Updates

Barely coherent updates from the desk of a harried writer

Friends, mortal enemies, unrepentant bibliophiles,

It’s been a little over a month since Jackal, Jackal dropped and the reception has been wonderful. Readers and reviewers alike have been properly terrified joyously awed by the stories, or else walked away with a renewed commitment to turning in library books on time (you’re welcome, librarians). But perhaps most of note is this rave New York Times review which had me cackling with “irrepressible glee.”

Partway through the second story in Tobi Ogundiran’s collection JACKAL, JACKAL: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic (Undertow Publications, 317 pp., paperback, $20), one starts to suspect that the author is writing with irrepressible glee. Perhaps it’s the increasingly unnerving letters the story’s traveling salesman receives, including one delivered by a raven. Perhaps it’s the diarrhea and professional failure that befall the salesman when he ignores said letters. And perhaps it’s that the salesman ends up sweating and cornered by a terror, all because he failed to return a library book. (The book? Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.”) Who knew impending doom could be so fun?

Vivid and twisted, ironic and stirring, the varied stories in the collection are told with verve, even when blameless characters meet gruesome ends. “The truth is that I’m moving into this old colonial manor to kill myself,” one story matter-of-factly begins. In another, a sentient forest murders a character’s mother and little brother by invading their bodies with plant growth, their “eye sockets choked with blossoms.” In “The Goatkeeper’s Harvest,” an entire family simply ends up ravaged by malevolent goats.

Nigerian myth, folklore and culture inform these stories, acting as touchstones that unify disparate worlds. Characters travel between the cities of Ibadan and Lagos and the state of Kwara; they feel the cool dry winds of harmattan and drink Gulder beer. A story centers on an abiku, a Yoruba spirit child that torments mothers by repeatedly dying after being born; a boy in another story plays a talking drum to ward off evil apparitions. Griots serve as totemic figures and reveal ancient lore. One flash fiction piece even takes the form of an ominous and delightfully arch letter from African royalty to a colonizing kingdom across the ocean. Spoiler alert: Things don’t end well for the colonizers.

Beyond ghosts and gore, the collection contains another, more fantastical strain: epic stories featuring witch-kings and enchanted cities and realms where ancient beings reside, places where rare fruit can grant wishes. In either mode, Ogundiran’s prose has a warm, enthusiastic vitality; through it we peek into myriad living universes we’ve never seen before, and rediscover our own capacity for thrill and wonder.

Whew! After reading that review I wanted to go buy the book … and I wrote it.

Upcoming: In the Shadow of the Fall

Some of you might not know but I have a new series in the works! It starts with In the Shadow of the Fall, out from Tordotcom in July of next year. Barnes and Noble is holding a preorder promotion for all available titles (which includes Shadow) from Sep 6-8 for all members. Code is PREORDER25 so why not get this awesome book at an absolute steal? (25% off + an additional 10% for premium members). The book is good, my mum says so, as does my agent, as do my editors. No, I don’t have them chained in my basement, why do you ask?

I have seen a few prelim sketches of the cover art and I am so excited.

Here’s the official blurb:

"Electrifying, terrifying, and tender."―Mark Oshiro, #1 New York Times bestselling author

A cosmic war reignites and the fate of the orisha lie in the hands of an untried acolyte in this first entry of a new epic fantasy novella duology by Tobi Ogundiran, for fans of N. K. Jemisin and Suyi Davies Okungbowa.

Ashâke is an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, yearning for the day she is made a priest and sent out into the world to serve the orisha. But of all the acolytes, she is the only one the orisha refuse to speak to. For years she has watched from the sidelines as peer after peer passes her by and ascends to full priesthood.

Desperate, Ashâke attempts to summon and trap an orisha―any orisha. Instead, she experiences a vision so terrible it draws the attention of a powerful enemy sect and thrusts Ashâke into the center of a centuries-old war that will shatter the very foundations of her world.

Until next time,

Tobi