Tag: Local writer

Categories
Arts

Magic and tech: M.K. England’s second novel blurs sci-fi and fantasy

With Spellhacker, M.K. England delivers a young adult sci-fi/fantasy mash-up. “What I really wanted was a Star Wars book with queer characters in it,” says England.

As the branch manager for the Scottsville Library and a former young adult librarian at the Crozet Library, it’s safe to say local author M.K. England knows books. And when England set out to write a YA novel, it was important that the stories held personal resonance.

“I just wanted fun adventures that had people like me,” says England, whose sophomore novel Spellhacker is out now. “I knew those were the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.”

In Spellhacker, an adventurous young adult sci-fi/fantasy mash-up set in the futuristic city of Kyrkarta, England follows Diz, a talented hacker with communication issues, and her three best friends: Ania, Remi, and Jaesin. In a world where magic—known as “maz”—was once a readily available natural resource, it’s been heavily regulated since an earthquake unleashed a toxic strain, causing a massive spellplague. The four friends combine their unique talents (Ania, a techwitch; Remi, a spellweaver; and Jaesin, brute strength) to run an illegal maz siphoning business, but it’s all coming to an end as Diz’s friends prepare to go to college and leave her behind. They agree to take on one last ultra-dangerous heist but get more than they bargain for when an explosion uncovers a conspiracy—and threatens the future of the world.

Spellhacker is an exciting romp through an artfully crafted world with fascinating technology, captivating magic, and a delightfully diverse cast of characters. And, believe it or not, the idea for the plot came about due to a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

“Something in the game we were playing made me think ‘magic hackers’—but that is not a book,” England says. “That is just the tiniest seed of an idea.”

Yet, it was a seed that would grow into an entire world. England began the work by asking questions to establish the necessary truths that would make these characters and this setting come to life. “I started poking at the idea and all the inherent assumptions,” England said. “That leads me out farther and farther until I have the basic building blocks of the world.”

However, while Spellhacker takes place in a deeply creative and believable world, the novel is driven by the strength of the characters—though England admits to initial concern that audiences wouldn’t connect with Diz.

“One of the things that made me want to tell this story—and want to tell Diz’s story specifically—is that she has some rather unhealthy things in common with me as a teen and early 20s person in that I did not know how to have healthy emotions and express them,” says England. “I knew that might potentially alienate people.”

Yet, despite her frustrating inability to navigate complex emotions, Diz is an acutely relatable narrator and, magic and futuristic technology aside, the impending transition point of her friends leaving for college is one with which many young readers will identify. After all, isn’t that why we’re drawn to fiction: to see reflections of ourselves in the plight of characters? England had this same desire as a young reader of science fiction—and a lack of queer representation helped inspire the types of stories they would go on to write.

“What I really wanted was a Star Wars book with queer characters in it,” England says.

And Spellhacker lives up to this goal. Unlike many other young adult books with queer characters, the story is not defined by queerness. While there is a love story between Diz and Remi, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, neither character’s sexuality or gender identity is ever discussed or utilized as a plot point—a choice that was intentional on England’s behalf.

“The world that I created is extremely queer normalized,” they say. “It is just not a big deal. It’s just part of the world that we don’t need to talk about because it’s not an issue.”

While England recognizes the importance of stories that focus on the modern, pressing issues LGBTQ teens face, both Spellhacker and England’s debut, The Disasters, tell stories of diverse characters simply living their lives. Sure, living their lives also involves trying to save the world, but that’s all part of the fun.

“There’s been a big push in the last few years to make sure we’re also including those stories where people just are who they are—and they also fly around in spaceships and have adventures,” England says.

When it comes to having adventures, Spellhacker certainly delivers. With cheeky dialogue and character chemistry that sizzles on the page, England’s novel explores themes of greed, power, environmentalism, family, love and trust. It begs the universal questions: What makes a family? What matters most? And what’s scarier: a potentially deadly strain of magic…or opening up your heart?

But most importantly, it invites readers to see themselves —even in characters with whom, at first glance, they may not have much in common. “I hope that, as with all books everywhere, readers walk away with greater empathy,” England says.

Categories
Unbound

Riding lessons: A cyclist learns a lot about himself—and America—on an epic tour

A man and his rig: When fully laden with gear, Register’s bike weighs 125 pounds. Photo: Eze Amos

On six-week jaunts over several years, Charlottesville’s Chris Register crisscrossed the country on his bike, interviewing people for his book series Conversations With US: Two Wheels, Fifty States, Hundreds of Voices, One America. The first volume, published in early 2019, is based on his 1,916-mile trip through the Midwest and Great Lakes states. Here, he offers a personal account of his journey and mission.

When I graduated from law school in Washington, D.C., in 2009, partisanship and political bickering were the worst I’d ever seen. I thought it would be cool to get out there, talk to people, and find what’s really going on. I did my first tour in 2010, nearly 2,000 miles, interviewing at least one person a day about their views on America.

After that tour, I took a break to work and save up my money, always knowing I’d get back to my tours and writing. In 2015, I quit my job and started my second tour. That’s recorded in the first volume.

Register’s book and more information about his travels are available at conversationswithus.com.

I’ll write about Charlottesville in the book that covers what I call Appalachia and bluegrass country. I remember coming down out of the Shenandoah mountains and riding straight to the Lawn. I interviewed two students—one of them came to the book-release party. That was cool. The next day I rode up to Monticello and spoke to Linnea Grim, the director of education and visitors’ programs. I ended up settling down here.

In all the ground I’ve covered, two stories really stand out. One is about the vastness of this country, and the other is about learning to walk in another person’s shoes.

I’m 39, so I grew up well after the civil rights movement. Most people my age or a little younger haven’t actually talked to someone who had to sit at the back of the bus. But when I was in Elgin, Illinois, I interviewed Ernie Broadnax. Ernie was the only black player on his debate and basketball teams in high school and community college. He told me, after a win, his white teammates would celebrate at a restaurant, but one of them would have to bring his meal to him on the bus. That upsets me. It gets me in the gut.

The other story unfolded at the Grand Canyon. I arrived at dusk. There was a full moon rising. After I set up camp on a rock outcropping at the edge of the canyon, I looked down and thought I saw the haunch of a large, brown animal that had moved around a rock. An hour later, after sunset, the moon was bright. I stood up and was looking out over the canyon. There was a sort of gray-blue hue to everything. I was soaking it all in. It was beautiful, an endless view. I looked to my left and saw bright flashes, like Morse code: dot, dot, dash. I finally realized what it was—a mountain lion. It had looked right at me, and the moonlight reflected off the lenses of its eyes. I never saw it again. If he wanted to get me, he would have. But he didn’t.

Ultimately, I’ve learned that I can do more than I ever thought I could. I climbed 12,000 feet to Independence Pass, outside Aspen, Colorado. My bike and gear are 125 pounds in all, and the oxygen gets kind of thin up there. I pressed on slowly, and I made it. Writing is like that, too. If you just keep going, you can do anything. Determination is the most important factor in success.
—Chris Register, as told to Joe Bargmann

Chris’ stats

15,769 miles

6,307,600 crankshaft revolutions

376 interviews

355 days on the road

47 flat tires

Categories
Arts

Dancing with disaster: Adam Nemett offers hope for the future in We Can Save Us All

Adam Nemett will read from and celebrate the launch of We Can Save Us All on Thursday at New Dominion Bookshop. Photo by Jen Fariello

After months of involvement with SURJ and Charlottesville Resistance Choir, author Adam Nemett saw the statue debate become a community catalyst during the events of August 11 and 12, 2017.

“I have tremendous respect for the anti-racist and anti-fascist heroes that were out there on the streets putting their bodies on the line to protect our community when the police refused to,” he says. “That experience showed how much needs to be improved here, but it also showed that there’s a lot of resilience in Charlottesville.”

Nemett notices how people band together in the face of potential disaster because he’s a longtime student of the subject. After graduating from high school in Baltimore, he went to college at Princeton during what he describes as a “pretty heavy” time. “1999 was Columbine, 2000 was the Bush/Gore election, 2001 was 9/11, and then the war that followed,” he says. “I feel like it was a period where we [as Americans] went from this naiveté, or feeling of pure safety and security in this country, to something a bit darker.”

Against this backdrop, Nemett took writing and religion classes while building something new on campus: a student organization that hosted parties and events showcasing diverse forms of music. “There was no one else that was going to come in and create the kind of social life that I and a lot of other people wanted,” he says. “So we all just said, ‘Well, let’s do it. Let’s us do it.’”

The group’s grassroots approach, taking one slow step after another, created a “mini-movement” with nearly 600 members at Princeton. Eighteen years later, MIMA Music has morphed into a global non-profit organization, one that provides innovative music education to kids and adults in underserved areas.

When Nemett started the Charlottesville chapter of MIMA two years ago, he drew on those same community-building skills, knowing “if you put in the hours and do the work, something cool can happen.”

His novel, We Can Save Us All, is a testament to his dedication (it took 12 years to write and publish), as well as to Nemett’s observations of how people behave during periods of upheaval. The story centers around a group of Princeton students leading a movement across college campuses while the world teeters on the brink of apocalypse: climate disasters create a global state of emergency and America is perpetually at war.

Those speculative aspects that “felt really far-fetched 12 years ago,” Nemett says, “now feel really realistic. Especially in terms of this very charismatic but very unhinged leader figure coming to power at a dangerous time, and other apocalyptic phenomenon going on around it. Unfortunately, the world caught up to the book a little bit.”

Crafting disaster while watching the world follow suit has been a jarring experience, he says. “Some of the book was based on 1930s and ’40s Germany. I’m Jewish and I’ve always been horrified and fascinated with how something like that could happen. In the beginning, it felt like light years in the past, and it was hard to imagine something like that could ever happen again.”

Writing the book became a thought experiment of sorts, a way for Nemett to challenge his own complacency around systems, institutions, and norms he felt could come crashing down at any minute. “What kind of organization might I have wanted to start if my issue hadn’t been ‘there’s not enough good music to listen to on campus,’ but ‘Oh, God, the power’s been out for three weeks’? What would happen if a new student movement rose up around this very dark period where the future was uncertain, and what would that look like?”

Officially out on November 13, We Can Save Us All has already garnered critical praise and landed on numerous top 10 lists. At a time when life imitates art—climate disasters loom large and political upheaval fuels fear—you might expect such a book to feed your anxiety. But after dancing with disaster for more than a decade, Nemett says he came away with a real sense of hope.

“We think of dystopia, the apocalypse, and the post-apocalyptic world in this very cinematic, Mad Max hellscape way,” he says. “Everything is terrible and everyone’s trying to kill each other over cans of soup.”

But, he says, the mob riot mentality doesn’t bear out in real life. “Historically, all the way up to Hurricane Katrina, the people on the ground do an amazing, beautiful job of banding together and creating these improvisational, mutual aid societies. The danger comes when the state or the elites or the media just want to portray it as a dog-eat-dog scenario.”

Which leads Nemett to another thought experiment. “What if it wasn’t dog-eat-dog?” he asks. “What if this destructive period is building something very progressive and evolved—a model for how civilization and communities can and should exist in the future? Maybe it looks very different. Maybe it’s simpler, harder, and there’s less comfort involved. But it might just be more human, more spiritually satisfying, and more uplifting in the long run. If we can keep our heads during these tough periods and work to help each other.”

Adam Nemett will read from and celebrate the launch of We Can Save Us All on Thursday at New Dominion Bookshop.