crippling condition, which is a big part of her life -- it's not her whole life, and I wanted the story to reflect that. Hope you weren't offended by my reference to Nao as a total nutjob. Not at all, it was interesting, and if you don't know anything about OCD, she is gonna come across as a nutjob. I did find her totally loveable and relatable. I also wanted to highlight the fact that you completely avoid at any stage in the book making her into cheesecake. A lot of your male peers have been praised for creating strong female characters -- Alan and Jamie, Phil Bond, I'll even sling Jaime and Beto in that pile, despite a little age gap, but all of them have chucked in some dodgy gratuitous nudity into their work over the years. Yeah, it would've been completely out of place with Nao. It wouldn't have served, or added to, the story in any way. Nao Brown Some of the recurring imagery in the book predates the story of Nao, doesn't it? Gregory Pope appeared in Swallow #3 in 2007, and appears as a poster on the living room wall in the Gorillaz house in the DoYaThing video . Hell, you're selling merch with his face on it. It's like there's a personal visual language breaking through into the text. Can I ask what the Pope/The Nothing icon means to you? Originally, the book was going to be a different beast all together, in