Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have been a (mostly full-time) professional ventriloquist for the past twenty eight years. I’m also a pianist, screenwriter, martial artist, Yiddish teacher/translater and single dad to two teenage daughters whose myriad talents dwarf mine. I have written five feature film screenplays and one short film. The latter, Oxford Park, was produced several years ago in England and screened at more than a dozen film festival world wide. While the Village Sleeps is my first novel.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I’ve always written all of my material for my ventriloquist act. I’ve had to write material for all ages and kinds of audiences and venues, so it has amounted to a vast amount of writing. About fifteen years ago, my passions for both film noir and ventriloquism led me to the idea of wedding the two in the form of a noir-ish ventriloquist/detective who solves crimes with the help of his wooden partner. Over the ensuing decade or so I wrote a few feature film screenplays featuring the ventriloquist/dummy detective duo of Van Trillo & Sam Suede. While the Village Sleeps is the novelized version of my most recent screenplay. I think that it works particularly well as a novel.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I find that I generally do my best writing in the middle of the night.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Agatha Christie, Woody Allen
What are you working on now?
I’ve been too busy with performing ventriloquist shows – and raising two daughters as a single dad – to write another novel yet. But I plan to make time for it soon.
The next novel that I plan to write is set in Shanghai, China. It will be based on another one of my Trillo & Suede screenplays, and I’m excited about how the exciting, romantic, foreboding locale will serve as a backdrop for the novel version of the narrative.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/While-the-Village-Sleeps-the-NOVEL/655918007770884?ref=hl
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Be concise. I think that is the most important lesson that I’ve had to learn and of which I still have to continually remind myself. I received valuable feedback from a British director/producer, Ian Lewis of Farnham Films, on each of the screenplays that I wrote. One of the notes that he kept repeating was to be brutally tough with myself in editing my own work. Most writers by nature hate to cut anything they’ve written, which is why most of us need an editor when all is said and done to make our work better. But it is important to go through our own first draft (and subsequent ones) and constantly ask ourselves, “Is that word truly necessary? Or that phrase/sentence/paragraph/chapter?” If the answer is no then delete it, no matter the pain.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Elmore Leonard wrote something to the effect that he tries not to write the parts of novels that readers skip. In other words, be fanatically concise.
What are you reading now?
A Yiddish novel by Moyshe Kulbak, “Zelmenyaner”
What’s next for you as a writer?
I plan to write novelized versions of several of my other Trillo & Suede screenplays.
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?
Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve never been able to get through it, but I think that in the above circumstance I’d finally have the time to do it!
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