Today I'm joined by author Dave O’Leary.
What
genre do you write and why?
Literary fiction. That's
where my interests are and with the way I want to write and use language and
incorporate poetry, it's the only genre I feel comfortable in. I admire books
in other genres and there are plenty of great writers doing other things. I’ve
always admired Tolkien and his imagination. The same goes for George R.R.
Martin and Stephen King, but I'll never write any science fiction or fantasy or
horror. I guess there’s enough magic and terror and love in this world for me to write about that I
don't feel the need to create wholly new worlds.
Tell us about your
latest book.
The Music Book is a collection of the writings
I’ve done about Seattle bands for both Northwest Music Scene and the now
defunct Seattle Subsonic. It is a fictional narrative wrapped around and within
the actual music, a story about live music in Seattle, and more broadly, about
the power of music in our lives.
The book gets after what music means. Can it be
more than the sum of its notes and melodies? Can it truly change you? Rob, a
musician turned reluctant music critic, poses these questions as everything
important in his life appears to be fading—memories of lost love, songs from
his old bands, even his hearing. He delves into the music of others to find
solace and purpose, and discovers that the chords and repeated phrases echo
themes that have emerged in his own life. The music sustains him, but can it
revive him?
The Music Book is a story of loss, of fear and
loneliness, of a mutable past. But most of all it’s about music as a force, as
energy, as a creator of possibility. What might come from the sound of an A
chord played just so? Rob listens. And among other things, he finds surprising
companionship with a cat; another chance at love; and the courage to step on a
stage again and finally, fully comprehend the power of sound.
What formats is the
book available in?
The Music Book is available in print form, of
course. Barnes & Noble picked it up in Seattle-area stores as did some of
the local independents. It’s also available online at the Amazon and Barnes
& Noble sites in both print and ebook formats. I believe that buying a
print copy on Amazon will enable a download of the Kindle version for free.
iTunes has the ebook as well.
There’s also a CD of the music experienced in
the book. A portion of the proceeds from CD and download sales go to the
Wishlist Foundation which is an organization that supports the charitable
endeavours of Pearl Jam. Wishlist Foundation made sense as a charity to support
since Pearl Jam is mentioned a few times in the book and they’re from Seattle.
They’re another local band just like all the unknown bands I wrote about. So
anyway, all the bands were happy to donate a track for the cause.There are a
limited number of physical CDs available, but the music can also be purchased
for download by individual songs or all 16 tracks. It’s a great way to get some
excellent music while supporting the book, the bands, and the Wishlist
Foundation.
The CD can be found here:
Who are your favourite
authors?
My favourite authors are Haruki Murakami,
Virginia Woolf, Graham Swift, and Charles Bukowski. I like Murakami for his
strangeness. He reminds me a little of Kafka at times for writing about these
weird things that happen, a bit of the supernatural that almost seems ordinary
within his world. The unexpected is expected, commonplace. Read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the
World to see what I mean. Woolf was just a master with her prose. Her stuff
borders on poetry without seeming so. Her language is so beautiful. To the Lighthouse is an absolute
masterpiece. Graham Swift is another. His use of language and perspective in Last Orders is at once gut wrenching and
funny and magnificent and even simple. One chapter of the book is only two
words long, but it’s so absolutely perfect. For Bukowski, I like his poetry
best. He wasn’t ornate at all, a straight punch to the gut, but he could be
quite moving too. It seems rough on the surface, but if you really pay
attention it’s beautiful stuff. He had a soft heart under that rough exterior.
Books like Love is a Dog from Hell and You Get So Alone at Times that It Just
Makes Sense are books that I’ve read four or five times each and each one has
many pages dog-eared for quick reference. There is also a journal of his that
was published posthumously, The Captain
is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. I carried that
book around with me so much at one point in my life that the cover came off.
What's the best thing
about being a writer?
The best thing about being a writer are those
moments when it just works, and the words bite into the page and stick there
with a fierceness, those moments when you know those words are final and will
never have to be edited or changed in any way. I had one of those moments with
the ending of The Music Book. The
manuscript went through a number of drafts, but the last paragraph never did. I
somehow got that thing out on the first try, and man what a feeling when that
happened. I cracked open a beer and just sat there knowing. I’d only written
for about an hour that night, but I stopped after that. I’m not one of those
people who writes to a certain word count every night. It’s more of a feel
thing with me, and after I wrote that paragraph, I knew that was a good point
to stop for the evening. You have to know when not to force it.
How long did it take
you to write your book?
The music writing mostly dates from 2011
while I was finishing my first book, Horse
Bite. I got started in late summer of 2012 on The Music Book in the sense
that I started collecting the music articles I wanted to use and to start
thinking about the narrative that would surround the music. I was playing in a
band called Sightseer at the time though so my writing time was more limited so
from the start until October 2013, progress was slow. And then I decided to
make the tough choice to quit the band. I found that I couldn’t do both as
fully as I wanted, and the one I needed to do more at the time was write. I
needed to finish the book. So I left the band in October 2013 and was done with
the book by February 2014. Booktrope made an offer to publish it less than two
months later. Thankfully Sightseer has found a new bass player and is moving
forward. That band is one of the best in the city and should be every bit as
popular as Pearl Jam and other famous bands from Seattle.
What is your
work in progress? Tell us about it.
I have two things. First, there’s a Valentine’s
short story that is coming out next month. It’s called Valentine’s Seahorse. It’s about an older guy and a younger woman
and their attempts at relationship and sex while they discuss great works of
literature that have been adapted to the big screen. There’s the worry of age
difference and what to do when a younger woman propositions an older man for
sex for the simple need of release and the risk of love that may or may not
bring.
The other one is a longer work called Condoms on Christmas. Seems I’m on a
holiday theme, and I originally had the idea for a collection of short stories
based around holidays but that weren’t really holiday stories. Condoms on Christmas is actually a short
story that was published by the Monarch Review back in 2012, but when I went to
edit it to get it ready for the collection, it grew from the story of one man’s
Christmas day to the story of six different people on a single Christmas day
and how their lives intersect as they make choices about where their lives are,
where they’ve been, and where they’re going. There are condoms of course, some
broken, some unused, some placed on the windshields of cars in a parking lot.
I’m hoping to have it done in time to publish in the October or November, but
that might be pushing it. It depends on the length of it.
Who or what inspired
you to become a writer?
The desire I think was always there. It just
took the right exposure to the right books. The first books that made me think
about the idea of being a writer were Tolkien’s. I just so admired his
imagination. Then there was Jim Morrison. He put the poetry bug in me, and then
I got into Whitman for a while. There’s Bukowski, of course. Actually, the only
two graves of famous people that I’ve visited are Bukowski’s and Morrison’s. It
was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man that got me to think about not just writing fiction but rather
literature, something where language was as important as story. That solidified when I read Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. That was back in the mid-90s. I was living with
a friend who’s also majored in English in college, and when I showed him a
couple short stories, he gave me some honest feedback but also some
encouragement. I remember him telling me, “You’ll be published someday, O’Leary.”
A comment like that can give someone courage and resolve. It turns out he was
right about the publishing bit so I guess owe something of it to him too.
Thanks, Rich.
I have a blog post that delves into
this a little further. It goes back to books from my childhood that got me
going in the direction of reading and writing. It culminates with a book that
for me is something to aspire to, which is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I hope to someday write
something so good. If you’re reader’s are curious, here’s the link.
What advice do you
have for other writers?
Write. Don’t make excuses, just write. Also
believe in yourself. If your manuscript is rejected, make it better or send it
to someone else. Then get back to writing something new. And read, always be
reading something. And read a variety of stuff. It never hurts to get other
voices and perspectives. Like right now, I’m not reading fiction, which is what
I normally read. I’m
reading two things actually. First is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. It’s research for Condoms on Christmas, and I’m also
reading Graham Swift’s Making an Elephant.
It’s a non-fiction book, his account of a writer’s life, something in the vein
of Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s
quite good. I like it better than King’s actually.
When
you’re not writing, how do you spend your time?
There’s an English-owned pub
in Seattle called the George and Dragon where my girlfriend and I go to watch
EPL games. She was an Arsenal fan when we met so that meant I pretty much had
to be one too. I’ve quite gotten into it actually and might now be a bigger
Gunner fan than she is. We watch Game of Thrones when that’s on. Then there’s
reading. Always have a book in hand, even at the pub. And there’s music of
course. The guitar is there in the corner. I think I’ll go pick it up now.
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The Music Book
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