In celebration of the release of Rogue the Durum, we asked author Steven J. Kolbe to speak on how he came to create Remy Mbombo, perhaps the most compelling of all the characters in his Ezra James mystery series. This is what he said:
The Making of an African Priest
Father Remy Mbombo is arguably my most
complex character. From the scar running down his cheek to his nuanced approach
with his parishioners, Remy refuses to fit into a box–and there are some good
reasons for this.
Artful incongruity is an idea that I
absolutely require of myself and of my writing students. When two things are
incongruous, I say, it means they don’t fit easily together. Take a character
who works for the IRS. Every morning he counts his toothbrush strokes, he
counts his steps to work, and he does complex multiplication in his head. This
is Harold Crick. Through the course of Stranger
than Fiction, he begins hearing the voice of a literary narrator, learns to
play guitar–a lifelong wish–and falls in love with an anarchist baker. None of
these are characteristic of an auditor, but they’re believable because Crick is
written and acted as a real person.
Likewise, I strive to make my characters
multifaceted and real. The inspiration for Father Remy came from a writing
exercise in Brian Kiteley’s book The 3
A.M. Epiphany. He advices writers to take two real people and merge their
personalities, taking what makes sense from both to form a new real person. For
Remy I took a priest and a former roommate from Senegal Africa.
My roommate was probably the most
religious person I’d ever met. He rose every morning to lay out his prayer rug.
Every night, he took out his subḥa, a kind of Islamic rosary. While I felt
quite accomplished speaking English, a little Spanish (from home), and a little
French (from school), my roommate spoke fluently in English, French, Wolof, and
Arabic, and he was studying German for business. He also had so much gratitude
for little things. It might seem too incongruous to merge a priest with a lay Muslim,
but the parallels, as I have found, are numerous. Both are Abrahamic religions,
both use rosaries in their meditative prayers, and both emphasize praying at
specific hours of the day.
The priest I put most into Remy is one of
the most open-minded and kind priests I’ve ever confessed to. When a friend
read book one, she commented on several things she found unbelievable about
Remy. “A priest would never say this or that or this.” I assured her that one
would and in fact had.
In book one, I worked to make Remy more
than just his job. His relationship with my primary detective, Ezra James, is
where that develops the most. During slow times, they play games of sans voir chess, exchanging chess
notation to launch assaults and mount defenses, and Remy helps Ezra process his
divorce, figuring out how to move forward. In book two, I look at what made
Remy the priest he is, specifically what gave him the distinctive scar that
runs down his cheek–a story that takes us to the violent history of Rwanda.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBDDN93R?_bbid=92109537&tag=individualbookpagesite-20
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rogue-the-durum-steven-j-kolbe/1141982790?ean=2940186631200
Absolutely fascinating, the way you create characters, especially Remy. Actually both of the men who were your inspiration sound like wonderful people. Bet your writing students love class! all the Best, Steven.
ReplyDeleteBarbara, thank you. Remy has been a great character to work with. As for my writing students, they're definitely a fun group, so the feeling is mutual!
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