What if you had a superpower, but suddenly lost it, or it was turned off? Where would that leave you? This is the question that burned Brisbane writer, Troy Henderson.
Overloaded with the relentless crop of franchised superhero mega-movies each harbouring their own secret special power, is it any wonder a curious mind would ask that question. So began the germ that spawned Troy’s debut novel, Head Grenade.
It didn’t arrive in one pyrotechnic blinding flash, it wasn’t handed to him by a caped crusader, or found in a secret location written in undecipherable code. He came prepared, gifted with his own evil nemesis to defeat, self-doubt. After a wrestle between imagination and the physical task of writing he ended up with a genre-fluid manuscript, described as speculative contemporary fiction.
We are sitting outdoors rugged up in fleecy hoodies making the best of a chilly Brisbane morning, neither of us wanting to recant, and move indoors where it would be warmer. Armed with a large plunger of Lavazza and a smattering of gluten-free biscuits, the price you pay for having coffee with a coeliac, genuine conversation circumvented discussing an unseasonable freezing Queensland winter.
‘The novel started life as lots of ‘thought’ pieces written on the computer, jotted in notebooks, or whatever came to hand for me to scribble on,’ explained Troy. ‘A cut and paste process not unlike Bowie’s lyric writing.’
‘Bringing all those jagged, unfinished ideas together revealed a style, tone, and pace that set the direction for writing.’
As is often the case, writing chooses the writer.
Troy followed a creative path, there was never going to be a fixed-income career. At school he did complete maths and chemistry, but veered naturally to arts and physical pursuits. He took up guitar, was in a band, played jazz, toured, somewhere in here completed a university degree, moved to London for a couple of years, played more music. Returning to Brisbane he stepped into a digital workplace.
‘Writing creatively kept nudging its way forward, there was just no stopping,’ he recounts. ‘Early drafts I shared closely.’
‘Feedback proved heartening, the story of Manny, a boy who could resurrect the dead, first evidenced bringing back to life his escapologist goldfish Raphael, had appeal.
‘Guess that was a spoiler alert because we first meet Manny as an adult, working the trolley on night shift collecting the dead at a major hospital. It’s his job, not a hobby, if you were wondering. He’d stopped using his superpower at this time.’
It’s only after other questions raise alarm, something out of the ordinary is happening here. It’s the goldfish incident that fully exposes the scope and limitations of Manny’s superpowers. After which persons of questionable character, and dubious motives enter the equation.
‘Elvis, his obsessed housemate slip slides into disrepair, there’s Jam, an animal rights girl-friend who doesn’t feel pain, meanwhile Aunty Sue an obsessed doomsday believer is literally bunkering down in her backyard, and personalised cryptic handwritten messages begin arriving anonymously, conceivably from E the bad guy.
‘All this plays out in a highly underutilised landscape, Brisbane the Playground City,’ Troy pauses for a refill before continuing. ‘I’d say River City, but it’s the title of my next book, and I was saving that to tell you later.
‘Right now I had a book, and I wanted to be published. I was so close I could almost touch it.
‘The editing and final proofreads were brutal at times. The to-ing and fro-ing over Oxford commas, or whether Manny’s cigarette lighter had been lost, whether cigarettes was plural or singular, too many “me’s” in the sentence, unnecessary lines, was it raining before? Would a phone survive the plunge into the Brisbane River? Ensuring consistency, continuity, tenses, timelines, character arcs. Every ‘the’, every ‘and’, is scrutinised to determine whether the manuscript can be tightened. It’s red pen fever.
‘You get closer and closer to the moment of publication and the words weigh more. Knowing you only have one more read before going to print really sharpens your analytical eye. I’m not a details person, but I forced myself. Reading as if holding a magnifying glass is bizarre. It utilises a different part of your brain.
‘After the final proofreads I thought I’d never want to read Head Grenade again, but holding the book in my hands was incredible. I’ve held thousands of books, but this one is mine. I’ve sparked my very own into existence. It’s surreal to have something that spends a lifetime in your head, years on a computer, and then it manifests into a real, tactile thing.
‘With excitement, there comes dread. I can’t tinker with it, what if everyone hates it, or worse, finds a spelling error.
‘I probably built it up too much in my head. Bang, there goes my own head grenade. Too late. The book is here, and I did it.’
Reading Head Grenade won’t harm you, but could raise questions of ethical and moral issues, and test the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates’ COVID vaccine contained micro-chips. Critical thinking, it’s good for you, right?
Is Manny’s physical head grenade a metaphor for life choices? Do we all have a superpower, but for reasons unknown we gradually turn them off, living a limited life?
But we had already knocked off the second large plunger of Lavazza in bucket sized mugs so the reality is, two men sitting in the cold full of coffee have more pressing physical issues, we decided to take on the metaphoric another time.
Well will you look at that, we left on a cliffhanger. You wouldn’t read about it!
C’mon, pull the pin, get your hands on Head Grenade here:
https://hawkeyebooks.com.au/collections/best-seller/products/head-grenade
Originally published at: Troy Henderson – The Godless Traveller
