by Rich Larson
Full-length novels, on the other hand, take a long time to write, and if they turn out shitty nobody will ever read them—which makes you feel like you’ve wasted several months of your life. The three books I wrote before Annex are languishing in my Dropbox and will likely never see the light of day.
In that risk/reward way, writing novels is more stressful. The upside to writing novels, though, is that you can do things that are impossible in short fiction. You can create a really slow burn for certain character developments or layer small clues over an extended period of time before a big reveal. You can get deeper inside people’s heads.
Can you talk about how the idea for Annex developed?
Yes. I had the idea for Violet’s character in 2012 and started writing a story that featured her as the lone survivor of a parasitic zombie outbreak. I never finished it.
In 2013, I wrote her into a short story called “Mother Mother,” which was basically the scene where Bo and Violet hunt Bo’s first othermother. All the editors I tried to sell to claimed that I had jammed too much backstory into too small a space, so I let it sit for a while.
Then, during the summer of 2015, I fleshed out “Mother Mother” into a novel with the working title Mothership. Several rounds of revision later, it was picked up by Orbit Books and became Annex.
How did you get started with writing speculative fiction? Why did it appeal to you as a writer?
When I was a kid I loved science fiction and fantasy books, so my first attempts at writing were speculative. There were a few years in college when I wrote realistic fiction about melancholy young Canadian men, but it was mostly to get published in trendy online lit mags.
Once I had crossed off most of the places on my little list, I switched over to speculative fiction and never looked back. It just affords me more options. I can use more of my creativity, and I’ve always loved thinking about the future. Oh, and it’s more lucrative.
Having the novel unfold from Bo and Violet’s perspectives is very moving. What did you hope to achieve by shifting the POV to children? How did it change the story being told?
I did the bulk of my reading when I was a kid, so my tastes sort of fossilized in YA. I’m very comfortable writing from younger perspectives, and it never occurred to me to write Annex from an adult POV—I always intended to write the sort of book I would have loved as a kid, one that features young protagonists but doesn’t shy away from the dark. Sort of a tribute to Animorphs, Shade’s Children, The Thief Lord, and other favorites of mine.
There are themes of belonging throughout Annex—belonging to the group, belonging to your family, belonging to yourself. Why did that subject appeal to you?
Belonging is a very personal theme for me, but it took me a long time to admit that. In 2014 I had a writing instructor (Charlie Jane Anders) point out to me that all the characters I wrote were outsiders. She asked me if that had something to do with how I grew up between cultures, moving between Niger, Canada, and the United States.
At first I felt sort of offended, as if she was questioning my ability to blend into new environments and build new relationships. Then I realized a lot of people don’t have to measure their ability to blend into new environments and build new relationships. They don’t even have to think about it.
So, yes. I struggle to feel like I belong in any particular place. I struggle to invest in people when I know so many relationships are temporary. My family is complicated. Annex let me engage with all that by exploring characters with similar struggles.
Diversity is a frequent conversation topic in publishing. Was it a conscious choice to include diverse characters in Annex or did it evolve on its own?
The idea for Violet as a trans teenager transitioning post-apocalypse has been with me since 2012, but Bo being Nigerian was a decision I made only when I actually started writing Annex. That was more of a personal thing for me, since I wanted to use some of my distinct memories from Niger in a character.
I do think writing diverse characters, particularly diverse young characters, is very important. I remember my aunt telling me about the first time she encountered a female Mennonite character in a novel, and what a big deal it was for her as a kid to read about a character that was like her.
I realized I had never had that revelatory experience, because practically all protagonists were superficially like me: white, male, often cerebral. So I guess I now want to give as many kids as possible that experience of finding characters who are in some way like them.
What was the most challenging moment of writing Annex?
The writing itself was relatively smooth. I wrote it while staying at my parents’ place for a summer. Every morning I would walk to either a coffee shop or the library to work, and once I got into the flow of it I was breaking a thousand words a day. Revision is always the tricky part. When you change one thing in a novel, you have to change a dozen others. I hope to plan the next two out a little better to make that process easier, but probably won’t.
Are there any authors who have particularly influenced how you see yourself as an author?
I still don’t really see myself as an author. I’m way more likely to say “I write” than “I’m a writer.” Writing is a thing that I do, and get paid for, but it’s just a thing, not an identity. There are authors I consider important to what I write—Kenneth Oppel, Megan Whalen Turner, C. S. Lewis, M. T. Anderson, William Nicholson, K. A. Applegate, Garth Nix—but it’s for their specific works more than for their styles or personalities.
What do you want people to walk away with after reading Annex?
Nothing major: I just want them to have had a good time.
if you enjoyed
ANNEX
look out for
CYPHER
Book Two of the Violet Wars
by
Rich Larson
The invasion is over, but not all the aliens are gone. As the outside world learns what happened to their city, Violet and Bo struggle to keep Gloom hidden from prying eyes.
When those in power discover his capabilities, they realize Gloom may be the key to unlocking the mysteries behind the invaders and their technology. They’ll stop at nothing until Gloom and his friends are captured and confined to a dissecting table … or dead
“Remind me again.” Violet tucked her hands beneath her head and looked down at her exposed stomach. Beneath her skin, the dull red shape of the Parasite bobbed up and down with the push-pull of her lungs. It was crackling with static, enough to make her arm hairs stand on end. “How much is this going to hurt?”
“I do not know, Violet.” Her companion removed his black bowler hat and let it turn into a mass of seething black motes that coated his pale hands like gloves. “I am not familiar with the structure of its nervous system.”
“I mean for me,” Violet said. “How much is it going to hurt for me?”
A rippling shrug. “Vertebrates have a wide range of pain responses.”
Violet snorted. “Bedside manner: five stars. Really great.”
She tipped her head back and stared at the stucco ceiling, trying to slow her breathing and calm her Parasite. She couldn’t rate the cleanliness of the surgical theater very highly either, since they were operating in a smoke-stained motel bedroom.
But she supposed she would cut her surgeon a break for his lack of interpersonal skills: Gloom wasn’t a trained doctor or even a human being. As best she could figure, he was an insect colony of tiny intelligent machines that could do just about anything so long as there was enough sunlight.
Which made him a good choice to kill the alien organism in her stomach without killing her too.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said. “You ready?”
“I am always ready, Violet,” Gloom said. “A saboteur …” He paused. “A surgeon must always be ready. I wonder, though, if you are making the correct decision.” His black eyes fixed on the creature below Violet’s skin. “The key has been very useful to you.”
Violet knew that. In fact, she already felt a little bit guilty over it. Without the ability of the Parasite to shunt matter off to some other dimension, she and Bo and the other Lost Boys never would have been able to repel the alien invaders who had implanted them in the first place.
Sure, she still had nightmares every once in a while about the day they injected the Parasite through her belly button. But she figured the little monster hadn’t had much of a choice either, and in the months since she had grown accustomed to its wriggles and churns and especially to the power it gave her to make things disappear. She would miss that.
On the other hand, her body chemistry was complex enough without an alien in her gut, and who knew what would happen if it kept growing? It was time to remove a variable.
“Yeah, it’s been handy a few times,” Violet admitted.
“But I’ve got you now, right? Friend?” As usual, the last word made Gloom’s mouth twist up in a still vaguely creepy smile. He was like clockwork that way. “Yes. We are friends, Violet. We are the best of friends.”
“Let’s not go that far, Gloomy.”
The lower half of Gloom’s face dissolved and re-formed as a black surgical mask, but when he spoke his voice was unmuffled. “I do miss Bo, though. I like him better than you.”
Violet’s stomach gave a guilty twist that had nothing to do with the Parasite. “Yeah. He was a good kid. But he’s happy. Safe. He’s got his sister looking after him.”
“Do you wish that we had stayed?” Gloom asked.
“I was born in that city and stuck there for fifteen fucking years,” Violet said. “When the aliens showed up, I thought I was going to die there too. Now I’m going to see the world. So. No.”
“I have seen many worlds,” Gloom said solemnly. “Most were composed of gas.”
“Yeah.” Violet exhaled and nodded down at her stomach. “Let’s kill this thing already.”
Gloom nodded, then reached with both hands, his fingers unspooling into fine black tendrils. Violet squeezed her eyes shut as they slid through her skin.
if you enjoyed
ANNEX
look out for
ONE OF US
by
Craig DiLouie
They call him Dog.
Enoch is a teenage boy growing up in a rundown orphanage in Georgia during the 1980s. Abandoned from the moment they were born, Enoch and his friends are different. People in the nearby town whisper that the children from the orphanage are monsters.
The orphanage is not a happy home. Brutal teachers, farm labor, and communal living in a crumbling plantation house are Enoch’s standard day-to-day. But he dreams of growing up to live among the normals as a respected man. He believes in a world less cruel, one where he can be loved.
One night, Enoch and his friends share a campfire with a group of normal kids. As mutual fears subside, friendships form, and living together doesn’t seem so out of reach.
But then a body is found, and it may be the spark that ignites revolution.
One
On the principal’s desk, a copy of Time. A fourteen-year-old girl smiled on the cover. Pigtails tied in blue ribbon. Freckles and big white teeth. Rubbery, barbed appendages extending from her eye sockets.
Under that, a single word: WHY?
Why did this happen?
Or, maybe, why did the world allow a child like this to live?
What Dog wanted to know was why she smiled.
Maybe it was just reflex, seeing somebody pointing a camera at her. Maybe she liked the attention, even if it wasn’t the nice kind.
Maybe, if only for a few seconds, she felt special.
The Georgia sun glared through filmy barred windows. A steel fan whirred in the corner, barely moving the warm, thick air. Out the window, Dog spied the old rusted pickup sunk in a riot of wildflowers. Somebody loved it once, then parked it here and left it to die. If Dog owned it, he would have kept driving and never stopped.
The door opened. The government man came in wearing a black suit, white shirt, and blue-and-yellow tie. His shiny shoes clicked across the grimy floor. He sat in Principal Willard’s creaking chair and lit a cigarette. Dropped a file folder on the desk and studied Dog through a blue haze.
“They call you Dog,” he said.
“Yes, sir, they do. The other kids, I mean.”
Dog growled when he talked but took care to form each word right. The teachers made sure he spoke good and proper. Brain once told him these signs of humanity were the only thing keeping the children alive.
“Your Christian name is Enoch. Enoch Davis Bryant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Enoch was the name the teachers at the Home used. Brain said it was his slave name. Dog liked hearing it, though. He felt lucky to have one. His mama had loved him enough to at least do that for him. Many parents had named their kids XYZ before abandoning them to the Homes.
“I’m Agent Shackleton,” the government man said through another cloud of smoke. “Bureau of Teratological Affairs. You know the drill, don’t you, by now?”
Every year, the government sent somebody to ask the kids questions. Trying to find out if they were still human. Did they want to hurt people, ever have carnal thoughts about normal girls and boys, that sort of thing.
“I know the drill,” Dog said.
“Not this year,” the man told him. “This year is different. I’m here to find out if you’re special.”
“I don’t quite follow, sir.”
Agent Shackleton planted his elbows on the desk. “You’re a ward of the state. More than a million of you. Living high on the hog for the past fourteen years in the Homes. Some of you are beginning to show certain capabilities.”
“Like what kind?”
“I saw a kid once who had gills and could breathe underwater. Another who could hear somebody talking a mile away.”
“No kidding,” Dog said.
“That’s right.”
“You mean like a superhero.”
“Yeah. Like Spider-Man, if Spider-Man half looked like a real spider.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” Dog said.
“If you, Enoch, have capabilities, you could prove you’re worth the food you eat. This is your opportunity to pay it back. Do you follow me?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Satisfied, Shackleton sat back in the chair and planted his feet on the desk. He set the file folder on his thighs, licked his finger, and flipped it open.
“Pretty good grades,” the man said. “You got your math and spelling. You stay out of trouble. All right. Tell me what you can do. Better yet, show me something.”
“What I can do, sir?”
“You do for me, I can do plenty for you. Take you to a special place.”
Dog glanced at the red door at the side of the room before returning his gaze to Shackleton. Even looking at it was bad luck. The red door led downstairs to a basement room called Discipline, where the problem kids went.
He’d never been inside it, but he knew the stories. All the kids knew them. Principal Willard wanted them to know. It was part of their education.
He said, “What kind of place would that be?”
“A place with lots of food and TV. A place nobody can ever bother you.”
Brain always said to play along with the normals so you didn’t get caught up in their system. They wrote the rules in such a way to trick you into Discipline. More than that, though, Dog wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be special.
“Well, I’m a real fast runner. Ask anybody.”
“That’s your special talent. You can run fast.”
“Real fast. Does that count?”
The agent smiled. “Running fast isn’t special. It isn’t special at all.”
“Ask anybody how fast I run. Ask the—”
“You’re not special. You’ll never be special, Dog.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, sir.”
Shackleton’s smile disa
ppeared along with Dog’s file. “I want you to get the hell out of my sight. Send the next monster in on your way out.”
Two
Pollution. Infections. Drugs. Radiation. All these things, Mr. Benson said from the chalkboard, can produce mutations in embryos.
A bacterium caused the plague generation. The other kids, the plague kids, who lived in the Homes.
Amy Green shifted in her desk chair. The top of her head was itching again. Mama said she’d worry it bald if she kept scratching at it. She settled on twirling her long, dark hair around her finger and tugging. Savored the needles of pain along her scalp.
“The plague is a sexually transmitted disease,” Mr. Benson told the class.
She already knew part of the story from American History and from what Mama told her. The plague started in 1968, two years before she was born, back when love was still free. Then the disease named teratogenesis raced around the world, and the plague children came.
One out of ten thousand babies born in 1968 were monsters, and most died. One in six in 1969, and half of these died. One in three in 1970, the year scientists came up with a test to see if you had it. Most of them lived. After a neonatal nurse got arrested for killing thirty babies in Texas, the survival rate jumped.
More than a million monster babies screaming to be fed. By then, Congress had already funded the Home system.
Fourteen years later, and still no cure. If you caught the germ, the only surefire way to stop spreading it was abstinence, which they taught right here in health class. If you got pregnant with it, abortion was mandatory.
Amy flipped her textbook open and bent to sniff its cheesy new-book smell. Books, sharpened pencils, lined paper; she associated their bitter scents with school. The page showed a drawing of a woman’s reproductive system. The baby comes out there. Sitting next to her, her boyfriend Jake glanced at the page and smiled, his face reddening. Like her, fascinated and embarrassed by it all.