TEX THOMPSON: Well, if you know the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you might be familiar with Irving. It is the warm, friendly armpit of the DFW metroplex, wedged right up between the D and the FW. I was born there and lived there until I was thirty (when we moved an entire eight miles down the road into Dallas proper), and if I play my cards just right, I might even be lucky enough to die there.

And it’s not like Irving itself is some kind of sparkling gem on the Interstate. To me, what matters is that I’ve gotten to grow right where I was planted. I can meet my parents for dinner on a whim. I still play D&D with people I went to kindergarten with. There is power and identity in being really, meaningfully “from” somewhere, and it’s the bedrock of everything I’ve written so far. In Droughtworld, the people who have magic aren’t “born special”: instead, their power comes from some kind of cultural continuity. They’ve spent their lives belonging to a place or a clan or a faith tradition, and that link empowers them. It certainly has empowered me.

When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

When my parents failed to teach me shame. 

No, but really—I’m just another one of those insufferable prodigies that you always read about in author bios. You know the ones. “Author McBookston has always been a lover of words. She taught herself to read as a zygote and wrote her first story on the back of a Cheerios box in her high chair.” I had kicked out a (ridiculous, god-awfully terrible, shamelessly fun) 150,000-word novel by the time I was out of high school, and thank God every day that our dial-up AOL account gave me no good outlet for publishing my anime fan-fiction epics.

But I do remember being in junior college, writing and illustrating my own stories, and feeling that I had to choose between the two. I dropped the art to focus exclusively on the writing and often wish I hadn’t. There are so many talented people who are masters of both, and I wish I could go tell my younger self that it really is possible to multiclass.

When did you become “Tex”?

Oh, that was another gift from the dial-up AOL days! My mom was adamant that my sister and I would be cyber-napped and murdered if we ever identified ourselves online—so I chose “Tex2S” (short for Texas Two-Step) as my alias. I spent years as “Tex” on roleplaying forums and chat rooms, but it didn’t follow me offline until January of 2012—the day I walked into the DFW Writers Workshop.

They’re a friendly bunch, don’t get me wrong. But walking into a room full of fifty strangers, getting ready to stand up and introduce yourself, and then go read the first sweaty pages of your magnum opus out loud for them to critique—you know, asking a dozen competent adults to casually eviscerate your dreams like some kind of low-rent Dancing with the Stars—man, that was too much for me. Too much for Arianne, anyway. So I did the superhero thing and made myself Tex, and let me tell you: it is amazingly effective. I get why Superman does it now. It’s not to protect his secret identity (as if he even needs that reporter gig anyway!); it’s because your ego is *bulletproof* as long as you’re not being called out with the same name you used to get grounded with.

Tell us about your books and what inspired you to write them.

Well, I was a squishy little nerdling from the get-go—soaking up every Star Trek book and fantasy novel I could get my sticky hands on. But it wasn’t until I studied history in college that I started to question my manuscript’s standard Euro-medieval fantasy setting. Like, I love the Lord of the Rings, but why am I writing about Europe? I’m not from Europe. This is Texas. “Yurp” is one syllable!

So I set out to write a really *American* epic fantasy story, featuring all kinds of American people—especially the ones who usually get left out. This was where that “culture magic” idea really changed the game: imagine an 1840s New Mexico in which the settlers still have guns, germs, and steel—but they’ve moved and changed and industrialized so quickly that they’ve lost most of their magic. The indigenous people, on the other hand, are still living on their own land, still speaking their own language, and worshipping in their own traditions—and so they still have powerful gifts. They’re able to fight the settlers to a standstill, and even take back some of their territory. Unfortunately, all the blood and tragedy from that last great war has soaked into the ground, supernaturally irradiating the land and its creatures—and now survivors on both sides of the border are trying to figure out how much of their old ways they can afford to keep in this new, frighteningly strange world.

And even though the setting is distinctly Western, I see that central conflict today, in our own modern society. We try so hard to heal our national wounds and move forward together, and yet we keep getting dragged back by all this ugly baggage from the past. This isn’t about dark lords or evil empires—the real struggle is figuring out how to live with our next-door neighbors.

How would you describe your first “big break” as a writer?

Well, it started with joining the DFW Writers Workshop and reading my first chapter out loud without being sick down my front.

It continued with meeting the world’s most fabulous agent at the DFW Writers Conference, which is put on by the aforesaid workshop, and which is basically Disneyland Hogwarts Burning Man Woodstock carnival-prom for writers. (“Hi, I’m Jennie,” she said with a warm midwestern smile. “Hi, you smell pretty,” I sweatily warbled.)

It culminated with a British editor leisurely reading my manuscript in his back garden in Oxford, then calling up the office and saying “Guess what I’ve bought?”

And the rest is history!

How has publishing changed since you first began writing?

That’s a really delicious question. I suppose technically I was writing before the big e-publishing boom (I began in 1999)—but in the short time since I’ve pupated into real industry awareness (2012 onwards), what’s really surprised me is how publishing and the literary world have become a “canary in the coal mine” for our ongoing political polarization. For example, the Hugo Awards/Sad Puppy controversy blew up in 2013, with an ugliness unmatched until this year’s election. That may be part of a larger trend in the culture wars—Gamergate kicked off in 2014—but I’m sorry to see so many good books and talented writers sorted onto a given side of the fence and promptly used for target-practice by the other.

Who are some of the Texas authors that you enjoy reading?

Well, I’m contractually obliged to fly the flag for Cormac McCarthy, the punctuation-optional genius in whose footsteps anyone would be privileged to walk. The same is true for Joe R. Lansdale, because I will never write anything as sublime as Bubba Ho-Tep, or as superlative as Batman. But more than anyone else, my heart beats for Molly Ivins. To constantly bear witness and report the fetid gurglings of Texas’ legislative bowel tract was a service in itself. But to do that—to pillory those laws and lawmakers that have compounded misery and shortened lives—with genuine compassion and humor . . . that is something special. She taught me that you can advocate for what you believe in zestfully, joyfully, taking pleasure in the challenge and poking fun at yourself and your fellow belligerents along the way. I wish we as a nation valued that more. Sometimes it feels like everyone’s so busy picking out a hill to die on that we aren’t doing a whole lot of living.

What is your writing process like?

You know, I am a serial monotasker. I know most writers have a rigorous daily routine, but I absolutely do not want to step through the wardrobe into Narnia if I’m just going to have to schlep back out again in an hour to start the laundry. So I tend to write in seasons. Winter is for drafting—for shutting up shop and cranking out words. Spring is when I do most of my community organizing and events, and get that first draft out to beta readers. Summer is the high season for promotion at various conventions and conferences. Autumn is good for revision because by then I’ve collected all that reader feedback and gotten some fresh perspective. I’ll never be the world’s most prolific writer, but if I can put out one really first-rate book a year and still get to teach and travel, I’ll be a happy camper.

You’re a teacher of writing too. What’s the best advice you have for aspiring authors?

You know, I see a lot of anxiety about writing a book that will stand out from the crowd. We hear over and over that there are only nine plots (or seven, or however many we’re down to now), and that such-and-such is oversaturated, done, over. Dystopians are over. Paranormal romance is over. Vampires are definitely over. But you know what? I know one amazing writer who’s putting the finishing touches on a novel about a menopausal vampire who’s been stuck at fifty years old since the 1800s, and has to use her “middle-aged woman” powers of social invisibility on a quest to become mortal again. And it is seriously the funniest, freshest, sharpest manuscript I’ve read in years.

Let’s do more of that. I’m tired of zombies—but show me a protagonist who has to survive the zombie apocalypse as a Type-1 diabetic, and I’m in. I’m tired of Euro-medieval fantasy—but if the Chosen One who pulls the sword from the stone is a single mother of three, I’ll buy it on the spot. The moral of the story: if you want to do something that hasn’t been done before, include someone who hasn’t been included before. There may only be half a dozen plots—but there are a million characters, and a million more readers who are still waiting to see a hero who reflects their own lived experience.

What’s next for Tex?

Probation!

Or failing that, I guess I’ll just have to write another book.