Lavie Tid­har​’s most recent nov­el is Osama (PS Pub­lish­ing). He will be blog­ging all week for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

I might be obsessed with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. Maybe it’s a Jew­ish thing. But my two most recent books were Osama (a nov­el) and Jesus & The Eight­fold Path (a novel­la) – though the one may be too ear­ly to be called his­tor­i­cal, and the oth­er may not be his­tor­i­cal at all. Jose­phus Flav­ius, sup­posed chron­i­cler of my novel­la (The Gospel Accord­ing to Jose­phus, we learn half-way through) is our only con­tem­po­rary his­to­ri­an to men­tion Jesus, but it appears quite like­ly the men­tion – a sin­gle para­graph – was insert­ed into the text cen­turies later.

Be that as it may, with a recent short sto­ry called ​“The Lives and Deaths of Che Gue­vara” (in the Solaris Ris­ing anthol­o­gy) chron­i­cling the effect mul­ti­ple clones of the leg­endary rev­o­lu­tion­ary had on the world’s var­i­ous con­flicts and wars, I think I might suf­fer from His­tor­i­cal Fig­ure Fix­a­tion, and that just sounds like a bad Woody Allen movie (which is, basi­cal­ly, any Woody Allen movie after 1985. Badabing).

I keep say­ing my next book will have to be Moth­er Tere­sa, Gun­slinger. I also like to say I nev­er joke about future books. Though it occurs to me this might be bet­ter as a graph­ic nov­el. Cer­tain­ly my planned book about a gun-sling­ing Walt Whit­man tra­vers­ing a future plan­et Mars accom­pa­nied by an automa­ton Gol­da Meir (in search of mys­te­ri­ous alien ruins, per­haps!) isn’t a joke. I’m just wait­ing for some­one to pay me to write it.

I might be wait­ing a while, though.

Still, as long as you’re will­ing to be poor­er than some­one who was made redun­dant from McDonald’s, the writ­ing life is a won­der­ful thing. You get to come up with titles like ​“The Were-Wiz­ard of Oz” and sell the resul­tant sto­ry to an anthol­o­gy (Bewere the Night, in all good book­stores!) or, indeed, re-imag­ine what would have hap­pened if the three Wise Men from the East were the three com­pan­ions of the Bud­dha (that is, Mon­key, Pigsy and Sandy) from the Chi­nese clas­sic A Jour­ney to the West. The work­ing title, need­less to say, was Kung Fu Jesus.

Four Jews made an unde­ni­able impact on 20th cen­tu­ry cul­ture. Freud gave us psy­cho­analy­sis. Marx gave us Marx­ism. Ein­stein gave us Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. And Haim Saban gave us Mighty Mor­phin’ Pow­er Rangers.

It’s a hard act to follow.

But history’s a great thing for a writer. Oth­er­wise it just, sort of, sits there. Doing noth­ing. Might as well pack­age it. Ide­al­ly with some kung-fu.

But I think I’m get­ting bet­ter. I avoid the his­to­ry books. Shun the His­to­ry Chan­nel. No more HFF for me. The words of my grand­fa­ther keep echo­ing in my ears, instead.

When, he said, when will you stop writ­ing this weird… stuff, and write some­thing seri­ous for once?

I don’t know, Grand­dad. I don’t know.

Lavie Tid­har​’s most recent nov­el is Osama (PS Pub­lish­ing). It has been com­pared to Philip K. Dick’s sem­i­nal work, The Man in the High Cas­tle by both the Guardian and the Finan­cial Times. His oth­er works include steam­punk tril­o­gy The Book­man, Cam­era Obscu­ra and the forth­com­ing The Great Game, all three from Angry Robot Books, the novel­la Jesus & The Eight­fold Path (Immer­sion Press), and the ground-break­ing Jew­ish fan­ta­sy col­lec­tion Hebrew­Punk. He grew up on a kib­butz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Van­u­atu and Laos. He cur­rent­ly lives in Lon­don, and tweets too much.