Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was born in Chicago but my parents moved to California when I was twelve because of my mother’s “medical problems” (being drunk and belligerent and hallucinating). When they tried to have me incarcerated I became homeless at fifteen. I lived in residence hotels and worked as a dishwasher until I met someone who offered me a job teaching English in Eastern Europe. After a few years of that I moved to Paris and found a job working as a security guard in the housing projects around the city.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“Shock and Awe” is inspired by the chaos, insanity, and violence of my life. I don’t really feel like a human being but a hunted animal. I can’t even understand how society even works. Why does the world even keep spinning and not just explode into pieces? Why do people even bother? Once I had to keep some drug dealer from putting a cigarette out on a baby’s face. He needed money to pay for his BMW. I don’t care about owning a BMW I just take the subway, but some people having a BMW is important enough to them to put a cigarette out on a baby’s face. I just feel that there’s so much hatred what’s keeping people from going insane and murdering each other?
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have trouble concentrating. I just keep reliving ugly experiences like it’s a film loop of some kind. Again and again and again the horror, ugliness, and fear just like when it happened and I’m trapped and I can’t get it out of my head.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
William Burrroughs, Yukio Mishima, Edgar Allen Poe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson
Do you have any advice for new authors?
If you can get a real job that makes some money do that. Buying and selling things. Why try to be creative? I’d just buy and sell things myself but I don’t know the right people.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
People don’t usually give me advice they just insult or threaten me.
What are you reading now?
“No Longer Human” by Osamu Dazai
What’s next for you as a writer?
probably obscurity
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?
Can I maybe take a laptop instead? But then hey there probably won’t be electricity on this island will there?