QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
Most writers don't even come close to making a living with their writing. Almost all of them have a day job or a husband or wife who supports them. Many write for the joy of seeing their work in print. Or they write because it feels wonderful to create something. These people often don't mind giving away free books or to entertain an audience for free. I envy them, but alas I am the other kind of novelist. I depend entirely on selling books for my income. When my family moved from Zimbabwe to the United States, we were only allowed to take $500 with us. While we were very happy to be in the U.S., it meant several years of frightening poverty. This ended when I began to sell books.Yet we have never become rich. We are like the people who run the mom-and-pop store on the corner. Expenses are high and one bad year can ruin the business. I am trying to explain why I don't give away free books. Many people have written to me for them, expecting me to pay the postage as well. I can't do this any more than a grocer can give away free hamburger. So please don't think I am being heartless turning you down. It's simply how the business works.
PETS AND THE EAR, THE EYE AND THE ARM
(ANSWERS TO AARON STAPLES AND KOREY RODECKER)
Dear Korey: I don't have any real pets. I wish I did, but our landlord won't allow us to have any. All I have is a bird feeder which is specially designed to keep the big birds out. It is for the little ones that can't stand up to crows, jays and squirrels. It has a cage on the outside with openings too small for the bullies to get in. I prefer creative writing. Writing non-fiction is extremely boring. And, yes, you do have to pay if you want your own domain ($25.95 per year, with discounts for longer period), though the Weebly.com website is free.
Dear Aaron: I'm glad you found The Ear, the Eye and the Arm interesting. It was set in Zimbabwe because I lived there for 17 years. I was there so long I lost my American accent (though I got it back quickly in the U.S.). I had lost touch with America and couldn't write about it convincingly. Also, I was writing for African children.
The father in The Ear, the Eye and the Arm is a general because most African countries are run by generals. General Matsika was based on a friend of my husband's. I put in a glossary because most American kids don't know African words. There is another version of the book, printed in Africa, that is much shorter and has no glossary. I didn't have to explain the African customs and religion there. I did intend to write a sequel about Arm and Sekai, but events in Zimbabwe became so terrible that I didn't have the heart to do so. If I am very, very lucky, The Ear, the Eye and the Arm will be made into a movie starring Will Smith as Arm. He is trying to get money to make it.
WHAT DID YOU MOST LIKE TO DO WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?
I liked to explore. I was never an indoor person even though we lived in the Arizona desert where the temperature was 120 degrees every summer. When I was very small I had to make do with our yard and my grandmother's yard next door, but there is a lot to discover even in such a small area. If you put out water, all sorts of animals would come in from the desert to drink, including road runners and lynxes. I flooded tarantula holes to force them out for pets. I had six chickens and (I was only six at the time) copied their habit of swallowing pebbles. I thought I had a gizzard. There was very little I didn't try to eat, including some tasty lumps I found attached to pecan trees. They turned out to be scale insects. Once, I ate some oleander leaves and nearly killed myself. When I was older, I was able to travel much farther, exploring the roofs in the center of town – the bowling alley, movie theater, various bars -- and the banks of the Colorado River. I hated school and played hooky for most of the seventh and eighth grades because I was bored and couldn't stand being penned up.
DID YOU WRITE STORIES WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG?
I was dyslexic and found it very hard to write anything. Fortunately, I could read rapidly and enjoyed it. Once I learned to use a typewriter, things became a lot easier, but dyslexia was still a problem when I had to write things by hand in school. Also, my eyesight was bad and this wasn't discovered for a long time. This may have been one of the reasons I hated school. I told a lot of stories. My whole family did.
WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE BECOMING A WRITER?
I have worked at many jobs. I sold newspapers on the street and picked fruit when times were tough, but of course I wanted to be paid more for less effort. Eventually I became a free-lance scientist. This meant I was hired for short-term projects and had little job security. I didn't want security. To me, knowing exactly how I was going to spend the next thirty years was as good as being dead. I worked on making bubonic plague vaccine, on an oceanographic boat (that was rapidly put out of service by a captain we called Captain Crunch), on controlling insects that ate traffic islands and on water weeds in Central Africa. I loved every minute of it.
WHAT BOOKS INFLUENCED YOU MOST WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?
I read everything. I was a very isolated child and generally not allowed to have friends over to visit. Since we lived in a run-down hotel in the bad part of town, quite a few parents didn't want their children to visit me either. My parents had a large library of mostly very old books. I started out with my mother's childhood books, wonderful Victorian tales about children who were struck by lightning for doing bad things (such as going fishing) on the Sabbath. I worked my way through Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Maupassant, Rudyard Kipling, the complete works of Mark Twain and the poetry of Tennyson. And of course Sunday was given over to the Bible. I memorized a lot of Bible verses. But now and then a ray of light would appear in the library. My aunt sent me Oz books and Tarzan books. My brother supplied science fiction magazines with monsters carrying off lady astronauts. My father got men's magazines full of adventures. All of these had a huge influence on me, especially memorizing Shakespeare and the Bible. You get those rhythms in your head and they never leave you. The books I remember liking most were Tarzan, The Jungle Books, Oz books and Mary Poppins. Also Elsie Dinsmore. Elsie Dinsmore was the most judgmental, narrow-minded, wonderfully warped series ever. She was always bursting into tears and praying over people.
WHAT TRIGGERS YOUR IMAGINATION?
Everything. I can be entertained watching a spider spin a web or watching people deciding who NOT to sit by on a bus. When I was in fifth grade my teacher, Mrs. Wolfe, lectured us about boredom. "How dare any of you little wretches be bored when life is so varied and fascinating?" she said. "If any of you dare to be bored when you grow up, I shall come back and haunt you."
DO YOU ENJOY RESEARCHING OR DO YOU WORK ENTIRELY FROM YOUR IMAGINATION?
I pay a great deal of attention to accuracy. My books are intended as textbooks as well as entertainment. I do the research while I am writing, not before, and often include bibliographies at the end of a novel. This is probably a hold-over from when I was a scientist, because you have to get everything right in a scientific paper. It drives me crazy when a writer is sloppy about his or her facts. I remember a picture book about a mother caterpillar who tells her baby caterpillar that if she is good and eats her leaves, she will grow up to be a beautiful butterfly. Mother caterpillars ARE butterflies! And anyhow, caterpillars are just as pretty.
DO YOU DO SCHOOL VISITS, BOOK SIGNINGS, ETC.?
I have always hated being in the public eye. Some writers live to go on stage. They get a huge ego boost from being cheered by an audience and they love to perform. I have a friend who puts on a chicken suit and dances. My soul shrinks up into a little ball at the thought of going on a book tour or of attending literary luncheons. I am no good at it. Everyone can tell I'm hunting for the exit. And why, I ask myself, do people want to see authors? It isn't as though we're interesting. Most of us sit in a little room with a computer all day. Besides, I'm horrible sensitive to criticism.
THE EAR, THE EYE AND THE ARM
WHERE DID THE BLUE MONKEY COME FROM?
When my son Daniel was a baby his aunt gave him a hideous doll with blue fur and a long rat-like tail. It was the original Blue Monkey. It wasn't new. It had been owned by Daniel's cousin when she was in the hospital with meningitis. Now meningitis is a terrible, often fatal disease. I was afraid to give my baby something that might be covered with germs, and so I burned the doll in the fireplace. Several years later the same aunt made a new Blue Monkey and sent it to Daniel. It was just as ugly, but I had no reason to destroy it. Besides, Daniel had already seen the gift and wanted to play with it. One week later he came down with meningitis and almost died! I burned up the second Blue Monkey and asked a witch doctor to put a curse on the aunt.
IS RESTHAVEN A REAL PLACE?
Resthaven is based on a real place. It is hidden in a quiet valley not far from present-day Harare. It was founded by a Catholic priest who dreamed of a village where people of all races and religions could live together in harmony. The next day the priest met a millionaire who had dreamed that he would soon meet someone who needed land. The millionaire donated the Valley of Resthaven to the priest. Through the years people built houses in the valley, but they didn't own them. They gave them to the community. Anyone who needed peace and quiet could stay there. Resthaven consisted of many cottages and huts, a meeting hall, class rooms, farms and even a swimming pool. It was one of the most peaceful places on earth. My son Daniel wasn't actually born in Resthaven, but he spent important parts of his childhood there.
A WORD ABOUT VILLAGES
Many people believe that an African village is a place where everyone lives in perfect harmony. It only looks peaceful from the tour bus. What do you think happens when people are bottled up together in a small area for years?
DANIEL RUNS AWAY FROM RESTHAVEN
When Daniel was nine years old, he got angry at me because I was writing a book and wouldn’t pay attention to him. He decided to walk from Resthaven to our house in Harare, a distance of about fifteen miles. The countryside between was dotted with old mine shafts, and infested with jackals, a few leopards and many poisonous snakes.
Daniel walked and walked. I didn't miss him till sundown because I thought he was playing with the village children.
At sundown everybody began looking for him. We turned on all the lights in Resthaven, and the hundred or so people living there began to search. After a while Harold decided to drive along the only road to town, to see if he could find our son.
But Daniel hadn't taken the road. He walked across country to the south-west where he knew Harare lay. Like me, he has an excellent sense of direction. He was fine until it got dark and then he began to worry. Unlike the U.S., the air in Zimbabwe is so pure there is no glow in the sky over a city. That’s because there isn't any smog. You can't see Harare at all until you bump into the first houses.
Daniel was lost. He saw a camp fire in the distance, which turned out to be a group of children making popcorn outside a hut. They saw that he was nervous, so they told him ghost stories until their grandfather came home and scolded them. Then the grandfather told Daniel about all the white people who had been killed by black people during the revolution.
After drinking tea and eating popcorn, the old man armed himself with a spear and took Daniel to the main road. Hardly anyone used it after dark, and Harold had not yet passed by. The old man flagged down a farm truck. Now this was a chance for Daniel to return to Resthaven, but he was still angry. He talked the driver into taking him to Harare.
Unfortunately, our house was locked. Daniel went next door to his friend Peshie's house. Peshie and her brothers and sisters were being looked after by a maid called Memory, who did not like baby-sitting. She had given all the children beer to make them fall asleep.
When Harold arrived he went next door, too, where he discovered Daniel drunk as an owl. Harold sobered him up on coffee and drove him back to Resthaven to apologize to all the people who had been hunting for him.
THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION
This book drew more on my childhood than any of the others, and therefore was difficult to write. When I was finished, I couldn’t face a sequel. I wrote the Trolls trilogy as a kind of vacation. Since then, I have been collecting ideas and exploring places for the setting. I can’t discuss a book before I write it, not even with the editor, but I can tell you that the working title is God’s Ashtray.
Scorpion took place on the Mexican border. The exact location lies between Yuma and Ajo. The Devil’s Highway runs along the southern border of it. The oasis was originally meant to be the Quitobanquito oasis south of Ajo, but the description is actually of another small lake in the Chiricahua Mountains. This is because the following adventure happened.
It was Christmas Day. Harold and I had been given permission to cross the Barry Goldwater bombing range. I wanted to look at the Quitobanquito because I hadn’t seen it since I was a child. I needed to see whether my memories were correct.
To cross the Barry Goldwater bombing range, you have to watch a half-hour video and promise not to pick up any grenades you find lying around. You promise not to sue the U.S. government if a pilot bombs you by mistake.
It was a cold, clear morning. We saw the border patrol, also known as La Migra, hiding in various places in the hills. Christmas is showtime for La Migra with all the illegal aliens going back and forth to visit family. Jet planes occasionally streaked overhead. It wasn’t long after 9/11 and we were gearing up to invade Iraq.
The road deteriorated as we drove toward the oasis. Suddenly, as we struggled through deep sand, we saw a man lying in the road. Harold is from Africa and always assumes the worst. He thought it was an ambush. He thought the man had been left out as bait, and that if we stopped we would be attacked by people who wanted our car.
I looked through the binoculars. The man was shaking as though he had a high fever. I asked Harold to stop some distance away. My plan was this: I would walk ahead and if bandits appeared Harold was to drive over them. He’s much better at these things, and besides, my eyesight is terrible.
The man kept saying, “Agua . . . agua . . . “ He wore very light clothing and the temperature had been below freezing the night before. I gave him a bottle of water. He kept raving and shaking, but eventually he recovered enough to make sense. He’d been part of a group of eight men being led by a coyote, or illegal guide. The coyote had abandoned them when the border patrol attacked in the middle of the night. The men had run in all directions and were probably all lost. Jose, our new acquisition, was trying to walk to Phoenix. He thought it was twenty miles away, but it was really more than two hundred miles. Jose had a poor sense of geography as well as direction.
Now came the problem of what to do with him. I wish people could be given time to make ethical decisions, but that almost never happens. There we were and there was Jose. We couldn’t leave him behind to die. We couldn’t take him back to Mexico because the road beyond disappeared completely under sand dunes. I made a quick decision. I loaded him into the back seat and Harold drove back to Ajo, swearing at me most of the way for getting him into this mess.
We left Jose at the edge of town with a bottle of water, a chocolate bar and twenty dollars. I’m sure the border patrol found him quickly, because he didn’t look remotely like a U. S. citizen.
The next day I asked a park ranger what we should have done. He said we should have left Jose with water and phoned the border patrol. We didn’t have a cell phone, however, so that advice wouldn’t have done us any good. I still don’t know whether I did the right thing. In the old days, when I was a girl, you could overlook a few people sneaking across the border. Now there are thousands of Joses and since 9/11 the rules have all changed. Harold, by the way, refused to take me back out into the desert in case we met the seven other men. I never did get to Quitobanquito Oasis and had to use the description of one in the Chiricahua Mountains for the book.
WHY DID TAM LIN HAVE TO DIE?
Tam Lin’s death upset a lot of readers. I don’t like killing a character, but sometimes the story requires it. First of all, Tam Lin had served El Patrón for too many years. He had been involved in many of the old man’s crimes and couldn’t escape paying for this. Tam Lin himself knew that he was guilty and that was why he chose to stay with his master at the end. He also admired El Patrón the way you might admire a volcano. Sure, it’s destructive, but it’s also magnificent.
El Patrón’s last wish was to take his entire family with him into the grave, probably because he considered them his property. He was to be buried with all his wealth in a secret place, like an ancient god-king. People like that can’t bear the thought of other people’s freedom, or of letting anyone else inherit their belongings. This kind of thing happens more often than you might think. When Hitler killed himself, he insisted that his followers, their small children, his newly-married wife and his beloved dog be poisoned as well.
Tam Lin followed El Patrón’s orders because they would bring down the Alacrán drug empire. He died because he wanted to atone for the wrongs he himself had done.
There’s another reason why, as an author, I had to let Tam Lin die. He is a powerful authority figure, someone who has taken the place of the father Matt never had. Matt cannot become the true ruler of the country of Opium as long as Tam Lin is alive.
ARE ANY OF THE CHARACTERS REAL PEOPLE?
Characters are based on one’s life experiences. They are almost never portraits of a single person because an author can get sued for libel. When I first started writing, my fingers itched to do wicked descriptions of some of the swine I found around me. And I did portray a teacher who was mean to my son in kindergarten. This was in a short story published in Africa. Harold, my husband, lectured me about it because he’s a lawyer. He understood the kind of legal trouble I could get into. I worried for several months after the magazine came out. African literature is a surprisingly small community and it’s possible for news to travel around, but the teacher never found out.
Since then I have been careful. But some of the characters in Scorpion are based on real people. First, let’s discuss Celia. When I was 12 years old in Yuma, Arizona, I played hooky for an entire year. I spent the days with a friend called Angie. The truant officer never searched for Angie because he didn't know she existed. She was what is now called an Illegal. The truant officer also didn’t search for me because I was hiding out in Angie’s territory.
We played on the banks of the Colorado River. We crept along the edge of the hobo jungle below the train bridge. Trains from California slowed as they approached the station, and men would jump from freight cars onto the sand beneath. We could see the smoke of their campfires rising above the salt cedars. Sometimes we climbed an old guard tower at an abandoned prison nearby. It was cool and shaded. We could look down on the ruined, stone cells and the prison graveyard, which had been partly washed away. Then we picked our way carefully under the shadow of the train bridge. The route was important because the shore was dotted with quicksand.
In the middle of an open space was the hotel where Angie's mother lived. It was a gaunt three-story building that wobbled around on the mudflats like a rotten tooth. Angie's mother was usually asleep, but sometimes she roused herself enough to buy us cokes from a machine in the hallway. The room was filled by a double bed and a large picture of Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Sometimes we opened the door at the end of the hall for fresh air. It looked like any other door, but beyond was a sheer drop to the river below. This was used to get rid of troublesome visitors.
Angie’s mother became Celia in the book. As you can see, the whole feel of the area around Yuma was used in Scorpion. It was a fairly lawless place in those days. Heroin, rather than marijuana, was smuggled across the border and there were many Illegals who came to work in the fields. People mostly looked the other way because there weren’t the vast numbers that flood across the border now.
Matt is based on my son Daniel and on my own childhood. No, I wasn’t thrown into a room full of sawdust, but it felt like that sometimes. I was an unexpected, and probably unwanted, child born when my parents were too old. El Patrón has some resemblance to my mother.
Mr. Ortega, the music teacher, is based on a piano instructor I had who was completely deaf. She could tell when I was making a mistake by feeling the vibrations in the piano with her fingers.
Both Tam Lin and Maria come from too many sources to describe. I’ve known several men like Tam Lin who had murky pasts and a tendency to violence. They were also likable and courageous. Maria is a little like myself, especially in her unswerving loyalty to Matt. The boys at the shrimp-harvesting factory are based on boys I went to school with in Yuma. The factory itself was copied from the Cargill Salt Works not far from where I live in Menlo Park. They had a wonderful open house where you could see brine shrimp and throw salt balls at one another like snowballs.
IS SCORPION GOING TO BE MADE INTO A MOVIE?
I sure hope so. There was a nibble from a film company early on, but the deal fell through. They wanted complete control of the characters so they could write a sequel if the first film did well. I said no. I was writing the sequel. They wanted the right to make a comic strip, market toys and many other things. This was the same company that made the Muppets movie. I wouldn’t accept an El Patrón muppet.
My feeling is that Scorpion is my most “important” book and shouldn’t be cheapened with sleazy merchandise. So, much as I wanted the money, I turned down the contract. I hope someone wants to make the movie, though, because Mexico is on the brink of civil war and the drug cartels run the border right now.