Prior to the release of his latest novella Ring Shout, master of speculative fiction P. Djèlí Clark sat down with The Nerd Daily for a brand new Q&A. Clark’s latest work (out October 13, 2020) is poised to be one of the most imaginative, explosive releases of the year from Tor.com Publishing. Tagged a “dark fantasy historical novella,” Ring Shout tells the story of Maryse Boudreaux and her band of badass women as they storm through early 1920s Georgia on a quest to find and eliminate the monsters she calls “Ku Klux.”
Read on to get a little history lesson from Clark (who is also an academic historian!), learn more about the vast influences which came together to produce Ring Shout, gain tips on worldbuilding in your writing, and much, much more!
Hello Mr. Clark and thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily! To start with, tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your upcoming release, Ring Shout.
Hi everyone. Glad to have the time to answer some questions. My name is Phenderson Djeli Clark (P. Djeli Clark) and I write speculative fiction set in diverse worlds, sometimes a bit steampunk, sometimes a bit monstrous, often with a touch of magic. Ring Shout is my latest novella, out on Oct 13th from Tordotcom Publishing. It’s a fantasy tale set in 1920s Macon, Georgia, complete with a sword-wielding heroine and so, so, so many monsters—plucked from our own world, and those in between. I think fans of Lovecraft Country (both Matt Ruff’s original and the HBO adaptation reconceived by Misha Green) or Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom might find it up their alley.
Ring Shout was my most anticipated read of 2020 and it did NOT disappoint! Congratulations on another phenomenal book! What originally sparked the idea for this new novella?
Thank you! The idea for the novella started bubbling up in 2015, although it didn’t start coalescing until I pitched it in 2019. But elements of the story date back to research I’d done over a decade ago in the WPA ex-slave narratives, the ring shout tradition and the music that accompanies it, time spent teaching a course on slavery in cinema (which forced me to watch Birth of a Nation a lot), a childhood spent devouring Madeleine L’Engle novels, Beyonce’s video for Formation, some H-Town (Houston, TX where I grew up) Hip Hop… I threw a lot up in there! Had no idea if that mashup was gonna work. So, I’m delighted when I hear it does!
Over a year ago I did my first Q&A with you and I asked if you were working on any new projects. You responded: “A Southern gothic fantasy. There’s a movie. A sword. Spirituals. Stuff gets weird.” I smiled looking back at this obvious reference to Ring Shout. It also made me curious … How did the story change over time as you developed and fine-tuned it?
Oh wow! That’s perfect. I should keep that description. That was back in May 2019. I’d just pitched Ring Shout to my editor Diana Pho, then at Tor. She’d loved the idea and told me to get started. But I didn’t really sketch out the bones of a story and start typing actual words until mid-August and finished a first draft in mid-September. So, although the main themes I told you about remained, lots of details were worked out afterwards. I even visited Georgia between that time. My first draft, I chopped off like 10k words thinking I was too wordy. My editor chided me to add them back! Then, she provided great advice on things she thought needed more description or fixing. My wife was instrumental in pointing out a glaring missing element I worked in later. Had other readers help me out with my Gullah, etc. And all along, with each reading, I found things I wanted to change or snip or enhance. Some things got lost altogether, for instance these quotes from the WPA narratives by former slaves describing their encounters with the first Klan during Reconstruction. Powerful stuff, but the passages interfered with the flow of the story. So away they went. Also, I had actual song lyrics in there from artists and my editor was like, errr…copyright issues, so nope. Had to become a songwriter on the fly. Then, I was forever dancing on the edge to keep the narrative under 40k words, because that’s often the novella cut off. Think I ended up at 39,980+ words. Altogether though, from the time I started to the final copyedits, the overall shape of the story (its main themes, characters, plot and ideas) remained steady—even as they were more fully fleshed out. In writing, consider yourself blessed when that happens.
I really enjoyed how you incorporate stories about different ring shouts throughout the book as if they are being reported via interviews with older members of the community. As a historian with a specialization in studying “comparative slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World,” I feel certain you have studied this tradition long before starting to write the book. For those who have not read Ring Shout yet, or who may not be familiar with what a ring shout is, could you talk a bit about this tradition and how you used it as a critical piece of your story?
Yeah, I don’t know when I first learned about ring shouts. I feel it’s something I first saw at some cultural event, then learned more about in classrooms, and finally through research. I came across them again when I was reading those ex-slave narratives, and investigated further to find their collections in the Library of Congress. I was immediately drawn to them: their clear African roots while being a creation of the “New World”—practiced by enslaved people throughout the American South, with similarities to traditions from the Caribbean and throughout Black communities in the Americas. The shout is a way of preserving and enduring, often part of spiritual practice but also having secular meaning. And once you’ve seen a shout, witnessed it, heard its rhythm and watched its movements—it stays with you. It’s not something you can forget. When I started thinking up this story, I found that the soundtrack playing in the back of my head was the shout. Soon I was listening and watching ring shouts wherever I could find them. When I had long drives, I’d play one or two shout songs over and over as I dreamt up scenes in the story. So, the shout began to take this central role in my storytelling, becoming in many ways its beating heart.
You have such a unique way of taking key pieces of history and making them fantastical in your writing. With Ring Shout the most notable way you do this is by turning the monstrous humans who were members of the Ku Klux Klan into actual monsters that must be destroyed. Could you talk a bit about the creation of these monsters and how you use this device throughout the novella?
It was history and the archives that first gave me the idea. In the ex-slave narratives I’d gone through long ago, former slaves who lived during Reconstruction described the first Klan as monstrous: as haints, dressed with horns, etc. There were stories of Klan members attempting to terrorize victims by pretending to drink seemingly inhuman quantities of water. And while enslaved people revealed that they saw through this sleight-of-hand, they also spoke of the terror the Klan induced and the brutalities they inflicted. It’s not surprising then that some of these narratives begin to prescribe semi-supernatural means to stop the Klan: laying vines out on the road, throwing hot coal in their faces, etc. There were also stories of Black people defiantly taking on Klan members ten and a time and surviving, or tricking them to make their escape in ways that mimic a Br’er Rabbit or Anansi tale. By the time I started thinking up my novella, I’d had these ideas of “monstrous” Klan members in my head for years—thanks to those stories and folklore. It wasn’t a big leap to reimagine all that and fit it into a new story I wanted to tell.
To say 2020 has been a hell of a year would be an understatement. The core theme of the horrors of racism in Ring Shout sadly continues to be just as pertinent today, almost 100 years after the time period your novella takes place. What do you hope Ring Shout will do to help the continued fight against racism and discrimination?
As I’ve said, when I first started thinking about Ring Shout as a story it was 2015. While I can’t point to the many issues leading up to that time directly influencing my novella (Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Sandra Bland), I’d be surprised if it wasn’t all seeping in there—even if the story is set in the 1920s. That’s how writing is. You’re always pulling in from what’s around you, whether you’re aware or not. It’s either coincidence and kismet I keep saying, that the novella is coming out right now. Certainly, there are themes in there that speak to this moment or any other: resistance, hate, trauma—and how they can be intertwined. Yet, you know I have less to say about what readers can or should take from my story, as much as I’m greatly interested in seeing how they might interpret and apply it to current movements and struggles. This is a case where I really want to listen more than I want to instruct.
Your work is known for centering Black voices in a genre like speculative fiction which often does not do this. Another of the things I most admire about your writing is how you incorporate such strong female characters front and center. What has led you to continue making this choice in your work?
In the case of this particular novella, every character fit the story I wanted to tell. I knew that Maryse was going to be wielding that sword in Ring Shout before I’d even given her a proper name. She arose almost organically. Same with Chef and Sadie. But I didn’t just want strong female characters—I wanted characters that were also complicated and well-rounded, who were imperfect and sometimes frustrating, who just got effin’ tired sometimes and fed up. Because hell, who can be “strong” twenty-four hours out the day? These were the types of Black women I’d known throughout my life. And I wanted them to have the adventurous fantasy story they deserve.
The protagonist in Ring Shout, Maryse Boudreaux, is a real badass woman. She obviously needs a weapon to fight off the monsters known as the Ku Klux, so you’ve given her a sword. I have to ask (because this isn’t the first weapon people would imagine a young woman wielding in the 1920s) … Why a sword?!
Because at the heart of it, this was imagined as a fantasy story. And what says fantasy heroine more than a sword—a mystical one at that? I like Eowyn. But I felt someone like Maryse needed a turn.
In Ring Shout, as with your other work, you build a surprisingly well-developed, three-dimensional world in such a small space as compared to a full-length novel. What are some strategies or techniques you find particularly effective to do this?
Hmm. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. I think you worldbuild to fit your story. If you’re doing a short story, your worldbuilding has to be slighter. So, you’re strategic with it: what really needs to be in there, what builds depth and gives your world character without overdoing it. You enter novelette and novella territory, you’ve got more space to build. You can give your readers larger slices of the world you’ve imagined, and glimpses at things you might not even explain. Sometimes less is more. Make it so that a reader feels that if they could just pull back a curtain, there’s an entire world to explore.
While reading Ring Shout I felt a real cinematic quality to your writing … I could see the characters and scenes and events unfolding so clearly in my head. Would you ever think about optioning your work for the big or small screen?
Sure! Is anyone listening? *Taps mic *
One last question … When we last chatted you referenced how balancing your full-time career as an academic historian and your writing was a work in progress. (No doubt!) What have been some highlights from each career over the past year? Any new lessons learned about how to balance wearing both hats?
Yeah, it’s really odd that both of these careers “took off” at the same time. A Dead Djinn in Cairo was probably my first really big sale (certainly my first with Tor) and the day it was published I was crossing the stage to get my PhD. So, the juggle and struggle have been real! Time management has really been the big lesson learned—and one I continue to work at. Keeping up with both has been challenging, but also rewarding. It was exciting to return to long form writing and complete my first novel A Master of Djinn, which will debut from Tor in 2021. I also got that much cherished book contract on my academic manuscript, which will probably be out in 2022. It’ll be great to have both in hand at some point.
Brilliant Q&A! I’ve already read Ring Shout and loved it! 😄