New Tomorrow by Cody Goodfellow: the perfect companion today

Only last night I watched that flaccid serving of spaghetti-o's, Battle: Los Angeles, little thinking that the next day it would be freshened by the heroes having to fight off, not humanoids but Pogo's "us", in masks.

History is like the thing I stepped on, on the way to junior high when I was fifteen. I thought it was a wad of gum. I couldn't dislodge it till band practice, when I successfully scraped some off on the music stand, brown furred skin blackened with dried blood. What happened to the shoes? I don't know but the feeling of  the thing being stepped on and clinging to me, the vision of it hanging on the slender metal leg--all in the past but through memory and the gift of horror, ever present. 

What could better suit history that refuses to confine itself to the past, than the present scenario? Starting in LA, a ragtag People and a few mil grunts fighting for the future of civilization? Where do you fit in this, and how do you cope? Do you doomscroll, escape, try to ignore? I say "try" because no one can escape.

Instead, I recommend a companion, New Tomorrow by Cody Goodfellow. I've been carrying it around for weeks like soldiers at the Front did, the book of poetry against the chest. New Tomorrow takes place in a past that is all so present, you can smell its blood. I don't know how long it took to write but I do know that he has to have transported himself and lived in this version of time and place, for every time I checked, he's as faithful to a parallel history and it's all so immediate and fresh, I couldn't help thinking he must have made it up or he was wrong, but he's more accurate than Movietone news. Yet fearless.

"...the government they voted for is threatening to mow them down, and they've got scab vigilantes running around spreading conspiracy theories. So, the only question is . . . Which side are you on?"

His cavernous voice seemed to come from just behind her ear, even as she cautiously approached him, still itching to use her lightning projector. "I sympathize with the workers' plight, but I'm on the side of law and order," she said.

"So, you stand with the factory owners, the Pinkerton mercenaries, the hastily sworn-in deputies, and soon, the Army. They don't need you. You'll have to find your fun somewhere else."

"I don't do this for sport..."

"To protect your investments, then?"

"He threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, I know all about you. I can see right through your mask, but I don't need to. All that shiny gear didn't come on a worker's salary, and it makes one wonder if you'd have taken up this game at all if America had foxhunting. But it's just more fun, isn't it, to hunt men?"

...It was putting it too broadly to say the masked vigilante craze had started a few years back.

It starts in 1918 on the Western Front, and ends in 1932, in NYC. It's unashamedly political, yet never self-righteously so. 

 "Drop your gun, or I'll libel you to smithereens!"

The mil tech is fun and believable. There's a helluva plot, but not artificially twisted, just as startling as reality. And it's so multifaceted.

Many of her peers were little more than publicity stunts to sell toys and newspapers. Others were exploited precisely because they were unwilling or without the means to fend off commercial use of their name and likeness.

His action is visual, not verbal. And he can be downright lyrical though he never writes to see himself write. 

The flying car floated away from the pavilion like an untethered balloon. Amid the scurrying men and women, she could pick out dozens sleepwalking after the music. The flying car veered south with a flock of NYPD autogyros on its tail, passing over the South Ferry Terminal, and the human bombs trailed after.

There's more to defend and fight than any respectable novel needs. But these are heart-sickening times, so the extras here are welcome defibrillating jolts.  And there's an actual alien. As a companion, New Tomorrow will, I'm sure, be sickly necessary for mental health, too, until humans are a species too silly to be contemplated seriously as having existed.

One of the great pleasures is the quotes at the start of every chapter, wittily numbered by Mike Dubisch, whose art throughout makes this a deluxe production at a dimestore price. 

Get it. Published by Oddness. 

484 pages

This is the official description, much more understandable than my dribble that doesn't do justice to it as the thrill it is. Entertainment with a brain and heart.

Overview

As America reels in the depins of the Great Depression; munitions heiress Matilda Lynch battles gangsters and anarchists in the armor of the SILVER SENTRY, never suspecting that her most dangerous enemy... is right behind her.

Petty thief Spider MacGowan escaped jail but was forced to don a cursed mask to become the infamous WHITE DEVIL; but using evil to destroy evil will leave him powerless before the greatest threat the world has ever known.

Joined by KID AMOEBA, a single-celled invader from an alien world, and the HAYWIRE GANG-identical triplets who wreak havoc on all they touch-these unlikely heroes will become enemies of the nation they protect when they discover the unspeakable truth behind a miraculous invention that promises to lift America's elite out of economic despair and let them colonize the stars.

Swashbuckling pulp action and mind-boggling mysteries await all who dare to explore the strange world of...

NEW TOMORROW!

 

 

Why Witches: an interview with Zig Zag Claybourne

Talking about his newest novel, Breath, Warmth, and Dream, Book One of the Mother Khumalo trilogy

But first, the blogger's privilege of intrusion

You know that ennui of reading, when you think I’m past it. No fiction can work its magic on me again? I was deep in its grip when I noticed Neon Lights.

There was something so deliciously abnormal about that cover. 

I roused myself enough to get into it, but still expected no more than a one-page stand. Instead, I felt the same thrill that coursed through me the first time I read Gogol's Dead Souls (the only diminishment since for both is the frisson of discovery). I still hope this brilliant satire gets “discovered” but I was so intrigued by its unknown author (who could mop the floor with the works of Updike and Roth as well as that of most current satirists sneerists) that I swan-dived into The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan.

Holy Hell. This one vied to knock my other favourite novel (Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov's Little Golden Calf) from its pedestal.

I wasn’t ready for it. The Brothers struck me like a bolt of lightning rooted in a solar flare.  

 

 It didn’t take The Brothers Jetstream Book 2: Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe to confirm: These were  written by one of those writers who is amongst the half dozen in a century who deserve to last.

 

And the characters. So many characters in others' fiction would walk the picket lines if they could. They all work for nothing, which they all expect. But so many don't get no respect. Claybourne's get more than that. Utter freedom. And they've got a mouth on them. Desiree Quicho, for instance, star of Afro Puffs... So their dialogue is as fresh as their attitudes. It doesn't matter what Claybourne's writing. Characters and stories are unflinching and inspiring in ways that are so uncommercial, they remind this reader why writing can be, not only still worth reading, but crucial in making life worthwhile.

He never plays the jester angle, nor panders to wishes to ignore and self-indulgently escape. As for tragedy voyeurs--they’d starve on his fiction. In every book and story, Zig Zag Claybourne celebrates the brashness of bravery, kindness, and joy—and in doing so, wields the most effective weapons of all. 

So, to the latest I’ve been lucky enough to read (not because he asked me but because I asked him)  his latest novel, Breath, Warmth, and Dream, Book One of a trilogy that should have been fought over by the biggies, but as I advised him when I read it: “People have had their souls healed and have learnt from everything you've written. That isn't considered valued, and instead, rancid relations paraded as if we love to be dumped into cesspools or else we can't feel alive.”

And so it came to pass. The rejections were I love it but...

And so, dear reader, it’s up to us.  There’s a Kickstarter he’s been convinced to launch so we can get this book into our hands, screens, and hearts. 

And because people love to know motivations, he's answered this grilling:

Why Witches?

Mother Khumalo herself says in Breath,  Warmth, and Dream, “Magick doesn’t require ignorance to be magick.” Do you know what she means by that? And how do you know that you know what she thinks?

There’s this puzzling attitude that knowledge makes something less special, and that a feeling of specialness is what’s wanted from magic. I think this follows from the ‘ignorance is bliss’ school or ‘it’s not magic if you know how it works,’ but the thing is, we can never have total knowledge of anything--so why not increase knowledge in order to work with what we’ve got? To me, that’s the whole nature of magic, particularly with the kinds of witches Breath, Warmth, and Dream imagines. Ignorance becomes a control mechanism for domination rather than harmony. Mother Khumalo thinks entirely opposite of ignorance, especially since magic itself is a tangle of learned skills. There was no way she would have allowed me to write her any other way.

Have you seen instances of magic?

So much of what we see and experience remains unexplained to us, but I’ve definitely felt magic in the trailing of fingertips along the skin of my inner arm, how it both energizes me and simultaneously calms me. Things appear, disappear, and change around us all the time. We have the feeling we’re surrounded by more magic than society tends to admit. Magic is the understanding of LIFE pieced together.

Let me quote a passage to you:

Bog’s hands went to tug his breeches. The lukewarm water of the tub would do him nicely. 

“Oh dear,” Tourmaline noted.

"Aye, he’s always showing off his buttocks when the children aren’t around,” said Grucca. “Natural healing and whatnot.”

She was taken with the play of his back muscles despite herself. Upper and much lower.

He climbed into the tub, leaned back with his arms over the sides, and presented his face’s closed eyelids to the sky. He didn’t seem angry, so Tourmaline took this as an elaborate yes that he would talk with Khumalo.

Warriors and witches were beyond dramatic.

You deftly use words, but like your action scenes, this one is typical of you in its Balzackian realism (Honoré de Balzac, considered one of the founders of believable characters in European literature). Your dialogue, particularly, is so sparkling it could burn noses, but it doesn’t read as forced, but as the logical outcome of conditions.  You seem to be channeling yet you don’t live in a cave, but both your The Brothers Jetstream series and your Mother Khumalo short story and the Kickstarting novel have a peculiarly rich intensity to them, as if the moving hand is your own, but worked by strings plied by each character between the covers. Can you explain what’s happening? Aren’t your characters supposed to be the puppets?

In Kabuki theater, there’s a contract between audience and production: see-but-don’t-see the kurogo stagehands dressed in black who interact with the actors or stage elements, but are not part of the story. That’s me, writing, especially with dialogue. Kurogo leaves room for imaginative surprise. Characters need to move through the plot, yes, but when a voice comes off as too aware of their story, it’s more spot-lit marionette operator than immersive experience. My dialogue starts, stops, merges, splits apart; same as in life.

How magical were literary influences on you?

My writing influences showed me what was possible. They pushed me to do more. My greatest influences came from authors who stepped outside constrictions to exhibit a sense of play! Toni Morrison, Douglas Adams, Percival Everett, hell, even Shakespeare. Influences are best when they excite imaginations. I saw writers doing unusual things and I loved it!

Your favorite literary fantasies?

To go to dinner without checking my bank account. Book-wise… Dune, which I always read as more fantasy than science fiction. One of my favorite books ever, The Alchemists of Kush by Minister Faust, blends Egyptian myths with modern immigrant life in Edmonton; The Twice-Drowned Saint by C. S. E. Cooney is a recent fav, because any book that blends biblically-terrifying angels with the feminine energy of Mad Max: Fury Road is a permanent win. The beautiful short story The Sweet in the Empty by Tade Thompson is an entire epic in less than 25 pages.

How does it feel to get “rejected” by the big New York publishers, turn around and do a Kickstarter, and within two days, out-earn a typical traditional publishing advance?

It’s a wild, strange thing. The big publishing houses tend to be Lords of Chaos. Thirty people within the editorial departments will love something, one will say no, and that’s the end of that thing. Crowdfunding is nearly a direct line from creator to audience. The whole experience is less about product and more about the excitement of potential. I’ve backed a number of projects simply because I wanted the energy behind a campaign to reach as far into the world as possible, even without backing for a reward (I’ll back because I want folks to succeed; I’ll buy afterward because I want folks to thrive). This being my first Kickstarter, it’s done wonderfully! Wonderful feels good.

You've written in several genres, from SF to fantasy to inspirational. Why do you like genre-jumping?

It’s that same thrill I got from watching Chadwick Boseman (all light to him) illuminate different aspects of real life via his roles. Hero, villain, genius; action, drama, levity. I suppose with writing/reading being such a mental endeavor, the claim that readers will get confused discourages jumping, although genre-blending is a huge thing. “You wrote sci-fi and now you’re doing comedy? Under the same name?! Wait, wait, a fantasy about witches? Whaaaat?” Yet we know conventional wisdom in publishing tends to be about as wise as wet socks. So for me, variety is the spice.

Writers have lots of pressures these days, from writing to promoting, to being a "public figure." But you often talk about the importance of joy. It always comes back to joy. Why is this important to you?

Without joy in what we do, there’s no life or spark, and without a spark there’s no real connection. To me, everything we do, from being in love to baking a helluva good pie to righting the wrongs in life, is a means to connect ourselves to being  better together. We as individuals, we as a species. Joy in what we do is that point-to-point connection. For me, joy is in knowing there’s a real conversation to be had that only the writer and reader can hear.

Please finish this sentence. In a perfect world...

We would make sure people knew from childhood on that absolutely nothing is more important than their joy and their connections!

_________________________________________________________

Breath, Warmth, and Dream

Read  The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar, the Mother Khumalo short story that spawned the Khumalo Trilogy

See Jerome Steuart's painting and read his review, "Family and Community in ZZ Claybourne's The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar"

Jeffrey Ford's Review of The Brothers Jetstream Book 1: Leviathan

Milton Davis' Review of The Brothers Jetstream Book 2: Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe

Read and listen to Silver Wing, a serial on Realm

A Trip Through the Imagination of Zig Zag Claybourne, Detroit Metro Times

Books by Zig Zag Claybourne listed on Goodreads

Zig's House--the motherlode