game on! part three

It's Wednesday, day three of my interview series with author Jonny Nexus. His book is called "Game Night" the story of six gods who sit down to spend an evening roleplaying. Really badly.

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm giving away an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Game Night to one lucky reader! For a chance to win your very own copy, here's all you need to do: write a comment to this post - or any of the other interviews with Jonny Nexus - no later than Sunday, January 24, 12noon Pacific Standard Time. One L U C K Y reader will be randomly selected to receive their own autographed copy.

Of course you don't have to wait until January 24th to find out if you won a free copy of this "gut-bustingly, rib-tearingly, bed-wettingly hilarious" book.. you can click here to begin reading free weekly installments of the book - but even better, you can order your own copy NOW from Amazon.com!

To read the first two installments, please scroll down - it'll help explain how it is that I'm in beautiful sunny warm Costa Rica, with my family in tow, conducting this interview.

-- Part Three of my interview with Jonny Nexus --

I wasn't really surprised to learn that Johnny is a huge fan of writer Douglas Adams (you know, the guy who wrote the five part trilogy known throughout the universe as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I'm a fan of his work too... which is so weird because I'm not much of a sci-fi fan. I only like the "Next Generation" series of Star Trek (with regards to the original series I simply c a n n o t suspend my disbelief). Though in full disclosure, I should mention that I've actually attended a Star Trek convention, wearing [gasp] a tricorder lapel pin. Having admited that, I cannot stand Dr. Who (I'm talking about the the original series - I would not conceive to attempt to watch the new series, as much as I abhor the old). So, it's weird that I can have such a strong appreciation for some sci-fi authors. But -- not to the extent of the guy I knew from high school who (honestly) had the green ball guy from Hitcher's Guide tatooted on his ass. I'm not that kind of fan. I wonder if he regrets that now that he's 40?

Well anyway, I'm not about to unleash those thoughts on Jonny - he's enough of a geek that I'm sure he'll rake me over the coals for not liking Dr. Who. But the memory of the Adams fan from high school reminds me that I want to ask Jonny about his characters - a motley crew of insecure gods.

JoyGirl:It's particularly amusing to me that the gods in your book are fallible, cocktail swilling deities with insecurities.

I put down the remainder of my cheeseburger and pick up my copy of the book. I read aloud,

Soon he will have to head to his conference and face Mr. Six Days and his tales of his oh-so-clever realm.

The AllFather wonders what tales he will have to tell of in reply?

He watches the Warrior as he tries, and fails, to think of something to say. Beside him, The Dealer continues to sulk.

The answer to the question of how many tales he will have to tell is depressingly obvious: not many.

An image appears in his mind of Mr. Six Days, wine glass in hand, surrounded by a retinue of early model nature spirit gods hanging onto his every word.

Jonny is smiling, obviously pleased that I've chosen this selection to read.

JG: Man, I LOVE that! This is not the usual exchange one thinks of when the word “God” comes to mind -- that the deities in your novel are more human-like echoes the pervasive idea that humans are created in the image of God. No wonder we bugger things up so well! I know in roleplaying, each player is essentially the god of the character they’re playing. The character is unwittingly being guided by forces beyond his immediate control. Do you think that is the case with us? Do you think we have free will?

I can tell I thrown Jonny a curve ball. His smile diminishes, and he breaks his eye contact with me to look out into the surf. He's taking in the children playing in the water... perhaps he's considering how much of his own belief system to reveal to the world? I cannot read his face. His reply starts slow...



Well to a certain extent, I first need to say why I chose to write about gods.

It wasn't because I wanted to write about gods. I wanted to write about players in a roleplaying game, and my initial idea was to simply write up a conventional roleplaying game with a narrative that was split between a bunch of guys sitting around their gaming table on early 21st century Earth, and their characters in the roleplaying game world.

But I very quickly realised that the narrative of the characters would lack truth. Put simply, it wouldn't be happening. Those characters wouldn't be real, and the reader wouldn't care about them. The only thing that would be real would be the guys at the gaming table.

Then I had the idea of making it gods playing with mortals, with the gods' dreaming creating reality in the mortal realm. Now, both narratives would be true. What happened to the mortals in the game would be real.

So it's from this start that their often human-like nature comes, given that they are players in a game.

As to whether we in our reality have free will, well I'd like to think so – but I once read a Stephen Hawking book that appeared to be claiming that the universe (including time) is like a static four-dimensional sculpture, and what we perceive as the passage of time is simply the result of seeing a series of three-dimensional slices through that four-dimensional sculpture.

In other words, the future's happened, we just haven't seen it yet. So maybe we don't have free will. (But in that case, neither would any gods).


It hasn't escaped my notice that he hasn't actually told me if he believes in free will, but I decide not to press him on this answer. Like Jonny, my ego wants to believe we are the masters of our destiny, but I do not know for certain.

I mention to Jonny that I once read that time is not horizontally linear, like we're taught in school (beginning - middle - end), but it's actually more like a vertical line, with (as an example) reams and reams of paper filling up the entire space. Each piece of paper represents a life time - a life time of God experiencing God in the form of being human and experiencing every possible way of being (rich, poor, old, young, king, serf, murderer, murdered, etc.) Given that paradigm, it's pure free will. God experiencing all the possibilities of life in the third dimension. The vertical line assumes it's all happening now; the past and future are simply intangible memories or visions in our human mind.

Jonny seemed to be mulling this over in his mind and was about to say something when the waiter arrived at our table to inquire of our needs and take away our luncheon dishes. I ask Jonny if he'd care to join me for a cocktail, he smiles and nods. I take the liberty to order the house special. I don't actually know what the house special is, but I like to be surprised.

-- End of Part Three of my interview with Jonny Nexus --

Please join me tomorrow as we discover [gasp!] how the world ends, are served some very strong cocktails, and find out what Jonny's up to next!

To read the first installment of Game Night, just click on this link (and remember to bookmark it!)

If you want to contact Jonny, then just drop him a line at gamenight (at) jonnynexus dot com or you can follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Or to just be kept informed of each chapter when it comes out, you can follow the @GameNightNovel twitter feed.

Photo credit:
Nubula: A Perfect Storm of Turbulent Gases in the Omega/Swan Nebula (M17). Source: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)