20-year-old Osawese Agbonkonkon has always had an affinity for fiction. The University of Texas sophomore said he would spend hours in elementary school playing pretend with his neighborhood friends, retelling stories they had watched or read and adding their own spin.
It was around that age he first considered writing and publishing a story of his own.
“I realized I wanted to be an author in about fifth grade, but I didn’t really act on that till I was much older, around 2018,” Agbonkonkon recalled. “Of course, I was writing stories at that time, much shorter. But I think this story was the one where I really sat down and said, ‘This is going to be my magnum opus.’”
Last May, Agbonkonkon soft-launched his first book, “Psychic Suit,” to a small group of friends and reviewers. Now, he’s ready to share the fantasy novel with the rest of the world. He said “Psychic Suit,” which uses action and adventure to convey themes of mental health and abuse of power, was a 6-year project over the course of his adolescence.
“I started the story in 2018, and I was about 13 years old at that time,” Agbonkonkon said. “I had been continuing to write it up until about 2020/2021, and I’d say a lot of the deeper themes were a product of those two years. A lot of what happened in 2020 was at the forefront of our minds — the pandemic, racial justice, the economy, and how all those changes were going to affect mental health.”
Agbonkonkon credited popular science fiction franchises Marvel and Dune as his inspirations. He said his 315-page book centers around a group of psychics, each with their own unique power, who must combat a terrorist group called “The Circle.” The story incorporates sci-fi elements like alien metals and mystical abilities, but also tackles big political themes like wealth, power and “qualified immunity.”
The book doesn’t shy away from heavy subjects, he said, but it’s written for middle and high school audiences so they can start to think about how the content applies to everyday life.
“I want the main takeaway to be people close the book and ask themselves, ‘how close is this to our real life?’” Agbonkonkon said. “Are there certain people in our society who get away with things because of their last name, because of who they know, because of their wealth or their power? That’s one of the big questions that I want people to ask.”
To connect with young readers, Agbonkonkon wanted to touch on internal and external expectations to succeed. As a UT track and field athlete, he said pressure is a familiar feeling.
“Obviously, all of us want to succeed,” he said. “People around us want us to succeed. And I’d say when I became good at track and field, that’s when I really started to feel this idea that I need to perform at a certain level. There’s an expectation that people have of me, and that is something that I need to meet. So I’d say my characters in a way kind of reflected that.”
Agbonkonkon said he’s in the early stages of a “Psychic Suit” sequel, and he envisions the book as part of a larger series. Regardless of where he takes the plot, he said he wants to tell a story about consequences.
“A lot of fictional media has characters performing actions, and we really don’t see how those actions affect everyday individuals, whether that’s on a micro or a macro scale,” Agbonkonkon said. “So a big emphasis [of the book] was when psychics make mistakes, people are going to get hurt, and I’m going to make sure the audience knows that.”
