationships were to eachother. And then I don't know,
(07:49):
like I just, I just tried tokeep track while editing. And
then my editor at orbit for thisbook, Nivea Evans was really
helpful, like helping me keeptrack of things and make sure
that things connect in the waythat they need to good
(08:09):
editor is just such a fabulousaddition to any book, I think,
right. Oh, absolutely youmentioned in the not the
preface, the afterward, butyou're talking about how. Let me
find the line. It's about yourfather who got you, who kind of,
what is it? There's somethingabout he inspired you to write
(08:32):
the blackest fantasy without,kind of, like actually
instructing you to do it. Hereit is, tasked me to write the
blackest fantasy I couldconcoct. And I think that is so
lovely. Can you talk a littlebit about that? Oh, yeah.
Well, my dad used to readfantasy novels to me and my
little brother when we werelittle. And, you know, he read
(08:52):
The Hobbit and The Lord of theRings to us, and especially the
Lord of the Rings has a lot oflike, black is evil language in
it. And you know, he put thebook down one night and said, I
wish there was a fantasy likethis, where everyone was black
(09:14):
and the darkest one, theblackest skin, is the hero. And
yeah, that really stayed with meall my life. When I started
working on this book, not onlydid I find myself working toward
that, but without realizing it,I dropped a fictionalized
version of my father at that ageand as the protagonist, Perry
(09:39):
graves. And it's kind of my loveletter to both my family and
adopted city that I love. Sothat's
fabulous. And that really comesthrough, really comes through.
And
music, I would say, too, becausewe're so much about music in
here. Oh, absolutely, when Ithink one
(09:59):
of the. Fun things about it is,when I was kind of researching
for the call, I ran across theSpotify playlist that you did to
go with the book. Oh, yeah, I'mlike, Yeah, that must have been
a lot of fun to put together. It
really was. I listened to a lotof music while I write and while
I was writing this book, I waslistening to a lot of New
(10:21):
Orleans music. And it really, itreally helped. And originally,
all of the songs in the bookwere actual songs by New Orleans
musicians. And, you know, afterI sold it, my editor was like,
you know, you know, you can't dothat, right? You're gonna have
(10:41):
to redo all the songs. And so Idid, and I seems to have worked
out pretty well,
yeah, but irritating that youhad to do that. I mean, I guess,
like it was, it was a reallyinteresting question as to
whether I could capture theproper feel for the songs that I
(11:02):
love so much, then animate thecity, and, you know, give a
sense of the rhythm and themelody on the page. And it seems
to have worked for people. And Iwas really happy to have the
chance to do that. Awesome.
Actually, I have a questionalong those lines, if you don't
mind me asking, and if you don'twant to do this, we can strike
(11:22):
this. But, um, first of all, thesongs, which are also
characters, had some reallyawesome names and some really
awesome personalities. Forexample, you had one named
Stagger Lee in there. Yeah, Iwas wondering if you could
describe what some of thecharacters sound like as songs.
Okay, so Stagger Lee is a verypopular character of black
(11:46):
folklore. He was a real personwho committed a murder at the
turn of the 20th century in EastSt Louis, and so he's he's kind
of entered into black culture asthe subject of toasts songs, you
know, like he's there a lot ofmurder ballads about him, and he
(12:08):
just keeps popping up andpopping up and actually Stagger
Lee is one of the few charactersthat I actually have an exact
voice for that's like, kind ofdifferent from my own. And so
let me see. Let me see if I cando this on the phone. I haven't
tried it in a long time, but Ido it when I read the book Alan,
(12:31):
fabulous. So sadly, it kind ofsounds like this. Well, it's
fabulous. I have to hold mythroat in a very specific way
to, like, get that exactresonance. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's
got to be amazing when you'rereading. But,
yeah, check out the, check outthe versions of stagger Lee's
(12:52):
song. Dr John has a great one,and there have just been so many
over the years. Hey, I'm writingthis
down just, just, so, you know,so I don't forget. So you would
say he's kind of like a folksong. Then kind of like a, yeah,
he's like, he's a blues song.There are a lot of jazz versions
of the song as well, and thereare some slightly more
(13:13):
countryside ones. And there areour little bits and pieces of
his myth that appear in sometoasts and not others. And, you
know, like it fits in perfectlyto New Orleans music, because so
many New Orleans musicians havedone versions of that song, and
there are myths surrounding NewOrleans musicians as well. So he
(13:35):
really fit right in.
Oh, that's that's sointeresting. This is maybe
somewhat of a non sequitur here.But as a musician, you know,
it's interesting to see whatsongs pop up over and over again
in like, what parts get takenfrom some songs then mixed into
others. Just very fascinating,right?
I'm fascinated by the feature ofblack storytelling known as
(13:59):
signifying, because it's it'spart of storytelling, but also
part of jazz, especiallytraditional New Orleans jazz,
where you take bits and piecesof things and then elaborate on
them, put them in a new contextand make them your own. And you
(14:21):
know, I really wanted this storyto be informed by that. You
know, I read the signifyingmonkey by Henry Louis Gates,
which is a fantastic book aboutstorytelling in the African
diaspora, and it just reallycaptured my imagination, and,
like, defined some things that Ihad noticed about stories told
(14:45):
like in my family, in mycommunity, and it was, it was
extremely helpful for thewedding of this book. Yeah,
so interesting. I was justlistening to a podcast this
morning about Little Richard andapparently, and I can't.
Remember the names of either ofthe songs, but Led Zeppelin,
their drummer, took the drumintro from one of Little Richard
(15:07):
songs and put it into one of theLed Zeppelin songs, because he
was a huge fan of littleRichard's drummer, so he wanted
to, like, have, like, a little,you know, like, call out to him
in one of the songs. And it'slike, of course, it's like a
super famous song from bothmusicians. You know,
I love that kind of stuff. I'mlike, I'm, I'm an obsessive
music nerd myself. So I'll, I'llgo looking for little samples
(15:32):
and bits of songs to find wherethey were lifted from. And like,
now, with the way the internethas grown and changed, that's a
lot easier than it used to be,but I remember, like, hunting
for the source of the sample tothis song, the 900 number that
came out, like, I think, in the80s or 90s, and like, it took me
(15:55):
forever to find out that'sactually from a song by one of
James Brown's proteges calledunwind yourself. And it's like
the first three seconds or so ofthe song, and somebody stretched
it out to an entire track. Andit's just like, I love it. I
love it so much. I love huntingthings. Oh,
(16:18):
James Brown has been borrowed solike, geez, any, any 90s hip hop
song, like, all of Wu Tang, Ithink is James, oh, a lot. Yeah,
yeah. That's so cool. That'scool. I think writers tend to do
that a lot too, you know, youknow, like, Who do you borrow
from? Who were some of yourinfluences?
Oh, so many. I mean, at itsheart, like, my book is
(16:42):
blaxploitation PippiLongstocking adventure, you
know, so like taking thatcharacter and recontextualizing
her for Central City, NewOrleans, in a fantastical
version that's post Katrina,that was kind of where the story
began. And I grabbed little bitsand pieces from all over,
(17:06):
especially from like, musichistory. Like, a lot of the time
when I was writing this book, Iwas studying New Orleans music,
like both in college, and then Iworked with the New Orleans jazz
orchestra as their copyconsultant for a while. And so
just seeing that's cool, yeah. Imean, it was a, it was a really
(17:27):
fascinating time. And, like,there's just so much information
out there. Like, Little Richardwas here for a long time. He
would, he would come back to NewOrleans a lot after he blew up
as well. And he was good friendswith, like, one of our sainted
figures of New Orleans music,James Booker, and they used to
(17:48):
have a great time together, likeriding a pink Cadillac up and
down Canal Street and likeyelling at people on the street.
And I love little stories likethat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.You have traveled a great deal,
and I believe you were born inGermany and have wandered around
(18:09):
a good bit, and you mentionedNew Orleans as your adopted
home. Can you talk a little bitabout what it is that draws to
you at New Orleans, because itseems like such a fabulous city
to be writing and settingspeculative fiction in. I
mean, it really is. I My fatherwas a diplomat. Like in the 60s,
(18:31):
the State Department had thisbig farm program to get more
black Foreign Service agents todo diplomatic relations with the
countries in Africa that weregetting their independence. And
so he got into the ForeignService in like 67 and stayed in
until 2001 so I was born inGermany, grew up in Botswana,
(18:55):
Surinam, Tunisia, the UnitedStates. And you know, I came
down to New Orleans on a whim in2003 with my late brother, and
it just really reminded me a lotof paramerivo Surinam. There's
like a very Caribbean feel toit, something very sort of old
(19:16):
world about it, like it says,it's as weird and almost out of
place, as French Guiana is inSouth America. And it just, it
really spoke to me. So wedecided to move down here. And,
you know, we, we came in thesummer of 2006 like, almost a
(19:38):
year after Hurricane Katrina,and the city was really hurting
then, yeah, but I felt acceptedby it, and it's, it's the first
place I've been able to put downwhat feel like real roots before
night, you know? But before Ilived in New Orleans, home was
(19:59):
wherever my family. Was. And youknow, most of my family are in
the DC, Baltimore area, but NewOrleans became my home. And you
know, even though I moved toBaton Rouge in January, it still
very much feels like home. Andmy partner and I are here almost
every weekend, because we stilldo stand up in the city and so
(20:21):
many of our friends are here,and the culture, it's just, it's
just really hard to pullyourself away from. And we love
it so much. Nice.
You mentioned that you do standup. And the defining mood of
this novel, to me is really kindof joyful. I mean, there are
scary parts to it, you know? Imean, the main bad guy is pretty
(20:43):
scary, right? There's, like,zombies walking around and
stuff, right? There's definitelyelements of horror and stuff in
here. But ultimately, I thinkit's a very, like, a very joyful
book. Why was it important toyou? And I guess this is
assuming that you did itintentionally. Why was it
important for you to includethat as the primary mood? Well,
(21:09):
I wanted it to mirror blacknesswrit large. Like there are,
there are a lot of difficultiessurrounding being black, there's
a lot of oppression, there's alot of heartache, but there's
also this alchemical processthat, like, turns that pain into
(21:36):
joy, or at least runs a vein ofjoy alongside it. And so like,
while my life has been difficultbecause of my background, it's
also been very joyful, like justthe the camaraderie, the sense
of community, the focus on ourfamily, the the joy of
(21:56):
rediscovering our history andcreating culture of making
something out of nothing isextremely, extremely important
to me. And if I'm, if I'mwriting a book about the city
dearest to me and the peopledearest to me, then that has to
be the overwhelming mood. That'slovely,
(22:17):
lovely.
I have a question, which is inthis, this kind of coming from
the publishing angle, you havechild characters, right? You
have Perry and brand brandy asas half of the kind of carrying,
I think, a huge amount of thebook. How did you avoid getting
this book billed as ya?
Well, it was not easy to keep itaway from that. But when I when
(22:43):
I first spoke to Nidia at orbit,she understood the book as an
adult story and wanted to frameit as an adult fantasy. So he
suggested adding in more adultPOVs, and actually, Casey had a
(23:05):
much, much smaller role in theirearly drafts and the version
that I sold, and she told me tobeef it up and actually grow the
book As a whole into a kind oflarger standalone story that
would serve as sort of a micdrop, you know, like, I do have
(23:27):
more stories to write in thatworld and possibly with those
characters even, but I wanted tomake sure that if I was, you
know, hit by a bus before Icould do something else, that
this book left it all on Thetable.
Yeah, I picked up on that, too.Kat, I I almost felt like there
were two completely differentbooks here melded together. When
(23:50):
you're reading the chapters withPercival and brandy, right?
Especially at the beginning,it's like, it's very
imaginative, very like fun, youknow, all this weird stuff
happening, right? Very magical,right, very fantastic. And then,
and then you get to Casey'schapters, and they start, they
(24:12):
start a lot more grounded,right? And a lot more serious.
Blood character.
I mean, a lot the mood is moresomber. Yeah, right.
It was very interesting how yougradually pull them together.
And something I noticed, and Idon't know if you do this on
purpose, is the um, the firstchapter where you have Casey in
(24:36):
in with Percival and peaches andbrandy, is the first time. Is
the first chapter where peacheshas, like, ever been hurt,
right? Yeah. Couldn't help butnotice that. And I was like, oh,
so like, I guess where I'm goingwith this is it was really an
interesting structure in thatway they keep flipping back and
forth. When I started readingwith the kids, point of view, I
(24:57):
was like, Oh, I could just givethis to my my son. To read, you
know what? I mean, like, thiswould just be totally in line
with everything they're reading.And then it flipped over, and
that was interesting. And thenit was very interesting how you
started bringing it together,and how that affected the
characters and even the world,you know, right?
I mean, one of the things Iwanted to do with this book was
write a fantasy novel for thekid I was when I was 10 or 11,
(25:22):
and like, you know, at thattime, I was reading things aimed
way above my head. I was readinga lot of Stephen King. I was
reading stuff and, you know, Ialso, one of the things I loved
about the children's literaturethat I read as a boy was a sense
of danger, like a sense that ofbad things possibly happening,
(25:47):
and the fact that triumphing oraverting disaster was something
with real states, you know. So Iknew I wanted to have that edge
in there. And as for Casey,meeting with the kids for the
(26:09):
first time after peaches ishurt. It wasn't entirely
conscious, but I know that thetimes in my life when I've
experienced like a lot of painor a lot of trauma, what allowed
me to heal and what allowed meto continue on was the
camaraderie with the peoplearound me, both bio family and
(26:34):
chosen family, and how we'reable to lift each other up and
have each other's backs whenThings go wrong. So it was very
important to me to have thatsensibility in here too. So
I also love Pippy long stocking,and when I found this
transfigured version of her inthe book, I loved it so much.
(26:55):
But why Pippi long stocking?Alex?
Uh, for a couple of reasons. Forone thing, when I moved to New
Orleans, there were a lot ofstories in the news and on
social media about kids who wereforced to return to the city
without their parents and sortof take care of themselves and
(27:15):
fend for themselves while theywaited for their parents to be
able to come be with them. Andthe first thing that made me
think of was Pippy longstocking, like living in that
house by herself, with all thoseanimals, dads out sailing the
seven seas. And so that had methinking, what if Pippi
(27:38):
Longstocking was a little redbone girl living in Central
City, New Orleans, and the restof the story grew out of that.
That's so fabulous. Yeah,
she's such an interestingcharacter. It's also very clear
that you like comic books.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Tell us about your comic bookInfluence and then tell us who
(27:59):
your favorite characters are,oh,
geez, okay.
I I first became enamored ofcomics when I was, like, three
years old. My older brother, HT,would just tell me about stories
and things that happened in thein the Marvel and DC comics that
(28:20):
he read, you know? And my oldersister taught me to read when I
was four, and the first thing Idid was pick up the copy of
Uncanny X Men, the issue whereMadeline, prior first uses her
telekinesis to hold back. ScottSummers, I beams, and he asked,
(28:42):
you know, all this time, he'ssuspected that she's somehow his
dead wife, well, his deadgirlfriend. And, you know, at
four years old, I'm readingthis, I'm like, Look, I don't
understand any of this, butwhatever is happening, like, I
dig the emotion. It's, it'sreally cool. And I just want to,
(29:03):
yeah, this for like, forever. Sothe X men have always been super
important to me. And in fact,like, I'm really big on Afro
futurism, and I feel like theera of the X Men that just
ended, where they were allliving on the island of Krakow,
and they had done away with thethe heroes versus villains
(29:27):
mentality, just trying to, like,survive and and carve out a
world for themselves, with thehuman race always gunning for
them like that. That reallyresonates with me, and there's
just so many great stories here.I'm also super in love with
(29:47):
Miles, Morales, the other SpiderMan. Love character, love
everything that he can even playthe video game. I love that. I'm
also a huge fan of Jakeemthunder in the DC universe, who
(30:07):
has his, you know, genie insidea magic pin, and his his magic
word when he hits the plunger tosummon the genie. Is so cool. I
really love that. And like, infact, I allude to that in the
book a couple times. I've alwayswanted to write a Jakeem thunder
(30:29):
Maxi series, like 12 issueslong, and see if I can elevate
him to the a list of the of theDC heroes. Yeah. Like those.
Those are, those are my veryfavorites. But I also love Black
Panther. Oh, there was a comic Awhile back, I think, written by
(30:49):
Dwayne McDuffie called the crewthat was like the white Panther
war machine. I think Josiah Xand like a few, like a bunch of
black characters operating inthe Marvel Universe trying to
(31:11):
solve street level issues. Ilove that so much.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I lovethe fact that we are in an age
now where superhero movies havejust amazing special effects and
can, right, often live up tosort of the glory of reading it
when you're a kid, right? Andit's just like, everything is so
(31:32):
freaking cool.
Yeah, yeah, that like seeingthat first Avengers movie like I
had waited so long for that.Yeah. I just loved it so much
to have, I presume. Have youdone any comic writing? Because
you, I would think that would bea great I mean, it sounds like
you would be a good fit for it.
I've done, I've done a littlebit of comic scripting, of,
(31:54):
like, my own projects. I haven'tdone any stuff for, like, the
big two or anything yet. Thecomic project that I have is not
out yet, but I think it's goingto be a lot of fun. Oh, cool.
And I would love to, I wouldlove to do more of that. I
really enjoy it. I've done alittle podcast scripting.
There's kind of a secretproject. It's going to be out
(32:16):
next year. I think that, I hopepeople will really dig. Oh, one,
I got to do something with oneof my, like, favorite
franchises.
Oh, cool. I'm guessing that youcan't talk about it yet. I
mean, I think I could talk aboutit. It's a like, my thing was
always that I love Aquaman and Ilove the Submariner. But and
(32:42):
their world, and, like, theirwhole deal didn't really make
sense, yep. And so I find myselfthinking like, okay, so they're
from Atlantis, but the historyof Atlantis and like the way the
story originated from likeSocrates and Plato, didn't
(33:06):
really make sense, because itdescribes Atlantis as being like
a full fledged, like Greekstyle, city State almost 11 and
a half 1000 years ago, whenthey're like, that just didn't
exist. So I came up with theidea that, like, oh, maybe time
(33:30):
is broken somehow. And there wasa world where there was an
Atlantis back then, butsomething terrible happened to
make that not true anymore inOWL, right? And so, like, I also
put a huge Afro futurist spin onit. So instead of Atlantis,
(33:50):
it's, it's the undersea kingdomfrom The Ballad of perilous
graves grand lado. And you know,it also involves, like, an elder
god and eating time. And I thinkit'll be a lot of fun. Oh, that
sounds fabulous.
(34:11):
I mean, you know, Elder God, yougot me there for sure. Yeah,
I haven't, I haven't seen a lotof Afro futurism meets elder
gods in in Donald's, yeah, yeah.
That sounds interesting. Thatsounds really interesting. Cat.
I know some of your yourfavorite characters are x men
(34:31):
too, correct.
I love, I love the X Men. IYeah. I think I started reading
just when, like, uh, ChrisClaremont was starting to write
them, and it was the ClaremontJohn Byrne team up, and the
artwork was very beautiful. Butthere was also the Phoenix
storyline was one that I alwaysspoke to me thought was amazing.
(34:54):
Yeah, that was so good. That wasso good. Yeah, maybe one day
we'll get to see it adaptingproperly.
Thought, Oh, that would be socool. God yes, it really would.
Lips to God's ears, as we say,right?
So I'm fine. I'm finallycatching up and reading the fall
(35:16):
of x. I do kind of wish theKrakow era had gone on forever,
but I've got to get caught upand see where everything lies,
especially now that Gail Simoneis writing and yeah, like,
that's very important to me,because I love Gail Simone's
work, yeah,
yeah, no, she's done someamazing work, and I think it's
going to be looking like whatthe first issue has come out of
(35:39):
hers, right?
The first two issues are out. SoI bought that, and I bought the
collection of fall of X and riseand powers of x. You know, when
I was back east this last week.And so I'm about halfway through
reading that, and it's not, it'sit's doing it for me. Yeah,
(36:03):
yeah,
I'm gonna have to make a trip tothe comic book store, I can
tell. Yeah. Well,
two questions for you. Numberone, we'll just start with this
one, because this is going to bethe more controversial question,
how do you feel about the Marvelmovies now, like, do you like
the trajectory? You know, whichone's your favorites? You know,
(36:28):
give us your opinions. I knowyou have them. Being a comics
fan, there's
still, there's still a lot tolike there. I like what they've
done with most of thecharacters. I feel like the
formula that they were goingwith for a long time is not
working as well anymore, and sothey've kind of got to establish
a different direction. And like,they had a lot of issues that
(36:50):
were beyond their control, likeputting so many resources behind
like the rise of Kang and that,like the whole job, major
situation and all of that. ButI'm really hoping that they can
figure out a way to freshenthings up and reinvent
themselves. I mean, I likedDeadpool like I liked that, but
(37:17):
you know, a lot of the othermovies right now aren't really
doing it for me, and so I wantto see more weird, oddball
stuff, like, I want to send morestuff like the werewolf by night
special. Yeah, let's some ofthose awesome. Yeah. I mean, it
was so good, and we just haven'theard anything about it since,
no, right? And I'm, I'm stillwatching a lot of what they put
(37:39):
out, yeah, but I'm I'm notwatching it as closely as I had
been before, and like, my firstlove is, is and will always be,
the comics, like, that's what Icare about. Yeah, yeah.
Second question for you is, haveyou ever met zigzag Claiborne?
I have not met him yet. Like,we've corresponded a little bit,
(38:03):
and I want to work with him assoon as possible. Like, I love
his positivity. Yeah, I love thestuff that he's always saying on
social media, and that's beforeyou even get to his brilliant
writing and editing. But no, Ihaven't met him yet.
We're talking about this beforewe started, before you were even
on you're your work actuallyreminds me a lot of what was the
(38:26):
name of his brothers? Ofbrothers up?
Yeah, yeah. I've heard that, andI love the comparison. I
appreciate that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Youreally went all in this question
I had for you. Zig is prettymuch a regular on the podcast.
We have mine all the time. Wewere talking to him about the
(38:49):
about the brothers jet stream,and he had mentioned that it was
kind of his everything but thesink book, right? Where he just,
like, threw everything in there,right? I really feel like your
book was like that in a lot
of ways. Oh, it was,
as Ed already mentioned, thereare definitely horror elements,
right? You've got superheroelements. We've got, like Matt,
just straight up magichappening, right? Yep, you know,
(39:12):
why did you decide to just throweverything in there? And then
also, because I know this couldbe a problem in publishing. I
mean, zig even told us that wasone of the problems that he had
with the brothers jet streamsbooks. People were saying there
was too much in there, you know,how did you approach that when
you were shopping the bookaround? Well,
that's a good question. I i didpresent it as, first and
(39:39):
foremost, a contemporaryfantasy, because that's what
mattered to me most. But it wasalso, it was also sort of
modeled off of things like thethe major comic universes, like
they have so much going on. Likethey they skip genre to genre
very easily and quickly. You.Got space opera elements. You've
(40:03):
got more traditional fantasy,you've got sort of science
fiction. You've got contemporaryfantasy. So I wanted to create a
world where there was a sensethat anything could happen. And
I wanted to include all of thethings that gave me gee whiz
moments of wonder as a kid, andthat's, you know, that's robots,
(40:27):
that's flying saucers, that'sHidden Kingdoms, like all, all
of that stuff. And then I justwanted to make it a love letter
to everything that fired myimagination.
Yeah. Zig is also a huge comicbook fan, just so you know, and
he is the exact same opinion onthe the Phoenix comic or the
(40:51):
Phoenix movie. Yeah. Do youremember that conversation? Yes,
I just, I feel every reasonablefan,
I've never come across anybodywho is happy with it honestly,
yeah, yeah, that's
what any reasonable fan, it'strue. I am a reasonable there
have
to be people out there who thatwas their very first exposure to
(41:16):
any of those concepts. And now,like, I bet, there are people
out there who have imprinted onit, and then, like, in 20 years,
they're going to be talkingabout how great it was. Oh,
yeah.
Oh, I bet. I bet naming theiryou can find any weird thing.
What you saying? I said namingtheir child gene. Yeah. Shout
out for the fact that theparents of the kids are so
(41:40):
involved in their lives, asopposed to a lot of times when
we have kind of, like fantasychildren, and they're just sort
of latch key kids, or theparents, or was it Lemony
Snicket has kidnapped them, orwhatever?
So it was, was that a deliberatechoice?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean,like, I grew up largely in the
(42:02):
80s, so in some sense, I was alatch key kid, but my parents
were all also always veryclosely involved in my life as
well. And you know, since thisis since this is a story that's
kind of a tribute to my family,like I had to include the
parents as well, for sure. Ithink that's
really lovely. And it's one ofthe, I mean, one of the things I
(42:24):
like about this book is it justgot so many things that are
interesting and unusual, andkind of you look at it from
different angles, and it just,it has something new to show
you. I mean, I don't, I don'tteach at the college level, but
this book makes me wish that it,I did so I could assign it and
make a bunch of students read itand talk about that
is really sweet. Thank you. So,yeah, yes, I could
(42:47):
100% see that, that it wouldmake a
hell of a good like, a lot of alot of classes have been using
it, and I always appreciate thatgood. It's, uh, yeah. Like, the
idea behind it was that, like,like, sure, I would have loved
for it to have been a giant bestseller or whatever. But more
(43:09):
than anything, I wanted toinclude enough in it that it can
be looked at in a lot ofdifferent ways, so that years
down the line, like people wouldstill be discovering it and
buying it and getting into theworld, because those were the
books that I loved best.
Have you thought about doing agraphic novel adaptation of it?
(43:31):
I have orbit
has the graphic rights. I alwaysfantasized about Kyle Baker, oh,
doing a calming adaptation.Because I just, I love his work
so much, like both his, both hisMarvel and DC stuff and his
indie stuff that was so, sogood. So, yeah, that would be,
(43:55):
Oh,
that would be amazing. Thatwould be amazing. Well, tell
orbit to get on the stick. Sellthe right.
We all know publishers payattention
when authors call up and demandthings So absolutely, what is a
question that nobody has askedthat you wish people had asked
about the book? Oh, wow.
(44:16):
Um,
I thought people might ask me,which of the fantastical
elements like come directly frommy life and which were
completely made up whole cloth?Because there, there is some
stuff for my actual life.There's a there's a character
(44:38):
who has a habit of speaking tothe dead and like, that's
definitely something in myfamily. Oh, interesting. Okay,
it's, it's Casey's mom and I, Ihave the same attitude towards
it that Casey does like I I knowmy mom is not like, lying, and
she's not nuts or anything.However, I don't go. All the way
(45:01):
and like, think of myself assomeone who believes in ghosts,
you know, yeah, stuff like that.Somebody asked me a question I
had never expected the otherday. He asked me if the preacher
(45:21):
that appears toward the very endof the book, might be Milo from
the Phantom Toll Booth all grownup. Oh, I really, I really
appreciated being asked likethat. I asked about that because
that is the only, that's theonly person who's ever
(45:42):
approached you.
So is it? Is Milo? Ah,
yeah. I guess I'll, I guess I'lladmit that. Like, yeah, the idea
is that is my we're all grownup, and he's, he's been on a lot
of further adventures that havechanged him a lot. And maybe,
maybe he's not the best guy atthis point.
Yeah, yeah, I could see that,you know, the road ages you and,
(46:06):
well, that's awesome. It'scanon.
Now it's canon. That's it.
I was debating on whether to sayanything about that publicly,
but I
found it very interesting thatyou mentioned Phantom Toll
Booth. So much in here. I justhappened to be reading that book
to one of my sons, and I'd neverread it before. We're not very
far in. We're only like two orthree chapters in. But you know,
(46:30):
what was your relationship withthat novel in particular? I
mean, I really loved it as akid, both the book and the film
out of tension, and it was, itwas one of the few books written
specifically for children that Ireally got into after I was
saying eat. And it's just it'skind of stayed with me over the
years. I've thought about itoften, and I really, really,
(46:54):
really love it and willing to,yeah, you know, place that love
and Perry, that's awesome.
I mean, I think that's awesome.One of the nice things about
being a writer is being able topay homage to all the sort of
influences that have touched youin the books that you really
loved. And I think then thatlove shows in the book that you
(47:16):
are writing as well. That was
what I was hoping for. Yeah.
Yeah. For me, that was just verysurprising to be, oh my god. I
just happened to be reading thisbook right off my kid. But it's
happening here. It's one ofthose weird, what do they call
that? You know, strangesynchronicity, synchronicity,
that's it. Yeah, exactly. That'sit, yeah, oh man,
(47:38):
yeah. That's one of my that'sone of my favorite things about
storytelling period is those,those synchronicities, like that
moment when you see an unusualword for the first time, and
then you start noticing iteverywhere, like that. That's
the stuff I love the best.
(47:58):
Yeah, that's what I think isgonna happen with Stagger Lee,
now I'm gonna start being like,oh my god, there's dagger. Lee,
oh my God. Because I'm a hugemusic nerd too, and I had never,
I'm obviously in a verydifferent direction. If I have
not heard of Stagger Lee, right,so it'll be interesting to see
where his name, oh yeah, he'saround.
He's definitely around. Uh, JohnHorner Jacobs wrote a horror
(48:24):
novella involving Stagger Leesome years ago called, I think
that one was called a lush andseething hell. I know it was
packaged along with anothernovella, but it is really
fantastic. I love that guy'swork.
Where is it? Great. He is sogood. Yeah, that
was a pretty popular one. Iremember hearing about that
(48:44):
quite a bit. Actually, I thinkthat was during my new horror
phase. Okay, well, we aregetting towards the end, so we
should start wrapping this up.So what is bringing you hope
right now? Alex, a
lot of things being able to makeprogress with my health in a way
that I never have before, likebeing in my 40s, like it's not
(49:08):
so much the weight loss, it'sthe it's the other things that
go along with it that are thepoint for me. You know, music,
music brings me a lot of hope,the way, the way stories play
out in our world, I have a lotof hope, like hope from family.
(49:29):
My dog, karate Valentino givesme a lot of help. And then my
partner in catchy chibuiza. Andjust like being able to laugh,
like as as a comic, like one ofthe most important things we do
is laugh together, and, yeah,most those are things giving me
help right now.
(49:50):
Okay, this is off the beatenpath, but I gotta ask you, like,
what, when did you decide to bea comic? It just seems like so
hard, like I can't. Ah, man, Iam. Yeah, that is the opposite
of my personality, you know,like, I could never stand up
there by myself and do that.Like, I've played in bands, I
could do it with a group ofpeople, but I could never stand
up there and, like, I don'tknow, it's just, it's very
(50:13):
brave. Well,
I mean, I've kind of always beeninto stand up and I think I've
always been a bit of a performeron some level. But in like,
toward the end of 2012 or 2013 Igot called up on stage at an
improv show. And, you know, Igot laughs doing that, and I
(50:36):
really liked that. And so therewas an open mic at the same
theater a little bit later, andI went up and told like, two and
a half jokes, but I got laughs.And that's Narcotizing man like
that, that feeling of gettingthose laughs from a room full of
strangers. And so I just keptdoing it. I took time off in
(51:00):
2017 to, like, get back to thenovel and finish it up. But you
know, since my partner and Ihave been together, I've been
getting back into it more, and,like, now I'm co producing a
show in Baton Rouge, and we'restill not going up quite
regularly, but I am going up andI am writing, and it's there's
(51:23):
nothing else like it like, forone thing, there is so much
waiting involved in publishing.But stand up is about instant
gratification. Setup, punchline,yeah, tag, you get the laughs,
right? Then you get all yourcookies. You keep them, and it
is magical in a similar way tostory in that like I have had my
(51:50):
back go out before I've gottenon stage and been in tremendous
pain, and then by the end of myset, in like 510, 15 minutes,
it's gone, all gone. And that's,that's really, that's really
important to me. I do
think there is a lot ofstorytelling involved in in
(52:10):
stand up too, you know,obviously shorter stories, or
maybe we'd say flash if it waswritten down or something, you
know what I mean. But, uh,right, yeah, there's definitely,
because that hook at thebeginning is usually some kind
of story about your life orsomebody you know, right? And
then you kind of build up tothat joke,
yeah. And also, like, I talkabout this a lot in my teaching
(52:31):
work, but like, the manipulationof beats and like getting a
specific response out of anaudience without being
completely direct about it, thatthat fascinates me, that's
always fascinated me. So that'sone of the things that's drawn
you to comedy. The next bookthat I'm working on is set in a
(52:53):
version of the New Orleanscomedy scene.
Ooh, exciting. That's
how is this in the is this inthe Percival Graves or the
perilous graves universe orseparate? I
would say that it is contiguous,but they're not in the same
world. But has anyone from thisworld or that world crossed over
(53:15):
into the other like, Yeah, I'dsay so. So while
we're talking about it, whatelse? What else? What other
projects do you have coming upthat you want to tell everyone
about?
Well, I just had a I had a storycome out in bourbon pin in July
that I'm very proud of, thatpeople seem to still be
discovering bourbon pin 33 thestory is called fat kids. And
(53:37):
then I believe my column is outin the new issue of f and NSF.
It's a speculative Poetry Reviewcolumn, because I'm also a poet
and I I love awesome reading,thinking and writing about
poetry. I also have a reviewcoming out in the future issue
(54:03):
of Uncanny Magazine. But I'm notsure which issue exactly, and
those are the most pressingthings other than the novel. I'm
worried.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Andwhere can everyone find you?
Online? You can findme@alexittings.net
on Twitter. That's the one thingI'm willing to dead name under
(54:28):
magic Negro, M, A, G, I, C, K,and I'm on Instagram under the
same name as well. And I'm onblue sky social at Alex van der
dot Guinea and yeah, that'swhere I am.
Excellent, awesome, awesome.Well, pleasure having you on so
glad to get to talk to you.Finally,
(54:50):
absolutely. Thank you so much.That was amazing. Thank you.
Okay, that was our interviewwith Alex Jennings before we.
Continue on. Don't forget toshare a podcast on your socials,
whatever those may be, there's areason why cats laughing, but we
(55:10):
are not going to reveal that.Also, don't forget you could
rate and review us. That wouldbe great. Haven't checked those
recently. I really need to goout there and see if there's any
more good reviews. But we've gotgetting a bunch out there, so
we, you know, we could alwaysuse more, though. Well, and if
you've been wondering, go ahead,I was gonna
say, if people enjoyed thisepisode, we have literally
(55:32):
dozens and dozens more with someamazing writers, including the
writer zig zag Claiborne, whoyou heard us mention multiple
times.
Oh gosh, we've got at least twowith zigzag, maybe three. Can't
remember, but yeah, we had somereally awesome guests on. We had
Tanana Reeve do last month. Oh,good. She was phenomenal. I
(55:57):
mean, we've had we've had Marthawells on, we've had Corey
Doctorow on, yeah? Who else havewe had? We've had some good
ones.
We we get the good people,right?
Yeah, yeah. And I'd be honest.You know, some of our most
interesting guests have beensome of the little more obscure
(56:18):
people too. I would highlyrecommend not skipping those
episodes, because, yeah,everybody that we invite on is
super interesting and hassomething to say. So also, we
have our Patreon. If you want tosupport us that way, that's at
patreon.com/if, this goes on,and then finally, and then I'm
(56:39):
done talking about it. We alsohave coffee. That's K, O, f, i,
you can go out there and you canjust search us in the search
bar, we will pop up. And you canjust give us, like, a one time
donation, if you don't want,like, the ongoing monthly thing
that that's involved withPatreon. So,
yeah. So Kat, yes, thoughts,
(57:01):
opinions about Alex in his work,and I
knew he was going to be amazing,and he revealed things about the
book that I hadn't known. So I,I pronounced this an amazing and
very fruitful interview. Yeah,
yeah, there was a lot ofsynchronicity in this book, in
this episode, for me, kind ofweird. I mean, I had mentioned
(57:22):
The Phantom Tollbooth thingearlier in the episode, but,
like some of the music stuffthat's in the book, and I've
actually, I've been to NewOrleans a couple times, and I've
always had a really great timethere. I've been to Baton Rouge
too. Actually, I will tell myNew Orleans story. I went there
with Chris Snyder, who sometimesdoes music for this show, okay?
(57:46):
And so we were down there, andwe were like, walking around,
because this is when we were inour 20s, and we were artiste
sino and writers and whatnot. Sowe went into this graveyard, and
Chris was gonna, like, do somedrawings and whatever. And I was
going to write some poetry,because I was a poet at the
time, right? And so we are justhanging out, and they are
(58:07):
chatting a little bit and doingour thing. And so we go to
leave, and we are locked intothe graveyard. So then this is,
like, 12 o'clock noon. This isnot, like the middle of the
night or something, right? Yeah.And we're like, oh, fuck, we're
fucking locked into thegraveyard, and there's a huge
(58:28):
fence. It was like a 10 or 12foot fence, right? Now, it
couldn't have been that high. Itmust have been like seven foot
or something like that. But it'snot like, it was not like one of
those that you could easilyclimb over, right? Oh, my God.
So we sit around for a while.We're like, What the hell are we
going to do? And we're walkingaround the graveyard. So
finally, we decide we're gonnaclimb on the top of this tomb
(58:51):
and leap over the gate or leapover the fence, which is what we
did. And if I did it now, I'dprobably like, break my leg or
something. But we were in our20s, you know. So we were like,
All right, here we go. In
your 20s, you can definitely dothat sort of thing in a way that
you don't even think about howeasy it is at the time. Yes,
well, that's so you made it overthe fence and you made it back
to your festival.
Yes, we made it over the fenceand back to the festival. But I
(59:13):
always like to tell a story ofhow we were locked in the
graveyard and trapped in there.You know, it was so funny,
because we really panicked for aminute. We were like, oh shit,
oh shit. Like, when do they comeback? We don't even know. Why is
it close to 12? What ishappening?
This is how they get the newcorpses to bury, right,
right? And it was one of the,you know, those, those
(59:34):
graveyards that you always see,you know, in the photos and
stuff from New Orleans, wherethey're above ground, right? And
so there's brown teams and stuffand, but, yeah, it was fun. But,
uh, so what are you readingthese days? Anything cool?
Um, I am reading it. It's ahorror novel called Burn the
negative by Josh winning, whichI I'm enjoying. It is it is nice
(59:58):
and creepy and. And queued upafter that I have I'm so excited
about this. Stephen GrahamJones, don't fear the rate word,
which is the second in hisIndian Lake trilogy.
I know I've mentioned thisbefore, but I've only read two
things by Stephen Graham Jones,one which I was like, Meh, I
didn't really care for and thenthe other, which is probably the
(01:00:20):
most disturbing short story I'veever read in my life. So,
oh yeah, yeah. He had some thatare really he had when he came
to Clarion West, he read thisshort story that was a kind of
zombie landscape story. This guyhad all these kittens basically
tied to his belt, which he woulduse to distract the zombies when
(01:00:40):
they were coming after him,which, wow, it was pretty dark.
It was pretty dark.
That is dark. That's totallydark. I am reading. It's called,
I'm trying to find the fulltitle. Here it is, found an
anthology of found footagehorror stories edited by, oh,
that okay. Oh, it's cool. It'sgood. It's good. Edited by
(01:01:04):
Andrew call and Gabino Iglesias.That's
I, oh, I love Gabino Iglesias.We should have him on here to
interview. Actually, he would be
amazing. We should. I'm writinghis name down so I don't forget.
Yeah,
write his name down. Oh,
it's been really good. So far.I'm only a few stories in but
Josh Roundtree is in here. Idon't know if you're familiar
with him. I like, I likeeverything I've read by him so
(01:01:26):
far, just I've not read any ofhis long works, but most of his
short work. And then I don'trecognize all the names. You
know, I'm not, I'm not as up onthe horror stuff as I am
everything else. But, right? Butit's really great. It's really
great. And then the next thingI'm reading it is, oh, this is
(01:01:46):
for the next episode, becausewe're recording Diane and I are
gonna be recording the nextepisode soon, because I'm trying
to, I'm trying to stock up forthe holidays so I can take
December off. But it's thenightmare box and Other Stories
by Cynthia Gomez, so I'm lookingforward to that
awesome, awesome that should bereally good. Yeah, I've heard
great
things about it from a lot ofpeople whose opinions I trust.
(01:02:09):
So definitely looking forward tothat. Well, I think that's I
think that's it for us, all
right. Well, it's beendelightful. Alan, thank you for
interviewing Alex with me,because I have been so excited
about this interview. Yeah, I
know you have, I know you havein whenever we're doing an
episode that one of my co hostsis excited by I get like, I get
(01:02:30):
like, additional excitement, youknow? I mean, because there's I
get excited, everyone getsexcited. And it's always
awesome. So
awesome. Well, hey, cool is myexhortation to you and our
listeners, yep,
yep. And that's it for us, weare bringing you hope one
episode at a time.
(01:03:00):
If this goes on, don't panic. Isedited and produced by Alan
Bailey. Our theme music is byFather flamethrower. Additional
music is by Christophersnitroski, and outro music by
sable Aradia, Intro by DaveRobinson. A special thanks to
our guest, Alex Jennings, thanksfor supporting us, and we'll see
you again soon. You
(01:03:25):
I believe in unicorns intoplanetary
I believe in unicorns.
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