Multi-award-winning author Eugen Bacon is as private as she can get, even though she’s recently joined TikTok—”It was petrifying at first,” she says, “quite overwhelming, really.”—and has a video with over 115,000 views and others at 70K, 61K and climbing. She’s bopped (badly) in a couple of them—it’s about the glee of book mail.
Interview
What’s the most unexpected fan interaction or fan theory you’ve encountered?
A fan once emailed me a gift voucher to buy myself something nice. It was quite thoughtful and decent of them, but I felt—perhaps wrongly—compromised. I was a person in a position of authority and it didn’t feel right to accept the gift. So I awkwardly declined. The gleeful response from my fan made me scrutinise the inelegance of my ambiguous words, so clumsy, it took several attempts in back and forth email, each more embarrassing than the first, the fan getting giddier, before they eventually figured out I was declining their gift!
If you were a character in one of your books, what kind of role would you play and how would you contribute to the story?
I’d love to be the omniscient narrator in a you-narrative (second person), personally addressing the protagonist (not the reader) in a most intimate way and knowing more, so much more, about them and their world, their past, present and future, than they do. I’d love to play fate with them.
What’s the most unusual writing ritual or superstition you have?
Sometimes when I feel so tense and words are not flowing, I look to see if it’s wine o’clock.
Share one interesting or quirky fact about yourself that readers may not know.
I cannot dance to save my life. Please (don’t) watch those TikTok videos.
What’s the most unusual or surprising inspiration for one of your characters or storylines?
I use what’s around me and sometimes steal from the everyday, and mirror a fictional character on a real-world person or event. Embellishing their quirks by miles, of course.
Share a funny or embarrassing writing-related anecdote from your career.
I wish it was funny but it’s not. A publisher once made an advance offer. I didn’t have an agent at the time, and I made a counteroffer—not a ridiculous one.
The publisher withdrew the offer. Just like that, no negotiation.
I felt embarrassed, like I’d been naughty, done something I shouldn’t have. It made me realise the imbalance rife in the publishing world.
The funny bit, yes, ha-ha, happened when I’d already sold the book elsewhere. The first publisher asked if it was still available. My answer was cordial, but inside was an occultist’s hacking laughter.
If you could step into the shoes of one of your characters for a day, who would it be and what would you do?
So there’s this witchdoctor named Knuckles. The story is, in fact, about a raven named Ja. But Knuckles can’t help injecting his foibles into the story. He has one blue eye and a black one. And many totems to commune with the dead. He says all the time to his apprentice, “No shenanigans.” And to his village clientele—before he administers a potion: “Did you bring a little sumthn, sumthn?” He accepts fermented brew in a calabash, a spotless cockerel, a sack of new-rain cassava… He’s reappeared in a few stories. I’d love to be his apprentice.
Share a behind-the-scenes secret or Easter egg from one of your books that readers may have missed.
You know how I steal from the everyday and put people into my fiction? Some of them are real bad people. And I like what I do to them. They get what’s coming. [Occultist’s hacking laughter]
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was announced on the honor list for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.
Sauúti Terrors unravels the darkest stories in the deepest parts of the Sauúti five-planet system orbiting a binary star. There’s much to love in the Sauútiverse with its sounds, music, language, biologies and histories, but everything is not perfect in the federation of planets—from legends and folktales to inheritances, gods, ancestral spirits, sacred prey, sentient creatures, beings of unreality, sonic storms, solar flares and meteor strikes, perils infest the planets. Discover the doomed, the damned, the shunned, the cunning, the destroyers, the noxious, and more, in the worlds of the living and the dead.
What people are saying about the anthology:
Sauúti Terrors bursts at the seams with nightmares and endless possibilities.— Suyi Davies Okungbowa, award-winning author of Lost Ark Dreaming, Warrior of the Wind and Son of the Storm
Fascinating. Impressive. My goodness. This is creation.—Makena Onjerika, Winner of the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing
Once again, the Sauúti Collective—in co-editors Eugen Bacon, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Stephen Embleton—has gathered a commendable and talented set of writers who deliver fantastically imaginative stories that remind us why we fear the dark, and the unknown. — P. Djèli Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout and A Master of Djinn
