Interview With Author Michael Gross
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m an author and communications consultant based in Brooklyn, NY who recently published my debut novel at the ripe young age of 72.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My novel is called Spillage. Fifty years in the making, it’s a wild play on the Faustian musical Damn Yankees, a rock and roll romance and a wickedly fun throwback to the crazy days of 1976 New York. I was inspired to write an early version of the novel by the kaleidoscopic chaos I was living through at the time, both in my personal life and the world around me. Recently, after stepping back from my role as a senior communications executive, I returned to the book, hoping to preserve its original vitality while tempering its excesses with the perspective of age.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I wake up incredibly early to write, between 4:30 and 5:00 am. It’s an old habit, begun when I had a full-time day job. Now, it’s just my natural rhythm.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
When I began Spillage back in the 70s, I was influenced by some marvelously inventive popular writers of the time including Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Hunter S. Thompson. I also had as a mentor the postmodern master short story writer Donald Barthelme, to whom I am greatly indebted.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a journal I began during the early days of Covid, when I retrieved my old manuscript from the office I was vacating and began reworking it. The journal looks back at my early years in New York as well as the world I am experiencing now as a retiree.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I encourage people to visit my website, www.spillagebook.com, which has a collection of the great editorial reviews Spillage has received so far, as well as more information about me and interviews I’ve given. I am also active on Facebook @michaeljongross, Instagram @michaeljongross and X @spillageauthor.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I encourage people to visit my website, www.spillagebook.com, which has a collection of the great editorial reviews Spillage has received so far, as well as more information about me and interviews I’ve given. I am also active on Facebook @michaeljongross, Instagram @michaeljongross and X @spillageauthor.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
In my first rewrite of Spillage, I toggled back and forth between a stripped-down version of the old manuscript and my memoir of my time as a young writer. The novel was in essence a book within the book. It was interesting, but the great advice I got from an editor was to take the perspective of the memoir and infuse it into the novel, fleshing out the characters and their world with more of my lived experience and letting the novel stand on its own. I’m very glad I took that advice.
What are you reading now?
I’m reading a lot of crime and spy fiction, including the great Slow Horses series by Mick Herron as well as classics by Graham Greene and John Le Carre.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m going to keep at my journal through the 2024 Presidential election, give it a rest, and then decide whether I want to refine it as a memoir or fictionalize it, possibly as a sequel to Spillage.
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?
Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby and Catch 22. Each, in its own way, created a wondrous world with larger-than-life characters whom I would love to spend more time with.
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