Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I grew up in Philadelphia. Philly was a great music town. And music was a major influence to my writing. The combined mix of rock, folk, jazz and rhythm and blues helped me develop a musical sensibility to my own literary voice.. Blues music, especially, taught me how to capture great human moments with a simple turn of a couple of lines. Philly was a town known for its sarcasm and its irony. This helped me see world and human events through the prism of humor. The City of Brotherly Love offered a mix of high and low culture. I’ve always been attracted to those two extremes. As a young journalist for a Philadelphia newspaper, I started to see the world at large, and how civilization and sophistication were but a thin veneer concealing the primal impulses that rest beneath the surface. Peace and love better wear a bullet proof vest.
I wanted to be a writer from the time I was twelve years old. My first professional writing gig was at eighteen, writing for Nightlife Magazine, a weekly newspaper that was distributed largely to the bars and nightclubs in North Philadelphia. The paper was owned by two brothers, who wanted to tell of the black entertainment and social experience in the urban center. As I was not black, the club owners used to get a kick out of me when I delivered the papers as that was part of my job along with writing the stories inside. At nineteen I started working for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as an editorial clerk. I moved up to doing the Vietnam casualty beat, where I interviewed the survivors of the soldiers killed in action. I was promoted, covering the fire and crime beat. At twenty I experienced the surreal extravaganza of the city at night, replete with gory crime scenes and six alarm testimonials to the destructive consequences of a hot plate left on too long in a faulty electric socket. It was edifying to say the least.
I am the author of the bestselling release, “Beautiful Bad Girl, the Vicki Morgan Story,” a biographical novel that chronicles the tempestuous love affair between department store scion Alfred Bloomingdale and his long time mistress that made international headlines while defining exotic sexual mores among the rich and famous, during the eighties. I have written several other books. They include “The Guys Who Spied for China”, “The Constant Travellers,” and “The Blood Orange,” a modern take in the great Los Angeles film noir romantic mystery tradition.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Cuban Quartet. It is an action adventure tale, filled with romance and international locations. This is a love story that is based on speculative incidents that may have occurred when Cuba fell to Fidel Castro in 1959. The main narrative occurs some thirty years later when the two protagonists must track down four rogue government agents who vanished like ghosts with millions in gold shortly after the Cuban Revolution.
With Cuba so much in the news today, I figured this new work of fiction would draw a lot of interest. The core of the story is based on a projected event told to me by an older friend, a former CIA agent, who as a young man had been stationed in Cuba less than a year before it fell.”
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
My writing process, frankly, is erratic. I would love to say it is regimented and that I am up at four in the morning and write X amount a day, so many pages in so much time. But I would be lying. For one thing, my business keeps me working at all hours, and providing information to the various and sundry is more than a perfunctory gesture. I think about what I want to write for quite some time. I sit with it, play with it, let it gestate. I mess around with it, some trial out of the gate pages to see what I like what I don’t like. I listen for the voice of the piece. Oh, the voice. The voice is the GPS, a true guidance. And then I sit and write pretty feverishly. I get absorbed and don’t think about much else. I finish a first draft, which is like hacking through the jungle weeds to find the highway. Once I finish the first draft I realize, okay, I can now see the story I really want to tell. And then I tell it. Many revisions later, I have something that looks like a book.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have been influenced by many authors. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is beyond a doubt one of my absolute favorites. His books demonstrate a mix of passion and violence with the metaphysical and the gloriously absurd. Tom Pynchon is another of my favorite writers, an author who doesn’t slide easily into any genre but picks his themes and subjects as they inspire him. I also enjoy Joyce Carol Oates. Her book, On Boxing, is arguably one of the greatest books on boxing ever written. There is Tom Wolfe, of course, and Norman Mailer’s non-fiction novels. These writers can capture the tone and feel of the times in which we live.
My favorite writers are modernists, mostly. Charles Dickens is an exception, and there are others, but I have always gravitated more toward the writers of the twentieth century. It was rich period for literature. William Faulkner is inspirational, as is Kurt Vonnegut in his wonderful ability to capture the humor in some of the more dire scenarios of modern times. Samuel Beckett is remarkable, as is the much underrated poet, Kenneth Patchen and his poetic novel, Journal of Albion Moonlight.
The list goes on. As a teenager I was lucky enough to avail myself of the remainder bin at the old Marlboro Books, in New York. There for a buck a piece, one could find great modern works published by the iconic Grove Press and New Directions. It was no nonsense literature, more to the point, but beautifully written and in the modern context.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am an extroverted writer. There are some, but not all that many. Most writers I know are happy daydreaming by themselves or sitting alone in a coffee shop working out their chapters. Introverts, mostly. For me, I have an outgoing personality which allows me to do well in interviews. As a former public relations and marketing executive, I have honed my skills over the years. I know what people are looking for in interviews. I can anticipate and satisfy. I am naturally funny and that goes a long way to liven up what can otherwise be a dull and unproductive session. I also blog and write different articles. That draws a crowd. With a Hollywood background I know one has to stay out there, engage and indulge while bringing some life to the party. Because in interview sessions, it ain’t always easy staring at someone with bad taste in fashion, no mouthwash, and a deep rooted desire to right all wrongs in the universe by flexing their agenda in the middle of a question-answer session. But then, with many, if they didn’t have an ax to grind, they would be having some fun. We can’t have that now, can we?
Author Websites and Profiles
Gordon Basichis Website
Gordon Basichis Amazon Profile
Gordon Basichis Author Profile on Smashwords