by Jess McCuan     .     photos by Brent Fleury

Twelve years ago, Ro Bily was standing in her kitchen when her son noticed she looked “spaced out,” or lost in thought. “I’m talking to Pierre,” she told her son matter-of-factly, though Pierre was not a person but rather a character, a 16-year-old boy who would show up in her first science fiction book, Beyond Light. Two published books and five manuscripts later, Bily, who lives in Asheville, says it was that first “conversation” with Pierre that kicked off her writing career, and she still regularly converses and collaborates with her characters, whom she sees as real and independent. “Sometimes I get the characters into situations and have no idea how to get them out,” she says. “They seem to figure it out themselves.”

Bily, a retired math and science teacher who wanted more things to do after her six children left home, got involved with Toastmasters International, a nonprofit that helps people with public speaking and leadership skills. Around the same time that she started writing, it was Toastmasters that gave her the courage to sign up for clown school. Until recently, The Health Adventure, a health-and-science museum in downtown Asheville, ran a clown school to teach clown “character development” along with basic clowning rules (for example, don’t throw hard candy at kids). Bily, who grew up in Chicago and has always loved the circus and clowns, was delighted. “I love to play with toys, so I fit right in,” she says. “Everyone was as silly as I was.” 

Bily says she has always felt awkward around people, but not when she’s suited up as her clown character KnotHead. In the Christmas parade or at Bele Chere, KnotHead is as outgoing and mischievous as any clown, shaking hands, pulling toy squeakers out of kids’ ears and hamming it up for the cameras. 

In her serious, writerly moments, Bily, a self-described Trekkie, ponders the end of the world, space travel, life on other planets and the limits of physics—all frequent themes in her books. When she tires of these somber topics, she slips into her clown persona and thinks up a new rope trick to perform for a crowd. It’s difficult to say which mode she likes best, the serious or the silly, but there’s no question that KnotHead gives her a distinct social advantage. “When they’re talking to a clown,” she says, “everyone’s a child.”