Tell us about your latest
book.
On July 7th, 2012 Jesse Burke passed
away. He was my dearest friend. Jesse and responsibility is the
fictionalization of our time. In 2011 I quit drinking, which made me very sick.
I knew Jesse in China as a roommate, bar buddy and Franc-o-fied-American away
from home. He married in 2011 and the month I spent in China celebrating with
him, his new wife and our friends was the highlight of that year. His passing
was a terrible loss. We were different and depended on each other. When I
wasn't in China we kept in touch with email and occasional phone calls. My last
words to him were, "It was meant to be."
What genre do you write and
why?
This is where it is important to
deferentiate style from genre. Jesse and responsibility is written in
English with some non-tonal pinyin Mandarin. The style is Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, or "Oulipo" (
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/9371098-the-oulipo ). It is a
French experimental form that imposes constraints, resulting in
hyper-structuralized, hyper-compressed story-telling. At 96 pages Jesse and
responsibility is a squeakier of a novella. Oulipo's constraints bring
prose to poetry and poetry to paragraph. I completed a selection of poetry
before beginning Jesse and responsibility and ultimately found Oulipo's
constraints to be liberating. Jesse and responsibility was written
sequentially; word, paragraph, chapter, without thought for genre. On the day
of publication I picked "Adventure" as the best fit.
I published a selection of short stories
at the same time. The first story, George
and the White Dragon, was written 2013 in modern prose. The following three
stories were written after Jesse and responsibility and also in the
style of Oulipo. They are Fantasy and more of a pressure read than the novella.
What marketing methods are
you using to promote your book?
Taking it slow.
What's the best thing about
being a writer?
The abstinence. And to hell with you for
calling it the best thing.
Who is you favorite
character in your book and why?
I like Mr. Snudgeberry very much. I see a
lot of fire in him.
Why do you think readers
are going to enjoy your book?
I enjoy challenging reads. I always
wanted to tackle the big books at young ages and was fortunate to have teachers
that encouraged this desire and understanding of the books by explicating
literary techniques, devices and reference analysis. Jesse and
responsibility is a challenging book and a book that I would enjoy reading.
How long did it take you to
write your book?
10 years of living in China and the
United States. Two years of mourning. And five months of writing everyday.
Who designed the cover?
I did. Shout out to Kindle Direct
Publishing cover design software. I had thought about the cover of Jesse and
responsibility for more than a year and their software was able to create
it exactly the way I wanted. The cover for Short Stories Selection #1 was also
from KDP cover software and I'm fine with it. It has gotten a, repeat
"a," compliment.
Where can a reader purchase
your book?
Short
Stories Selection #1 is
available on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Ebooks for $1.99. Jesse and
responsibility is available on Kindle for $9.99.
What is your work in
progress? Tell us about it.
On September 11th, 2014 I started writing
Neidermeir's Revenge. It has become a series of plays, also in the style
of Oulipo. (
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/9484258-neidermeir-s-revenge-the-anthology
) The play's pattern has eleven parts with parts three and eight left out
(skipped.) This pattern for individual plays is then magnified to the series of
plays with Neidermeir's Revenge, Neidermeir's Revenge the Sequel,
and Neidermeir's Revenge Number Four making up the anthology. Neidermeir's
Revenge Number Five is complete. I'm in the middle of Neidermeir's
Revenge Number Six.
The next novel is called Not often
with Roger. Its like Tuesdays with Morrie but with more death and
funnier. It will be finished and published somewhere in the 2020s. Turning my
thesis (
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/9366919-george-washington-at-valley-forge-and-mao-zedong-on-the-long-march-thes
) into a book is not a priority.
Does your family support
you in your writing career? How?
Family is such a facile term these days.
How indeed.
What are you currently
reading?
I have unreturned copies of Obscene in
the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
and The Portable Roman Reader courtesy of the Phoenix Public Library.
They are being kept out of the bathroom and so will take years to read.
What books or authors have
most influenced your life?
Steinbeck is everything. East of Eden
is the greatest book of the 20th Century. Cannery Row is my favorite
read, favorite story. I had an Ayn Rand phase. The Fountainhead does
survive and will continue to survive as literature. It should be re-read every
ten years as a Confucian exercise. Atlas Shrugged is the Big Boy fantasy
of a big office with a big desk and a framed ten foot poster of the Atlas
Shrugged cover on the wall behind the desk that tells all who enter; 'you
are successful and not to be trifled with.' To an artist it is juvenile.
Gore Vidal was my favorite living author
for the longest time. His death was less than a month after the death of Jesse
and it hurt me the way only a boy can be hurt. During a long stretch in China
without returning home he scheduled talks at book stores in Shanghai and
Beijing. He kept the Shanghai date but cancelled Beijing. I was mad. Julian
is a hell of a read and must have been hell to write. Burr gave America
a Puck with young and aged Aaron Burr; as well as a portrait of Washington, the
incompetent vainglorious uncle to throw pebbles at and mock, from a distance. Lincoln
is a masterpiece. Creation should be read.
You don't know anything about religion
outside of America, not to mention Islam, if you haven't read The Satanic
Verses.
Chuck Palahniuk writes for the TV
generation that I am a vegetable in. Fight Club is one of the few movies
that is better than the book and I'm glad the story went from meditation to
life via film. Choke is the opposite and should have been left on the
page. Its characters are brightly human while inhabiting Choke's
atypical psychological exploration.
