Writer Wednesday: Zig Zag Claybourne

Today, Writer Wednesday welcomes the great Zig Zag Claybourne. I had the pleasure of meeting Zig in person a few years ago at ReaderCon, where we both participated in a play test of C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez’s wonderful card-based RPG Game Negocios Infernales.

photo by Al Bogdan

Named one of the “6 Best Black Indie Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers You Should Be Reading” by Book Riot (2021), Zig Zag Claybourne is the author of the upcoming fantasy Khumalo Tales and its prequels Breath, Warmth, and Dream and Amnandi Sails. Other novels include The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe, and By All Our Violent Guides. His stories and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex, Realm (formerly Serial Box), Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, GigaNotosaurus, and numerous anthologies. Claybourne is a frequent speaker at libraries, conventions, and learning institutions. zzclaybourne.com

 

Hi Zig Zag! Thanks for taking part in today’s Writer Wednesday chat.

Thank you for making space on the interview sofa for me!

You’ve recently launched a Kickstarter for the final book in your Mother Khumalo trilogy, Khumalo Tales. Tell us about the characters and trajectory of the trilogy.

I wanted to write a grand adventure focusing on the people having the adventures, not so much the adventures themselves. I’ve done a book a year on these characters, a first for me, as well as my first strictly fantasy outing. What started as a short story in 2020 (published at GigaNotosaurus by LaShawn Wanak) evolved into a separate novel in 2024 that I immediately knew was going to be a trilogy. Ayanda Khumalo and her daughter Amnandi are the primary characters throughout. Ayanda is better known to her world of Erah as Unina (Mother) Khumalo, not that she actually seeks to be known. Amnandi Khumalo, in book one, is a sometimes lonely ten-year-old but incredibly aware of herself and what she can do. As a family, their thrust is travel. Who doesn’t want to give their child access to the entire world? And Mother Khumalo does, heading overseas on a whim. As witches, though (my version of witches), certain rules are a given, prime being never allow harm to come to innocents. There’s never a shortage of harm to be found. BREATH WARMTH & DREAM sees them squared off against a thief mage and his cohort of a wraith and a demon.

By AMNANDI SAILS, book two, mother is off on her own adventure while 17-year-old Amnandi sails with a beloved family friend, Captain Maab Pinyasama, on Maab’s fabulous ship. We know what Amnandi is capable of from book one. The question she has for herself is not simply can she push herself, but which directions she should do so, a question shared by everybody in the book regarding themselves. The book concerns itself with power. Coming into one’s own power—and how that affects others—should never have a single definition.

By trilogy’s end, Amnandi’s in her forties, her mother her seventies. We know the witches have grown into legends despite their best efforts to ignore that status. KHUMALO TALES hints at adventures we haven’t seen, and presents the grand duo with one they’re not entirely sure how to face, despite their advanced years.

What was the initial inspiration for this world and characters? How have the world or characters changed from your initial conception to the finished books?

Inspiration came 100% from an offhand remark a good friend made. We were messaging each other and she said she’d baked so much “the air in my house tastes like sugar.” Instant amazing title. Instant story. I wanted to do a riff of Hansel & Gretel. I wanted a storyworld that had the feel of a fairy tale told in an uncertain woods, a story full of magick (on Erah it gets the added ‘k’) but not about the magick. Mob-thought and ignorance are staples of ancient tales, so the story would revolve around that. How would a magickal Black woman and her daughter have molded the typical olde English fantasy world to comport itself in their presence? Particularly when they had no interest in proving themselves to anyone; it was more “prove yourselves to me, otherwise I have better concerns.”

That’s a thread that stayed with them throughout the series. They know their power. Nothing comes between them. Nothing occurs between them but love. By the time we get to KHUMALO TALES, the world of Erah is solidified in the reader’s mind. They know its tastes, its waters, there’s even a map in book 2 (is it even fantasy if there’s not a map?). Readers know that Amnandi in any given situation is going to be a person a reader wants in that situation. They know Mother Khumalo has addressed the situation before the situation ever has a chance to come up and is waiting for the inevitable to catch up to her. But they also know that these are two magickal beings among a world of magickal beings (and non-magickal ones) who love being thrown a curve! And by the time Mother Khumalo has hit seventy, Erah is a lot more peaceful in more ways than one.

covers by Anansi+Hayes 

Was this always intended as a trilogy? And, if you can answer without spoiling the events of Khumalo Tales, is it possible we’ll see more with these characters or this world in the future?

Maybe some part of me decided I was going to sink a buzzer shot from the 3-point line, but as sure as Tolkien sent Bilbo traveling, I knew that this would be a trilogy covering their entire lives as concisely as possible. And I like to think all my books, no matter the genre, are interconnected. It might not be likely we’ll see these characters in the future; ain’t exactly unlikely either.

You write across a number of genres under various pen names. Is there a genre (or sub-genre) you haven’t tried yet that you’d like to?

I’ve dabbled with horror shorts. I’d like to do a horror novel. Except I’m a horror weenie. Especially paranormal stuff. Splatter and gore? Barely registers. Jump scares are easy and don’t stick. But the stuff that gets inside the mind? The feeling of your reflection watching you walk from the bathroom after you turn out the light? Or you hearing a chair pull out when you know you live alone? Nerp. As much as I want to write a horror novel, I’d need several months in a beachside yurt to recover.

What is your writing process like? And does it change based on genre or story length?

I write from a place of feeling. If I can’t feel the soul of a story, my pen doesn’t move. I write everything longhand, then type it up, then print it, then revise with red pen, sticky notes, or taped bits of paper. This means I might take forever to get a story out. Sometimes I tell that to new writers and they panic. They think of ideas as Pokémon; gotta catch em all. Since I think of ideas as tribbles, I can take my time making sure the one I’m working with is what it wants to be, because if I lose one, no big deal. I’ve gotten to the point where I know that no idea I ever have is so precious as to get in the way of me having another. This allows for freedom of expression in prose and exploration of form, which leads to your question of does my process change based on genre or length. It does not. I’m not a perfectionist or absolute completist, which is why if I do take on a project, I have to love it. Pen, paper, soul. If anything, I’m a literary tuning fork. A line, page, or book is only finished when it vibes right.

I’ve heard the term “Afrofuturism” used to describe your work, as well as current writers such as Maurice Broaddus, Rob Cameron, Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl, and SF grand masters like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany. I only recently learned that the term dates to the early 1990s. I’d like to ask what your thoughts are regarding the history of the label, its applicability to your work across genres, and use as a marketing tool. I know it has helped me find authors I haven’t read before.

Short history: the publishing industry found a new means to sequester Black writers under a new label, same as the music industry had to invent “race music” then “roots music”, “R&B”, “world music” and on and on. Whiteness always says “What we do is the thing, what you do is something akin.” Never matters if we invented the thing or not. Black writers have been doing futurism since the Dogon described Sirius B.

Longer, more rooted, contemporary history: there are so many definitions for Afrofuturism; there are so many offshoots, so many refutations, so many dismissals, and conscious mutations. For me, an afrofuturist is a time traveler delivering ways to improve human affairs. It’s not solely “Black people are in the future.” It’s a creative mindset of actively healing the future. We take the past, present, and future as one body. We imagine fictions that tend to that body. I do speculative fiction. I don’t mind if anyone labels what I do as afrofuturist, as long as they’re using that term to embody exploration, not sequestration. Afrofuturism is not interested in the status quo. Stagnancy is infection. Even in my fantasy novels, there’s inherent pushback against the notion that fantasy is the province of white people, with everyone else in the world just tourists in it. I recently watched a documentary about the fantasy genre’s huge dominance in pop culture. Lord of Narnia’s Potter Rings basically. You can guess how white it was except for a 2-second flash of NK Jemisin’s name toward the end of the entire hour. If a documentary wants to do that, then call it Eurofantasy, not Fantasy with a hard F. I’m sure any documentary on the Khumalo Trilogy would call it Afrofantasy so fast my pen would spin. Marketing-wise, terms can help readers who are curious break out of their defaults, but the industry generally keeps a Black writer’s discoverability small within the traditional channels. I’m primarily indie. People that want to go somewhere cool already know where to find me. Zig Zag Claybourne is a speakeasy.

Who are your biggest influences?

Toni Morrison and Dr. Seuss. Seuss enabled me to have fun with words, Morrison sharpened their inner workings. You can imagine “combines the best of Toni Morrison and Dr. Seuss” is not the most comp-ready buzz among the traditional publishing industry. Works for me tho.

What’s next for you, after the Khumalo Tales Kickstarter ends and you put the finishing touches on the project?

Gonna get intimate with the TBR pile. Gonna drink so many leaf squeezins (tea, for the heathens out there). I’m not the fastest writer in the world but I’ve literally done five books since Covid covered the world. Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the World, Conversations with Idras, Breath Warmth & Dream, Amnandi Sails, and now Khumalo Tales. And it’s not a matter of cranking. I don’t crank. A scifi, a satire, and a fantasy. Sometimes the words flow. I jump in my innertube whenever that happens. Once KHUMALO TALES is in the hands of backers I’m going to give my brain time to get its elasticity under control. Right now it’s Mr. Fantastic after three rounds with the Hulk.

And my usual final question: What is your favorite book, and why?

My favorite book of all time is McElligot’s Pool [by Dr. Suess], because it was the first book to teach me how to expand the universe from any small unlikely place, crucial knowledge which is not only valuable but fun.

covers by Anansi+Hayes 

Interview: Glen Held

Today I chat with author Glen Held. Born on a Monday, Glen Held grew up in Brooklyn, then was unceremoniously whisked off to Long Island where he still resides with his wife Kathy and the fabulous Eddie the dog! His writing credits include the just published 1930's adventure Legends in the Earth, the pulp team-up novel, The Devil You Know, the young adult sci-fi tale Way Out World (all three available on Amazon), The Killer -  a short story anthology (available from Gromagon Press) and the mystery/romance novel Burning Secrets (available nowhere.) In addition, he has a number of science fiction and fantasy short stories published in various magazines/anthologies. Glen is retired from a thirty year plus Civil Service career and enjoys travelling as well as watching the Mets - having converted his adult children into fans, thus teaching them the agonies of NY National League baseball.

 

Hi Glen. Thanks for taking some time to chat with me.

A pleasure!

Indeed — always a pleasure talking to a fellow long-suffering Mets fan!

I’m running this series of interviews as a lead-up to PulpFest, so my first question is: what draws you to the pulp genre?

What drew me to the pulps, what I guess drew most of us, was Doc Savage. It really was a strange circumstance that introduced me to The Man of Bronze. I was in fifth grade and this one kid, who was a bit nutso, raced over to me at lunch, stopping inches from my face. He said he had this book I must read (I learned afterwards, his parents forced him to read a book as punishment for something he did, and he wanted me to give him a summary of it.) It was The Devil’s Playground, one of the Bantam Doc reprints. The cover interested me in it immediately…as did the fact I didn’t want to have to fight him.  So I put aside the Foundation novel I was reading, and started the Doc. Even though it’s not a Dent, I was drawn in immediately. From then on, I devoured every Doc I could find. As my neighborhood had a number of antique stores, I went to them hoping to find original Doc pulps. The few I found were way expensive, however I did find other pulps that I could afford and that lead me to other reprints and heroes and…here we are!

 

Your latest release is Flights of the Peregrine Book One: Legends of the Earth. Tell us a little about the book and how you came to re-launch the character.

This book had a strange journey from the start. A few years back, I saw an ad on the old Pro Se site saying they were looking for authors to write a novel based on Barry Reese’s character The Peregrine. At that time, I had one book published, a romance/mystery printed in 1991, and a few short stories. Fascinated by the art for the character, I came up with a proposal and was thrilled when I was given the okay to write the book! Four months later it was done, and I submitted the finished manuscript. I heard nothing for over a year. I kept contacting the company and was told various things. I had just about given up, when I was contacted by Dale Russell who would be the book’s editor. Together we polished up the story and got it ready for publication. More months passed and I saw various things on the internet which led me to believe Pro Se was in trouble. Eventually I was contacted by them and told, yes, they were going out of business and releasing stories back to their respective authors. However, as The Peregrine belonged to its creator Barry Reese, I would have to work something out with him to use it or change all the names and descriptions. Luckily, Barry was thinking about starting his own publishing company and we worked out a deal bringing Legends out as the first of his Flights of The Peregrine series.

The book itself is a two-part story. The first section deals with establishing the characters and has our good guys fight a truly evil menace that they had inadvertently released. But when the bad guys are defeated, it turns out  there’s a bigger bad behind them. Part two deals with The Peregrine, his fiancé, and a surprise from part one, venturing into the hollow Earth with the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. I tried to give the story as many twists and turns as I could, throwing in some easter eggs and cameos, and gave an ending which, I hope, was thought provoking. Once I get some reviews, I’ll know for sure.

 Will you be writing further installments? Or is this a multi-author franchise?

There will be at least two more novels in the series, but I won’t be writing them. One of the stories will be written by my friend, J.P. Linde, author of Fool’s Gold. I can’t wait to read his take on the characters Barry allowed me to play with. I suppose one should never say never though as The Peregrine is a great character and I’d be happy to return to chronicle more of his adventures.

Tell us a bit about your other recent novel, The Devil You Know, which came out in 2024. This also has some strong connections to both classic pulps and the “New Pulp” movement, right?

Boy that one was a doozy to write! At the time I started thinking about concocting a story for Airship 27, I figured I’d have a better chance of getting published if the tale had as many public domain characters as possible. Doing my research, I came upon an image that blew me away. It was the cover of the August 1935 Weird Tales with a picture of a red clad, horn masked man with the words “Meet the Sinister and Mysterious DOCTOR SATAN, the World’s Weirdest Criminal” I mean, come on! What could better than to have a character like that as my antagonist?

I immersed myself in all eight Satan stories, feeling a fondness for not only him, but his enemy, Ascott Keane. Although Keane, a minor practitioner of the mystic arts, would be my main hero, he would need help going up not only against Satan, but another villain of my imagination who would be working for the nazis.

Since there would be a decent amount of magic in the tale, I figured Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery, would be likely to give a hand. So, I read a bunch of his stories. Considering the worldwide scope I had planned, there would have to be a governmental liaison to eventually coordinate the efforts. More research brought Major Steele, a minor pulp character, as that liaison. And, what the hell, why not add a bigger hero into the fray? I looked for someone who wouldn’t overshadow Ascott. When I discovered that the girlfriend of Secret Agent X, the man of a thousand faces, shared the same last name of Keane’s girlfriend, I knew it was fate. (And I also had an easy way of bringing X into the picture when the cousin’s got together.)

After that, I sprinkled in some real-life characters of the time (such as Amelia Earnhardt’s navigator Fred Noonan and the criminal Meyer Lansky) as well as historical places such as the German bund camp in Yaphank on Long Island and, eventually, I had a story. It’s gotten some good reviews (always room for more!) so I think I may have done a good job.

 

 

I’d be interested to hear a bit about your writing process. Are you a plotter, a “pantser,” somewhere in-between? Do you have a set writing schedule?

 

Definitely not a plotter; not even close. Nope. No, sir! I have a vague idea of the story’s beginning and nothing more than that. My chapters are usually a few pages long and end on cliffhangers to get me (and hopefully the reader) excited about what’s to come. After chapter one, I have to spend some time thinking about where to go from there. Usually a new chapter idea comes to me overnight or on a walk with Eddie the dog. It’s really a terribly time-consuming way to write since I have to go back and change the previous parts to agree with any new plot twist. However, writing this way keeps me engaged with the story and I don’t get bored. Frustrated? Yes. Bored? No.

 

I know you’ve published short stories in anthologies like Atomic Stories, Dead Science, and Spectacular! Spectacular! Does your process for writing short stories differ at all from writing novels?

That depends on what sort of short I’m writing. If it’s someone else’s character – like the ones I’ve written for Code Name Intrepid, the Reese Unlimited Universe, Atomic Stories and the Radio Rita anthology – I have to immerse myself in the character’s established histories. I don’t want to go against anything that’s already established or have the characters behave differently than readers of the series are used to. Completely new stories require a different kind of research as I try to make my stories believable in their unbelievability. Like for my story ‘At His Hands’, which featured John Wilkes Booth and Dr. Samuel Mudd (‘Hands’ appeared in Freedom Fiction Journal) I read everything I could about the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination and visited both Mudd’s house in Maryland and Ford’s Theater. (Actually, I would have gone to those places anyway as history fascinates me.)

 

 

Finally, do you have anything in the works that readers should keep an eye out for?

Thankfully, I do! Currently, I’m writing a Lazarus Gray story for a Barry Reese anthology as well as a tale bringing a version of The Shadow into the Doc Talos universe. I’m just starting to write a sequel to my book The Devil You Know, available on Amazon (plug, plug)  with what I hope is a really cool idea that I just got on a walk with Eddie. In it, Doctor Satan…well, that would be telling.

At the moment, I have a young adult book making the rounds at a number of agents and another I’ve written about 10,000 words of that I’d like to finish. I also have a story in Robert J. Mendenhall’s Code Name Intrepid anthology coming out mid-August as well as a Radio Rita short to be published later this year by Airship 27.

I’d like to write a mainstream novel, but I’m still hunting for that one great idea. I think Eddie and I are going to have to start taking much longer walks!

 

Thanks again Glen! See you at Pulpfest!

 

 

 

Readers, it is not too late to register for and attend Pulpfest 2025 (THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast) and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the Pulpfest website for registration and hotel information!