Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Well, I’ve written four and a half. Published three: The Indestructible Man: Stories (Livingston Press, 2005); The Clockwork Man (Medallion Press, 2010 and republished in India and Croatia by Grey Oak and Skorpion); and Feral Boy Meets Girl: Stories (Unsolicited Press, 2020). Currently editing down a beast of a novel.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Feral Boy Meets Girl is a genre-bending collection of twelve stories that involve outsiders within their own communities, families, even intimate relationships–naturally, complicated by things like zombies, feral children, pookas, and parallel universes. Because that’s how I roll.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Every time I think I do, someone admits to something stranger. Writers are a quirky bunch. Dark roast coffee, Bela Fleck on the box (sometimes I’m in the mood for a little jazz), bucket hat on and tipped below one eye.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many. Steven Millhauser, Aimee Bender, Tim O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor (you cannot study short fiction without her), Kazuo Ishiguro, the mighty Saunders.
What are you working on now?
A novel about teenagers on the cusp of adulthood who suffer from a science-fictional disability that renders them periodically intangible, which mucks up their lives and interpersonal relationships in all the ways that might entail, and then some. Many hearts get broken.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Goodreads is great. I’m learning the wonders of Twitter as well. And of course, since I’m old, I have a Facebook account which I use to ply my tawdry wares.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Finishing that first draft is the hardest part. So do it. Power through. Write crap. You can make it not crap later.
The first draft teaches you how to write the second, the second teaches you how to write the third, and so on, and so on.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write what you want to write, find your audience, go where the love is.
What are you reading now?
Sequoia Nagamatsu’s excellent collection, Where We Go When All We Are Is Gone.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Tame the beast of a novel. Then start another novel, most likely involving zombies.
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?
Millhauser, We Others
Karen Russell, St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves
Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen
A DIY book on surviving on a desert island
Author Websites and Profiles
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