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In the end, five of the eight mercenaries, as well as the child, were dead.
He hopes the first book will be finished in time for a possible Fall 2018 publication.
Credit: Jeffrey Skemp
But finding him takes nine years, and at the end of it, the kid is dead.
And the whole novel is trying to figure out, How did this happen?
So [Black Leopard, Red Wolf] itself is basically a witness testimony.
Where did the idea for the trilogy come from?
Originally it came from a fight that I had with somebody.
We would have just moved on.
And my friend said, Well,Lord of the Ringsis all this British and Celtic mythology.
And I said, Well, you know…Lord of the Ringsisntreal.
It just turned into one of these arguments we have about diversity and inclusion.
I think the argument ended with me saying, You know what?
I just realized that theres this huge pool of fantastic stories to draw from.
So its partly your invention, and partly bringing these old myths and stories to life?
But I just became really fascinated with real, old, epic storytelling.
There are African epics that we still talk about some of which are as old as Beowulf.
Others, likeThe Epic of Son-JaraandThe Epic of Askia Mohammed,Ive been researching for years.
When I started to really dig into it, the book almost started writing itself.
[The setting] is still a made-up place.
Its more Middle Earth than say, Mogadishu.
Ooh roughly what year?
I dont know if I could put it in a year.
I think it would be like if Luke Cage was suddenly Conan the Barbarian.
But I didnt want to write a historical novel.
I wanted to go back to being a fantasy geek!
I want monsters and magical beings!
Just in the first 50 pages of this book, this guys already gone underwater to the Underworld.
Hes running into these mer-creatures who cause huge sickness.
In that sameinterview, you said you were going to invent a new language.
Did you end up doing that?
No, not yet!
But Im sure I will.
To get it right, Im trying tolearna lot of African languages.
I love that Tolkien just created Elvish.
I also like that he didnt bother to translate it!
[Laughs] I just wanted to build this whole thing.
I even drew a few already!
Did you start the world building and designing before you started writing?
The world building took me a year and a half, actually.
Just a lot of research.
Part of it is just the way I write.
I mean, once I start, I write and I write pretty fast.
I write like 6,000 words a week.
But to get to that point, I have toknoweverything.
Were you starting this research post-Man Booker win?
No, I started it post-handing in the manuscript for [A Brief History of Seven Killings].
So were talking around mid-2014, I was already researching it.
How does it feel to write after winning the Booker?
Instead, Im like, Man, I hope 12-year-olds read this book.
Okay, maybe not.
[Laughs]
12-year-olds like blood and gore!
This is your first series.
How has that been?
What made you want to expand this over multiple books?
I had that idea from the beginning.
A lot of the books I read, whether its fantasy or not, tend to be multiple.
But alsoWolf HallandBring up the Bodies Hillary Mantels Cromwell trilogy.
Even Nuruddin Farah, who almost writes exclusively in trilogies.
Especially when I realize there are so many different points of view that I want told.
Re-watching a film likeRashomoncertainly has a lot to do with that.
Two people can view an event in profoundly different ways.
And that became really, really interesting to me.
In another interview, you mentioned Salvador Dali becoming an influence as your writing got more and more surreal.
Is this series the result of that?
Granted, a lot of those guys are also big fans of Dali.
They dont make those distinctions.
Like, do you really want to cure somebody who has their own private cheerleading squad?
When can we read this?
Have you finished writing the first one?
Oh god, no.
