Transcript of NK Jemisin’s interview of KM Szpara, Author of Docile

This is a transcript of a conversation between KM Szpara, author of Docile, and NK Jemisin, author of numerous books but most recently The City We Became. Video of the interview can be found here. I am posting the transcript on behalf of the friend who made it (who wishes to remain anonymous), because it’s the only place I’ve really seen where anyone involved in this book has addressed its racial issues in any capacity.

Docile is set in a near-future alt-America where, according to its author, racism does not exist. It is about debt slavery in the city of Baltimore,¹ yet it never talks about or engages with historical American slavery. As a white southerner who is keenly aware of how hard our country works to conceal and minimize American slavery, American racism, and the continued impact of both on Black communities, I believe that this premise is doing the work of white supremacy, despite what I am sure are the good intentions of its white author. I would encourage folks to check out what queer Black critics have said about the book here, here, and here.

And now, the transcript!

(tw for talk of slavery, rape, and abuse)

NKJ: Oh, we’re live.

KMS: We’re live.

NKJ: It seems to have worked, yay!

KMS: Yay, let’s go for more than 40 seconds this time.

NKJ: That would be nice. That would be really nice. Hi folks, thank you for joining us. As you can see, we’re actually doing this today and hopefully, we’ll actually last for a bit. So just as a general thing, I’m N.K. Jemisin.

KMS: I’m K.M. Szpara.

NKJ: Okay. And we’re going to talk a little bit about this, but this is actually part of a little series I’m trying to do to highlight other authors who have books coming out during the pandemic because it’s a scary time to have a book coming out, let me tell you. But anyway we’re going to get right into it. Kellan has a reading that you wanted to do, or did you want to introduce and such first? It’s up to you.

KMS: Sure, let’s introduce.

NKJ: We could probably do that.

KMS: Yeah.

NKJ: So I’m N.K. Jemisin. I have written many books. My latest one is The City We Became, which is out now from Orbit, and which came out literally two weeks ago on the day that they declared lockdown in New York City. Woohoo! I just finished a virtual book tour because I was not allowed to go on my regular one. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to possibly infect people or myself. So that was fun. And I have won awards and things, so that’s me.

KMS: I am K.M. Szpara, but you’re welcome to call me Kellan, not that I think we can directly talk. That’s okay! My pronouns are he/him. I’m a queer and trans author of also some short science fiction that was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula. And I just turned in my second book which is called First Become Ashes and we will have covers soon. I am very excited! It looks beautiful next to Docile.

NKJ: Congratulations on turning in a book, oh my gosh.

KMS: Thank you, that was really hard. Everyone’s like, “you’re just sitting on your couch, you have so much time to work” and I’m like, “I can’t even do anything except for play Animal Crossing right now.” That’s the hardest brain function that I have. So yeah, I think we both just finished big things so we deserve to relax.

NKJ: Yeah, I’m there. And belated apologies, my own pronouns are she/her, I should have said that in the beginning.

KMS: So I have two little short things I am going to read. If you’ve read the book, you know them. If you haven’t read the book, they will not spoil anything. I think it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Elisha refuses Dociline, that’s the drug that helps people forget what’s happening to them and also makes them more eager to serve.

NKJ: Is Piper in your lap?

KMS: Piper’s in my lap. This is my dog, Piper. She knocked my computer over before we started, so hope that doesn’t happen again.

I’m going to first do a little reading from Alex’s point of view. He is a trillionaire and Elisha signs a contract with him. This is his interview with Elisha.

(KMS reads two scenes. The first is the interview scene, the second is the scene where Elisha refuses Dociline)

NKJ: This is my first time running a Crowdcast event that has not fallen apart, so my apologies in advance if it takes me a second to do things. Now we’re going to segue to a little bit of back and forth. I had some questions that I wanted to ask basically as soon as I finished Docile. Doe-cile, not Duh-cile?

KMS: I say Duh-cile, not Doe-cile but as soon as it was asked of me for the audiobook I started googling “how do you pronounce docile?” There are three or four different ways and of course, Lee Harris who is British and works for Tor.com says “doe-cile” so I’ve now heard solidly three ways to pronounce the work and I don’t care. I say Duh-cile.

NKJ: I don’t know where I picked up Doe-cile from. Maybe I have British friends or something? So I noticed in the poll that 14 percent of the people who are here have not yet finished the book or are still reading the book, and it looks like 29 percent haven’t read it at all but are still curious. For basically that chunk of you, my next question is going to be a spoiler. So you can please turn off your audio for a period and then Kellan, what do you want to do?

KMS: I will give the thumbs up and will hold it for ten seconds. I’ll give the thumbs up when I’m done with the spoilers. I will try not to do spoilers throughout but if I do, I will say so in advance.

NKJ: Okay, so audio off. So my first question is, let’s start with the end of the book. I had capital F feelings about Alex and Elisha ending up in a proto, possible relationship state instead of a no-contact forever state. To me, Alex is given a redemption arc that he makes steps towards earning but that, honestly, I don’t think he can ever possibly earn back. And I found myself frustrated that Elisha was so forgiving. So why did you decide on this ending?

KMS: Sure. So when we made up the AO3 tags for this book we called Elisha “Sweet Cinnamon Roll of Steel.” He is, unlike many characters, a very kind person generally. But that aside, when people talk about redemption arcs, most people are pretty over redemption arcs. But for me, there’s not really such a thing as an arc that has an ending. I don’t think that Alex has reached an endpoint. I think that people, all people, are flawed and make mistakes and are constantly reevaluating and putting themselves on the path of… path of “redemption” is not a great word because I don’t think people can be redeemed.

(NKJ says something inaudible)

KMS: I’m going to pull an L. Ron Hubbard real fast, I need money. I would never do that.

[NKJ laughs]

KMS: I don’t think that Alex is redeemed. I don’t think that anyone is redeemed. My goal is for him to take the mental, emotional and when I say physical steps, I mean taking actions, like forsaking his family and moving on without his money and working towards helping the cause of people who have been affected by Dociline and sort of like giving Elisha space when asked for, learning how to respect boundaries. Lots of stuff sort of sets him on the path of… for lack of a better word, redemption, even though I still don’t like that. People get to change. I think people get to change. We all fuck up (there’s going to be cursing on this live stream).

NKJ: We’re fucking cursing around here.

KMS: People fuck up and he’s born into a system where all the people around him show him one thing and reinforce his worldview so he has no motivation to expose himself to people who make him feel bad.

NKJ: Home training.

KMS: Yeah. I remember growing up and there are things that I picked up from my environments, school, family functions, friends, television, whatever, that made me think things that I’m not proud of now but I work hard to flush those things out both with physical actions and emotionally all the time. I don’t think of Alex as redeeming himself. Elisha making that choice, that aspect of it… at some point, you have to let people make their own decisions. So many people so fast went at Elisha and were like you can’t see him, you can’t be in love with him, everything you think is fake, you don’t like the piano just because you think you do, just because it was given to you, you can’t use those clothes. And like, he’s got this full personality assembled for him by someone else and now he ‘s told none of it is real and it’s so traumatic for him! Do you have to go against everything you believe just to — hello cats!

NKJ: Sorry.

KMS: My dog is now sitting in the next room yipping like I’m going to go pay attention to her.

I mean at a certain point, Elisha is like, I have to be allowed to choose what I want in the moment and that means for me at the end (me as in Elisha) that I am allowed to acknowledge that I do care about Alex without calling it a romantic relationship. So he decides to maintain a semblance of contact and to do so in a way that is productive for them both, meaning working for the betterment of people who have been affected by Dociline. There are two ends of it. There’s Alex trying to learn and figure himself into a new helpful and productive better person. And there’s also Elisha being like, look there are some things that I like that I don’t want to get rid of or maybe I want to get rid of them in the future but let me figure that out. Other people can’t figure that out for you. It’s like someone telling you, in terms that maybe most of our audience might understand… you know, this book, you revised it a million times, maybe you should just put it aside. You’re going to give that book up when you want to give that book up, but not before. That’s a really hard decision. He in his own time will make his own decision and that’s why there’s not a sequel. If anyone didn’t know that surprise, there will not be a sequel.

NKJ: That’s what fanfic is for.

KMS: Yeah, you know. You can make fanfic. Don’t link me to it but I will know it is there in my heart. You can make fan art though and link me to that. Especially the sexy fan art.

[NKJ laughs]

KMS: That’s why I wrote this book. So people will make sexy fanart!

NKJ: That’s the best reason to be a writer these days (laughing).

KMS: My real reason to become a writer… It’s so that I will become super famous and that Hanson, my favorite band from the ’90s, reads my book and falls in love with me. That’s it. That’s the secret.

NKJ: Okay. all right. I mean, I was a hip hop kid in the ’90s. But you know, go for what you know. Oh, we should signal that the spoiler question is done.

KMS: Spoiler is done.

NKJ: I have another question, which is… When you decided to write this novel did you worry about whether you’d find an agent or a publisher and did you have any trouble with either, or did they snap it up and beat down the door to give you a contract?

KMS: I was definitely worried. When I started writing I sort of learned what fantasy and science fiction looked like from… I knew a couple of other writers but I wasn’t plugged into the community until at least 2012. Not even then. Even after I published my first story, maybe not even until 2013 or so. I didn’t even know what a Hugo or a Nebula was. I wasn’t raised on it; I was raised on fanfiction. And there’s like twenty Anne Rice books behind me on the shelf.

I had started writing, “Oh they kiss at the end of a book.” And I was like okay, but what if they dry hump a little in the middle? People are like, “Unresolved sexual tension is the only way you can do it,” and I was like, “But what if they did do it very early on?” So I thought no one is going to want to publish this book that is basically all queer characters and there’s just so much fucking in it. And a lot of it is.. I’m going to use… I tend to use AO3 tags when I talk about the content of this book. There is a warning on the back cover that says this book has a frank depiction of rape and assault and abuse. That’s true but… When I say dubcon and noncon, I mean those in the phrases of Elisha the character trying to figure out what those various sexual encounters mean to him. So he doubts whether he consents or not, so that’s why I call it that sometimes. So I was not sure anyone would want that. I didn’t know if you could publish anything with that much sex in it. That was most of the reason I was nervous.

It took me about a year to get an agent but that’s because agents are busy people and not for any real reason. Honestly, the advice I’d heard from all my friends who’d published so far was “Start working on your next project immediately, don’t think about it when you go on sub” and that’s something I really learned and is one of the only bits of advice I would strongly give to people trying to make a career out of writing. Making a professional career out of writing is learning to fall in love over and over again with your next project which is very hard. I had already fallen in love with a second book which is now going to be my third book. It’s about vampires.

NKJ: Nice.

KMS: So I had already fallen in love with the next book. I was like “No one is going to buy this, I’m ready, it’s fine.” And then it was maybe two or three weeks and my agent was like “So we have a phone call with an editor,” and that shocked the hell out of me. I don’t think I ever got the experience of being on submission because it happened very fast.

NKJ: That’s a good sign though.

KMS: It was very good and really alleviated a lot of stress. We would get rejections on other ones and I was like “That’s fine we almost have an offer, I think, so I’m feeling good.” And I love working with my editor. I work with Carl Engle-Laird at Tor.com publishing and he gets my stuff and has said that anything you can throw at me, I can handle or I will look up. Which is great because my next book is heavy sadomasochism and chastity play. The one after that is a lot of vampire blood and kink.

(overlapping talk)

NKJ: I just added a new poll during the time that you were talking. The new poll is “Are you a fanfic person? Are you into it? Are you not?” We’ve got twenty-one votes already, all of them are “woohoo yes”. None are “ew no”, none are “what’s fanfic.” All right then, we’ve got lots of fanfic readers in here.

KMS: I am very lucky that I wrote almost all my fanfic in journals and they’re all over here on my shelf. They are my journals from when I was a child, so unless someone breaks into my house and scans them…

NKJ: They will never see the light of day.

KMS: It’s mostly me making out with Hanson.

NKJ: I didn’t even discover fanfic until I was in grad school and I’m super grateful for that. No one will ever see the stories that I wrote as a teenager. Nope. People ask, “Can you give me your papers after you’re done?” Nope. Fuck that.

KMS: As a strong fan of a band, I’m always a little like, I want all your unreleased songs. I want to hear everything you’ve ever made, it’s perfect. But as a writer… I do not let anyone look at anything that has not been through a professional editor.

NKJ: Nope, nope. “We want to see how you developed as a writer.” No, you don’t get to see that. It’s not your business. Mind your business.

Next question, why was it a choice for you to avoid the use of the word slavery for what is so obviously indentured servitude at the bare minimum and effectively, because debt is inherited and passed down and Elisha’s family’s case, it is effectively chattel slavery. So why did you decide to avoid the use of this word and other words that clearly establish what’s happening here?

KMS: Sure. Not everyone avoids the word. Not a tangent but an inclusive is that the word “rape” only appears a couple of times. For me, “slavery” and “rape” are both very strong words that are specific namers of intense traumas and not everyone in the world of Docile has that vocabulary. The people that are making the rules are… we either have Alex’s point of view or Elisha’s point of view. Alex’s point of view is so full of that “people of means.” Okay for the record, I coined “people of means” in my book and then someone in real life said it.

NKJ: You did it first.

KMS: And I was like, “No this is not the kind of thing I want coming true.” So people like Alex are saying things like, “I’m a patron.”

NKJ: “This is a business relationship.”

KMS: “This is a Docile.” When you are in the ruling class and you make up this language, it’s harder for people to realize what’s happening to them. It’s harder for people to name their specific traumas. It’s sort of part of the bow that’s wrapped around the nefariousness of the Docile system. In fact, even words like “debtor” are very rarely spoken except when couched in like, “Ohh, a debtor.” So I think that the Empower Maryland folks will say “debt slavery” and they also use the word “rape.” So only the people who have sort of “seen beyond the veil” so to say. When I talk about people learning and growing and starting to see the systems that they are a part of, only the people at Empower Maryland have progressed to the point where they can name specific things.

NKJ: Sorry to poke in. I love that most of the Empower Maryland people we meet seem to be people of color. That to me, that’s where we meet at least one other prominent black character. I would hope that in the future that when slavery returns that people like me would be at the front lines of breaking that shit down. But you know. We will see, I suppose.

KMS: Yeah. I think when we had a brief conversation before the live stream… It’s like, well, we always want to see ourselves in the roles of the protagonists and the revolutionaries but it was really important for me that people not only see themselves in Empower Maryland and in Elisha. I wanted them to see themselves in Alex too. I know people that are like Alex’s parents. I know people who are like Jess, who continues to work at Bishop Labs making Dociline even though she was a Docile herself. And one of the things we talked about beforehand is that… I did browse the questions and I just want to pop down. I’m gonna answer some of these that are related. One of them says some discussion about how race is handled in the speculative world of Docile so I’m just going to answer that now real quick since it’s tied into it.

So a couple of things. One for me is near future which is a sub-genre, marketing term. I always call it alt-near future. So that for me is… I’m not a futurist. I’m not a historian. I’m not an economist. I don’t think I’m predicting an exact future. When I write near future it is an alt-timeline or like a pocket universe where I have sort of picked the aspects of history that move forward versus those that don’t in order to tell the story that I want. So it’s not an exact near future, and when that happens I think that writers can often choose to go all in or go all out with including isms and phobias. And I think that people are sort of torn about… I don’t mean torn as if there’s a correct answer. But I think that people have differing opinions about whether they want to see those in fiction. Some people are like “I’m tired of homophobia. You’re inventing a world. Can you just not have it?” But I don’t think that you can do just one thing or another. So a world with no homophobia but racism feels like a bad world to me. So I didn’t try to put any systemic or interpersonal racism into my world. I am white and fallible so it is possible that there are aspects that leaked but it was my goal to have it set in a world where racism is not necessarily a founding part of society going forward.

And then I just tried to populate the world with a well balanced, diverse array of identities including race. For example, if Docile were made into a movie then it’s not a movie that could be anonymously cast, so to say. I very particularly tried to… for example Elisha couldn’t be a woman or black or trans even because the power balances would bring in a host of different dynamics that I did not think were my lane to play with or my story to tell. I just tried to sort of place people such that it highlighted the themes that I wanted to highlight and not to inadvertently bring up any additional negative connotations. I definitely put a lot more people of color in the Empower Maryland group though. I tried to make sure… there’s a lot of different class stuff going on so it was all about me trying to make sure that the things I wanted to highlight were highlighted without stepping out of my lane. And I think then that’s it for that question.

NKJ: Okay.

KMS: I did think though… I wrote down the questions and I think we skipped one that I would love… nope we didn’t. Pain, pleasure, and consent are next.

NKJ: I’m looking at just how many audience questions we have and I had a couple more questions myself but do you want to segue into doing audience questions?

KMS: Sure.

NKJ: In that case, I’m going to reduce myself so that you get the full bandwidth. If you mention the names of the person of the question you are answering I will highlight the question so it’s easier for you to see while you’re answering and will move it to the answered column.

KMS: I’m looking at the full list of questions here. Since it’s Sunday I can go a little bit over. The top next one says “please tell us about your next book.” I will do this very briefly because we haven’t had the big cover reveal yet. That’s Nino Cipri, hi, Nino. My next book is about a guy named Metalarc who is raised in a cult to believe that he has magic powers and that when he turns twenty-five he will save humanity from monsters and that his home is corrupt. When he is almost twenty-five, his partner goes out into the world first, because he is older, and betrays the cult to the outsider authorities, who send in a SWAT team and break up the cult immediately and tell them that magic is not real, monsters are not real and that everything they learned is a lie. So Metalarc doesn’t accept this. He meets a cute cosplaying nerd named Calvin who desperately wants to believe that magic is real and has a car, and the two of them go on a very gay kinky road trip to learn about themselves and discover if magic is real or if monsters are real, and do it in the woods. Yeah, that’s what my next book is about. I’m very excited.

And the one after that… I mentioned the vampires. My story that was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula, “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time”, is about a gay trans guy who is pissing outside the gay bar because he’s too afraid to use the men’s room inside when he’s bitten by a vampire. And his body turns differently than a cis person’s body because it plays on the vampire tropes of like, “Oh you become so beautiful and your body heals” and what does that mean for someone who is medically altering their body and has gender issues? But it is eight weeks later when he is back at work. He is a real brat and it is very fun. I can’t wait to write that voice again.

This question I am very excited about, from Nicole. “I would really like to hear more about Dutch. I think the role(s) he played in the narrative are fascinating and dissonant, and I’d love to hear more about your thought process as you constructed his arc.”

This is going to have some spoilers in it. If you don’t want to hear about Dutch, now would be the time to mute your audio. I will give the thumbs up when I finish. So Dutch is one of two of Alex’s best friends. He was a Docile when he was younger and he was a Bishop Labs Docile and his contract was with Bishop Laboratories not with Alex directly. And Alex was also a child. Since Alex was raised in a bubble he didn’t have this concept that this other kid wasn’t just there to play with him for fun or of his own free will. So after Dutch’s term, he got a job there because everyone liked him and that’s how nepotism and similar works. Dutch is someone who readers either vehemently hate or deeply love and I really like the juxtaposition between him and Jess.

Jess is Dutch’s other best friend who was in the same situation and also raised as a Docile in Bishop Labs. She continues to work at Bishop Laboratories developing Dociline. She says she thought that it could use the point of view and influence of somebody who was a Docile. She wanted somebody who had the experience to have their hands in it still, and that’s her sort of mission. But Dutch actually has been working for the activism group Empower Maryland the whole time, and he does not tell Alex. This is a secret and he doesn’t tell Elisha either. He donates most of his salary, which is billions of dollars, to their organization and that helps buy people out of debt. He is doing actual work behind the scenes that he does not tell anyone about. As the book progresses he helps Elisha kind of fervently. Not with a gentle hand. He’s not a nice person. In fact, he works very hard to put up an asshole-ish front so that people will not suspect him. He has a scene that is infamous with Elisha where they are at a party and he tells Elisha to suck his dick and then Elisha doesn’t want him to… I’m sorry this is getting so explicit but that’s the book… he doesn’t want Dutch to come on his face so he’s like “oh my God” and backs up and Dutch scolds him and embarrasses him publicly for it.

People are pretty much… the people who won’t forgive Dutch, that’s where it is for them. They say he sexually assaults Elisha and that’s the line. They don’t necessarily care or find him “redeemable” for the work that he does behind the scenes for Empower Maryland. But also those same people are just cool with Jess who is actively making Dociline, a product that is going to be given to people, and I think that is so interesting because who is helping people and who isn’t? When you go “undercover” like that, what are you willing to do for the good of more debtors vs this one person? I don’t know, I love almost everyone that I’ve created, but it’s different sorts of love. My editor is in the comments saying he’s the head of the Dutch hating club. I love Dutch.

NKJ: I’m just going to poke in though and say there’s a difference between what Dutch does, which is nonconsensual, and what Jess does, where at least people have the ability to refuse Dociline.

KMS: Yeah, absolutely.

NKJ: For me, that’s the line, but I’m going to go back on mute now because we get better bandwidth when I do.

KMS: Sure. I mean I think it’s everyone’s right to have whatever feelings they want. I know I wrote a book that has characters who do things so to say and people are going to have strong opinions about them. That’s fine. You are totally allowed to have yours. The author is dead, etc.

So let’s see. Next question. Right, okay this next question is about Alex’s chapter being the last point of view. I thought about that while I was writing it too. Do I give Alex the last point of view? I gave Elisha the first point of view. It’s really Elisha’s actions that set the story off. So I gave Alex the last point of view. I think that he sort of makes huge huge changes throughout the book and I was interested in seeing what his emotional resolve was there. I think we know where Elisha is and “where’s Alex” is sort of a check-in I wanted to have. Not all of the answers to these questions are super deep. It’s one of those things where it’s like, do you want to end a book four times in a row? Do you now want to show what happened to every single person?

For me, it’s not important… and this sort of applies to other characters as well as a mild tangent… I’m not somebody that thinks that every character needs to get their just deserts on the page. You can judge them. That is where it stands. We live in a world where people get away with things, where the rich sue the poor, where they’re still working through their issues. I sort of set people down on a path where I think you have made some changes inside and I want you to go from here and see what happens and that is sort of like you can extrapolate that. I want to give people something to think about. I’m not laying judgment on everyone. Alex gets the last point of view because I wanted to show the path he had set himself on. And I think that we have sort of seen where Elisha was going. We know he has a long way ahead of him to heal and Alex has a lot to make up for, not that I think he can. But you can only ever keep going forward and trying. That is the answer to that one. I see there’s a long discussion in there [the comments] that I will leave between everyone.

There’s a question about whether a character doubted the effects of Dociline. “Whenever a character doubted the effects of Dociline on Elisha’s mother, I kept thinking about cisgender women who take birth control hormones and how, when they say there are symptoms, nobody believes them because of a lack of ‘medical evidence’ (but who is doing the testing?). Could you talk about the resonances of this ‘medical doubt’ problem between Docile and the real world?”

Sure. So I am not a cisgender woman. I have taken birth control in the past. But this for me, my sort of latch onto this is (oh shoot I forgot to come out of the spoiler! Oh well I’m not talking about it anymore. The chat seems like it is carrying on this kind of thing. I am very sorry. I am not spoiling anything anymore.)

So medical doubt. My tie to this personally is being a trans person, and you have to get through a number of gatekeepers and prove yourself, and often people will say “oh let’s try all these other things before we decide you’re trans and see if those will fix you first” or whatever. This is a gatekeeper issue. So Alex will say like “No, she can’t possibly feel any side effects” but that’s because he always has worked with people initially and that is more sort of an emotional tie to his family. That is a threat to his family, that Dociline wouldn’t work. He is saying how dare you imply that what my family does is a lie. In the real world, I think it’s different than that. It’s also outsiders judging people who are trying to be honest about their side effects or their emotional or physical health. It is an issue. I don’t know that I have much more to say on it than that. I’m not a healthcare expert.

I’m going to go to the next question because I don’t have a ton more to say on that except listen to people when they tell you things. I wanted to answer this one. “Both Alex and Elisha’s families are… something. Can you talk a bit about the role family structures/roles/obligations play in the world of Docile?”

Yeah. So Alex’s family is a generational piece of shit. His grandmother invented Dociline. His father perpetuates it and in fact has a very specific vision of what it should be going forward. Even Alex, he thinks he’s doing a good thing by trying to make Dociline a new, nicer version. His dad doesn’t even like that. He’s very beholden to what his grandmother laid down and his dad after her, and when you have that much influence and power it necessarily bleeds into the interpersonal.

I don’t read a lot or watch a lot of this… whenever you see the trope of the king and the king’s lover. There’s always a power imbalance. You’re never going to get out of that. That’s not an exact one-to-one with family but his dad also has the power to take everything away or to totally push him out or to ruin him or commit him to a facility or all kinds of things and Alex, I think, doesn’t realize all that at first but it does become obvious to him how much of himself he’s derived from the toxicity of his family line and part of his character arc is learning to push against that.

Elisha’s family is also not great. His sister is great. I like his sister. His dad and mom are not legally married. Getting married… the family structure is such that when you get married your debt gets tied to that other person legally so a lot of people who have a lot of debt are not getting married because then you pass both parents’ debt down to your kids so his parents are not legally married. His dad is kind of a mess. His wife/Elisha’s mother, Abigail, served a term as a Docile and it affected her such that she acts like a Docile still, taking instructions, repeatedly doing things over and over again. The dad is grappling with this specific loss. There’s just sort of an echo of his wife there, and there’s no sense that this will ever be fixed or that there will be some kind of medical breakthrough that will help people who have been on Dociline (rather than fixed, I don’t really like that word). He is sort of grieving and he considers sending out Elisha’s sister in the beginning and that’s why Elisha goes himself. He’s like, she is not going, not my little sister.

He carries this weight of expectation from his family that he will perform being a Docile a certain way. He gets to go home to visit, that’s part of Docile rights. So when he goes home sometimes his father (I guess mild spoiler) sees that Elisha doesn’t hate everything and isn’t mad and actually seems to like his patron and that is unacceptable. Instead of treating it with the care of noticing that someone is… this is how they’re suffering, by having incorporated that training so much that they’re brainwashed. Instead of handling that with care his father is outraged and can’t handle it, can’t handle more people that are becoming docile all the time around him.

Everyone’s family mostly sucks except for Abby, who is Elisha’s sister who… there’s one little scene with her and Alex but I will not spoil it. I will just say it happens. I will leave that question there.

NKJ: Let me just point out we’re at time.

KMS: We’re at time. Let me just answer the newest top question, if that’s okay with everyone. Are you good?

NKJ: I’m fine.

KMS: Okay. “Can you talk some about how Dutch and Opal, because they’re hiding their identities and intentions, have sex/assault Elisha under false terms (he thinks he’s having sex with a Docile but that’s not the case)? When I read it they seemed relatively unapologetic about it, and I’d like to hear your thoughts about the writing of the situation.”

I think that asker means Dutch and Onyx, but Opal is also a character. There are Dutch, Onyx, and Opal and they are… there’s no way this is not a spoiler. I don’t know how to answer this without giving a spoiler. They are not on Dociline. Dutch, who is working with Empower Maryland, also is in a relationship, a poly relationship, with Opal and Onyx separately. They live together, the three of them. And none of them are on Dociline. They are basically undercover to get information about trillionaires and Dociline and to help Empower Maryland. At one of the parties… There used to be so many party scenes, my agent and editor were like “Maybe not five, maybe just one and a half.” So at one of the party scenes, I already mentioned earlier how basically Alex is like “Go suck Dutch’s dick” which is quite a shitty thing to say. Afterward, they are like “Go play with the other Dociles” and Elisha has a moment where he’s like… “I’m going to have sex with one of these Dociles who is on Dociline and I don’t know how I feel about that. Am I better than the trillionaires who are doing the same thing to me and do I have a choice?” It’s one of those impossible positions that you put people in.

No, those are not their real names. They are like fake names because all the Dociles except for Elisha have fake names like “Billiard” or “Fluffy” or stuff like that. So Elisha… when I say “has sex”, I mean engages in sexual activity, whatever your thought about the word is. So they do that. And he feels angst about it because he is a good person or trying to be one and doesn’t think that he should be having sex with someone who is under the influence of a drug. But of course, he sort of slips deeper and deeper under the thrall of Alex’s training and becomes subsumed in him and later (still a spoiler) when he has escaped off to Empower Maryland, he sees Dutch and Onyx and is like, “Wait you’re not on Dociline.” And they’re like, “No.” And Onyx is unapologetic about this. He says something like, “I’m sorry that I had to do that you specifically but (I can’t remember exactly what happens) but something like I’m not sorry for going undercover into this space where I’m doing things like this.”

I wanted to show a lot of different people’s… I wanted to show varying takes. I don’t think that characters make just the right choices all the time, for whatever that means to you, and Elisha is really put off by this and they eventually have sort of a friendship and still a spoiler, they actually do eventually negotiate Elisha’s first crack at consensual sex. So I think I hit most of it. He’s just sort of unapologetic. Dutch is sort of “I’m doing this.” Sort of like YOLO-ing through this. He gives up some stuff during a deposition later on. They have their eyes on a prize and sometimes people do shitty things. There’s not a lot of people making wholesome choices in this book.

So yes. We are over time. I hope that I’ve even scratched the surface. I wanted to write a book that raised a lot of questions. I don’t think I’ve written an open and close on things. I think I am providing a vehicle for discussion. I think it’s good to think about whether certain characters are good or bad or whether you would do the same thing and the extremes that people are willing to go to. I don’t think it’s realistic to think people make the right and righteous choices all the time. It’s important for me to populate the world with people like that. For example when you think about stories where a very rich person is like “I’ll give up everything to be with you” to their new lover… I’m like, would you though? I tried to be really honest with myself about a lot of this stuff. Like, if someone said to me “you need to give all your money to x because of y reason” I’d be like “okay but all my money?” (I don’t have trillions of dollars!) but realistically leaving your family behind is very hard even if you think they’re wrong. Leaving the comfort of everything you’ve known growing up is very hard. These aren’t steps people take lightly. That’s why a lot of questions go unanswered in the book because this stuff takes more time than 104,300 words. Not everything is fully processed or worked out to a total ending, but that is on purpose because I don’t think it can be. I think we are well over.

NKJ: It’s your time, but yeah.

KMS: Good questions.

NKJ: Yeah there were great questions. I didn’t even get to do most of mine but that’s fine. It was a good conversation, bottom line. All right. The video will be available in a few minutes. Just come back to this URL if you want to watch the session over again. That’s all I’ve got.

KMS: Yeah, same. My dog is standing on the steps over there looking at me like, “Excuse me. It’s my time now.”

NKJ: Many thanks to those of you who showed up to ask questions and participate.

KMS: Thank you so much, everyone, it was so wonderful and thanks to Nora for reaching out to me because we’ve all been stuck in our bubbles. Be safe everyone!

NKJ: Kay. Bye!