It’s finally here! On Saturday, April 17, 2010, Chicago theater group Collaboraction and I are throwing an Order of Odd-Fish fan art gallery show and costume dance party!

Collaboraction is decorating their space to portray scenes from Odd-Fish. Foppish cockroaches, courtesy of Strange Tree, will be strolling around. There will even be kegs of Belgian Prankster beer, thanks to Matt Mayes and Meg Rutledge!

It’s 437 N. Wolcott in Chicago. From 7-10 pm, it’s the opening of the gallery of all the great fan art I’ve received for Odd-Fish. Here’s just a few examples—click on the thumbnails:

After 10 it turns into a costumed battle-dance party into the wee hours. Come costumed as a FIGHTING GOD for the battle-dancing contest in the Dome of Doom! Register by emailing your name, your fighting god name, and if possible, a picture of yourself in fighting-god costume to domeofdoom@collaboraction.org. 64 duelists maximum; first 20 duelists who register get in free!

What kind of DIVINE BATTLES can we expect to see on April 17?

Yes, all divine warriors eager to prove their celestial muscle are invited: murderous angels, immortal bacteria, supernatural gladiator droids, reverse vampire ninjas, chthonic death-ooze, righteous seraphim clad in armor of holy lightning—fighters of any kind!

Ritual COMBAT-BY-DANCE shall be judged by the warrior-priests of COLLABORACTION, based on COSTUME, fighting STYLE, and signature DEATH-BLOW.

The champion shall have the honor of being sacrificed to ICHTHALA, the ALL-DEVOURING MOTHER, in an OCCULT RITUAL of APOCALYPTIC TERROR!

Tickets are $20 ($25 after April 15) for general admission and $50 ($60 after April 15) for premium admission. Premium admission includes hosted bar, appetizers and access to premium lounge. Get your tickets here, or visit Collaboraction.org for more information!

Wait, What’s This All About?
James Kennedy, the author of the young adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish (Random House Delacorte, 2008) has teamed up with Collaboraction to pull of a unique art show and costume dance party extravaganza for Collaboraction’s 7th Annual Carnaval. THE DOME OF DOOM will showcase the strange, wonderful fan art James has received from enthusiastic readers of Odd-Fish. It will also be a costumed dance party in which guests dress up as fighting gods and battle-dance in a raucous competition reminiscent of the climactic scenes of Odd-Fish. For the week after the opening, James and Collaboraction will host field trips from Chicago schools for performances from the book, art viewings, and theatrical writing workshops led by James. Information about the field trips can be found here. You can contact James directly at kennedyjames [at] gmail [dot] com.

Modern dandy Basil Arnould Price, a fifteen-year-old prodigy whose work on DeviantArt is staggering, contributed this amazing picture for the Odd-Fish art show: a stylish portrait of Ian Barrows, Jo’s best friend in Eldritch City.

I’m blown away by this! Basil really captured the what I wanted Ian to be; both his unstable, adolescent good looks and his tentative awkwardness. The rose in his hand and the butterfly perched on his rifle give him such a fragile, earnest air. It seems fraught with symbolic import, like some allegorical code. I also appreciate that Basil put Ian in proper knightly raiment. It gives it the proper medieval, chivalrous atmosphere. The brooding weather in the background, with the nightmarish half-face in the clouds, is a masterful complement to Ian’s uncertain mood. It’s a really astonishing piece!

Basil writes, “I felt like Ian was sort of an embodiment of the gentle, somewhat youthfully insecure first boyfriend, complete with awkward teenage facial hair. He’s the sort of boy that I can easily identify with. And yes, those are monstrous faces in the background, intended to represent Ichthala, along with the unnamed fish that so lovingly vomits up the city.” Exactly.

What a stroke of good fortune to get someone like Basil to do a piece for this show. He’s a star in the making. We’re dealing with someone who writes for their contact information, “To contact me, you must fire a maroon flare into the sky whilst wearing a purple, smoking jacket.” This is how I talk in a perfect alternate reality.

By the way, fellow Chicago writer Margo Gremmler has done a splendid write-up of The Order of Odd-Fish on her blog, with a creative contest in which you can win a copy of the Odd-Fish paperback and a CD of the movie soundtrack I compiled for the book. Go now! Enter and win!

Back? I’ve got one more piece of Odd-Fish art to share—this one completely different from everything I’ve received so far, an absolutely unique collage from artist Carol Mollica, whom you can learn more about at her blog Artist In Progress.

It’s a collage of Jo Larouche’s life, and I love how Carol integrated the text of the the jacket into the piece, including the warning about Jo being “dangerous” (helpfully pointed out, with dry humor, as “enclosed advice”) and put in so many little subtle touches—the fish and the bird and the mysterious woman in the margin (Aunt Lily? Jo’s mother? A Silent Sister?) and the clip from the British WWII posters (”keep calm and carry on”)! Bang-up job, as they would say . . . as it happens, at work at the U of C, and every day I pass an identically-styled “keep calm and carry on” sign, so that was an unexpected coincidence! Great work, Carol—I’m so excited about the mixture of the realistic and the abstract I’ve been getting for this show. Both Carol and Basil say there’s a possibility that more work might be on the way, and I certainly hope that comes to be!

By the way, on Tuesday I visited Dwight Township High School, about an hour or so away from Chicago, and had a great time. I will be posting pictures and video of the epic visit soon. (Four 85-minute sessions in a row. I was run ragged at the end, but the students were spectacular.)

Last but absolutely not least: I had the great honor of being interviewed by Rick Kogan on WGN Radio 720 last Sunday. You can listen to the interview here. It was a blast, even though I was kind of intimidated at first. Rick Kogan is the last of the hard-ass, old-school Chicago newspapermen—an old pal of Chicago giants such as Mike Rokyo, Studs Terkel, and Nelson Algren.

He also has the most succulent voice in broadcasting: a deep, smooth growl.

To express how smooth I thought Kogan’s voice was, on the show I compared it to a “prime rib wrapped in a velvet cloth soaked in Bailey’s,” but that was a misstep; you should have seen the man wince. No hard-drinking newspaperman worth his salt would be caught anywhere near such sissy stuff as Bailey’s. I chose it because of its “smooth” cloyingness, but no—I should have said his voice was like a “prime rib wrapped in a velvet cloth soaked in fifty year old single malt scotch.” My apologies, Rick.

I’ll be honest. When I put out the call for submissions to the Order of Odd-Fish art show, I expected good art. But I didn’t expect to get my socks rocked off like this. I can’t tell you what an awesome experience this has been, to see my handful of words blossom into gorgeous, skillful, colorful pictures. THANK YOU, ALL ARTISTS.

Today I want to share three pictures from Diana Todd—each one engagingly different, each one showcasing a different aspect of her prodigious talents.

The first one, above—Jo and Ian on their ostriches, with the Odd-Fish banner—is good enough to be a book cover. It’s beautiful! Diana’s clearly spent some time poring over photos of real ostriches, right down to their knock-kneed stance and the imperious look in their eyes. The armor and regalia are exquisite, especially the authentic-looking ostrich tack (stirrups!) and the semi-transparent feather headpiece. This is the best kind of art: doing the diligent research, and then setting it on fire with imagination! Marvelous!

By the way, the young ‘uns might not remember this, but there was a video game called JOUST back in the 1980s in which you fought battles on flying ostriches. I played this game obsessively on my Atari, and it is of course the inspiration for the ostriches of The Order of Odd-Fish.

Please, do yourself a favor and watch this 1980s commercial for the JOUST video game. It is in the grand tradition of 1980s commercials that imply, “If you buy our product, it will come to life and destroy your house.” Commercials were longer back then, giving them time to become completely insane. Hang on for the last thirty seconds—I won’t ruin it for you, but it’s positively Lynchian:

But wait, there’s more Diana Todd art! Such as this, Dame Delia’s field notes for the Schwenk:

I can totally see Dame Delia snatching up a crumpled paper bag and scrawling these expert sketches of the beast as she chases it across Eldritch City. It might be too small to see here, but scribbled among the sketches are the notes “The Schwenk—Struthiconiicopteri Schwenkii” (I love the pseudo-Latin scientific name!) along with “sharp bill” and “crest is rarely raised” and “caught a glimpse of the bird in flight” and “tracked the bird around the city for several hours. It is just as elusive as Korsakov said!” This is beyond fan art; this is an authentic document from Eldritch City that somehow flew into our world.

Diana makes the Schwenk even more enigmatic by never fully revealing it, but only capturing it in a few hastily-executed sketches, each showing a different aspect. Making it feel that much more real. Masterful! At last, the Schwenk has found its John James Audubon.

And now, the last art from Diana—a tableau of the main characters of Odd-Fish. But since it’s Diana, this is no ordinary tableau. Everyone’s hanging by a thread!

What a joyous, buoyant feeling this one has! Ian and Nora are hanging from Jo’s legs, and Korsakov and then Sefino are hanging from Ian’s leg, and Audrey’s hanging from Nora’s arm—and there’s Aunt Lily floating nearby with her own balloon (a reference to her reckless hot-air ballooning in California?), and the Belgian Prankster popping up in the corner. This is just wonderful composition, summing up the essence of all the characters in their expressions and body language.

I love the close attention to detail here. Who remembers Ian’s tan corduroy jacket? Diana does, apparently. And Nora’s Teenage Ichthala shirt is the perfect touch. But my favorite thing is how Colonel Korsakov is pouting about something . . . as though he had been unexpectedly scooped up by Nora’s foot, and is patiently enduring the indignity of flight. Another strength: I like how Sefino looks like a fop, but also looks like a real cockroach.

Smashing work, Diana! To be so talented so early in life is a gift. I’m honored that you’ve done such brilliant work for The Order of Odd-Fish. Thank you!

Another knockout entry for the Order of Odd-Fish art show! This time it’s the creation of the universe as depicted in the Odd-Fish tapestry: the All-Loving Mother tricked by Aznath, the Silver Kitten of Deceit into vomiting the 144,444 gods into existence.

I love this! It’s gorgeous, raucous, and strangely solemn. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The Order of Odd-Fish may not be known to many, but it’s known by the right people.

Karen Alexander is the artist—you may remember her from the great Lily Larouche portrait she drew back in January. Great work, Karen! This is just what I imagined the tapestry to be like—wild, colorful, crammed with life, but its rambunctiousness streamlined into a flowing whole.

Even better, Karen has included many of the gods mentioned in Odd-Fish in the picture! Can you find all of them? Along with Ichthala, the All-Devouring Mother and Aznath, the Silver Kitten of Deceit, there’s also Zam-Zam, the Dancing Ant of Sadness; Fumo, the Sleeping Bee; Quafmaf, the Pigeon of the Moon; Nixilpilfi, the Gerbil Who Does Not Know Mercy; Mizbiliades, the Bleeding Butterfly; Pzarnarfalasath, the Rhinoceros Whose Laughter Destroys Worlds; Zookoofoomoot the Maggot of Dismay; Pft the Mouse; and more! Karen’s giddy profusion of gods puts me in the mind of the otherworldly bathhouse in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away—which was, after all, precisely what inspired me.

Karen’s densely populated, lovingly detailed, fantastically imagined fragment of the tapestry also puts me in mind of the panoramic bas reliefs at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the temples around it. No picture can do these reliefs justice—they’re just too big, they demand the viewer’s entire vision field—but this might give you an idea, when the Hindu gods and demons are churning the Ocean of Milk to create an elixir of life:

Thanks again, Karen, for bringing another aspect of Odd-Fish into visual reality. Your work is exquisite!

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the kind reviews for Odd-Fish that are still coming in (a year or so after it came out!) from far-flung places all over the world. Lyndon Riggall from Tasmania (!!) wrote a great review on his blog A Quick Word. In Dublin, Ireland “Lady Schrapnell” So Many Books also wrote an enthusiastic review of the Odd-Fish audiobook. And a great thumbs-up from Miss Corene in Vancouver, Canada! Closer to home (much closer; Bolingbrook, Illinois, as a matter of fact), Mr. S’s BiblioBlog has a generous review.

Thanks, all you reviewers, for taking the time to write nice things about the book. And of course, thanks to all the artists who are rocking my world right now.

Jaw drops to floor.

Brain explodes with awe.

Eyes joyfully melt.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hailey McLaughlin’s contribution to the Order of Odd-Fish art show: a double triptych of Lily Larouche, Colonel Korsakov, and Commissioner Olvershaw, both in their prime and in their old age. WHAT A DOOZY!

It’s accompanied by dialogue between the characters, also by Hailey:

“Oh the good old days! I remember when I took down a Segregating Cyanide Serpent with nothing but a half broken biscuit sword and a Christmas cactus!”

“Ah yes, I heard about that when I first came to the city. I had just arrived, you know. I was so fortunate to have been rescued by the eel-people, but if worse had come to worse, I knew my digestion would have gotten me through!”

“YOU TWO ARE THE MOST COCKAMAMIE CADS I’D EVER HAD THE UNFORTUNATE COMPANY TO SHARE OZONE WITH! WHEN YOU WERE STILL POOPIN’ IN YOUR HUGGIES I WAS OUT SHANKING THE FIENDS OF THE UNIVERSE WITH NOTHING BUT MY THUMB! I BET YOU THINK YOU’RE SO CLEVER TO HAVE ALL YOUR LIMBS BUT ONE DAY YOU’LL WAKE UP AND ME AND MY THUMB WILL BE THERE WITH BELLS ON! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME!?!?!!”

When this art first arrived in my email, I was so blown away I couldn’t write back at first—I had to get up and walk around the room, my heart beating in excitement, my eyes twirling.

I can’t decide what I like best: the vivacious Audrey Hepburn feel of young Lily Larouche, the dashing figure Korsakov cuts as a young KGB agent, or the terrifying decrepitude of Olvershaw as he reaches out to demolish you with his thumb (and if you zoom in close enough to the hi-res version, you can even see his crinkly nose hairs!). A visual feast!

Choice details: Korsakov’s teeny-tiny teacup, Olvershaw’s thumb fluttering on the edge of a stringlike arm, and the nonplussed cockroach assistant. I could go on and on. It makes me so happy. Well done, Hailey! I’m honored and ecstatic.

Remember, everyone’s invited to contribute to the Odd-Fish fan art show, which opens the weekend of April 17. Deadline is March 15!

The good news doesn’t stop there. Today is the release day for the paperback of The Order of Odd-Fish, with this new cover by Paul Hornschemeier!

I’ve mentioned Paul before on the blog. What I haven’t yet shared is that he designed the brilliant invitation for Heather’s and my wedding. It’s a map of our relationship, mashing together all the places Heather and I have lived and traveled into one vast Pangaea. The name of this land is a combination of our names, James Kennedy and Heather Norborg: NOREDY. Click for a closer view:

Personal favorite detail: that distance is measured in “Kenneborgs.” I’m lucky to know Paul, and I’m thrilled to have his cover for the paperback.

I’m having a paperback release event at 57th Street books in Hyde Park this Thursday (2/11). I’ll also be reading at Claire Zulkey’s Funny Ha Ha series at the Hideout tonight (Tuesday, 2/9) with stand-up comedian Cameron Esposito, author Kate Harding, writer Fred Sasaki, writer Robbie Q. Telfer, and filmmaker Steve Delahoyde. And of course, Claire Zulkey herself. If you’re in Chicago, swing on by!

It was a busy weekend. On Friday I went to see Newbery award-winning Rebecca Stead (and her editor Wendy Lamb) speak at 57th Street Books. I thought Rebecca’s book When You Reach Me was brilliant in every way; I’m shocked something this quirky and unclassifiable snagged the Newbery. 1970s lower middle class New York City coming-of-age story AND a time travel mind-blower? Playful appropriation of A Wrinkle in Time AND game show fairy tale? Laser-accurate diagnosis of junior high school friendships AND page-turning mystery? All this in about 200 pages? And she makes it all look easy? YEP.

To my startled pleasure, Rebecca knew about me—Betsy Bird of the indispensable Fuse #8 blog had recommended Rebecca read my cri de coeur against the secret bloodthirsty rituals of the American Library Association, which she enjoyed. It’s not every day your writing is complimented by a Newbery award winner. What an honor!

During the Q&A, Rebecca and Wendy mentioned the various ways Rebecca wove When You Reach Me closer together with A Wrinkle In Time—in a way When You Reach Me is a kind of sly rewriting of Madeleine L’Engle’s book. Anyway, along those lines, I mentioned how clever I thought it was when, after Sal broke off his friendship with Miranda, he started playing basketball alone, and Miranda could hear his basketball constantly bouncing. This immediately brought to my mind the creepy basketball-bouncing boys on Camazotz in Wrinkle. It was, I thought, a deft parallel.

I got halfway through saying this and then stopped. Both Rebecca and Wendy were staring at me in surprise. That detail, which I had thought was a masterstroke of subtle counterpoint, was completely unintentional—it hadn’t occurred to Rebecca or her editor until that moment! Rebecca shared other stories of unintentional parallels that were spotted by readers. It was a fascinating talk.

Saturday, fellow Brother Delacorte and author of paranormal romance spoof I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It Adam Selzer helped me with a Dome of Doom writing workshop at 826CHI. More about that later—this post is already too long, and Adam filmed the whole thing. Video coming soon!

Freya and Theo, along with Georgia and August, also made a gingerbread house of the Odd-Fish lodge! Last year they made a gingerbread house of Aunt Lily’s ruby palace. This is the kind of Christmas tradition I can get behind. The reason the lodge is slathered with frosting and marshmallows here, Theo explained, is because it had just suffered one of the Belgian Prankster’s pranks. I particularly like the “ostrich take-off” sign on top, and off to the right . . . the all-devouring . . . brother?

Thanks for it all! Freya and Theo are my test audience for The Magnificent Moots—nowadays whenever I see them I usually have another chapter or so finished, and so they’re the ones who must endure listening to me read aloud from my clunky first drafts. I did a reading of Odd-Fish at Freya’s school a couple weeks ago, and this Friday we’re all going to see the newly minted Newbery winner Rebecca Stead at 57th Street books. We all adore her When You Reach Me, so this will be exciting. Don’t worry; no Newbery shenanigans planned this year.

Back on January 14, I participated in Opium magazine’s Literary Death Match. It was tons of fun. The idea is that four local writers read a short piece, and are judged American Idol-style by three judges on literary merit, performance, and “intangibles.” Two semifinalists go on to the final round, a contest which has nothing to do with literature—in the past it’s been stuff like laser-tag, musical chairs, or long division.

My worthy opponents were Davis Schneiderman, Rebekah Silverman, and Andy Farkas. The judges were Shawn Smith (whom I’m pictured with above, the mastermind behind Shawnimals plush toy empire), author Kathleen Rooney (who just got bumped to the top of my to-read list), and one of my favorite people in Chicago, music critic and author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking Jessica Hopper.

An account of the whole evening is here. I faced off against Davis Schneiderman in the semifinals, in which we had to execute sketches of the judges in 20 seconds. For example here’s my sketch of the lovely Kathleen Rooney, side by side with the real thing:

Long story short—somehow, I won! (Hence, the crown and medal above.) This puts me in the illustrious company of previous Literary Death Match victors such as Daniel Handler, Cintra Wilson, and Amelia Gray. I’m honored! (Wilson’s hilarious, poisonous A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease is a longtime favorite of mine.)

Thanks, everyone! This year has started off promisingly.

A couple weeks ago I posted an in-depth interview with a blogger who disliked my novel The Order of Odd-Fish.

Here’s the opposite: an interview with a blogger who LOVED Odd-Fish!

It’s Adam Callaway, absurdist-lit writer and master of the blog The Weirdside. The interview is cross-posted there. (He’s the one with the clock on his head. I’m the one with the merciless baby editor.)

We talk about comedy theory, what makes a good title, the upcoming Odd-Fish fan art gallery show, and Dig Dug. And more. Let’s get cracking!

ADAM: The Order of Odd-Fish is many things, but one of the main things is humor. How do you write humor? Do you carefully plan out each joke or do they come more by happy accidents?

JAMES: For me, the best humor comes from character. If the characters are fresh and distinct, and their relationships with each other have a natural push-and-pull, then the jokes will flow almost without effort.

Screenwriter Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica) had a blog in which she explained various tricks of screenwriting, with particular emphasis on comedy. I came across it while I was in revisions, and I found it very helpful. Jane makes a distinction between “soft” jokes and “hard” jokes that’s worth exploring.

A “hard” joke is like an equation, with every word precisely in place, a glittering nugget of funny. If well-written and delivered well, then joke for joke, hard jokes get the biggest laughs. The sharp, lethal put-down is often a hard joke. Here’s a chestnut from Dorothy Parker: “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

(Notice that the word that makes the whole line funny is the last word? I’ve found that if I’m working on a line that has humorous potential, but it just isn’t funny for some reason, often the way to fix it is to rearrange the words such that the last word is the one that unexpectedly changes and makes funny everything that came before.)

The danger of a hard joke is that it can feel canned, written, sitcommy—something too clever that no actual person would ever really say. A hard joke is often something that anyone could say and it still would be funny—but wait, that’s good, right?

Actually, no. In a novel, jokes can’t just be funny; they must also develop character. Otherwise you have a bunch of joke machines nattering at each other for 200 pages or more, and that’s just wearying.

“Soft” jokes, on the other hand, are often not as immediately laugh-out-loud funny. They spring from the peculiarities of character, and are usually very context-specific. But the accumulation of many soft jokes, and the way they reveal character, makes them more powerful and ultimately funnier than a similar amount of “hard” jokes.

Here’s an example from Napoleon Dynamite:



Deb is selling crappy handicrafts door to door. Napoleon answers the door; his boorish brother Kip is inside watching some haw-haw sitcom.

DEB. In here we have some boondoggle keychains. A must-have for this season’s fashion.

NAPOLEON. I already made like infinity of those at scout camp.

DEB. Well, is anyone else here? I’m trying to earn money for college.

KIP (off-camera): Your mom goes to college.

It would be a sin kill the effortless genius of this scene by overexplaining it, but in the interests of analysis, let’s sin.

None of these lines is funny on its own like the Dorothy Parker line above, but taken together, and especially in the context of the rest of the movie, they’re funnier than the Dorothy Parker line. Why? Because with every line, each character unintentionally reveals their absurdity. We all unintentionally give ourselves away every time we open our mouths. The disconnect between what a character thinks they’re saying, and what they’re accidentally divulging about themselves, is fertile ground for comedy. (It has to be accidental, something we read into the line. Napoleon wouldn’t be funny if he believed he was being funny.)

Napoleon’s combative dorkiness is out in full force with his line, which is perfectly worded (”like infinity,” “scout camp”). Stilted, listless Deb starts out by robotically mumbling a sales pitch (”in here we have some,” “a must-have”—nobody talks like this outside a sales context) and then breaks down into a plea. But the masterstroke is Kip’s “Your mom goes to college.”

Outside of certain limited contexts, it’s impossible to do a funny “mom joke”—that territory was strip-mined years ago. But there is such a thing as a funny joke-about-a-mom-joke, or a joke about a listless old white dude who makes mom jokes. The best thing about this mom joke, “Your mom goes to college,” is that it doesn’t make sense even on its own terms as a joke. It’s funny because it’s poking fun at the reflexive, mechanical, self-satisfied humor of people like Kip.

Jane Espenson has three valuable posts on the topic of soft vs. hard jokes here, here, and here. Indeed, her whole blog is a generous cornucopia of wisdom. It’s a free master class in comedy writing by an experienced professional.

As a postscript, there is a particular kind of “hard” joke that I’m very fond of, although it never makes me laugh. I call this joke the “Zen koan” kind of joke, for it does not cause laughter so much as it brings the reasoning mind to a gentle halt. From The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

FORD. You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.

ARTHUR. What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?

FORD. You ask a glass of water.

I’ve never laughed at that joke. The first time I read it, I probably didn’t understand it, or even notice it. But it is now one of my favorite jokes in the Hitch-hiker’s series. It doesn’t make me laugh, but it does make my brain go “click” in a satisfying way, which is rarer.

I think a good comedic novel should have both hard and soft jokes, and if possible, the occasional Zen koan.

In this discussion, it would be a shame not to mention New Yorker literary critic James Wood’s brilliant preface to his book The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. In it Wood draws a distinction between “corrective” laughter, which he characterizes as satirical and bullying, and he claims has roots in religious writing, and “forgiving” laughter, which is more gently mocking, modern and secular. My tastes run towards “forgiving” comedy rather than “corrective” comedy. In any case, useful insights aplenty. You can read an abridged version of the essay here, but it’s worth it to go out and buy the book to read it in its entirety.

You’ve said that when you were shopping around Odd-Fish, you received over 100 rejections from agents. How did you stay chipper through all the negativity?

I didn’t stay chipper. It was completely demoralizing.

Do you feel like you’ve gained the right to humiliate those agents that said “nay” to you of/and or using costumes and pie?

Well, The Order of Odd-Fish hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, has it? Only if I’d written a bestseller would I have the standing to humiliate anyone.

Actually, I’m grateful for the rejections. They forced me to review my manuscript, again and again and again, each time with a more critical eye. For the three years I was trying to sell Odd-Fish, I was continually revising and rewriting and tightening. If I’d sold my first draft, it wouldn’t have been as good a book.

Do you put value in the trope that you need to live life before writing believable characters and plot?

Wait. In what situation do you not need to “live life”?

What’s your take on titles? Are they important or secondary? Do you prefer complex or simple titles?

Titles are important. I have a pet idea about titles that I might as well share.

Ideally, I believe a good title should feel like the DNA of the book—that all the conflict, structure, atmosphere, and sensibility of the story should somehow be there right in the title, writ small in a couple words. The telling of the story is simply the unpacking, the unspooling of what’s already crammed into the title.

Titles that manage this trick have a magnetic tension in them, a fertile busyness. You can feel the different words of the title pulling each other in different directions. Those titles are unforgettable. They intrigue you afresh every time you hear them, even if you’ve already read the book.

For instance, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a fantastic title. We feel three distinct things pulling against each other—something noble, something evil, and something commonplace. Adding and the Wardrobe to the end is the masterstroke, because it deflates the epic-ness of the first two items, and brings the title back to earth. It assures us that even though there will be fierce animals and unnatural magic, there will also be a certain coziness. That coziness is essential; it throws the magical stuff into relief.

The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is another great title. You can feel the unpretentiousness and raffishness of “hitch-hiker” rub up against the cosmic grandiosity of “galaxy.” Again, the last word turns everything around. “Galaxy” instantly recontextualizes all the preceding words, making the title buzz with tension. And the two words beginning with H, followed by the two words beginning with G, is a nice piece of alliteration, but not so much that it bonks you over the head.

A certain kind of good title posits something that at first sounds like an impossibility. Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (Huh? How could an assassin worth their salt be blind? I’d better read it and find out!). G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (Wait, how can a man also be a day of the week? I’m intrigued, tell me more!). Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (But there are no home-grown American gods! Ah . . . )

Some titles try too hard. Throw in too many conflicting concepts, and you just get a mess. I love Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, but the title itself is a mish-mash, almost impossible to remember. Even now I had to visit my bookshelf to make sure I was getting the title right.

So that’s what I tried to do with The Order of Odd-Fish. The words Order and Odd can’t bear to be in the same title together; they’re pushing and pulling, you can feel them fighting each other. Odd things don’t feel orderly; well-ordered things aren’t odd.

But throwing two opposing concepts together in a deadlock isn’t quite enough. We need the third thing (the third heat?), like Wardrobe, to liberate the energy pent-up between Order and Odd. And so Fish—something alive, something faintly disgusting, with religious overtones, but strangely alien to humans—comes along as the last word of the title, recontextualizes what came before, and releases the charged energy stored between Order and Odd. As a bonus, there are three words beginning with O in the title, giving us some pleasant alliteration.

At least, that’s my analysis after the fact. When the title first came to me, it was just out of the blue.

Odd-Fish is a cinderblock, but has a great flow. Do you see yourself as more a maximalist or a minimalist?

I just had to look up “maximalist.” After reading the Wikipedia page, I’m still at a loss as to what it means.

However, if I was asked whether I preferred a luxuriant, overflowing garden like Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., or a precise, formal Japanese garden like Ryoanji in Kyoto, I’d say I loved them both, but I’d probably spend more time at Dumbarton Oaks.

And if you give me the choice between fake Gothic architecture and authentic modernist architecture, I’ll take the fake Gothic.

(These buildings are across the street from each other the University of Chicago. It’s not quite fair—to my mind, the SSA building isn’t the best modernism can offer—but if I never saw another Mies van der Rohe glass box in my life, I wouldn’t miss it.)

The point is, I feel more at home with generous, baggy, forgiving art better than strict, clean, controlled art. I like when characters have a vitality that causes them to overflow their role in the plot, that allows them to be irresponsible in their duties to the story. I like it when stories can breathe, when they allow themselves to digress and evolve and surprise me, when the story momentarily forgets it’s merely a story, and for a little while feels like an authentic document from another world.

This liberating feeling of overflow can happen in both “minimalist” or “maximalist” writing. But I suppose the sentiment, on its face, sounds “maximalist.”

As evidenced by your amazing use of language and a little snooping, you are obviously well-versed in the classics. Do you read more for entertainment or a deeper meaning? What is your main priority when writing a story?

The only reason to read, or write, is for delight. To put yourself in the hands of an enchanter and allow them to astonish you—to be brash and obnoxious enough to try to be one of those enchanters—that’s the irreplaceable, exhilarating, non-negotiable thrill of stories. Everything else is secondary. Deeper meaning is something we construct for ourselves later, in our own idiosyncratic way, when we’re musing about what we read.

I’ve often found that if I think of a book, “Wow, this is deep, this is really good” as I’m reading it, then that depth is almost certainly fraudulent. Lasting depth is constructed in your head, after you’re done reading, and nourished by re-reading. Many of the books that are deepest and most meaningful to me seemed, on first reading, off-puttingly dry, arbitrarily silly, perversely turgid, superficially entertaining, etc. But that’s to be expected. Anything that’s truly original achieves that originality by doing something that, in the current scheme, is wrong. Not just “breaking the rules” but I mean wrong—it just doesn’t sit well with you the first time you read it.

But then it nags you. And you eventually come around. And then it seems like a brilliant innovation, and later, as an inevitable development. But when you first encounter something truly new, it seems incorrect, arbitrary, in bad taste. My goal is to think up stuff that shouldn’t work and make it work. If you think up ideas that sound like they would work right off the bat, then the excitement of creation just isn’t as electrifying.

You have a blog and a Twitter account and update them regularly. What do you think is the role of social media in the modern author’s professional life?

I usually blog once a week, maybe once every two weeks—that is, not very often. My twittering is pathetic. It does take time away from what I should be doing, which is writing stories. But the upside is that it’s given me a way to be in touch with my readers, and a showcase for the amazing fan art I’ve received that I’d like to share with the world—such as when a husband-and-wife team of brewers, Meg Rutledge and Matt Mayes, created a beer in honor of Odd-Fish’s villain, the Belgian Prankster. (The label is by Gabe Patti.)

Or when a Floridian named Elise Carlson surprised me by baking a cake that depicts the scene when the giant fish vomited the Odd-Fish lodge into Eldritch City.

Or when Max Pitchkites, a high-school student, did mixed-media illustrations for all 28 chapters of the book. Some examples:

And other various other cool pictures, poetry, and costumes. Being in touch in this way gives me the chance to co-create the Odd-Fish universe with my readers. That’s a privilege, and an honor, and it’s worth giving up a little writing time for it.

Actually, I’m going to have a gallery show of this Odd-Fish fan art in Chicago in April 2010! More about that below.

Your blog reads more like a series of disjointed fevered dreams than personal entries. Why?

When I blog, I like to put a little effort into it. After all, I’m supposed to be a writer, so it’s a matter of professional pride to put out something nice. It didn’t seem worthwhile to write a blog that was simply ephemera; we’ve all read enough of those. You know the sort of blog: “I had a cheese sandwich today. Hey, how about that Tiger Woods? I’m almost done with the DVDs for this season of Dexter. Gosh, will it ever stop raining?” My day-to-day life is not interesting to those outside my friends and family, and so if I’m going to take the time to blog, I’m going to try to make each entry special. If it’s coming across as disjointed fever dreams, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Has your writing style/schedule changed since your daughter was born?

Yes. I don’t get to write anymore.

You live in Illinois (which I may point out, is below Wisconsin; interpret that as you like) Do you prefer deep-dish or New York style pizza? Toppings?

I interpret that to mean that Illinois is south of Wisconsin.

Deep dish pizza is simply gross. It’s an evil brick of cheese that sits in your stomach and tells you that it hates you. I hope I’ve eaten my last piece of “Chicago-style” pizza. Thin crust all the way. My best friend growing up, Dave Mancini, has a thin-crust pizzeria in Detroit called Supino that is the bee’s knees.

Why did you choose to become a writer versus a painter, musician, Irish Step-dancer, etc?

I have no talent in those areas. I occasionally get lured into a band, but that doesn’t make me a musician. I have always been the least valuable player in every band I’ve been in. That includes my last band, Brilliant Pebbles, now sadly defunct.

Now that Brilliant Pebbles looks like it might be over, what are you going to do to keep yourself busy in a non-writing related way?

To keep myself busy? I’m already too busy without trying to dream up new stuff to eat up my time! I’m actually relieved Brilliant Pebbles is finished; that means I will have more time to work on my next novel, which my editor expects to see in July 2010. I am horribly behind schedule. It’s called The Magnificent Moots, and here you can find some preliminary illustrations, as well as a link to me reading its introduction.

Between The Magnificent Moots, my family, and my job (I’m a computer programmer for the University of Chicago), there’s no time for anything else. It’s a pity, because such extracurricular activities inspire a lot of my writing. I wrote the majority of Odd-Fish while taking improv comedy classes at The Second City and ImprovOlympic. In terms of creativity and inspiration, improv and writing fed into and nourished each other.

How and why did the Brothers Delacorte come together? What do you make of the allegations that its sole purpose is to show off how dashing you all look in turtlenecks?

Those allegations are sadly true. The Brothers Delacorte have done barely anything other than pose for those photographs. We’ve had two public readings, but getting us all in the same room at the same time is like herding radio waves. I’ve given up!

As for how we came together—fellow Delacorte author Daniel Kraus got in touch with me because he knew I was another YA author in Chicago who was on Random House’s Delacorte imprint. As it turned out, he worked right around the corner from me—as a reviewer at Booklist—and I worked at the American Medical Association at the time, a ten minute walk away. We started having occasional lunches, and are now cordial frenemies.

Weirdest scene from any book you’ve ever read?

The Circe chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Never seen it topped. Don’t expect to.

What can we expect from Mr. Kennedy in the future, and when can we expect it?

Glad you asked. As I mentioned in my remarks above, I’ve been getting a lot of wild, strange fan art for The Order of Odd-Fish since it’s been published. I’ve been putting them up in a special gallery on my web site.

Fan artists like this deserve broader recognition! So in April 2010 I’m planning a gallery show / extravaganza of Order of Odd-Fish art in Chicago. I’ve put out an open call for submissions.

Above image by Panndy from DeviantArt.com.

It’ll be not only an art show, but also a costumed dance party and theatrical extravaganza. I’m working with Collaboraction, a Chicago theater group, to do this. They’re going to decorate their cavernous space to portray scenes from the book (the fantastical tropical metropolis of Eldritch City, the digestive system of the All-Devouring Mother goddess, the Dome of Doom where knights fight duels on flying armored ostriches, etc.).

Opening night will be a dance party where people dress up as gods and do battle-dancing in the Dome of Doom. My wife and I used to throw costumed battle-dancing parties back in the day; you can see pictures and read about them here, to give you an idea of what I have in mind for April, but on a much larger scale.

In the weeks after the costume party opening, we’ll bring in field trips from schools. They’ll browse the fan art galleries (which some of them may have contributed to), be wowed by the elaborately decorated environment we’ve created, take in some performances from the book, and participate in a writing workshop.

Hey, you! Reader of this interview! If you’ve read and liked Odd-Fish, and you’d like to do art based on it, your art can be featured in this gallery show in Chicago in the spring. The whole shebang will open in April. The deadline for submissions is March 15. Hoo-hah!

Finally: favorite mythical creature?

The Pooka. Not the legendary Irish demon of chaos. I mean the tomato-red balloon with yellow goggles from Dig Dug:

By the way, did you know they’re making a Dig Dug movie?! Check it out. The Internet doesn’t lie:



“So what’s in this for me?” “What do you want?” “Oh, the usual. Pineapples. Mushrooms.”

Thanks so much for interviewing me, Adam!

IT IS COMPLETE! Today I’m proud to present the last two entries (Chapters 19 and 20) in Max Pitchkites’ series of mixed-media illustrations of The Order of Odd-Fish. It’s been a long, exhilarating ride! You can see all 28 beautiful illustrations, with Max’s and my commentary, here.

Above we have the scene when Jo and Ian first visit the seedy prizefighting venue in Eldritch City known as the Dome of Doom, and they are menaced by “a ferocious man with blue skin and a face bristling with grotesque moles, decked out in an ornate military uniform from an army that existed only in his overheated imagination.”

I’m a sucker for the multicolored silhouettes, a Pitchkites trademark that he exploits in the same way cinematographers use deep focus. The monstrous shadows give the scene a foreboding Star Wars cantina feeling, and the overlapping yellow-orange-red layers in the background give it visual depth, but the hilarious, nostalgic masterstroke is—well, I’ll let Max have the last word, because it’s seven kinds of genius:

“Since this is the Dome of Doom, I decided to, well, turn it into a game of Doom, which is an old but spectacularly awesome first person shooter game . . . Jo is armed with that vile glass of black milk that the blue guy is so upset about, by the way. And 50 shots, to boot.”

Brilliant! (But alarming: 0 health and 0 armor for Jo? Get her to a power-up, stat!) For those among you who’ve never played Doom, the screenshot to the right should give you an idea of what’s going on. Max has used video game iconography as a motif throughout this series, and it works because he does it differently every time—always pushing the motif in a new direction. It’s one of the many touches that rewards repeated viewings of the whole series.

Above is Chapter 20, when Ken Kiang plots his intricate sabotage of the Belgian Prankster’s plans—and a musical, to boot. Max beautifully combines both ideas in this dreamlike music notation, which is also a sly reference to his earlier illustration Ken Kiang’s first appearance in Chapter 4. All of Ken Kiang’s methods of sabotaging the plan are represented here; it also ingeniously references how Eldritch City becomes a giant, intricate chess game between Kiang and the Belgian Prankster. Daring, imaginative, and totally true to the spirit of the chapter! I love it when something is both a conceptual triumph and beautiful to look at. Max takes risks, and they pay off.

Thanks again, Max, for such a awesome, creative series. We’re no longer writer and reader, but collaborators. Again, here’s the whole series.

But I’ve got more than Max’s stuff to share! Here’s a quirky, cool portrait of Jo from Mangamoo1 from DeviantArt. I love the feeling of this one, which catches Jo’s quiet humor. She seems both dainty and punk, both poised and otherworldly. The golden thread and the fish are smart references to the plot, but it’s the eyes that really sell me here—they seem to go beyond merely large manga eyes—all the way to the hauntingly huge eyes of a Margaret Keane painting. Great work!

This one’s by Karen Alexander (Azro on DeviantArt), a sober, contemplative portrait of faded starlet and ex-knight Lily Larouche. I love when artists take an unexpected perspective on the subject—Karen doesn’t focus on Lily Larouche’s wackiness and glamor, but on her secret sadness.

That’s a hard emotion to pull off, but Karen does great justice to Lily’s character, deepening it so that Lily Larouche feels like a real person with a tragic past and not just a caricature. I imagine that this is the look Aunt Lily sometimes get in her eyes at the ruby palace—and when Jo asks what’s wrong, Aunt Lily just smiles vaguely and changes the subject.

Karen writes, “I don’t know why I drew her with a hat, maybe because every time I think of crazy older women I see a a floppy sun hat?” Ha!

Bonus! This looks a bit like Judi Dench, whom I think would be perfect to play Aunt Lily if there was ever an Odd-Fish movie—well, either her or Helen Mirren.

This art that’s been pouring in for the Odd-Fish gallery show in April has been beyond top-notch. I am humbled and grateful. And there’s more to come! Remember, you can participate too. Here’s the details about submitting Odd-Fish art for the show. I can’t wait for it.

This past August The Order of Odd-Fish received its first truly scathing review. Before that I’d received either ecstatic reviews, or lukewarm reviews, or okay-but-not-my-cup-of-tea reviews. Now here was someone who really ripped into the book, with a passion that made me feel like I’d personally betrayed her. Her name is Ri, and the review is here.

In the review, Ri admitted that she didn’t actually finish the book. Intrigued, I got in contact with her. She decided to finish the book and re-review it.

She still didn’t like it.

You read a lot of interviews in which the author is asked questions by a fan. I thought, wouldn’t it be more interesting to do an interview in which the interviewer totally hates your book? Ri was game, and thus the following interview was born.

Warning: this interview is long and detailed, and thus it ain’t for everybody, just the sexy people.

Ri: What’s up with Ian’s mustache? That thing made me want to scream. Usually, books do not make me that angry . . . Has anyone else voiced complaints against it? Did Ian shave it off because Audrey and Jo’s campaign worked, or because he wanted Jo to like him more? How old is Ian, anyway? When he’s older, will he grow it back?

James: For those of you who haven’t read Odd-Fish, Jo is the heroine and Ian is a boy her age. When we first meet Ian, he is described as having “the wispy beginnings of a mustache, which did not suit him.”

To get the full effect of Ri’s distaste for the mustache, I must quote her review at length:

Oh God. Ian’s mustache. That thing bugged the freakin’ hell outta me. No joke. In fact, it annoyed me so much that I kept track of how many times it was mentioned. The grand total was 10 times before Ian (thank God) finally shaved the damn thing off.

Remember before, how I had said that if you want me to like a character, don’t keep reminding me that there is something abhorrent about them? Yeah. Well, fail. Maybe Kennedy just didn’t know that. Perhaps he hasn’t read enough romances. But if you don’t know romance, don’t write it (a warning to all you Stephanie Meyer wannabes)!

“Abhorrent”? Why all the mustache hate? After all, you can’t properly impersonate a rogue generalissimo without one:

I could post attractive pictures of myself with a mustache all day.

You’re right, I don’t read much romance. But I was deliberately writing against that template. None of my own relationships have been like the romances you read about in books. Jo and Ian’s relationship feels more real to me. They’re still figuring themselves out.

They’re attracted to each other in a confused way, yes, but they’re also friends. They rely on each other, they routinely hang out, and they feel at ease with each other. But they also get on each other’s nerves. Even after Jo fumblingly kisses Ian—and Jo surprises herself just as much as she surprises Ian—they still can’t figure out how they feel about each other. I wanted to catch that adolescent confusion, that awkward ambiguity.

You mentioned Stephanie Meyer, so I’ll put this in terms of Twilight. I didn’t want Ian to be an Edward Cullen who is repeatedly (and vacuously) described as “perfect.” As I’m sure you know, Edwards only exist in girls’ imaginations. Most boys are more like Ian. Why do you think Edward is played by a 22-year-old in the movie?

I used the mustache as a physical shorthand for Ian’s awkward transition to manhood. Ian wants to be grown-up, knowledgeable, and dependable. But he can’t quite carry it off yet, just like he can’t quite carry off the mustache.

The mustache causes everyone to show character. Ian keeps the mustache for a long time, even in the teeth of everyone teasing him—which shows he’s not concerned with what others think. Jo doesn’t care about Ian’s mustache unless Audrey is egging her on. That shows physical looks don’t really matter that much to Jo. As for Audrey, she just uses the mustache as an excuse to indulge in Audrey-esque pranks and taunts.

I think at a certain point in adolescence people are vain about their looks, but utterly clueless about aesthetics and obstinate in their fashion mistakes. Ian, like Jo, is in an awkward stage of growing up. It’s a fragile, weird, interesting time. Ian’s gauche mustache is a perfect emblem of that.

In fact, now that I’ve answered your question, I’ve convinced myself that Ian’s mustache is, far from an error, a masterstroke. Bravo, me!

Why the Belgian Prankster? As I mentioned before, it does not sound particularly evil and I could only ever think of him as a TV show star. Why not go with Nils or Sir Nils, if you really want to get crazy?

You want love interests to be handsome. You want villains to sound evil. I think that that path leads to obvious choices, and finally boring stories. Do we really need another “Dark Lord,” another “Xultar the Emperor Overzorp of Deathdoom”?

I didn’t want people to know how to feel about the Belgian Prankster at first. Is he supposed to be funny? Vaguely unsettling? Outright demonic? Even though the overall structure of Odd-Fish is traditional, I wanted each episode and detail to feel fresh, to have the tang of the arbitrary, even at the risk of being disorienting the first time you read it.

Here’s why he’s called the Belgian Prankster. In 1998 a Belgian named Noel Godin smashed a pie in Bill Gates’ face in the street. It was supposed to be a kind of performance art.

Interestingly, all the newspapers or reporters invariably referred to him as “Belgian prankster Noel Godin” or just “a Belgian prankster.” I found the phrase Belgian Prankster irresistible. It had a sinister lilt for me. I thought, what if this Belgian Prankster graduated from mere pie-throwing to more insane, dangerous, and finally supernatural stunts? Like filling the Grand Canyon with pistachio pudding? Or turning the Eiffel Tower upside-down? A celebrity terrorist—as if Osama bin Laden had his own whimsical reality show—a man in pursuit of the worst practical joke, the most apocalyptic prank.

The “Belgian” part makes it feel off-kilter, makes it bracingly arbitrary. So when my Belgian Prankster starts doing truly hideous things, there is a certain queasiness because it’s just a goofy name, not something thuddingly obvious like “Zuulgrokker the Unholy Skullcrapper.”

And “Prankster” puts him in the tradition of supervillains specializing in absurd nihilism like Batman’s Joker or Watchmen’s Comedian.

To my mind, “Sir Nils” doesn’t come close in richness. Although I do suggest the nihilism behind his character by choosing the name “Nils,” a variant of “nil”—“Sir Nothing.”

On the subject of Sir Nils, was there more of a history behind him? How did he get mixed up with the Silent Sisters, exactly?

There is more history behind him, but I won’t reveal it here. I have two sequels to Odd-Fish planned as well as a prequel!

And on the subject of the Silent Sisters, was Jo’s mom tight with them or did she just randomly get chosen (I was really confused about this; I think I might have skipped a page or something . . . )?

Jo’s mother’s specialty for the Odd-Fish was obscure cults. She had gone undercover in the Silent Sisters to research her article for the Appendix, and gotten in over her head. The pages you skipped are page 282 and page 286.

I was interested with Ken Kiang during the beginning and his background was interesting, but towards the end, I was skimming his scenes. Was I just not picking up on the subtle action?

Ken Kiang is a comic character. He starts out as the villain of the book, but somewhere along the way, he gets demoted. The Belgian Prankster replaces him as villain. This sets Ken Kiang off on a journey to figure out who he is.

Ken Kiang’s story is a comedic mirror-image of Jo’s story. Jo is an innocent girl who nevertheless has a implacable evil deep inside her. She tries to fight it and finally succeeds. Ken Kiang is the opposite: he desperately wants to be evil but he just can’t pull it off. Humiliatingly, he is doomed to be good. Ken Kiang’s story is the reverse of Jo’s, its comic counterpoint.

You’re very kind to attribute your lack of interest to “not picking up on subtle action.” I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of subtlety before.

Why didn’t you kill Ken Kiang heroically? Was he just the sort of character to live?

Ken Kiang is too silly to die heroically. And Ken Kiang’s way of looking at the world is quintessentially Oddfishian. It only makes sense for him to become a knight of the Odd-Fish at the end.

Also, I’m not a punitive writer. I don’t like “punishing” characters who are “evil.”

Why even have Ken Kiang in there? When it comes down to it, he didn’t have that much of a role to play.

There were times, in early drafts, when I experimented with removing Ken Kiang. It never worked. I found that his removal drained too much comic life and insouciant absurdity from the story. His story is a ludicrous reversal of Jo’s, and the counterpoint breathes fresh air into what could have easily turned into a mere genre exercise.

When the Belgian Prankster replaces Ken Kiang as the villain, this scrambles the reader’s expectations. As I was writing Odd-Fish, my first priority was to make it unpredictable. I even wanted the reader to throw down occasionally the book and yell, “What is Kennedy giving me now?” But on finishing it, I wanted the reader to feel, “It was all inevitable; it couldn’t have happened any other way.” Moment-by-moment, keep the reader unbalanced; overall, satisfy the most traditional structural norms.

Also, once the Ken Kiang piece was put on the chessboard, I could use him to solve technical storytelling problems. For instance, I didn’t have to write the obligatory scene where Aunt Lily tells Jo about her fateful backstory. This is a common scene in fantasy: the story grinds to a halt while a mentor gives a long-winded explanation to the hero. I solved this by having the Belgian Prankster explain it to Ken Kiang instead. Ken Kiang doesn’t really care and thus can react much more naturally (for him, the scene is all about finding a way to kill the Belgian Prankster). I’m free to cut to Jo’s reaction after all the heavy lifting of exposition is done.

Another advantage: the Eldritch City we see through Ken Kiang is different than the Eldritch City we experience through Jo. Having more than one point of view of the city gives it depth.

Heck, why even have the Belgian Prankster? You could have made Ian the vessel of the Silent Sisters and then both he and Jo would have been wicked. But Ian could have been in denial and confronted Jo about her Ichthala-ness, and then there would have been some real drama when he couldn’t suppress his powers anymore and Jo found out the truth. I don’t think apology guns would cut it for that . . .

That would be a completely different book.

I said in my review that I thought this book would have been better if Jo wasn’t a dangerous baby at all, just a girl brought into the Order from the outside. Did you ever consider writing the story like this? If you did, why didn’t you go with it?

I think the apocalyptic subplot gives a sharper urgency to Jo’s experience of Eldritch City. I haven’t seen this particular plot done. It felt original to me. To put it in context, it’s almost a complete reversal of Harry Potter. Harry is a beloved celebrity in the wizarding world (at least at first). Jo, on the other hand, would be lynched if people found out she was in Eldritch City.

Harry Potter is the boy who lived; Jo Hazelwood is the girl who kills.

It seemed like a fertile reversal of the “Chosen One” archetype. What if, instead of being the one “chosen” to save the universe—something we’ve seen a million times—you were “chosen” to destroy it?

That’s why it was also essential for Eldritch City to be a fun, fascinating, lovable place. It’s much more wrenching if the place you’re destined to destroy is a place you’ve come to cherish.

The tension of Jo’s secret gives emotional pungency to scenes that would’ve otherwise been routine. And, in a way, I have done what you suggested. Jo is a normal girl brought in from the outside. She triumphs not through mastery of superpowers, but through her ordinariness. Jo walks away from her “Chosen One” destiny and refuses her supernatural abilities. She ends her story not exalted in some otherworldly pantheon, but eating at a table with her friends. After all the madcap absurdity, after all the nightmarish trials, Jo achieves becoming an ordinary person.

Why did you choose to go with the action/adventure/intrigue plot as opposed to the story where not much happens but big things are achieved? Or a Jo’s-Adventures / Romantic Comedy-thing?

Uh, I’m not sure what you mean when you talk about a story “where not much happens but big things are achieved.” How would that be preferable to “action / adventure / intrigue”?

I actually have to say, I kinda liked the whole Silent Sister thing with the All-Devouring Mother. The story behind the gods was pretty interesting. Did you make that all up?

I did indeed make it up. I’ll give a brief explanation of where it came from.

Jo is a female hero, so I wanted the villain to be female too. For instance, in Star Wars the hero is a boy, Luke Skywalker. The villain is Darth Vader, or “dark father.”

My heroine is a girl. So what would a “dark mother” be like?

There’s a Hindu goddess associated with death and destruction called Kali. I took that as a partial inspiration: “What if something like Kali walked among us?” I was also really into the Alien movies growing up, and in particular, the scene at the end of Aliens when Ripley fights the huge disgusting mother alien. Those images burned into my subconscious.

The dark side of the nurturing mothering instinct is smothering. What is the ultimate smothering? Devouring. (That’s why the theme of eating, of digestion, runs throughout the book.) So my goddess is the ultimate mouth—the “All-Devouring Mother.” It wants to gobble up the universe for its own good, to harmonize its discord, to keep it “safe.” The idea was getting richer.

I like stories in which the hero has a special intimacy with the villain. So I decided that the All-Devouring Mother wouldn’t be something outside of Jo that she fights against. It would be more interesting that she secretly was the All-Devouring Mother, and she had to find a way to thwart the terrible prophecies about her. When Jo confronts her true nature, she loses everything—even her status as a “hero.” She isn’t the savior of Eldritch City, but the monster that Eldritch City must be protected against. She is a walking apocalypse.

And that brings us to the Silent Sisters. A certain dark corner of human psychology has a cosmic death wish, is in love with the end of the world. In a tragic way, you see this in suicide bombers; in a farcical way, you see it in apocalypse porn like those putrid Left Behind books. In this way of thinking, Armageddon is not a disastrous cataclysm but a blissful cleansing, a reconciling to the divine. I thought, what if there was a doomsday cult dedicated to this world-destroying goddess? That’s where the Silent Sisters came from.

The actual term “Silent Sisters” comes from Thomas Mann’s book The Magic Mountain, which is set in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Some thermometers in the sanatorium are called “silent sisters” because they have no markings. Why do they have no markings? Because some patients are so accustomed to their years-long confinement at the hospital that they don’t want to leave. So even after they’ve become well, they try to fake a high temperature. In that case, the doctors use an unmarked thermometer (a “silent sister”) and then measure the mercury with a ruler to find out if the patient is really sick. The behavior of these patients is like the Silent Sisters in Odd-Fish: refusing to leave their safe, predictable niches, refusing the messy, dangerous adventure of life. More on the topic here.

Now I was ready to write the origin story of the All-Devouring Mother—which I realized had to be the origin story of the universe. And this brings us into religious territory.

It’s easy to forget that much of the best-loved fantasy books are written by committed Christians. For J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine L’Engle, their Christianity informs and enriches the mythologies they created. Christianity is thus a hidden part of the DNA of fantasy. This is even true for Harry Potter: though never explicitly Christian, it is chock-full of Christian archetypes. It could hardly manage otherwise, since it invokes a whimsical medievalism, and it is impossible to redact Christianity from the medieval.

This is true even in reverse. Some writers get their energy from their opposition to Christianity. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series is an explicit condemnation of Christianity, a kind of anti-Narnia. But that only confirms Christianity’s central place in the DNA of fantasy. Fantasy, at its best and deepest moments, touches ultimate questions of the universe and our place in it. But this is also the province of religion.

I felt that the very act of developing a metaphysics and an origin story for my fantasy world would bring me into this debate. And it was a debate that is very, very wearying to me. I just have no interest in it at all. I’m not interested in taking a pro-Christian or anti-Christian stance in my work. I have no axe to grind. And I felt it was a dichotomy that was aesthetically exhausted.

I solved it by not working with Western archetypes. Instead of having One True God (Lewis), or No God At All (Pullman), I decided to have 144,444 gods. Instead of transposing themes for Christianity into the realm of fantasy, like Lewis does with the crucifixion and resurrection in Narnia—and instead of crafting dark parodies of Western religious practices, such as Pullman does with the Magisterium in His Dark Materials—I instead tuned into ideas, practices, and mythologies found in Hinduism, Shinto, and Buddhism—thus escaping the whole debate.

It would be pretentious to claim I know the least thing about Hinduism, Shinto, etc. But the little contact I have had with them, through travel and reading, was enough to spark my imagination in directions that are skew to the Western tradition, freeing me from the locked categories that were invisibly guiding my imagination. The mythologies of Eldritch City are not directly inspired by any one story in those non-Western traditions, but they share a similar flavor.

DING DING! Round one is over. Back to our corners. Doc, doc, where’s my hot towels? Where’s my mouthguard? Where’s my hairspray, where’s my chronometer, where’s my sun hat?! I don’t need my sun hat . . .

DING DING! Round two!

You know, you could’ve gone with the Romantic Comedy and saved the Ichthala thing for another, more action-filled book . . . which reminds me. Even though I loved all the random scenes (with Chatterbox and Korsakov’s hunt for the Schwenk), why put them in there? Your book seemed to want to be too many things at once, and to be frank, they kind of seemed out of place.

So your favorite scenes are precisely the ones you want to cut? Hmmm. In that I see a glimmer of possible agreement between us. Let me see if I can talk you around.

In my mind, there’s two kinds of stories. On one hand you have sprawling, shaggy tales that are not so much read as inhabited—the reader accepts an invitation to board at a vast, creaky old house full of strange treasure, secret staircases, and hidden attics. You have to read and re-read these books to get to the bottom of them; they’re the kind of book that you can reopen anywhere and start rereading. Examples are Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, the Lord of the Rings books, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. In books like these, plot is often secondary, a launching-point for digressions, stories-within-stories, intertextual games, and other glorious irrelevancies. These kinds of books are frequently long, but they don’t have to be: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Alice in Wonderland fit into this group, books that are less concerned with telling a story than building a world. We’ll call these “shaggy” stories. Their strength is playfulness and generosity of vision.

On the other hand, we have stories that are tight, lean, and focused. Every detail efficiently clicks into and builds upon the others, sweeping the reader forward on a thrilling ride. Off the top of my head, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Michael Crichton’s Sphere, and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders fall in this category, which we’ll call “lean” stories. Their strength is page-turning, breathless pacing.

Of course there’s no such thing as a purely shaggy or purely lean story, but you see where I’m going. The Order of Odd-Fish is quite deliberately and proudly a shaggy story, and it should be judged by the norms of shagginess, not of leanness.

Indeed, the very substance of its plot is a defense of irrelevance and digression. The title refers to a group of knights whose purpose is to aimlessly fiddle about, and the great work they’re collaborating on—the Appendix—is named after precisely that part of a book, or indeed the human body, that can be safely left out. The knights study dubious, irrelevant topics, and it turns out they don’t especially care if the knowledge they collect is strictly true or not. This ethos overflows the activities of the knights and spills over into the text itself, infecting the whole book with this dithering spirit.

If the Odd-Fish knights had their way, they’d muddle along for hundreds of pages in happy irrelevance, going off on Schwenk-hunts, holding elaborate feasts, dressing up in needlessly ornate costumes. It’s the villains who are trying to impose a plot on these happy dilettantes. The Belgian Prankster and the Silent Sisters are the snakes of plot, corrupting a paradise of character and setting.

One of the important themes of my book is to praise digression, to assert the worth of aimlessness, to defend the meandering and the marginal. Since your favorite parts of the book are precisely where I gaily tell the plot to go to hell, and putter off on some goofy irrelevance, I think you understand this, and on some level, you might even agree with me.

Dugan was an interesting character, what with his being in with the mafia and all, but what was his purpose? I can’t remember him doing anything after the tournament . . . Actually, when he was first introduced, I thought there was going to be a love triangle with him and Jo and Ian. Did you ever consider that?

I did in fact consider it, but abandoned the idea since it would further complicate an already complicated story. (I admit there is, in the end, such a thing as too much complication!) Some loose tendrils of that subplot must still be flopping around. Very perceptive of you to zero in on them. I’m glad I didn’t go that route, though, because I have an idea for Dugan in the sequel(s) that’s much more interesting.

Since Aunt Lily is dead, who is Jo a squire for?

I hate to say this again, but . . . that’s another issue for the sequel(s).

Jo and Ian seemed to get off to a quick start with all that snuggling. What was up with that? Aren’t they a bit too young for that, anyways?

Really? They’re thirteen. Maybe things have changed since I was that age.

Towards the middle, the romance disappeared. One moment, Jo was making Ian jealous, and then—nothing! Where did it go? During that middle bit, they seemed to be great friends, but nothing romantic.

Jo was freaked out about Ian’s murderous attitude toward the Ichthala. Things were going swimmingly until the scene in the tapestry room, when Ian said he would kill the Ichthala (Jo) if he discovered her. Jo’s secret is the obstacle to any romance. After that scene, they’re able to become friends, but Jo holds back her full emotions because she’s also holding back her secret. Their feelings for each other are submerged, but are still bubbling under the surface, and come to a boil when Jo kisses Ian at the victory party.

This is out of nowhere, but how many husbands has Oona Looch had?

An entirely new branch of mathematics would have to be invented to answer that.

I have to say again, that I really loved Ian and Jo’s dance. Very cute. Why wasn’t there more of that?

I think it worked because there wasn’t more of that.

Insofar as that scene worked, it’s because romantic tension was building up between Jo and Ian. I wanted that tension to be subtle, hidden, and implied. If I kept hitting that note, giving the reader “more of that,” it would have turned out leaden. Faux-romantic scenes of characters exchanging long, significant looks, or of mooning about in an emo way, do not appeal to me. I wanted the romantic buildup to be indirect enough so that when Jo impulsively kisses Ian, it’s a surprise to Jo, Ian, and the reader—and yet, in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. (Why were they hanging out so much? What did happen to all that initial snuggling?) By discreetly omitting details about Jo and Ian’s attraction until that crucial moment—by allowing them the privacy of their feelings rather than heavy-handedly exposing them—I could achieve the effect you clearly appreciated, but not otherwise. In such delicate emotional waters, less is more.

This is also true in horror movies. In monster movies, rule number one is not to show the monster too much. (Alien is a masterful example of this.) Emotions become present in the reader’s mind precisely because they’re absent on the page.

J.K Rowling said she wanted to go back and redo parts of the Harry Potter books (because some of the math and junk was off). Do you feel that way, ever?

I’m certain there are logical errors in the book, but I haven’t found any yet.

For me, the characters made this book. Will there ever be another focusing just on them? (Please say yes! Just a short story collection, maybe…)

Hopefully in a sequel to Odd-Fish, I’ll strike a balance between character and plot that you’ll find more satisfying. Pace my previous remarks, there’s no such thing as character without plot. Character is revealed through plot, and plot shapes character, so I could never have a book that focuses just on characters; they need to be doing something, after all, even if it’s just frittering and dithering.

And speaking of characters, are any of them based off real life people?

Each character is, in the end, only themselves, but certain friends and acquaintances provided the initial inspiration. I plead the fifth on exactly who.

Do you wish any of them were real? I wouldn’t mind spending the afternoon with Audrey. She seemed like fun.

Audrey is a firecracker. I have spent some memorable afternoons with Audreys.

Was Odd-Fish the book you’ve always wanted to write? Dreamed about since you were a little boy? Or is there another?

There was no particular story I always wanted to write, but I always wanted to be a writer. Odd-Fish evolved piecemeal over many years. I didn’t experience a total vision of Odd-Fish one day, and then simply execute the predetermined design. The book became what it was through the process of writing it. I guess, now that I’ve written Odd-Fish, it has become the book I always wanted to write?

When I’m done with my next book, I’ll probably feel the same way about it.

I’m working on the book I’ve always wanted to write. Hopefully it will be epic. But it will not be the only book I write. My other stories all take place in the same world, but at radically different times. Will something like this be happening with Eldritch City?

That sounds like an interesting idea, and I’ve read other books that have done this successfully. (The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, for instance.) However, I don’t see the Odd-Fish series going in that direction. With stories that take place at radically different times, you can’t watch characters evolve from book to book (unless they’re supernaturally long-lived). And character is the most important thing to me. It seems that such a series would have to be idea-driven or theme-driven rather than character-driven, and though I like to read that kind of thing, writing it wouldn’t play to my strengths.

I just looked up Eldritch. Apparently it means “weird.” I get it.

Word.

If you were an Odd-Fish knight, what would you study? I’d practice the art of Long-bottling, which is the Guyanese art of having nothing to do and all day to do it in. Quite intense stuff.

You’re going to enjoy college.

And finally, any advice for aspiring authors?

You’re asking for my writing advice even though you don’t like my . . . ? Anyway.

Don’t think about writing; just write. There are at least 500,000 words standing between you and your first glimmer of quality. You have to put in the time. You have to write thousands of sentences before you write your first good sentence. There is no substitute for parking yourself in a chair and writing. Ninety percent of what you will write, even if you’re a professional writer, will be poop. You must swim through the poop to find the diamond. There is no other way.

Thank you very much for the interview (it was long. I apologize. I just can’t seem to stop typing once I start.) Though I cannot say I enjoyed all of your book, it must be known that the parts I liked, I really liked, and it was worth reading the book for those bits.

Thank you too, Ri!

But wait . . . I see from your website . . . that even with your scathing reviews, you have classified The Order of Odd-Fish under “Books I Liked”?!?!

Could it be . . .

Max Pitchkites has hit the home stretch of his astonishing mixed-media illustrations for The Order of Odd-Fish (check out the complete series so far). It’s going to be a highlight of the Odd-Fish art show we’re putting on in April 2010.

This one above is a new favorite—the final moment of the Schwenk-hunt in Chapter 15. I love the triumphant swirling energy of the Schwenk as he corkscrews through the sky, but the masterstroke was to render the awestruck, gobsmacked citizens of Eldritch City as multicolored silhouettes. It’s beautiful!

Above, Max has put together an annotated map of Eldritch City to illustrate the series of disconnected adventures of Chapter 14. (Fantasy books have to have maps, right? It’s a rule.) Brilliant idea to include Jo’s personal footnotes and marginalia, including events from outside the chapter, like the pig-icon for the zoo (”I will never go to a nangnang exhibit there. EVER”). Max also writes, “The kanji on the orange continent means ‘festival’ (provided the internet didn’t lie to me) since Eldritch City and its festivals are based on Japan and its festivals.”

I like how elements, themes, and in-jokes repeat and develop throughout this series, as when Max says, “The Mario mushroom houses reappeared from On Their Way (Chapter 11), and since that’s from a Nintendo game, I decided to make the Muncipal Squires’ Authority shaped somewhat like the Temple of Time from the Legend of Zelda Games (Ocarina of Time version especially) since the MSA headquarters lies within a dilapidated temple.”

The map’s worth studying for a while. It gives me ideas for new adventures in Eldritch City . . .

There’s something expressionistic and rather scary about this one. It’s for Chapter 16, when Ken Kiang invites Hoagland Shanks over to his Manhattan castle to discuss weighty matters of destiny and pie (step one of Ken’s evil plan to send Hoagland Shanks to hell).

In the book the meeting happens in an ordinary office, but Max explains, “I placed their chairs and desk on two precipices to symbolize the tension between the two parties, and the superimposed pie above being a mixture of their thoughts—Shanks’ thoughts of pie, and Ken’s thoughts of sending him to Hell.”

Very effective and creepy. Max complains that he doesn’t like the layered effect of the colored sharpies, but I do. It looks like those great slabs of color are sweating, or melting, only adding to the tension. Max also finds a way to work in Ken Kiang’s logo that he invented for Chapter 5 and brought out again in Chapter 6. It’s careful little touches like that which knit the whole series together in such a satisfying way.

Here’s Chapter 17, when Jo, Ian, and Nick ride squids through the flooded, jewel-encrusted halls of an ancient Silent Sisters cathedral buried deep beneath Eldritch City.

Spectacular, mysterious, and irresistibly pulls the eyes forward! Max wisely just shows the squids, instead of cluttering up the composition with Jo, Ian, and Nick riding them. Max writes, “That arch you see there is really a huge mouth, and the tiny arches within being the outside world and the sunlight from outside . . . As I was making this, the mouth-arch seemed to me like a red McDonald’s arch, so I like to think of this as a Lynchian, Vasquezian ride into an underground nightmare-McDonald’s.”

Underground nightmare-McDonald’s! There’s another whole book in that little phrase—quite probably, a better one.

Max also writes that there is a “rather blatant” Easter egg hidden in the picture. Can you find it?

In this chapter, Nora gets a hold of some scripts from the uncannily prophetic show Teenage Ichthala and discovers the true depth and terror of the Belgian Prankster’s plans for Jo.

Scary, lurid, and weird! Max writes, “The noseless Belgian Prankster here looks like a cannibalistic hobo clown thing . . . I don’t know if this is how James envisioned him.” Yup. As usual, Max nailed it. The extreme closeup to the grotesque face, the nightmarish wash of colors, and the crammed, upside-down text give it all an unsettling vibe. You can feel the Belgian Prankster’s presence lurking behind each word of the script. The split composition is a nice reference to Max’s illustration for Chapter 25, and now that I think about it, it also reminds me of the cover of Alan Moore’s Batman graphic novel, The Killing Joke. Prankster, Joker . . . highly appropriate!

Just a few more chapters, and Max will be done. I can hardly believe it. What fantastic luck I had to meet him. Seriously, do yourself a favor and check out all his Odd-Fish work here.

And remember, artists . . . the deadline for the Odd-Fish art show is March 1! Here’s the original call for submissions.