Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Well, I was born and raised in Miami to Jamaican parents, so you could say I grew up in as culturally diverse a community as you can in the U.S.
To me, it seems like I’ve been around a lot. But then I always end up thinking about how relative that idea is. If I compare myself to the friends I grew up with–most of whom have lived in Miami their whole lives–then I have done a lot. But then I talk to other people who tell me about the year they spent in France or South Korea or England or all of the above and then some, and I suddenly feel like I haven’t done shit.
Regardless, I’ve lived in Tallahassee in Orlando for undergrad and grad school respectively, after which I lived in New York for a year and worked a couple of different jobs (including one as Managing Editor of a real estate magazine, which was pretty much a daily replay of The Devil Wears Prada). The city kind of started weighing me down after a while though, so I moved back to Miami, taught English for a couple of years at Miami Dade College, then quit to become a bartender and focus on my writing.
I’ve been writing professionally for about nine years now, mostly short stories at first but moving into novels when I entered grad school. Quarter Life Crisis is my first published novel. Hopefully it won’t be my last.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My new (and first) novel is called Quarter Life Crisis. The original title was going to be “How to Get Over College and Become a Functioning Member of Society”, but you can see how changing it to something shorter was an almost universal suggestion.
The inspiration to write it actually came while I was in graduate school. I’m a video game nerd, and back then I had a mild (read: not-so-mild) obsession with Guitar Hero. My girlfriend at the time shared this obsession, so we used to sit and battle it out on my PS3. One day I beat her and was being particularly obnoxious about it when she turned around and told me that I was acting like I knew how to play an actual guitar. For some reason that struck me then, and it got me thinking about the limited number of things that I knew how to do. I mean, I was an academic and a writer and had gone to college for like seven years and gotten my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, but I still didn’t really know how to DO anything, especially not something cool like play the guitar. Neither did most of the people I know. So I went out and bought a guitar and taught myself how to play it, which was the inspiration for one of the protagonist’s–Sean’s–story arc in Quarter Life Crisis.
The rest of Quarter Life Crisis was inspired by this growing certainty I was gaining back then that a college education was (and still is) a lot less impactful than it’s ever been before. It’s also putting people into debt by the truckload, a lot of times without the return that an investment like that would need to be considered “smart”.
The ironic part is Quarter Life Crisis was actually my thesis in grad school. So my novel about why college isn’t necessary is what ended up getting me my Master’s Degree. I’ve always had a thing for irony.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I always thought it was funny how habits develop. It’s like, you can sit down and tell yourself you’re going to do something this way or that way and keep at it, but the body is always striving to make itself comfortable. So, regardless of your efforts, you’ll always inevitably veer towards whatever feels right, even if what you’re doing is weird as shit.
For me, one of the quirks that developed over the years is I can’t write in one spot for more than like fifteen minutes. I’ll be at home, fully immersed in whatever story I’m working on, and then it’ll be like I get this itch in my legs and I just stand, grab my computer, and move to another chair, or to the couch, or to the toilet seat (when you gotta go…), or wherever. To me it’s perfectly normal, but I could see how somebody looking in might think I’m slightly insane.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The true answer to this question could probably be a book in itself. I’ve felt influenced by a LOT of different authors over the years, and probably will feel influenced by many more in the future. In the case of Quarter Life Crisis though, the answer for what influenced that particular story and style of writing is a little more simple. Jonathan Tropper probably tops the list, especially his first novel “Plan B”. Nick Hornby and “High Fidelity” is another one. Definitely Tom Perrotta’s “The Wishbones”, and I’ll probably have to throw “The Catcher in the Rye” into the mix too, only because I’ve always credited it and the voice Salinger created in Holden as being the initial moment that got me wanting to write back in high school.
What are you working on now?
Quarter Life Crisis was actually a deviation from what I normally write. I’ve always liked to write with a comedic voice, but plot-wise I’ve always been into suspense thrillers, ever since I was a kid. MFA programs tend to frown upon what they consider genre novels though, so Quarter Life Crisis was my response to that aversion, a character-oriented coming-of-age comedy that went over well with my thesis committee.
Now that I’m free to do what I want though, I’ve gone back to my roots, so to speak. I’m currently working on a suspense novel about two best friends (one an ex-Marine, the other a very unorthodox college professor) who make ends meet by conducting a few armed robberies a year on the side. They make the mistake of robbing from the biggest drug lord in Miami though, which sort of sets things into a tail spin.
The scope of the novel’s wide, and lately I’ve been kind of leaning towards calling it historical fiction, since it switches back and forth between the modern day story and a parallel narrative taking place in Miami during the late 70’s and 80’s, during the Cocaine Cowboy days. Still got a lot of work and research to do on it, but hopefully it comes together nicely.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Honestly, promotion for me has always been about just being personal. I contact everybody I know and implore them to contact people they know who might be interested in the book based on it’s theme. I’ve had pretty good success with word of mouth in that sense. I admit Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social media sites play a huge role in making that task easier too.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Focus on writing, and making each piece of writing the best it can possibly be. All the other stuff like getting published and finding an agent and gaining recognition and things like that are all secondary to the act of writing. Seems like a fairly simple concept when people say it–like, of course writers should focus on their writing–but I’ve seen it so many times in my classmates and students, this desire to be recognized overtaking them and burning them out to the point that they eventually just stop writing altogether. Which is tragic, in my opinion. Focus on the writing, and if/when it’s good enough, things will fall into place.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
My college writing professors were geniuses in my opinion, and taught me pretty much everything I know about the writing process. And for that, I’ll always be grateful. But probably the best single piece of advice I’ve ever gotten was in the form of an Edgar Rice Burroughs quote I read on a writing website one day. I was feeling kind of doubtful about my storytelling skills at the time, and then I read this:
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”
And it sort of just struck a chord with me, made me realize that I’d allowed myself to fall into the habit of looking at my writing career as having a sort of deadline for recognition. Like, if I didn’t have a renowned novel by time I was 30, my career would be over. The quote reminded me of why I started writing in the first place though, of that initial need to just get my thoughts out of my head and to just tell the type of stories that I myself would like to read. It calmed me and helped me to move forward, and I’m pretty sure Quarter Life Crisis wouldn’t be coming out right now if I hadn’t seen that quote.
What are you reading now?
I recently finished Chuck Hogan’s “Prince of Thieves” (the novel that the film “The Town” with Ben Affleck is based off of) and fell in love with his writing style and the combination of plot and character development. So I’m pretty much going through Hogan’s bibliography right now, starting with his first novel “The Standoff”.
What’s next for you as a writer?
More novels. I’ve got five fully formed rough drafts sitting on my computer waiting to be edited, not to mention a dozen or so short stories in various stages of development. So I’ve got my work cut out for me for the next few years.
Other than that, I’m trying my hand at screenwriting, hoping to either adapt Quarter Life Crisis into a screenplay or help somebody else develop it who’s way more knowledgeable about that stuff than I am. There’s enough on my plate right now though that I can keep myself busy for the foreseeable future.
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?
Only three or four? Wow…that’s rough.
Um…”Caught Stealing” by Charlie Huston. Probably “The Stand” by Stephen King. “Everything Matters” by Ron Currie Jr. And I’d go with “Beat the Reaper” by Josh Bazell.
Though I’m pretty sure the books I had with me would be the least of my worries in this situation.
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