You’re My Inspiration with Errick Nunnally

One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a new column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.

This week, we bring you guest author and familiar name Errick Nunnally. Errick shared his favorite things with us last month, and today we’re celebrating the release latest novel, Lightning Wears a Red Cape, which comes out this October from ChiZine Publications!

Laird Barron, author of Blood Standard, says of Lightning Wears a Red Cape:

“Nunnally confronts the grittier aspects of the super-powered human genre and the result is a bruising thrill ride. Lightning Wears a Red Cape is brutal, dynamic, and action-packed, but it’s also an insightful glimpse into the hearts and souls of men and women gifted, or cursed, with the power of gods.”

How does one write a superhero novel that’s a “bruising thrill ride?” Let Errick explain…

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Pulp Inspiration

Superheroes are all the rage these days. They used to be considered cheesy AF, though, despite their historic popularity and longevity.

Let me explain by going back to the dark times before now.

I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and my earliest memories are from the beginning of the 1970s. My mother, an illustrator, painter, poet, and percussionist, made something of a living as a daycare provider. While my father worked as an accountant with the state, I was in the care of my mother, a fantastically creative and weird person. Seriously. We built paper maché dinosaurs the size of the dining room and snow llamas rather than snowmen. (See below for photographic proof of both.) She also used to tell me that she was thousands of years old and was from the planet Saturn. There is also written proof of this. Anyhow, In addition to Suess, Keats, and Eastman, my mother read Lee and Kirby to me. That is, she introduced me to superhero comic books at a very early age. The Mighty Thor and The Incredible Hulk were first. My mom wasn’t a fan of comics, she didn’t read them on her own, but she dug the pathos and strength of Hulk and Thing. You’ll recall that Hulk is the accidentally overdosed gamma-radiation scientist, Bruce Banner, and Thing is Ben Grimm of Fantastic Four family fame. (Alliteration was all that, back then, and I still get the bug, sorry.) I was unable to preserve her artwork involving these characters, but among the most memorable items, she created was a thick, wooden jigsaw of Hulk’s angry face and a life-sized, clay relief of Thing on a sheet of plywood — you’ll have to take my word on these. Needless to say, it was the beginning of a long, perilous descent into speculative fiction.

Since I grew up in something of a book desert — I had no peers who read and recommended books or comics — I relied on two sources for the stories I craved: the local public library in Mattapan and Sunny’s Cigar Store in Mattapan Square. I made the 1.1 mile walk (that’s 1.8 kilometers, you magnificent maestros of metrics) as often as I had money in my pocket. Which wasn’t that often, unfortunately. Regardless, I came to think of the spinner rack at Sunny’s to be absolute gold. Captain America & The Falcon, The Avengers, The Invincible Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Feature Presents The Defenders, Devil Dinosaur, Kamandi, The Uncanny X-Men — I’d often read them on the walk home. Since I was also living in a rather homophobic, toxic-male hierarchy, I was ridiculously embarrassed to be seen with comics and books. Rolling them up, folding them, and shoving them in my pockets tended to ruin those classic magazines. But that’s way in the past, I don’t regret absentmindedly destroying valuable collector’s items at all, no, sir, I never give it a second thought. The world has a more open attitude towards “funny books” today, if the multi-million dollar superhero productions gracing our screens is any indication. Excelsior!

So here we are, at some sort of peak superhero saturation with television shows, movies, streaming services, cartoons, e-comics, and more. As much as I enjoy a big superhero dust-up, I believe the more successful stories feature these fantastic individuals aiding normal, everyday people. When formative narratives in movies and television don’t include this point, I find them a bit flat. It’s why I miss Batman as detective rather than avenging Dark Knight. The Spider-Man character is very good for this sort of story since “your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” frequently saved people from burning buildings, accidents, and petty crime. In the very first movie, this is exemplified no less than three times! During Spidey’s first battle with Green Goblin, he rushes to snatch a boy from beneath a falling structure, later he saves a woman’s baby from a burning building, and the cable-car scene — ohmygod — where he sacrificed life and limb to save and inspire people? Priceless. The first Superman movie had similar moments. The most hair-raising among them is when Supes catches Lois Lane falling just before catching a falling helicopter. As wonderful as all of this had been when I was younger, the cynicism of adulthood has since crept in. Which explains my approach in writing Lightning Wears a Red Cape. There is a cost to leaning in while selflessly serving the public, a sacrifice that becomes more apparent to us the older we get. Having superhuman abilities might be fantastic, but our normal abilities are more likely what we’ll have to rely on should a crisis present itself.

Heroism doesn’t require extranormal abilities, however, and the supporting character Mumen Rider, from the One-Punch Man Manga series probably best represents this. (I know Mumen Rider is a Kamen Rider parody, don’t @ me, Interwebs.) No matter the odds, this powerless, bicycle-riding hero does his best to help people and often succeeds at great cost to his own body.

These are the moments I live for, the aspirational, positive escapism offered by these characters are “you’re my inspiration”* moments. That someone — anyone — could be inspired to help rather than harm is an idea I can live with forever.

*Section title in the article! Drink!

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