Insecticide: A Republican Romance follows the Bush family in an alternative timeline where history and the supernatural coexist, and conspiracy theories become real. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

It’s hard to pinpoint a single inspiration! Frustration with both Bush presidencies, back in the day, was obviously the original inspiration. And, more broadly in the decades since, fear of pro- and proto-fascist tendencies in America (and the world) at large. It’s simply amazing to me that so many people want jackboots—in the name of freedom!

The inspiration for the weird supernatural sci-fi/fantasy stuff came from my reading on W. Averell Harriman: who was this guy, and where did he come from, and how did he amass so much wealth and political power so fast? All I had to do was think “what if he’s a space alien,” and then “what if he’s a 10,000-year-old space bug from ancient Atlantis,” and all the rest of it started propagating: Lincoln as an ancient Lemurian beetle living at the bottom of a lake in Texas with his devil-water-cow Bessie, the fascists supported by beetles and the progressives supported by fish, the John Wilkes Booths, the woolly mammoths, etc.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

The divergent political conceptions of freedom: freedom for everybody, or freedom for just us. The clash between power&wealth and values. The ways in which the “little guy” gets chewed up in the quest for power and wealth—even when the “little guy” is a prominent player like George Bush (father or son).

In fact the biggest surprise for me, writing the book with the Georges Bush father and son narrating it, was my growing sympathy for them. I wrote the book to satirize them, and didn’t expect to identify with them—with their general cluelessness and haplessness, their sense that they are being manipulated and chewed up by insidious forces beyond their ken.

The world you created in this novel is brimming with possibilities. Where did the inspiration for the setting come from, and how did it change as you wrote?

Texas has complex symbolic resonances for me. My mother’s father came from Texas, and my mother spent the most wonderful summers of her childhood there. And yet Texas is also one of the most draconian havens for fascist politics: radical abortion and travel bans, scary gun-carry laws—oh, and of course Ted Cruz. And since there was once a Republic of Texas, and right-wing Texans love to talk about seceding, it made sense to have them secede and create a new Republic of Texas as an unabashed police state. And of course, as you mention, it was loads of fun to turn existing conspiracy theories into historical “fact,” and invent lots of new ones. How did it change? Well, obviously there had to be progressive pushback against the police state; but introducing the supernatural elements and linking Lincoln and the fish with the progressive resistance made the whole thing a lot more fun.

What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it?

I’m writing a flash-fiction novel titled Lord Trump the Undead. In it Donald Trump loses the 2024 election, stages another coup, and is accidentally killed by friendly fire. A pair of sci-fi Resuscitation Drones (thanks to The Expanse by James S.A. Corey for this!) collects the pieces and brings him back to “life”—but he is now undead. He becomes the undead deity of the Church of Trump, with tens of millions of true believers who have a hologram image of him talking and dancing in their living rooms. The events of the novel take place in 2074, with clashes between the Church of Trump and the nefarious Trump Haters, and lots of sci-fi/fantasy weirdness.

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