Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
“Forgotten” is my debut. I was submerged in the music scene for many years and then started writing fiction based in convenience stores. I started a website and put out Seven Eleven Stories: Volume 1–though it has a few stories of mine, it is a collection from those submissions. Volume 2 should be out this summer, and I’ve only started sketching my next major work, a novel.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“Forgotten” was just as I said, a collection of “Seven Eleven Stories.” The novella within, and title story, “Seven Eleven Forgotten,” started out at a 7-Eleven and got very much away. I used to walk to 7-Eleven a lot when I wasn’t feeling well in the head. This is probably the inspiration for the concept.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I scribble a lot into little notebooks, all day. These sometimes end up being of major contribution to whatever I’m working on, and sometimes just little prompts. Once I’m at the keyboard, it hopefully starts making sense or heading in a direction that makes sense to me. I like to sit in front of the TV and watch almost anything for inspiration. The stupidest show can give me an idea.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Existentialists were a big deal when I started writing seriously, before my music degrees. So Sartre, Dostoyevsky. Henry Miller was also an influence. Prose poetry was an obsession for a while, and my fiction reflects that I think. Baudelaire’s book of prose poems blew me away. I sometimes do edit my prose with a poetic ear. Perhaps it’s the musician in me–always wanting my writing to be musical.
What are you working on now?
A novel set in the near future, about a musician struggling to make a living.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am still finding my way around this indie jungle. It’s very exciting on the one hand that basically anyone can publish a book–it’s also daunting to try to find one’s audience amidst all of this activity. So far I have found it most rewarding selling books in person, at readings at such; or to find out the high school Humanities teacher bought my book at a local shop–that had such an impact on me.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Nothing they haven’t heard I don’t think. As was said to me in a music business class, if you’re in it for the money, get a job plumbing. You’ll never run out of work. Write because you have to.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
There’s an expletive involved, so I won’t quote it verbatim. It comes down to working from your own muse, not letting nay-sayers get you down. Critique is fine, reflection is fine, but as you lay your head down at night, you’re answering to yourself as an artist.
What are you reading now?
“Pudd’nhead Wilson,” Mark Twain. I got a great review of “Forgotten” with a quote about my style sometimes reading like a translated work. That formal voice, again the influence of the existentialists I think. It’s a compliment to me, because I know the voice is genuine–but I thought it might be good to get back to a classic American author, who writes less formally.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Give away “Forgotten” every couple of months until I’ve found my readers. I know you’re out there; I know this because a few of you have stumbled on my book and really gotten it, as per certain reviews and feedback. Meanwhile, this next book, I don’t know how long it will take but it’s all shaping up in my head.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Long ones I guess. A few of my favorite longer books. Brothers Karamazov comes to mind. I’m looking now at Bleak House by Dickens because I haven’t read it yet. Maybe the complete teleplays of Black Adder, so I can have a laugh once in a while. That’s three. A good forth one–something with all of Emily Dickinson’s poems would be good. She knew how to be alone.
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