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  <title>Natalie Zina Walschots on good bosses and bad guys [encore]</title>
  <description>This week we’re bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called Hench. It’s about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor. Natalie’s just released a sequel to&amp;amp;nbsp;Hench, and it’s called Villain.&amp;amp;nbsp; &amp;amp;nbsp; [From 2021:] We learned about some of the fantastical worlds Natalie enjoyed exploring as a young reader &amp;quot;often for sheer escapism,&amp;quot; as well as the writers she drew inspiration from while starting out as a writer herself, and as a lifelong student of supervillainy:  Robert O'Brien's  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and  Z for Zachariah High fantasy including  J. R. R. Tolkien, but also  Shannara,  Dragonlance, and &amp;quot;anything with a wizard holding an orb on the cover&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a skeleton holding a sword&amp;quot;  Christian Bök,  Karen Solie,  bp Nichol, and other writers &amp;quot;doing super weird things with language and the structural materiality of language...&amp;quot;  Soon I Will Be Invincible &amp;quot;was the first book I read from the perspective of a supervillain.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Paradise Lost is really important to me ... the relationship between Satan the adversary to the world informs the way I write villains.&amp;quot; Neil Gaiman's  Sandman, where &amp;quot;a character who's a villain in one context becomes the protagonist in another.&amp;quot;  Vicious by V E Schwab Erin Morgenstern's  The Night Circus and various writings of  Catherynne M. Valente for their &amp;quot;messed up fairy tale feel.&amp;quot;  </description>
  <author_name>Kobo in Conversation</author_name>
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