1. Can you talk a little bit about some of your favorite creative projects? Looking back, what stands out as a novel or screenplay or other work that really puts forth your objectives as a writer, or typifies your style, what says “Matthew C. Funk”?

A: Matthew C. Funk tells the monster’s story. The writing that inspires me most is the writing that takes the reader to a dark place and shows its reflection is not all too different from their own. I have written about Germans and Russians in World War II, slave-peddling pirates during the fall of Republican Rome and outlaws in modern New Orleans slumland, but all of these projects have the same aim: I want to illustrate how the other side thinks and feels, and for those thoughts and feelings to have an effect.

What kind of effect I aim for differs, but I want all aspects of the writing to drive it. Pacing, structure and word choice all have to fit together into a complete and potent message. I’ve come to regard writing as a process close to sorcery. Just like any magical ritual, the components have to be pure, the rhythm needs to be precise and there has to be a “song” to it.

I wrote a historical fiction manuscript, Reaver, which was about the doom of the ancient Greek hero figure during the ascent of the “civilized” state. My message was that before vast civilizations took hold, humanity’s mythic heroes were, by modern perspective, self-centered psychopaths who thrived in a moral system that valued destruction almost as much as creation. My writing was modern and pulpy, in the style of Robert Howard—Conan’s author—because I wanted to convey rich detail and a gruesome, epic feeling to the reading. It was also unapologetic and intimate, to give the reader an unfiltered perspective on the minds that inhabited this time of transforming collective consciousness. Reaver, the title character, is like Hercules or Jason would have really been, psychologically, so that the reader could see the inner workings of a mind that could act in the atrocious way Greek heroes acted. I wanted it to be disturbing and accurate and, in the style of epics, rather long—a complete mythic style like Joseph Campbell would have nodded in approval to.

My next manuscript, AVA, was very different. It’s a horror novel about a schizophrenic serial killer in pre-Katrina New Orleans, Ava, who believes she kills to save the world. Like Reaver, it is very psychologically intimate—even more so in that it’s first-person. But since Ava’s mind is distinctly different, the writing is different. The novel is casually poetic, given that Ava sees the world in a “synaesthetic” way—the sensations blend with one another and she makes hallucinatory associations with what she experiences. The structure is brief, direct and full of mnemonic repetition, like schizophrenics use to maintain their slipping grasp on reality. AVA is intended to lock you in her mind, the core of its horror being how alien and yet how familiar her thoughts are.

In both instances, I’m trying to relate a provocative psychology in an intimate way. The means vary. Given that both works were so unusual and ambitious, I’ve tried my hand at more easily edible prose lately. It’s difficult to find a market for the bizarre that’s as widespread as I would want. I figured I would carve my reputation with crime fiction since it’s more accessible. My writing usually aims to get the pulse pounding—it’s succinct, savage and disturbing.  I still try to convey the complete experience of a depraved mind. I just try to do so through stories people will want to read, so that eventually, I can get them to read the even more difficult stories.

I want to make people think. I want to make them feel—feel afraid, feel hopeful, feel desire. And ultimately, I want to link those feelings with a character that they would never have expected to identify with—one who lives in a very dark place, but who treasures the light of life just as they do.

2. In an interview with Richard Godwin (Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse) you said some things that really stuck with me, on a number of points- and not all of them related to writing.

First, in reference to Chomsky, you stated that citizens often turn a rather blind eye to the atrocities of their own nation, compared to the “enemy”. To me, it often resembles the mother’s inability to find fault with her own child, it is a dynamic I think we can implicate in complicity- although not the whole explanation. Now Amy Goodman once said that if we really saw the pictures, the truth, the real horror- that war would be eradicated. Think so? Is it ignorance, denial, the inability to mix fault with loyalty?

Is there an element of ignorance, that if we only knew what was done in our names we would rise up and rally…or, is it the opposite? That we are not ignorant of killing, but desensitized? Do either come close to explaining the apathy, the tolerance, the acceptance of citizens to avoidable bloodshed?

A:

It comes down to ignorance. Desensitization is just ignorance defending itself.

We are desensitized, but only because we have had this very real, intense, personal human agony cast in abstract. It’s insulated as entertainment or laminated in patriotic purpose. Yes, finding fault in what our nation does is a hurdle of loyalty for many to overcome. But even citizens who frown on the abuses of the prison system or foreign policy aren’t, many times, compelled to act. I believe the missing link between discomfort and action is a lack of personal interest—of intimate experience.

This isn’t to say that everybody who has first-hand experience of a broken judicial system or the horrors war inflicts will have the same opinion. But so often, the political decisions we make are from the remove of ignorance. We don’t consider the actual effect—the cost—of our political action. Some that support Goodman and Chomsky’s point about how, when human lives are abstracted and reduced to just “the enemy,” it is easier to accept their suffering. But some of it is a broader lack of understanding.

Best to use an example: Afghanistan. Afghanistan is an extremely poor country that had always been a site of tribal strife and famously failed nation building. Intervention there is historically costly, sometimes disastrous. But because these complexities are reduced to a simple formula of “us or them,” the decisions made by the body politic are facile. The argument is transformed from whether we can achieve our goals and what they would take, into “How can we not defeat this adversary?” And as I noted in the interview at Chin Wag you cite, the world is filled with adversaries by that standard. Only by understanding the actual cost would people give pause.

The problem that the U.S. public keeps running into is that it signs on for the “us or them,” but then has to deal with the complexities. That’s why we keep intervening in such disastrous and disappointing ways—in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and even in bush wars by proxy like Nicaragua. We get involved but then don’t want to pay the check.

It’s easier to put the emotional gratification on credit and pass the buck on. That’s where the apathy comes from. People want their sense of security and justice to be like their pizza and their DVDs—just a mouse-click away. They don’t want to have to check their bank balance first and they sure as Hell don’t want to worry about long-term interest. Neither side of the spectrum is immune to this—plenty of leftists championed intervening in Afghanistan given the atrocities committed against women. The only hope to overcome apathy and indifference is for people to place as much care in intervening in a life as they would if the life was their own.

We need to not only see the suffering. We need to internalize it.

3. What are your thoughts as far as art, whether literary or other, and a role in swaying people in either direction?

A:

The only thing that would change our attitude would be to feel the consequences of our actions ahead of time. That is nearly impossible. In the heat of the moment, with the media drumming up the tension of an impending conflict and politicians having to act like Pro-Wrestling bad asses to grab a hold of the nation’s fear, people tend to forget the ultimate cost.  Military families often don’t, but they’ve already signed on for sacrifice. It’s up to the civilian population to apply the brakes, and that’s very difficult to do when arguments against intervention are boiled down to “us or them.” Decision is distilled to emotion.

This is one of the things I want to achieve with my writing: I want to put a face on “them”; I want to knit the reader’s nerves with the adversary’s. If it happens enough, it may change feeling—and since feeling is where most political action comes from, that’s the only hope we have. But when the government begins the drumbeat for war or for defeating “evil” criminals, it’s nearly impossible to stop. The U.S.A. has never turned away from intervention once it got its blood up. It has done nothing to seriously reform its twisted justice system and economic privation.

Poor minorities remain “them.” The shape-shifting enemy in the War on Terror remains “them.” And until that ignorance is shed, and we see “them” as human beings whose lives we’re trying to control, we’re never going to get an actual grasp on how to achieve our aims. We’ll be firing blind and having to deal with the mess.

4. I want to ask about a quote, by you, again from Godwin’s interview:

“…what mesmerized me – was how banal evil was in these grand tragedies.  Monstrosity was less a matter of the cryptic dementia of solitary psychopaths or nefarious plotters as it was born of laziness, pettiness and pedestrian fears.”

For some reason this got me thinking about the surprisingly “normal” details in many of the biographies of history’s “monsters”. I have a few questions in this direction, linking history with writing, the point about Lovecraft and the known vs. unknown enemy.

Do we need the “villain” to look or act different from us? What about this tendency to mythologize historical figures, those considered good or evil, this tendency to glorify and embellish their stories?  Do we have an appetite for the Hollywood version of a monster?

A:

Appetites change with the era, and mythologies change with them. What doesn’t change is that the public craves its scapegoats. It wants a figure to blame, burn and exile.

But they want a public execution in high parade style. They don’t want Sean Penn’s Dead Man Walking. They don’t want the monster to have once been a baby, or to still be that tender human being inside.

So the villain is abstracted. What that means, is to take a fully fleshed person or a complicated idea and to stick it in a framework like an abstract shape: It makes it less tangible and less complete. It lets us feel it as less real.

That’s the Hollywood villain—or the death row inmate, the restless enemy abroad, the convict. It’s what the public wants because it’s what the public can invest their own fears and darkness in. It makes it simpler to slaughter such a creature. It focuses on the sin, not the sinner.

Not all villains need be like this. The appetite for the grotesque varies with the era because the public’s sense of security varies. The less secure the public feels, the more monstrous their villains. The more secure the public, the more complex and “real” the villain can become. That’s why the 30s, 50s-60s, 80s and 00s are epochs of grand guignol—famous eras of swaggering action stars and larger-than-life monsters.

But just like almost every artist has to admit, the message that reaches the masses has to in some way hit the common denominator. Even in a time of sophisticated story, mainstream media continues to sop to the simplistic story if it wants a big hit. And that’s because conflict is necessary for story, horror necessary to drive conflict, and horror has to be abstracted to be universally edible.

The other part of why history’s “monsters” are embellished is because sensationalism sells. The “Helter Skelter” or “Rise And Fall of the Third Reich” approach to history—where the historian lards on scoops of sleazy facts about their monster, from drug addiction to underage sex—is because when it comes to dirt, the public’s in for a pound if it’s in for a penny. The more extravagant, the more the masses love it. It gives them more to feel superior to, more sins to slay.

It all comes down to that Biblical scapegoat—a beast ceremonially presented, invested with the public’s sins and slaughtered. It doesn’t give us the fact of justice. Far from it. But the act gives us a feeling of justice. Feeling is what’s craved, not fact.

Do you think this tendency carries over into a tendency to embellish characters, to exaggerate their backgrounds in novels? I mean, some of the scariest people to me weren’t the ones with eccentricities, but the ones who blended, the “murderer next door” types. Consider the mother who microwaves her infant, or the killer who entertains children as a clown by day… consider hidden illness, secret depravity…

“Monsters” are about fears we understand, maybe?

A:

Monsters are the fears we can defeat.

We can’t fully understand our fears. We certainly can’t conquer them. Fear is a constant and it is a complex creature. As soon as we’ve demolished it in one form, it springs up in another.

Not monsters. Monsters are abstractions—they’re not real fears, but the “masks” or the icons we create to contain our fears. And just like the icons ritually destroyed in pagan ceremonies that mark the change of the season, we tell stories of how monsters can be bested.

In some of those stories, the monsters live on. The notion that the menace isn’t quite destroyed just sweetens the thrill. But the important part of the story is that something conquers the monster. Jason Vorhees of Friday the 13^th may always rise from the grave and Apophis the Egyptian God may eat the sun every night, but the moral of the myth is that they will always be defeated.

You’re right when you say the scariest monsters are the ones who seem like everyone else. And I believe that the worst real monsters are the ones who never seem different. Politicians have inflicted inestimably more pain than serial killers. But even though the real human cost is worse, they don’t act depraved. They hardly pay it much mind, and that casualness to cruelty is contagious—epidemic in the public.

The reason why it can stay casual is because most people don’t want their fears to be that real. Whether it’s prison conditions or poverty or PTSD from combat, most people push those fears away before they can touch too deeply. More people read True Crime than watch documentaries on the agonies their political decisions cause, but not as many people as read Horror novels.

And when it comes to Horror, the most popular are the monster stories: The Stephen King and Sookie Stackhouse of Tru Blood fame.  It’s important to keep this in mind when writing a horror story. If you write a horror story, it’s difficult to win over the audience from the monster’s perspective. Most readers want a sympathetic protagonist. And, as opposed to a Thriller story, monster stories require an antagonist that is larger-than-life and stalking the protagonist. If you start getting deep into the monster’s head—truly deep enough to reflect the humanity of the reader—you’re entering disquieting territory. Plenty of writers do it, but they’re not as widely read as those that don’t.

Do you think it preys on that sense of being able to decipher good and evil with our filters, the sense that we can somehow keep ourselves protected when such monsters rarely appear so in front of us? Do we want predictable fear, monsters we understand, or can explain?

A:

The monster that blends is the monster we want protection from.

The less protection that a Horror story allows us, the less it’ll appeal to the public. There are exceptions. Good writing can lure a reader into a healthy sense of security, then repeatedly rip it away. I attempt that very thing on a regular basis. But you are exactly right in that most people want monsters they can identify. Whether on the news or in a paperback, we generally feel most comfortable being able to stick an obvious target on our monsters.

The exceptions depend on exceptional people. Not most, but many readers feel more secure in reading about the monsters that grin and blend and pay their taxes. There is a market for the kind of smart, sophisticated story that seats you soundly in the monster’s forebrain and rivets you there for every vicious deed. This audience is generally the kind of person whose sense of security comes from skepticism.

This breed of audience finds the unpredictable more predictable than the plain and ordinary. For whatever reason—usually a childhood populated by masks, false flags and other forms of lies with the seams showing—that audience has been forced to accept life in its chaos and complexity. They crave the bizarre and deceitful because they’ve come to know that’s how the world works. They feel safe being told this is an unsafe world, usually because the trust they put in safety was betrayed.

I am that kind of reader. I like to read gray stories, dismal stories, sophisticated stories. I don’t want my heroes to survive. I don’t want my victims to die gloriously. I want the fear to go on and on, flashing its myriad shades, because that’s what I see when I look at the world around.

It’s just my own pallet of predictability—predicting the unpredictable. And reading, like any consumption, comes down to appetite.

5.  Speaking of fear and the senses, and your experience with the psychology of warfare, I wonder about your take on terror and heuristics, or terror and statistical likelihood as skewed by the media or repeated imagery. For example, a Friedman article once made mention of the way image repetition skews the mind’s sense of threat. You might be much more likely to die from the flu, but news clips of the Twin Towers have you more afraid of an event that is really quite rare. Terrorism, as a cause of death compared to other things, is pretty rare. And yet we devote quite a lot of resources and it keeps us awake at night in a way that food bacteria or black ice can’t seem to match.

What can you say about perceived threat, and horror? Perceived threat, and advantage? What about character, the monster again, how important then is image in that fear equation?

A:

Monsters are bought and sold every day—from book shelves to board rooms to cable TV—for the same reason: Profit.

Perceived threat is a tool used to make money. That’s venal and boring and true. There is a much greater likelihood that a person will die of the consequences of poverty here at home than of a terrorist attack. Criminal acts from desperation, disease from inadequate health care, plain old starvation—these kill more people than extremist bombs. But the cost of tackling these problems here at home is toxic to the corporate bottom line.

It may seem cynical to cram the Twin Towers tragedy and the resulting War on Terror into so mercenary an outlook. I believe it holds up. The political gain of regime change in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq, was seen as immense by the war planners. That’s not without merit. The concept was actually a lot more “noble” than just Big Oil. The central Neo-Conservative idea began as a Liberal idea: That by putting American troops and American cash in these centrally located nations, you could introduce prosperity, democracy and liberties in an entire region. That is still being put to the test and I believe its success relies more on the nations we intervened in than in our investment. And as for the profit to the media, war sells. Whether the media is pro-war or anti-war, people tune in. And for them, it all comes down to keeping us from changing the channel.

So, those complex, domestic monsters only get trotted out on a slow news day. Any solutions to defeat them are kept dull and confused. Meanwhile, when a foreign policy of intervention will turn a buck, the media and politicians fire us up into a fury.

Senses fire that fury. The more we see something offensive, the more it has power to offend us. The media’s message shapes the mainstream fury. And the simpler the fury, the better the media likes it.

Fury sells and so does the simple notion that a few divisions and a couple thousand smart bombs will solve a situation. It plays better than the health care crisis or judicial reform. It’s more difficult to argue against. That’s why, in terms of heuristics, it’s easier to peddle a war than it is a repeal of insane drug laws—even though, in terms of our American values of liberty and self-determination, it is logically opposite.

With a war, you can simply say, “Look at all the evil They are doing. We must smite Them.” And from then on, the argument is defined as “Anti-Evil vs. Pro-Evil.” That’s a tough argument to win. But the heuristics of domestic evil are more complex. You can’t break it down to “us and them” as easily. It is especially difficult considering the “Them” are the people who have the money to broadcast the message. They don’t want to broadcast grounds for their own dismissal or execution. The result is an argument so complicated that when it grinds to a stalemate, nobody’s surprised.

The fear equation works best when there’s a monster—a “Them” to defeat. When “Them” is “us,” the fear equation equals frustration.

6. Do you think that the sense play a role in fear, that the visual image holds more sway in the minds of the scared?

A:

Senses are the core components of fear. If you want fear to flower in the mind, you have to seed the senses. It is a chief reason I am smitten with studying the aesthetics of horror.

Visual image is not the most powerful, though. Look at modern horror movies as a case study. Paranormal Activity typifies this best, as it relies on loud, instant sounds to shake up the audience. Spooky, brooding noises and eerie soundtracks are also potent instruments of horror. Watching a horror movie without the sound diminishes the effect considerably. From what I’ve seen, sound tends to be used to amp up the foreboding or ferocity, while images supply the substance of the shock. In writing, these tools are present, as are others:

Suddenness. That is a particularly powerful sensory device when it comes to inflicting horror: Composing something in the space of a heartbeat. Subtle flaws are also sublime when it comes to cultivating terror. Some of my favorites are skewed, scratched or repetitive recordings. Perverse or broken innocence is another tool—consider how creepy dolls, carnivals and children in general are when used in horror.

But all manner of sensory disquiet is used in horror. I love writing the horror of smells especially. There are some truly vile smells, and our experience of them is confined to the imagination. When I want an element of horror to linger and taint the imagination, I give it a smell.

7. What is next for you? Do you have anything in the works? Is there a dream project in the back of your mind?

A:

Next is getting published in as wide a market as possible.

I always want to tell the monster’s story. That hasn’t changed. What has changed—evolved—is my awareness of what it takes to get that story out to the broadest audience.

In the last couple years, I’ve been studying Web marketing and literary marketing. It’s led me to a few conclusions about reaching the reading audience.

First and foremost has to be that you need to know your readership’s tastes. This isn’t as cynical as it may sound. On the contrary, I think that there’s a market for just about any kind of well-written material. The Internet is a huge facilitator of this. But any writer looking to reach a market—large or small, mainstream or fringe—needs to recognize the demands of that market.

It is easier to sell non-fiction than fiction to a broad audience. That’s a basic numbers game: More non-fiction books are sold every year than fiction.

It is also easier to sell “genre” fiction than “literary” fiction. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, a publisher or producer wants to be able to sum up a story’s selling points readily, and a genre is a neat package for them. This isn’t to say that a genre piece can’t be complex—more that it needs to be able to sum up its selling points, and a label like a particular genre helps with that. And secondly, “literary” fiction is actually its own genre, just as restrictive as any label. The academic critical community that run lit mags and supply book reviews have very prejudiced ideas as to what a Literary Fiction novel needs to be. Anything that smacks of another genre need not apply.

The result is that a lot of good stories are in commercial limbo because they’re difficult to sum up in marketing terms. So, I decided to gear my fiction towards the “genre.”

Once an author is published in this environment, their story’s success depends on the quality of the writing and the “platform” of the author. The latter is increasingly important considering how promotional budgets are slashed. Just like how some stories languish, unpublished, because they fail to fit in a neat commercial model, some authors languish, unheralded, because they don’t make for great TV.

An author needs to market themselves. Social media helps with this, but in many ways, it’s just raised the bar. They need to be able to tap into the appetites of the market they want. Whether we’re talking about Stephenie Meyer or Jonathan Saffron-Foer, the author has to have a timely story and to seem like an interesting property for the media to point the cameras at.

This is all a long way of saying that after writing two intense and bizarre manuscripts, I have resolved to tell a story that both I and the mainstream would want. It’s a novel set in post-Katrina New Orleans and, yes, the protagonist is a kind of monster. But she’s a sympathetic monster—driven by trauma to seek redemption in an ecology of damnation. I’m telling her story so that I can earn the trust of the market. Once they trust me to tell a good story, I’ll tell the ones I wouldn’t have got them to listen to otherwise.

One way or another, I’ll be putting them in touch with some real monsters.

We thank Matthew Funk for taking the time to answer these questions, and for indulging a little bit of departure. You can find out more about his work by visiting his website, here.

We also have some new sections: Crow Audio and a blog. The Audio section lists our internet radio shows and upcoming guests and audio interviews. The blog is a place for updates, events, readings, and more from the editors of Full Of Crow- which also includes Blink|Ink, ARTERIALIZE, Fashion For Collapse, Comix For Collapse, The Sphere, and more. Crow is a growing family, whose nefarious tendrils extend into unexpected territories. Follow the madness on facebook and twitter. Contact Lynn Alexander for more information: lynnalexander@fullofcrow.com.

JM Reinbold: Hi, Sherry! Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Sherry Thompson: I’m in my sixties, retired, and fairly unconventional. Storytelling is my second career but my first love.

I’m servant to two cats. Khiva, the seal-point Siamese was considered unadoptable by her breeder–terrified of all humans–but we’re good buddies now. Vartha is a black foundling with some Maine Coon mixed in. She’s no longer a kitten but she still acts like one. She’s goofy over cardboard boxes. Khiva comes and tells me when Vartha is misbehaving.

I have a variety of hobbies, though it’s hard to make time for them with writing. Amongst these are jewelry-making (making beads, beading, wire jewelry) and interesting stones which sometimes end up in the jewelry.

I love filk, world, and folk music. Filk music is the folk music of the SF and Fantasy community. I am not knowledgeable about world music, but I like Putumayo recordings especially music of the Caribbean, Africa, and crossovers between them—CDs like “Music from the Coffee Lands”, “… Chocolate Lands”, “Wine”, “Tea”, etc. My fascination with traditional folk music is very old, stretching back to singers like Jean Ritchie, and moving forward through Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Stan Rogers, Gordon Bok, and Robin & Linda Williams. I also like virtually all forms of guitar music, Celtic music, and most forms of Christian music. Actually, it’s hard to name a type of music I dislike–Maybe bluegrass vocals and really angry raps.

I love birds and animals, especially the furred ones and as long as they have no more than four legs. I love trees and plants, though I know next to nothing about them. I can stand and stare up the trunk of a tree for a half hour in complete fascination, unless someone interrupts me. This last interest is echoed by my enjoyment but lack of knowledge about modern sculpture.

Back in the late 80′s or early 90′s, I was introduced to my first labyrinth. (A labyrinth is not a maze–it has one path and is used for meditation, prayer, relaxing or centering.) Even though that first labyrinth was just traced on newsprint, I became enamored of them. I even slipped hints about labyrinths into “Seabird” and a partially-completed manuscript titled “Marooned”.

Foods, television programs and films? Yes. Love them all. Okay, seriously, I love ethnic food of virtually every description. Unlike Cara in “Seabird” I love sushi.

In TV shows and film, I prefer mysteries, suspense, and psychological thrillers, plus the better SF and Fantasy films. I’m particularly fond of The Princess Bride, Alien and Aliens (film #2), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Groundhog Day, LotR (#1), Grand Canyon, Memento, Charade (orig), The Haunting of Hill House (orig), Blade Runner, Brazil, The Lion in Winter, The Shawshank Redemption, The Others, Galaxy Quest, Krull and Max Dugan Returns.

I watch CSI, CSI:Miami, Bones, and I am still decompressing from the end of Lost.

JMR: How did you get started in writing?

ST: When I was in late elementary school, I would tell myself stories after I went to bed. I never wrote any of these down, except for the first two or three pages of a time travel story in which the heroine (me) worked for the U.S. government as a secret agent. I was sent back to various time periods to fill in the details missing in historical records or to check out the truth behind legends. Generally, I got into terrible trouble and rather handsome young men would rescue me. Then I would rescue them. And like that.

JMR: What is your writing process? How do you work as a writer?

ST: I come up with the essential premise of a story—the skeleton of a plot. In the case of the Narentan books, I choose an Alphesaic weapon, and decide what kind of crisis or situation would be solved by that weapon. I may work briefly on setting as well.

Then, I put all of this aside, and begin to think about my characters—all of my characters, good, bad, undecided, human and animal. I spend a lot of time with my characters in thought, jotting down “discoveries” about their personalities and appearance. For example, during this getting-to-know-you phase, one character “told me” he was a poet. I told him he would have to be a bad poet, since that’s not my forte.

Do you think I’m nuts yet? Let’s try this. Back when I was writing Seabird I created a character meant to be cannon fodder so that his or her death would have devastating effects on another character. That was set for a while—until a different supporting character told me that he/she was the one who needed to die. They were right, too. I made the change in my notes. When I got to the scene, I cried so hard I could hardly write it.

JMR: Your book, Earthbow, has been getting some excellent reviews. What is your book about?

ST: Well, half of Earthbow has been getting great reviews, because half of it is out. Gryphonwood Press decided that Earthbow was too long to be published in one volume. Consequently, the book was semi-literally cut exactly in two, and the first half was published in late March. This half is titled “Earthbow Volume 1”. I am currently making final revisions to Earthbow Volume 2, which should be published some time this summer.
But that doesn’t answer your original question. What is “Earthbow” about?

Earthbow tells the story of the 2nd Narentan Tumult, just as Seabird related the story of the 1st Narentan Tumult. Tumults are cataclysmic periods of plotting, murder and battle during which parts of Narenta are threatened by various forces of evil. Frequently, these include sorcerers, and the 2nd Tumult is no exception. Madness, the blind striving for power, the possible destruction of whole ecosystems are also involved.

Because the Earthbow story is so complex, parts of the tale are experienced by certain characters while other parts are experienced by others. Consequently, Earthbow has an ensemble cast and several plot threads. It all comes together near the end of Earthbow Volume 2. Well, that’s the general idea. Maybe the whole planet will implode when the Death Star reaches it. Just kidding.

JMR: Can you tell us a little about the history of Earthbow and your experience writing this particular book?

ST: The first draft of Earthbow was written during a very dark time in my life. My beloved grandmother had just died. Added to that, I was determined to make sure Earthbow got off to a lively start, so I brought in a young fighter as a supporting character. When I began writing Coris’ first scene, I learned all sorts of things about him. Gulping, I had to rework my plot. I wrote for quite a while, and decided that the story was too dark. Enter Khiva the Stoah, meant to be comic relief. Khiva tried at times to make away with the whole story. So did Cenoc, Harone, Coris, etc. I had to keep reminding myself that Earth hadn’t sent Xander to help Narenta for nothing.

Massive rewrites later—with gigantic chunks of story being jettisoned and parts switching position, the story begins with the Outworlder Xander, then Coris comes in and the next thing you know, there’s Cenoc. Thus were my three original plot threads created. Slightly different character mixing-and-matching takes place in the second volume.

JMR: Earthbow is high fantasy, is that right? Could you describe what high fantasy is for readers who may not know?

ST: Backtracking to my first book, Seabird is high fantasy because it is set in a fictional location. In the case of Seabird, this other world of Narenta may or may not be part of our universe. Occasionally Earth inhabitants or people from other worlds are brought to Narenta—otherwise Earth would know nothing about it. Seabird is also “epic” in that a major part of the plot involves two or more forces struggling against each other.

Earthbow certainly fits these definitions – up to a point. That particular point is when the sorcerer, Mexat, and a young fighter named Coris strolled into my group of characters. Coris took a nearly instant dislike to Cenoc and Beroc, while they didn’t much like him either. In the meantime, Harone (an initiate enchanter) caught on to Mexat’s machinations and knew he had to be stopped. Voila: Sword and Sorcery

So just to confuse things, I look at it like this: the world of Narenta is definitely an epic high fantasy setting. However, the plot of Earthbow has strong characteristics of Sword and Sorcery, in which individual battles between wizards and/or fighters take place.

JMR: What drew you, as a writer, to fantasy as a genre?

ST: Wow! I think I was born this way. Okay, when I first started inventing stories, I was very into horses, and cowboy shows were the most popular genre on TV. Except weekends, when Ramar of the Jungle, Buck Rogers & Flash Gordon serials were rerun. I also loved fairy tales. Add my early interest in time travel to the ancient and medieval past. Mix it up all together in some proportions or the other, and out comes a fantasy author. Do it the “wrong” way, and you get space opera writers. (I’m saying this just to rile up my friends over at the Lost Genre Guild.)

JMR: Earthbow and its predecessor Seabird are also categorized as Christian fantasy. Can you tell us a little about Christian fantasy and how it differs from other categories of fantasy? What similarities might readers find in Christian fantasy and other types of fantasy?

ST: Speaking of the Lost Genre Guild, we’ve debated this one a few dozen times. You see, the LGG is made up of Christians who write speculative fiction, i.e. fantasy, SF or horror. Very little of our writing overlaps anyone else’s in any significant way. Except the base assumption of Christian principles. In most other respects, our work fits comfortably next to any fantasy, SF or horror you might find in any brick-and-mortar store. Actually, where LGG books are less likely to be found is in family Christian bookstores. We are, as a whole, too edgy.

JMR: What inspired you to write Earthbow?

ST: I was inspired to write Earthbow at the same time I was inspired to write Seabird. I had finished reading Tolkien’s LotR & the Hobbit and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and Space Trilogy. I was just starting on the other Inkling, Charles Williams, with his seven urban fantasy novels and his Arthurian poetry. But I was running out of fantasy to read. (That was a long, long time ago.) Since I was in danger of running out of fantasy, I wrote some. For myself at first, just as I used to tell myself stories. I very specifically began with an audience of one in view, then allowed as to how other people like I was might like the stories too.

JMR: Can you tell us any interesting or unusual “facts” about Earthbow?

ST: Let’s see. Coris started off to get some tension into the early scenes. Khiva, as I think I mentioned, came in as comic relief, and will now definitely be in the sequel to Earthbow. I had decided on an Earthbow as the weapon for the second tumult just as the Sword of Living Water was involved in the first Tumult. (One ancient “element” per Tumult). In both Seabird and Earthbow, I had no idea what the weapon would do when I started writing.

JMR: To a greater or lesser degree all authors write from personal experience. What part do your own personal life experiences play in Earthbow?

ST: Probably the chief one is my close observation and love of animals, particularly cats. (This does not make Khiva “actually a cat”!)

I’ve known people with thought processes rather like Cenoc’s. Not a particularly nice personal experience.

JMR: What other authors or books have significantly influenced your writing?

ST: George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. Madeleine l’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series. Barbara Hambly’s excellent and out of print fantasy series, Lewis Carroll, Poul Anderson…

JMR: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had related to the writing of Earthbow?

ST: Finding what certainly looked like one of my Narentan plants in a private garden. I went back and checked, and sure enough.

JMR: Earthbow is the second in your Narentan Tumults series. What next? What do readers have to look forward to from you in the future?

ST: The next thing is getting Earthbow, Volume 2 out, so that readers can read the whole book straight through, as originally intended.

Logically, I should continue with the story of the 3rd Narentan Tumult. The title for that one is variously, The Gryphon and the Basilisk, The Behemoth, or The Book That Intends to Eat Delaware. It’s over two-thirds done and, oh yes, large.

Alternatively, I would like to work on Marooned, which incidentally is four-fifths done but runs only a quarter of The Behemoth’s total word count. So, now you’re probably thinking that Marooned is about the 4th Narentan Tumult. Not so much. Marooned is set roughly between the 1st & 2nd Tumults, and it follows the adventures of a minor character from Seabird.

JMR: What kinds of books other than fantasy do you enjoy reading?

ST: Mysteries. I like a number of both old and new mystery authors: Ellery Queen; Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, Barbara Hambly and Elizabeth Peters.

JMR: What has been your experience of the publishing world and what advice would you give writers, especially new writers seeking publication?

ST: If I may put the cart before the horse, which is the way most new authors think; do not expect publication. You had better be writing because you love to write and can’t envision ever stopping, since you may be the only person who ever reads your work outside of your family.

My second piece of advice is the well-worn BIC: Butt in Chair. My third suggestion is find yourself some willing beta readers who are NOT friends or family. While you’re at it, find yourself a writer support group. Or maybe a mental health support group. We’re all a little crazy to keep doing this with little promise of any monetary reward or acclaim. Taking classes can accomplish several of these suggestions simultaneously, at least if you have a good fiction-writing professor.

JMR: What writers organizations do you belong to and how have they helped you on your path to publication and in general as an author?

ST: Critters is an online group for speculative fiction authors, designed to facilitate the exchange of critiques. It is run by Andrew Burt of SFWA (Science Fictin Writers Association) and is probably one of the oldest such groups on the web.

OWW (Online Writing Workshop) is a group similar to Critters, originally sponsored by Del Rey.

WRWG is the Written Remains Writers Guild. I’ve been a member since 2003. Originally serving as a local critique group, it has expanded its function in recent years with emphasis on serving the needs of professional Delaware authors and their associates. Please check out our website for more information!

BU is short for Broad Universe, an online and in-person group designed for the needs of female professional speculative fiction writers. BU sponsors rapid fire readings by its members at conferences nationwide, creates and maintains catalogues of members’ work and has a lively mailing list, amongst other functions

LGG is short for the Lost Genre Guild. Members are Christians who are actively writing speculative fiction of all kinds, or who have an interest in promoting this type of fiction. Increasingly our membership has welcomed publishers, editors and reviewers.

Path2Perf is a newly created subset of the Lost Genre Guild, and serves a function similar to Critters and OWW (See above.)

Coinherence is a mailing list for people interested in the Inkling, Charles Williams. It isn’t specifically for authors, though many members do write. Most of the membership are involved in the scholarship or study of the Inklings, with particular emphasis on Charless. Williams.

“How have they helped you on your path to publication and in general as an author?”

In ways too numerous to recall or mention. I’ll go with camaraderie, encouragement and the exchange of expertise in writing and in related fields like publication and research.

JMR: Is there anything you’d particularly like to say to your readers, those who are familiar with your work and those new to world of Narenta?

ST: Buy copies of my books. Give them away for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, graduations, Arbor Day, or whatever you’ve got.

Seriously, if you have read Seabird, I would love feedback. The same is true for Earthbow, Volume 1. Negative, positive, in the middle. Writers type alone but that doesn’t mean we like to live in isolation. We really want to know what people think—even about that picky little bit of dialogue on page 392.

JMR: Do you have a website? Do you blog, Twitter, or post on Facebook? Where can you be found on-line?

ST: You can find me on-line at these locations:

Sherry Thompson’s Official Website
Sherry Thompson on Facebook
Sherry Thompson’s Blog on Live Journal
Sherry Thomspons at Redroom

JMR: Thank you, Sherry!

Interview by JM Reinbold

Read an excerpt at Written Remains

Read About the art and symbolism on the “Earthbow” Covers

LA: How long have you been writing, and when do you recall first thinking of yourself as a writer?

IH: Been a songwriter for thirty years and a novelist for about ten. Both flex the same muscle.

LA: Some writers describe a sense of having a “novel in them” or a “novel to get out”. Did you feel that you had a story you had to tell? Did you have a sense of nagging, did it prompt you to sit down and get started?

IH: Cliché as it may sound, I am but a prism to the tale, and probably to my past. They come together. I enjoy the alternate universe and miss it when it’s gone.

LA: “The Gravedigger” is your debut novel, but you have done other work including short stories. Have you tried writing novels before this point? The challenge seems enormous, the commitment overwhelming…What was it like, trying to devote the time and energy to “The Gravedigger”?

IH: Novels are fun but need their time. I’ve written ten so feel comfortable with the process. Best to do is to trust the story, and not get upset if it chooses to leave for a while. The story always seems to come back, like a reluctant voyeur, wanting to know how it ends.

LA: Was it difficult to develop characters from other time periods, how did you decide about details and background?

IH: Characters present themselves before I can make them up. I tweak them but don’t sit to ‘outline’ them. I then research the details needed to include their environment.

LA:Is it difficult to write about subjects that seem close to the heart- love, loss, grief, spirituality?

IH: Not more difficult then writing a comedy sketch, possibly easier. Larry David is probably one of the best story tellers of all time.

LA: What’s next for Ilan Herman?

IH: Become a world renown novelist whose tales inspire the masses and rise to the movie screens (preferably I-Max 3D) and make tons of  money. I swear do donate 90%  to charity.

www.ilan-herman.com- Stories

www.emily-music.com-  Music

So then what about the author?  How the hell do I introduce Matthew Revert in a way that offers meaningful insight on his indescribable work? Bizarre, unusual, hilarious, and disturbed???   After all, anyone whose mind can generate such stories surely qualifies to have his name designate some new mental disorder in the latest version of the DSM, right?

Alas, Matthew can’t bank on any pity inducing freak-factor; despite all expectations, these stories are in fact the product of an overly sane mind.

Indeed, Matthew would be a worthy poster-boy for that scarce and paradoxical crowd I playfully label as rebelliously un-rebelling rebels—those whose still fully-functioning sensibility fills them with disgust in the face of the world we are forced to passively accept, but whose razor-sharp acuity allows them to discern the futility and inevitable despair behind wanting to function outside of certain societal constructs,  while  a profound sense of identity enables them to reach for the ‘meaningful’ and scorn the ‘prosaic’ knowing full well that their version of Happiness relies on the acceptance that their non-conformist goals are dependent on conventions and conformity.

Understanding this about Matthew Revert doesn‘t make describing his book any easier, but it certainly should make it clear to you that this book aims to fall well outside  of that weird-only-for-the-sake-of-goofy-novelty mess that festers the mainstream bowels of Bizarro and Absurdist fiction in much the same way that love songs were soiled by Air Supply.   Rather, this book offers a crucial and refreshing difference that should instantly establish it as a prototype of the Bizarro genre (perhaps New Absurdist?  Subject for a debate no doubt).  That difference is: in these stories, the nonsensical actually makes sense and the illogical is firmly grounded on logic, i.e. they have a raison-d’être.

And it is for that reason that I am reluctant to present  A Million Versions of Right as Bizarro fiction and why I want to avoid ‘bizarre’, ‘hilarious’, and ‘disturbing’.   All true, but this unjustly limits the book’s potential audience which really ought to be as broad as broad goes; these stories should appeal to anyone who enjoys well-constructed, well-written tales that have the ability to expertly whisk you into new mental realms—I’m guessing that’s anyone who enjoys fiction (yes, I’m an idealist).

Granted, perhaps testicular annihilation and scrotum aesthetics shouldn’t be appreciated by all.  And the paralysing fear that one or more of the ‘men’ contained in ‘semen’ may be what decides to burst forth at that next toe-curling moment is rarely a popular water-cooler topic.  Ditto for power blinks, malfunctioning bookmarks, and one particular comb-jar deep in the Hair District…  But all these things fill the pages for a reason, brilliantly described and brought to life to reveal the shocking silliness that exists in those things we call conventions.

Which brings me back to the beginning… how then, do I introduce this book?

I had the opportunity to ask  Matthew a few questions; here’s the result.

PDL:  How do you qualify yourself as a writer?  Is there a certain genre label you feel describes your writing best?

MR:  Wherever possible, I’ve tried not to qualify myself as a writer. I’m really against the idea of backing myself into a corner and reproducing endless facsimiles of my first book. I began writing in a very natural way, without any intention of sharing my work beyond a small circle of friends. I didn’t have to worry about where it fit and this suited me just fine. Since my writing has become available, others have happily placed it into categories for me. The most common genre it gets labelled with is Bizarro fiction, which I guess is an adequate way of describing it inasmuch as the writing is quite bizarre. I have more of an affinity with absurdist writing, which I personally think is a more accurate way of describing what I do. Ultimately though, I just write unusual fiction, which is probably the best way to describe it.

PDL: I myself tend to qualify A Million Versions of Right as Bizarro fiction for several reasons.  We can arm-wrestle for it if you wish, but your previous answer leads me to think you just don’t care?  However, are you not confusing “formula” with “ideal”?  Does the goal of writing works aiming to fit a literary or philosophical framework, according to you, entail a fair amount of eventual, self-imposed limitations?  Should “genre” emerge or can it also be a goal?  In good writing, is one separable from the other?    

MR: That’s a fantastic question! I went into this whole writing game naively, and to an extent, I still carry around a lot of this naivety. When I write, as far as I’m aware, I don’t take classification into account. I don’t write and think to myself, “Well, it appears this is a Bizarro story” and I never consider where a certain story may fall before writing occurs. I agree that idealism plays a role in that and I have a tendency to be a fairly idealistic person.  As for formula, I’m still discovering what my writing formula is.

Your comment about the framework of a story leading to self-imposed limitation is also fantastic. I find myself caught in a situation where on the one hand, I dislike the idea of limitation, and on the other, certain levels of limitation is obviously necessary. Anything that you wrap into a cohesive, narrative shell is the result of limitation. Aesthetic limitation also has a large role to play, especially in much of the music I enjoy. When I started writing this book, I hadn’t read any Bizarro fiction so I really didn’t know what Bizarro entailed. The reason I never considered myself Bizarro was because none of my influences came from that camp. My influences are a mess of different things, some that I’ve carried around since childhood. Having now read a fair bit of Bizarro, I’m interested to see if it ends up consciously working its way into my writing.

Genre can most definitely be a goal and there are many fantastic genre writers out there. Personally, I never read a book based on its genre; I just read books that sound interesting. That’s the same way I approach writing. I write a story if the idea interests me and hope that I’ve touched upon an idea that interests others. So in this respect, for my writing, genre emerges. The pulpy, noir-like overtones that permeate the first part of “Meeting Max” weren’t planned for instance.    

PDL:  Back to your “unusual fiction” description.  Yes, indeed!  But is that a departure or an adherence to the ol’ “write what you know“ adage?  In other words, and sarcasm aside, what motivates this propensity towards the unusual?  You mentioned that you originally wrote for yourself and for a few friends; did your desire to write unusual fiction initially come about purely as a desire to entertain acquaintances, no doubt with a fair degree of success, which led you to realize a talent?  Or did you always write about the bizarre, too disgusted by reality to ever be able to write seriously about real-life events and situations?  Neither?  Both? Other?  How?  Why?  Please expand.

MR: The ‘unusual’ has always been an enormous part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a child, it was always the jokes that didn’t make sense or that were told poorly that I laughed the hardest at. The absurd, bizarre, unusual, nonsensical side of life is something I embrace with near-religious fervour. So for me, the adage is correct. This is what I know. This is how I communicate. This is what I see value in. For me, it goes beyond mere entertainment (although that is definitely a part of it). It was the purest way for me to express myself. I’ve always been the kind of person to see the humour in a situation, even if my version of humour doesn’t translate to anyone else. Combining this inclination toward humour with the inclination toward the nonsensical, and you’re left with the material I write. Life is something I find largely disgusting, redundant and ultimately depressing.  The best way for me to approach a serious topic, or the “reality” of life is to expose the underlying absurdity behind it. I don’t know what this says about me personally, but this is how I’ve always related to the world. How could I write in any other way?

With that said, I do think all of my stories have a serious aspect underlining the overt insanity. Recently I’ve had people telling me that they believe I write horror. To me there is a certain horror bubbling through it all.

I touched a little upon influences in an earlier question but I want to expand upon that a bit. If I were to be honest about my influences, I’d have to say that they’re based in British comedy. The British have a knack for humour that no other country even comes close to. British comedy also possesses such an amazing flair for the absurd. The work of Chris Morris has probably influenced my writing more than any single book I’ve read. Anyone unfamiliar with Chris Morris should rectify that immediately.  I’d also add Armando Iannucci to that list.

PDL: Obviously, as anyone who reads your book can attest to,  you don’t pander to popular expectations, but nor can the writing in A Million Versions of Right be considered experimental; the situations and events described certainly fall outside of real-world conventions—thus the “unusual”—but the stories themselves are concise, well-written accounts that follow standard narrative forms.  No doubt this allows you to emphasize “the underlying absurdity” of life, but is this also a conscious method of marrying sellable with unsellable?  In other words, producing original, independent writing that still has commercial viability due to its readability and accessibility, for surely, you do hope to sell books?

MR: No, I’m not an experimental writer at all. My goal was always to write stories that entertained. This writing style personally entertains me and allows the internal logic to come through with conviction. It’s also the most natural way for me to integrate my type of humour into the writing. There’s a bit of subversion involved too, in that I’m using standard narrative to convey highly unusual ideas, almost like I’m trying to sneak the content through. The goal was to win readers over with the writing and hope that they’d accept the subject matter as a result. I’m not naïve enough to assume that my, admittedly odd, sensibilities and interests are going to appeal to that many people. So by writing in an accessible way, my conviction may win converts. Obviously I want people to pick up my book and ultimately buy it. I also want them to get something out of the experience. This is the first time my name has ever been attached to a ‘product’ and I don’t want that product to represent a waste of time or money for the reader. It still completely blows me away when someone displays enough faith to lay down money on my writing. I hope it continues to blow me away because I never want to take that for granted.

PDL: What do you qualify as “good writing”?  What features or characteristics must be present, or not?

MR: For me, good writing begins with an author’s passion for the material. The passion bleeds into the prose and as a reader, you can sense it. The sense that someone is writing by rote can also be felt, which can make for a depressingly by the numbers read. I personally get excited when an author makes me care about something seemingly banal or think in a new way about something I’d previously taken for granted. Ultimately though, I find it really hard to qualify good writing. Writing and reading is such a deeply personal thing, which is something I really value. The act of qualifying the value of a piece of writing almost goes against what I find valuable about it. It seems to suggest a checklist of sorts that as a reader, you mentally tick off in order to ascertain merit. To a degree, I’m sure this occurs unconsciously with all readers. I’d rather keep this unconscious so as not to remove the mystique. You could ask a question like, “What constitutes an author’s passion?” and I wouldn’t be able to define it. As trite as it may seem, when you encounter a good piece of writing, you know it.   

PDL: Artistic movements (not just literary ones)?  Good or bad?  Vague question, I know; I just want to get your brief, overall thoughts on the subject.

MR: It’s hard to have a real perspective of any literary movements because I haven’t yet become a part of one. Sure, I may write in a way that suggests Bizarro, but am I really a Bizarro author unless the ‘movement’ accepts me into their fold? If I am ‘accepted’ will that change my approach to writing? Movements as a whole are obviously an extremely important part of artistic history. The word itself suggests a nebulous entity shifting from point to point. The very nature of ‘movement’ implies that whatever it is that forms a movement will ultimately move away to the next check point. If a movement can avoid stifling dogma, I’m all for it. If a movement can evolve, I’m for it even more.

PDL:  The following is off your Myspace page, “And now I write. I write about nothing and I write about everything, all in an attempt to recreate the unfulfilling circumstances in which I was conceived.”   A very Freudian statement!  Keeping in mind what you’ve said so far, care to discuss this further?  A bit of Revertian humour or the basis for a personal, Revert-esque philosophy? 

MR: This is going to come across as slightly perverse, but I’ve always had this theory that my conception was the result of an unsatisfactory sexual encounter between my parents. Of course, I don’t know if this is true and I have no plans of asking them – it’s just a fun thing to think about. I do often wonder if the satisfaction, or lack thereof, during conception affects the resultant child. Would a mind-blowing sexual encounter result in a more dynamic child? Would an encounter between two people, too familiar in their relationship to experience spontaneity or passion, result in something opposite? It’s a concept I plan on exploring further in my writing at some point. The write-up on my MySpace page has more to do with my version of humour than anything else. It’s all about self-deprecation, which is something I get a kick out of. I don’t suppose it instils confidence in potential readers though. “Selling” myself is a skill I definitely have to learn, no matter how begrudgingly.

PDL:  Other than in biology textbooks, I’ve never read any other non-erotic work that contained as many references to penises, scrotums, or masturbation, all in a very non-erotic fashion.  Is this a personal obsession?  A desire to take toilet humour to new heights?  Or perhaps a personal f*ck you to the overly serious, out-of-a-cast, pompous literary types who seem to exercise totalitarian control over what is and isn’t publishable?  Or am I reading too much in every scrotum?

MR: To me this is actually a pretty complex question. It’s not so much that I’m obsessed with genitalia per se but I am utterly intrigued by the reaction to genitalia. The ubiquity of genitalia in no way gels with the obscenity associated with it. I definitely don’t use sex to tantalise in my writing, as you pointed out. I approach sex almost from a post-sexual perspective, where all that’s left is an instinctual urge for orgasmic release or mindless intimacy. Sex in my writing is used more to examine the relationships between the characters. These relationships are typically dysfunctional, dying or dead to begin with. I can’t write normal, healthy relationships because I’m not convinced they exist.

Regarding toilet humour and notions of what is and isn’t publishable; I admit to falling into this trap myself. When I was first approached by a friend who was interested in publishing my writing, my first reactions was, “this can’t be published.” I find it interesting and slightly sad that I had been conditioned to feel that way. Sure, knowing that a story like, ‘The Bricolage Scrotum’ was getting printed did fill me with a certain naughty glee but I also felt a sense of shame. Thankfully I worked through this rather quickly and now it’s a simple case of if you don’t like it, don’t read it. As an unknown author with an unknown book, there’s a wonderful liberation involved. If and when I gain a readership, there will always be a fear that I’ll fill future books with similar material because it’s expected and not because it feels natural. I’ll cross this bridge if I come to it.

Ultimately though, if I ever stop finding farts funny, that’s the day I’ll have to end it all. If this mindset detracts from my credibility, so be it.

PDL: Out of curiosity, in the first story, “A Million Version of Right”, the moustachioed tiler?  How much of that was inspired by the Super Mario Bros. video game?   Given what you write, are video games and/or cartoons in any way an influence for your writing?

MR: When I wrote that story (one of the first stories I ever wrote that I was happy with), Super Mario wasn’t a conscious inspiration. It’s a pretty slight difference, but Mario is a plumber whereas my little guys are tilers. I’ve had several people tell me that they couldn’t shake the image of Mario from their mind while reading that story. I think it may have warped their perception of Mario from that point onward. I think I’ve corrupted minds!

My childhood in the 80s corresponded with the explosion of the first Nintendo system (NES). The Nintendo was an enormous part of my life and I played it obsessively. The majesty of this 8bit universe is something that definitely still flows through my blood. Despite the barrage of new gaming systems that have been released, it’s still the original Nintendo that I return to. I’m one of those pathetic guys who purchases replacement parts to ensure their antiquated gaming consoles never die. I’m also enamoured with the Chiptune genre of music, which uses the original technology to create modern, nostalgia-spackled music. Interested parties should check out the work by the 8BITPEOPLES label. All free. So it would be absurd for me to claim that this doesn’t find a way into my writing. It’s not something I set out to do deliberately but it’s something that went into shaping who I am.

This same logic applies to cartoons. My childhood was stuffed with them and I’m not opposed to long cartoon binges these days. I find the increasing rise of adult cartoons interesting. I like a good amount of the work places like Adultswim produce and I respect what they’re doing a lot but I find it a little too self-conscious to be genuinely strange. It’s the cartoons aimed at kids that often manage to be genuinely warped, existing on their own terms.

PDL: Here’s one of those inane but revealing  questions – if you had to describe your writing by means of a musical genre label, which would it be? Why?  Does music play a role in your writing in any way?   You’ve mentioned in an earlier answer that, “Aesthetic limitation also has a large role to play, especially in much of the music I enjoy.”  Is there a parallel between this and how, when writing, you conceive the structure of a piece?

MR: Now we’re getting into dangerous territory. I’m an utter music geek and could go on and on… First of all, and I know this is a question a lot of writers ask each other, I never write to music. I become far too distracted. If I had to apply a single musical genre to my writing, I couldn’t. I’m sure I could apply several though. First, electro-acoustic improv because it contains both elements of the strange and familiar. There’s the terror and ultimate of absurdity of extreme metal (especially doom, death and black). The cold, clinical nature of the sexuality I write about has overtones of the Raster-Noton school of electronics. The synapse overload of noise. There’s a rhythmic quality I try to insert into my prose that has touches of hip hop cadence. The raw emotion of American Primitive music. The “fuck you” attitude of Miles Davis in jazz fusion mode. I love so many different styles of music that I’m sure I could find a way to relate all of them to my writing somehow.

Regarding aesthetic limitations in music, I’m going to use electro-acoustic improv as an example. Consider an artist such as Toshimaru Nakamura, who has been involved in some of my favourite albums over the last decade. His ‘instrument’ is the no-input mixing board. This is a standard mixing board with the input connected to the output. Anyone who has done this will be aware of the vast array of feedbacks that result. Using this very limited framework, Toshi  creates some of the most amazing music I’ve ever heard. With the years spent perfecting the use of a no-input mixing board, Toshi has become something of a virtuoso. This aesthetic limitation has been utilised superbly and I can’t imagine the music being so successful if this limitation hadn’t occurred. Other artists in this area of music who have actively limited themselves are Sachiko M, Keith Rowe and Ami Yoshida (to name some of the more popular practitioners). As I mentioned earlier, I don’t limit myself anywhere near as much but I’m still finding my voice and I don’t believe limitations of that nature would benefit me – at least not yet. The ways I limit myself at the moment are much broader than that. In ‘The Bookmark That Didn’t Work’, for example, I came up with an idea wherein the common bookmark had only been invented recently. This had to dictate everything that followed. Not a great example because all writers are confined by their narratives but that’s all I really have at this stage.

PDL: Beyond the Vegemite and the obvious idiomatic expressions, is there anything in your writing that you feel classifies you as an Australian writer?  Is there one defining aspect that distinguishes modern Australian literature from the rest?   I like to describe Canadian culture as:  we don’t know what we are, but we know we’re not Americans.  Care to come up with your own to describe Australian culture?

MR: This is a tricky question and one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I don’t believe I write stories related to Australia. This isn’t a deliberate thing by any means, just the way my writing has developed. Both my parents are English, which I think has shaped what I do in a more noticeable way. Having lived my whole life here, there’s no way that Australia doesn’t seep into what I do – I just don’t know how. Australian art, specifically literature and cinema, tends toward social realism. There seems to exist this theory that Australian audiences only desire specifically Australian content. The reality doesn’t really support this theory. Our top selling books are never books written by Australians. Australian films very rarely make it into mainstream cinemas. In my opinion, the Australian artistic landscape doesn’t give the bulk of Australians what they seem to want. If you walked up to an average person in the street and asked them to name five Australian authors, I’m sure many of them would struggle.  I like a lot of the social realist films and books that come out here, but it would be nice to occasionally watch some Aussie films or read some books that weren’t enslaved to it.

Australian culture: one that doesn’t really know what it wants and imports other cultures as a result. Or, Australian culture: something that most Australians aren’t very interested in unless it pertains to sport.

PDL: Have you had any difficulties finding local publicity or promotional support, such as book signings, etc., due to what can be classified as graphic content in your book?  Have you received any backlash for this in any way?  Do you feel that the writing community takes you less seriously as an author because of your content?   

MR: Finding ways to publicise or promote my book with Australia has essentially been impossible. There’s been love from some independent bookstores but my book is even more unknown here than it is overseas. As I mentioned earlier, the Australian literary landscape is a pretty tricky one, especially if you don’t follow any established conventions in the subject matter you choose to explore. I believe there is a local audience for my work but if I want to tap into that, I’ll have to find each individual person myself. Short of a miracle, I don’t see this situation changing. It’s more likely that local audiences will discover me via international outlets, such as this.

As for backlash resulting from the content; personally I haven’t been at the receiving end of this. It may be a component of a general dismissal of the book but I’ve never had anyone attack me for the content itself. I’m sure there are many, many people (not just in the writing community) who don’t take me seriously because of what I choose to write about. Hell, even among friends and family who’ll buy it to support me personally but will never actually read it. Hopefully the conviction I have in my own work will eventually speak for itself. If I had to contort myself into something that the writing community viewed as ‘acceptable’, I wouldn’t be able to take myself seriously. I can think of nothing worse than compromising my own integrity just to ‘fit in’. This is what I do; take it or leave it (if a couple of people choose to ‘take it’, I’d be most grateful).

PDL: The Australian government is currently under attack for heading the way of China and Iran in regards to controlling the Internet content it makes available to its citizens.   You are strongly opposed to this, yet the aims purported by many for such measures are positive.  Do you fear or mistrust your own government’s utilisation of such a filtering tool in the application of its laws with Australian service providers?  It seems that the motivation behind such measures is unlike those in China and Iran.  Rather, can it not be said that Australia is a progressive leader in the fight against child-pornography, fraud, violence, etc?  Shouldn’t the world aim towards implementing this kind of international system providing a neutral regulatory body can be established?  Possibility or fantasy?  Should there be some limitations or liability measures linked to the publication of certain Web content?

MR: I don’t think I’ve personally likened the situation to China and Iran as extreme hyperbole of that nature can detract from what’s really happening. For those who aren’t aware, the Australian government is set to enact a plan to introduce mandatory filtering on all internet connections. According to our communications minister, Stephen Conroy, this is intended to protect children from damaging content and ultimately stop the proliferation of child pornography. Looking at those intentions, how could anyone possibly disagree with such a plan? Well, an estimated 95% of those surveyed in Australia seem to disagree and here’s why:

First consider the concept of protecting children and filtering in general. A few years ago, the Australian government made available free internet filters to anyone who wanted one. These proved to be very effective filters and enabled worried parents a genuine opportunity to rightly control their children’s internet experience. This also enabled adults to decide for themselves what was suitable. Now consider child pornography and those who partake in this practice. No one with any amount of decency would ever claim that child pornography isn’t a despicable, repugnant thing. BUT filtering the internet to stop this content simply won’t work. It has been suggested that most people involved in child porn utilise encrypted networks and peer to peer software that isn’t picked up by this filter. Google don’t index anything related to child porn and I’m sure many other search engines are the same.  We’re talking about an extremely closed circle of people who operate behind more curtains than any filter could possibly dream of pulling aside. The filters will be incredibly easy to bypass with proxies and VPN clients and it will drive things further underground, making it hard to track.

Now Australia has a dedicated police taskforce whose job it is to combat online child pornography. They have been successful in bringing down numerous child pornography rings in the past. What many people don’t know is that this taskforce was recently slashed by 50%. In a country purporting to care about the welfare of children, how could this be?

If these filters were only targeting child pornography, I doubt anyone would have a problem with it and if a single child could be saved from this, I’d be more inclined to take it seriously. What most people are concerned about is the extreme ambiguity in the proposal. These filters are also aimed to stop RC (refused classification) material. Australia is a very ban-happy country. Our classification board refuses to classify a lot of films, which makes them illegal to distribute within Australia. However, with the exception of a few states and territories) it’s not illegal to personally own and view most RC material. It is claimed that over 90% of all adult content on the internet is RC. This doesn’t just encompass pornographic material, far from it. Anyone interested is encouraged to view the following site, which examines this in more detail: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#RC

The government’s refusal to clearly describe what they aim to filter is very worrying and it’s not difficult to imagine special interest groups trying to exploit this. I could dedicate the whole interview to this topic but it would be wiser to direct people here: http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/ this site gives a fantastic overview of the whole situation.

A neutral regulatory body would be fantastic in theory but I do believe this to be a fantasy. We’d still be subject to the morality of others and ultimately told what we could and couldn’t view. To claim that there’s no liability on what is published on the internet strikes me as false. Barely a day goes by where we don’t hear of someone who has been held accountable (whether by legal means or otherwise) for what they do on the internet. We have record companies suing teenagers. Dominos employees getting sacked for the web content they upload. Countless Facebook users coming under fire from bosses, co-workers, friends and families. The internet community as a whole has a moral code and they will persecute whomever falls foul of this code. It’s also false to claim that Australia could be viewed as ‘progressive  leaders’ in this area. You may be interested to note that one of the countries oft quoted by Conroy as a benchmark for the Australian filter is Canada. In fact we’ve been adamantly informed that no fewer than 19 other countries have adopted similar methods. What other countries have really adopted is a black list of 1000 or so child pornography websites, not a blanket filter for RC material. It should also be noted that this filter has no plans of stopping internet fraud. It’s a very slippery slope we’re heading down. International community, weep for our souls.

PDL: How do you feel about Internet pseudonyms?

MR: In general, I have no issue with internet pseudonyms but there are some major exceptions to this. If a pseudonym is used in order to defame or break the law, it can be very damaging. There’s something especially low about an individual snaking out of accountability by hiding behind a persona. If you feel the need to speak ill of someone, at least have the gumption to put your name to it. But how do you police this? On a whole, the internet is founded upon assumed guises without issue. I don’t care if you use a fake name on a forum or social network; if we have enough in common, I’ll learn who you are eventually. It’s a very complex issue because you want to somehow control the pernicious aspects of pseudonyms without thwarting individual freedom. Internet fraud units operate with success in most countries but this is a lot of hands on work. I don’t think an automated approach could ever be used to solve the problem (hello, internet filtering!). The issue of international law also looms large. If someone in America tries to defame me, as an Australian citizen, what avenues do I have to combat it? So an international agreement would be a good first step. But it’s the sort of thing that needs to be stopped before it happens, which I doubt is possible. So yeah, on a whole they’re fun and erroneous but pseudonyms have a very dark side. Finding a balance between controlling that dark side and maintaining individual freedom is a concept too difficult for me to contemplate. 

PDL: Matthew Revert, thank you for your time and honesty.  Wishing you much success.

MR: Thank you for giving me this opportunity. It’s appreciated in ways you’d find plain creepy.

PDL: Final words: Taste.  Experiment.  Learn.  Grow.  This author’s work may not be your thing, however, this is one of those rare cases where experience is everything and comparisons are useless.  What have you got to lose?

For those who realize they can’t go wrong, A Million Versions of Right is published by LegumeMan Books. It can  be ordered through their website and on Amazon.com.

Pascal-Denis Lussier is a linguist and freelance writer. His obsessions include music (the good kind!), The Simpsons, and unearthing structure in all things. He’s written countless articles on jazz, theoretical linguistics, and on semiotic theory for numerous academic journals, newspapers, and magazines, but these days he mostly earns his living by copywriting for large corporations and tech writing for small software firms – a  temporary “phase” he’s trying hard to get away from…
He currently lives in Montreal, Canada.

PS: You’ve done a lot of stuff in your thirty-nine years, Mr. Beatty.  Maybe you could start off by telling our good readers about some of your interests and accomplishments in this life cycle of you as an intelligent, handsome, bearded gentleman?

BB: My interests are varied, but mostly I’m into writing, comedy, music and the visual arts. I spend a lot of time hiking and camping with my girlfriend and our dog. I’ve never tried my hand at painting or sculpture, but I’ve given everything else I’m interested in at least a cursory go because I’ve always considered hands-on experience the best way to learn.

I’ve written and published articles, book and music reviews, humor pieces, one-liner jokes, poems, scholarly articles and short stories. In college I played in a frightening basement band that had to be heard to be truly feared. I accidentally appeared for a few seconds in the Michael Moore film that no one’s seen (The Big One). I spent an incredible day with Ken Kesey, who taught me a lot about life that I didn’t agree with at the time. I got to meet my original literary hero, Barry Hannah, long after it didn’t matter as much. Which was for the best, I’m certain. For several years now I’ve performed stand-up comedy and turned reading opportunities into impromptu comedy gigs.

I’m not sure how much intelligence or my hirsute appearance had to do with any of this. Really I’m just easily bored. So I’m always looking for the next way to entertain myself. That I’ve done any of it fascinates me. It seems impossible when I sit down and think about it at all. Maybe that’s the dementia of my forties sneaking up on me.

PS: Which interest interests you the most these days?

BB: I can’t narrow it down to just one, but some weird combination of writing and comedy, I suppose. From a Joseph Campell/C.G. Jung point-of-view, making people laugh always interested me more than narrative structure or characterization or prosody or other formal elements of traditional literary writing. This was a late realization as these things go, so I always feel like I’m making up for important lost time. Lately I’ve been figuring out how to be funny in front of audiences like I am in front of people I know. Because, for whatever reason, I need the approval of drunken strangers. It’s probably my parents’ fault.

PS: Ah yes, I sense you take this business of being funny very seriously.  Let’s hear more about your

comedy.  What’s your process for coming up with new material?  What do you consider your best performance?  Your worst?

BB: I’ve ended up taking my comedy a lot more seriously than I thought was possible. I don’t have a set-in-stone process for generating material, but what typically happens is that I hear about something on the news or I think of a word or mental image and a simple one-liner comes to mind. Over time I build upon that one-liner with more one-liners, or I develop a larger story that sets up the original one-liner in a way that will create a fulfilling payoff for the audience. Or at least complete the first thought for me.

I’ve probably ruined a lot of perfectly decent jokes trying to justify what I think about the world. So it goes, to quote Vonnegut. I’m not doing stand-up to become famous. I only started telling jokes because of a magazine article that nobody remembers. I took a four-week comedy class, wrote about the experience and was instantly addicted to the immediate response of a live audience. I’d never gotten that kind of feedback as a writer. Now it’s about figuring out new ways to exploit the limits of the stand-up genre. That’s why I sometimes perform in a bear suit.

I think my best performance ever was a fifteen minute set I did a couple of years ago at a coffee shop in Minneapolis. It was a big deal at the time because it represented the direction I’ve been taking on stage since, combining tight one-liners (or written pieces I’ve been invited to read) with an ongoing commentary as my set unfolds, completely dismantling the distance and expectations of professional performance. The emotional honesty of what I’m feeling on stage adds something to the prepared material, I think. The last thing in the world I look like is an entertainer, so I’ve decided to use that to my advantage. If audience expectations are low, I don’t see any reason to heighten them.

I’ve survived plenty of awful gigs, but the worst had to be opening for Louie Anderson in front of 5,000 of his hometown fans one New Year’s Eve. Those people had paid too much money to sit through my clever and decidedly dark one-liners. Louie had warned me that material about slavery and transvestites and child abduction was going to require some work on my part — and he was right. But rather than support my material with a strong, focused performance, I trudged onto stage and withdrew into myself, literally mumbling my jokes into the mic. I didn’t perk up until somebody in the expensive seats down in the front of this enormous theater farted in the silence between two of my jokes and I stopped everything to say that I would’ve thought for sure that rich people paid minorities to fart for them. Things went further downhill from there.

PS: Pretend I’m Louie Anderson, talk to me.

BB: Hey, Louie. Remember when that shitty classic rock radio station ran that reality TV-ish contest a few years ago, to open for you in front of a shit-ton of people who had no idea what was going on? And were too drunk to care? Thank you for allowing me to be one of the finalists sacrificed like a witch or a comedy virgin before your big show that night. Thank you, too, for being so honest about how I have a special talent for alienating audiences by making them think too much. I should try harder not to do that, yes. Anyway, you have no idea how much I appreciate your time and trouble, even if you don’t remember me at all.

PS: Okay, I’m just plain old Peter again.  Now I understand you were a bit of a prodigy as a youth.  Did you feel a lot of pressure from the expectations of those around you at the time?  How much of that do you still feel?

BB: The first draft of the first short story I ever wrote won a scholarship that paid for four years of college, then I started publishing poems and book reviews in mid-level literary journals as a freshman. Three years later — the day after my twenty-first birthday, I remember, because I went out and got drunk to celebrate — I sold a short story to Seventeen magazine. That was the fifth or sixth story I’d ever finished from beginning to end. Gordon Lish and I wrote back and forth for years before he finally published a prose poem-y thing in one of the last issues of The Quarterly. That was my proudest literary moment. I was also fortunate to have as mentors some incredible poets and fiction writers at a handful of summer workshops: Lynda Hull, Larrys Levis and Brown, Bob Shacochis.

I was the first person in my family to attend college, and nobody was much of a reader, so only the story in Seventeen mattered. Because there was money involved and because the story was a fictionalized account of my parents’ ugly divorce nearly two decades earlier. My college professors, undergrad classmates and fellow MFA victims were supportive of my dumb experiments until I started following my muse down stinky, dead-end rabbit burrows. Half the time, I had no idea why or what, exactly, I was doing in a poem or story — and everybody else wanted to know why I couldn’t write another piece like one they’d enjoyed before. Fuck if I knew why. Eventually that nagging question crippled me. So I quit for more than a year. Then I started freelancing book and music reviews again, because I had connections able to provide product and the little bit of cash reviews brought in helped cover my rent.

What other people think about what I do doesn’t matter to me now. That’s as much the result of hacking out ad copy for a living as anything that’s occurred in my own work. I’m not precious about my writing. It doesn’t cure cancer. It’s also not going to last in that vain literary sense. So what? I just write to entertain myself. That’s difficult enough.

PS: Amen, the process is more important than the result and spiritually entertaining yourself is more important than fame which is out of our hands anyway.  I’m entertaining myself right now by picturing you in your bear suit.  No question here, just wanted you to know that.

BB: Just because I had a bear suit made to wear when I perform stand-up doesn’t mean that I’m a furry. I didn’t know about those freak perverts until I’d done several sets in my costume. Not that I’m calling you a freak pervert.

PS: Oh, I’d just fess up if you called me a pervert.  So.  Oh yeah, what’s the closest you’ve ever come to killing someone?  Don’t say this interview, I’m already intimidated.

BB: I’m quick to anger, but I’m even quicker to turn that anger back on myself, which means I contemplate unlikely suicide scenarios probably a dozen or so times each day. Sure, I’m getting long-in-the-tooth for such thoughts, but comforting habits are the hardest to break. Despite my considerable size (6′ 3″, 280 lbs.) and a stare I’ve been told is either unnerving or deadpan, depending on my mood, I’m just not interested enough in other people to consider them worth the time and trouble killing them would entail. In other words, you’re safe — for now.

PS: Phew.  Okay, let’s put on our magic hats.  What would you like to see happen in your life?  I actually had a dream that you had your own late night talk show but there were a lot of commercials even in my dream so all I saw was your musical guest, Sting.

BB: I would take my own late night talk show, if folks were giving them out, though I worry that my disinterest in other people may make me a less-than-stellar interviewer. And celebrities interest me even less than people I know. The only way you would see Sting on my show would be if Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers were playing, too. Man was I a huge Police fan in my youth. I’m not ashamed to say so. I’m also not ashamed to admit that my career ambitions aren’t even as lofty (or lucrative) as late night TV. I’d much rather host an overnight radio show that crossed Art Bell’s call-in craziness and Joe Frank’s dark storytelling brilliance. My other secret fantasy is to pen a satirical advice column called “Badvice by Brian Beatty.” But I’d settle for the fourteen people who read this far each mailing me a dollar. That would buy my lunch for a couple of days.

PS: Well there you have it, folks.  Fourteen people, a dollar each.  Thirteen of you can send your money to the fourteenth and then he/she can just mail in a check or money order, or, you can each send a dollar bill inside a cute card to:

Full of Crow

c/o Brian Beatty

PO Box 1082

Beacon, NY 12508

That radio show does sound pretty awesome.  I know I’d listen.  I loved Coast to Coast back in the day.  So let’s pretend we’re on the radio right now.  Okay.  I also love your bad advice idea so in your best radio voice, please, let’s end by you giving us your best advice…

BB: I know it’s not considered “cool” or “hip” or “happening” to believe everything you read in the pages of The Reader’s Digest, but laughter really is the best medicine — unless you’re a Christian Scientist. Then it’s pretty much the only medicine you’ve got. So best of luck against the cancer.

J.M. Reinbold interviews Delaware author Greg Smith, author of “Final Price”.

JMR: Hi, Greg! Please tell us a bit about yourself.

GS: I was born and raised in Washington, DC. I have a BA in English from Skidmore College and an MBA from the College of William & Mary. I worked in public relations in DC and moved to Delaware to get married. I also worked in PR in Wilmington and Philadelphia before committing to fiction writing full time.

JMR: How did you get started in writing?

GS: I’ve always wanted to be a writer and it eventually dawned on me one day that in order to make it happen I had to…write! Sit down, come up with an idea and start typing, or filling legal pads with scribbles. When I finished my first novel, it was a great sense of accomplishment, but I look back on that VERY unpublished story and realize it was merely an important first step.

JMR: Your book, Final Price, was a quarter-finalist this year in the Amazon.com “Break Through Novel Award” competition and was published by CreateSpace. What is your book about?

Final Price pits a psychotic car salesman, Shamus Ryan, against a culturally conflicted Chinese-American homicide detective, Paul Chang. The story is set in Northern Delaware where Shamus takes out his murderous revenge on customers who waste his time and reject him. In the “small town” atmosphere of Wilmington, the seemingly random killings baffle the cops until Chang and his emotionally fragile ex-partner, Nelson Rogers, step in to find the common thread.

JMR: Can you tell us a little about the history of Final Price and your experience writing this particular book?

GS: I think this book has changed more than any other that I’ve written. Actually, in a lot of ways I think of it as my informal “graduate thesis.” It went through no fewer than ten drafts and years of intensive group critique led by a professional editor who improved my writing and craft exponentially. With her help we tried to find a home through conventional publisher routes but that is always a daunting path for an unknown. I got some good feedback but no offers.

I took a shot with the Amazon contest and got some more good feedback and even though it didn’t finish at the top, I was very pleased with the whole contest experience. After that, I decided to follow through and release the book as a self published work.

JMR: Final Price has been described as a thriller, a novel of suspense and a mystery — is Final Price a cross genre novel, and if so why did you decide to combine these three genres?

GS: I don’t know about that, I think it stands as a thriller certainly, but within the mystery framework it is not so much of a “whodunit?” as a “Howtheygonnacatchhim?” I wanted to show the action from two distinctly different perspectives so the reader gets to be in the head of both the hero and the killer.

JMR: To a greater or lesser degree all authors write from personal experience, how much of Final Price is from your personal experience and how much research did you have to do in order to write this book?

GS: This book started from a simple premise that occurred to me during a long shift selling cars during a snowy day with few customers. What if, instead of sharing war stories with co-workers in the break room, a salesman totally snapped and lashed out against his most aggravating customers? Shamus Ryan was born. To play the other side of the equation I wanted to create an edgy hero who has plenty of dark demons of his own.

Paul Chang is an amalgam of people I’ve met throughout my life, as well as a bunch of stuff I simply made up (one of the beauties of writing!)

JMR: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had related to the writing of “Final Price“?

GS: Sometimes when I tell people about the book and that I sold cars myself they get a funny look in their eye that always prompts me to remind them that it is fiction!

JMR: Can you tell us a few funny or unusual “facts” about Final Price?

GS: Of course all the characters are fictitious even if they were inspired by real people. More often than not, several people actually. Likewise, some of the annoying customer traits I gave the victims had some basis in fact. In particular, there’s a scene where the customers devour Shamus’s lunch then leave without buying. That happened once.

JMR: Do you have a favorite author and if so, who and why?

GS: Hard to pin down but since we’re talking about thrillers, Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz.

JMR: What other authors have significantly influenced your writing?

GS: James Frey, author of How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, (No connection to the disgraced autobiographer!)

JMR: Could you tell us a little about your other writing projects – past, present, future?

GS: Sure, I have two other complete novels, one a young adult fantasy and a second thriller based on a mind control conspiracy. I’m still looking for representation or publishers for those and have several new books in mind.

I have a short story, Street Smarts, published in Stories from The Inkslingers (Gryphonwood Press, 2007.)

The launch of Final Price has kept me pretty busy but the writing itch won’t be denied for long!

JMR: What has been your experience of the publishing world and what advice would you give writers, especially new writers seeking publication?

GS: It’s a marathon, and even for every “overnight” success if you look more closely you’ll see plenty of struggling.


Whether it’s writing, re-writing, polishing and marketing, take everything one step at a time.


Personally, so far it’s been a great experience. Since I’m doing it myself it’s certainly different than a big splashy marketing campaign. I liken it to forcing the proverbial tree in the forest to make a sound. Or to put it another way, each reader represents a spark, I never know which one will catch on.


So far most of the folks who have read the book like it, and word of mouth is the best marketing of all.

Additional Information about Greg Smith and “Final Price”

Check out Final Price on : Amazon.com

Read a review of Final Price on : Pick of the Literate

J.M. Reinbold at Written Remains

Tim Gaze is the publisher of Asemic Magazine, a publication dedicated to the presentation of Asemic writing. Interviewed by Lynn Alexander.

By Tim Gaze

ASEMIC:
It looks like writing, but we can’t quite read it.
I call works like this “asemic writing”.

LA: Starting off with asemic writing, how did you become interested? Do you find yourself explaining what it is, only to be asked why you do it? Not to say that there even has to be a reason for art or writing, but people often want one or feel entitled to one, to some kind of justification. Do people ask about your objectives with asemic work?

Do you find that people easily misunderstand?

TG: I used to write quirky fiction & poetry. somehow, after a holiday in Indonesia, talking in Bahasa Indonesia for 2 months, I started to make wordless squiggles of symbols.

After a few years of research, I became convinced that my squiggles can be considered to be part of a stream of culture, which is widely known now as asemic writing.

I see my own works as emerging from literature, & in particular visual poetry.

for some reason, visual poetry remains the neglected cousin of better-known forms of poetry. however, if you begin to explore, you can find hundreds of examples of visually skewed poems (which don’t rely so heavily on the meanings of words), from around the world.

LA: Recently, Michael Jacobson interviewed you for Dogmatika. You stated:

“A short definition of “asemic writing” is: something which looks like a form of writing, but which you can’t read.”

Do you find that such a definition obliges you, in some way, to speak to interpretation? Do you expect that a reader’s sense of meaning will be derived at intuitively?

TG:on interpretation:

often, I’m trying to create things which are totally open in meaning, suggestive to a viewer, but without a privileged meaning, injected there by me. I might aim for a particular atmosphere or feeling, but whether a viewer feels the same way isn’t important.

I believe that it’s possible to create rich pieces, which work on a number of levels, without using words. sometimes, they look like illegible writing; other times, they’re abstract, unidentifiable shapes. or combinations of those 2, with recognisable things.

LA:When you speak of “etymological fallacy” and asemic writing or symbolic script, are you saying that asemic writing is in defiance of text, or even regressive text? That, like words that are thought to evolve from their roots and remain static despite our clear understanding that this is not always the case, symbolic text can be detached from strict meaning?

Would you say that asemic writing is symbolic text, intuitive text? Regressive, deconstructed? Pre-literate, or departure… post-literate?

Is there something different about the experience on paper, compared to digital? Do you feel conflicted about that sense of white paper and the contrast of black on white, and the variety associated with color?Can you talk about the differences between asemic writing and abstract art? Between abstract comics, and graphic asemics? Asemic writing, and gallery art?

TG: etymological fallacy is just a technical term used by linguists, to describe the belief held by many people that words “really” or “truly” mean what their roots mean. we humans use words as we like, forbetter or worse. to a person who tried to convince me that “asemic writing” is an inaccurate term for the stuff which I call asemic writing, I’d reply that hundreds of people already use the term in that sense.

I still consider myself to be a writer. paper feels like the true home for writing. maybe I’m conservative! paper was invented in ancient China (by the eunuch Cai Lun, according to legend). it was traded along the Silk Road to the Middle East, & eventually adopted by Europeans. a truly international medium, with a long history.

unlike an art gallery, which is only open for a few hours a day, with exhibitions of limited duration, a book is portable, relatively cheap, & personal. a book can sit on a shelf untouched for years, but sits in readiness, without the need to pay an annual subscription or monthly internet access fees. it feels important to me, to compose asemic or abstract works into physical books, magazines & other publications.

there are at least 2 levels to creating asemic works. many people make imitation writing, often in flowing cursive. this is expressive. both physical & psychic (or psychological) energy can be read in it.

however, there’s a deeper level, of inventing your own family of symbols, & perhaps combining them with pre-existing symbols. only a few people enter this domain. Lettristes such as Alain Satié & Roland Sabatier create in this difficult area.

Michael Jacobson’s novel The Giant’s Fence is a journey into a land of symbols entirely invented by the author. his work is difficult to read: it takes mental effort for me to read through his lines of symbols. repeated readings make me more familiar with it. his book is a huge act of imagination, much more futuristic than most science fiction. plunging the reader into a completely unfamiliar world. I can’t think of anything else which strongly resembles Mike’s symbols. really original.

LA: What are you involved with now, what are you interested in, creatively?

Do you see cohesion and community among the artists who have a special interest in symbolic or asemic script?

What’s next for Tim Gaze?

the publication of Abstract Comics: The Anthology (Fantagraphics, 2009), which I’m proud to be in, & the ongoing, very active blog, are both inspiring me & distracting me from working on purely asemic writing. on the one hand, I have a sketchy knowledge of the world of comics, & wonder whether I should even stick my oar in. on the other hand, I’m aware of some amazing works with a relationship to abstract comics, which nobody else is talking about, so I post about them at the blog.

political aspects of going beyond English & the Roman letters:

the English language is an impure, cross-bred mongrel of a language. it astounds me that people have such strong beliefs about proper English or correct English. we could describe English as a super-Creole: Low German roots, with large amounts of Norman French DNA spliced in, with a lexicon of borrowed words from all over the place.

the global economic situation is pushing English everywhere. we could sum it up as:

speak English, you bastards, or we won’t pay you!

so, I see a moral dimension to the use of English. is it desirable for writers & poets whose first language is English to continue creating works just in English?

& then there’s a question about function or efficiency. I’ve never seen a comparative study between languages, claiming that English has superior expressive capabilities.

if English isn’t widely believed to be “better” than all other languages, what is the rationale for it becoming the new, global lingua franca?

if a writer is serious about the use of language, she or he needs to weigh up the moral issues of writing in English.

the Roman alphabet is a collection of symbols without a theoretical basis. each letter has its own history. the uppercase & lowercase letters are completely different symbol sets, with only a few common elements.

unlike the Korean Hangul alphabet, which was designed specifically to represent the shape of the mouth of a person speaking Korean, the Roman alphabet is a haphazard bunch of symbols.

the letter “o” is the only letter with a clear meaning: a mouth making an o shape, & the resulting o sound made by the human voice.

more loosely, we could say that an “s” resembles a snake, & by extension, the sibilance of a snake sliding along. but I wouldn’t say that letter s means snake or hissing.

capital “A” is supposed to be descended from a Phoenician ox-head shaped symbol, but you wouldn’t guess that from looking at an A in its current form.

what I’m saying is that the letters don’t have any logical basis. their meaning (the sounds they represent) is based on convention, pure & simple.

the only thing going for them is that they’re easy for children to learn, & are in use over large areas of the planet. computers & the internet are pushing Roman letters onto just about everyone.

& don’t forget that a slightly different Roman alphabet is used by every language which uses Roman orthography: different numbers of letters, & different diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, & so on).

my impression is that humans haven’t delved into visual communication, & the meanings of symbols, with the same thoroughness with which we’ve dissected languages.

the current activity in asemic writing, the creations & theory behind the Brazilian process/poem movement, some aspects of Lettrisme, & books such as James Elkins’ The Domain of Images, are all steps towards deeper understanding of visual communication.

our current approach to knowledge is logocentric. everything is expressed in words, & sorted & catalogued into verbal categories. some of us believe that there’s another way to proceed.

to escape English & the Roman letters is exciting. it’s possible that we can help to assemble a truly international method of communication, not tied to particular countries, cultures, languages or ethnic groups.

as well as asemic writing, abstract art & short essays, I create simple sound recordings, of electronic music, sound poetry & field recordings. some of the sound poetry could be described as asemic: non-verbal vocals. the sound recordings are more casual & fun than the visuals I do. I’m less of a pioneer in this area. just another bedroom (or living room) recording artist.

LA: What’s constant? In other words, is there anything that seems consistent for you right now?

RC: Unfortunately, the only constant in my life is my continued marginalization, living on the fringes of society. I used to think that I could still at some point work hard and fight my way back towards some degree of normalcy or the everyday domestication that most people experience. I don’t any longer. I am too old to spend my time at menial, backbreaking labour that leaves me with no time or energy to pursue the things that really mean anything to me and never get me ahead anyway. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll probably be destitute and homeless, living in shelters and whatnot, for the rest of my days. I plan on making the best of it, however.

LA: When I think about what I know of you, your life, the difficulties, the ugly side of living- I am often struck by the way truly beautiful sections of text seem to weave right through descriptions that are otherwise, very much “street” in their tone and anxieties. An example comes to mind, a piece I love from Counterexample Poetics, called “At The Beginning Again”:

Striation paradox, minutes stretched across the sky’s ceiling, then falling onto the city below. Motion becomes labyrinthine and beautiful, too beautiful to even approach our understanding.

All cartographies seem to freeze, new faces lost hopelessly in laughter and play, the dazzling hues of pink leaping from the concrete before returning to their song.

I get the sense that inside your head is a completely different world in contrast to your circumstances, that while you remain rooted in your struggles, in the moment, that you are engaged with these escapes.

Where are these places, do they reflect anything about your frustrations?

RC: The fact that I write the way I do , in a sometimes lyrical, imaginative, surreal fashion, is a pretty conscious choice on my part.

Some people have encouraged me to write about my personal experiences living in poverty and dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction in a more “honest way”, that is either to take a more journalistic approach, or to use my actual experiences as a base or springboard for straight-ahead linear fictions.

But honestly, I find all that pretty uninteresting and maybe even banal. It may be because I’ve actually lived through these things, but I personally find the vast majority of “working-class” life to be utterly and completely boring. People from other social classes may have their ideas about how it is, they may still have a tendency to romanticize it, I don’t know. The fact of the matter is, though, that whether it’s standing in line for an hour at a soup-kitchen waiting for supper, sitting in a holding-cell for 7 hours waiting to go before a judge, or trying to nurse a coffee in a doughnut shop for 4 hours waiting for a dealer, a good deal of proletarian life involves waiting around doing nothing much at all.

So yeah, escapism has always been important for me. A a kid growing up in Regent Park (Canada’s oldest housing projects), the fantastic visionary worlds I could access via my beloved public library offered obvious relief from the harshness of my surroundings. And even now that Iam involved in writing as well as reading, I can’t deny that some of my best stuff was written when I was the most down and out. I think taking refuge in my own imaginary realms and writing has actually contributed to keeping me somewhat sane and reminded me that Iam a part of something bigger than myself.

LA: What are you working on? Where is your energy going?

RC: I’m always working on longer pieces of text. As many know, Iam a huge fan of William Bokelund’s “Art Set Free” self-publishing project (link), and, to be honest, I would like to bite his style a bit and have my own constantly updated surrealist writing project that I could share with people via a PDF file they could access online. But I always wind up giving up on longer projects, just taking the longer pieces and re-editing them into shorter prose poems. So I will probably just continue to self-publish relatively short PDF file chapbooks of my surreal prose-poetry.

Don’t completely count out the possibility of a never-ending surrealist novel appearing somewhere online before too long, though. I’m unpredictable.

LA:What do you have against the sick government labia?

RC: Given the current social and political climate of corporate labiacratic neo-fascism, it probably wouldn’t be wise to answer that question. Sorry.

LA: If poetry is generated, created by a non human process, is it still poetry?

RC: Yes. Poetry can be many things. Why would we want to limit our creativity and our possibilities with definitions that are too iron-clad concerning what it is and isn’t? Not that I care very much if someone argues that machinic poetry isn’t poetry. I occasionally utilize automatic techniques in conjunction with an internet-based cut-up machine. If I didn’t go around telling people I did that, however, it isn’t likely they would know. But Iam quite willing to concede that I may not be a poet. Somehow I continue doing what I do and enjoying it.

“What they struggle with is what they feel or don’t feel, the inability to communicate what they are feeling and how it is we connect with others.” Ben Tanzer, interviewed for PRATE by Peter Schwartz

P.S.: Ben Tanzer is one of those guys you meet and like within seconds.  He’s agreed to talk to me here and I’ve agreed to use my big boy voice.  Welcome Ben, why don’t you tell our good readers a little about yourself and how you can change their lives?

B.T.: You are very generous, and it’s clear you have picked-up on one of my worst not so hidden traits – I love flattery, both giving and receiving.  I would add here that I appreciate your interest in interviewing me and I think you look great today.  Is that a new shirt?  In terms of myself, I used to tell people that I was a founding member of Wham!, but they soon realized that was maybe not entirely accurate.  I blame Wikipedia for that and now I tell them I used to be Ric Astley.  Beyond that I went to the same high school as Rod Serling, albeit after he did, and if you forced me to pick whether I am a Star Trek person or a Twilight Zone person, I would choose the latter.  I also went to high school with Lisa Baylor who you probably don’t know, but wish you did.  I was interviewed on the debut episode of the now long defunct MTV Sports show.  Sadly, I did not get to meet host Dan Cortese, which is something that still haunts me, though not nearly as much as the one time I watched Veronica’s Closet. Much beyond that is fairly bland I suspect, though I am proud to say that I am a father of two, husband of only one, though not for lack of trying, the Director of Communications at a nonprofit and a writer, the last of which is always weird to write or say out loud, because it still seems hard to believe.  You also asked me how I change lives and while I think I may be doing so right now, my main means for accomplishing this are through the products – my novels, short story collection and zine – and lifestyle choices – reading indie literature, blogging about the Elizabeth Crane, eating Peeps – I purvey via TBWCYL, Inc, my vast yet faux media empire.  For more insight into my methods please refer to the monorail episode of The Simpsons.  All the answers lie there.

P.S.: And there you have it, I told you this guy was likable.  Hey, I once murdered someone to get into a lit journal called Porcupine.  What’s the crummiest thing you feel like you’ve ever done to survive?

B.T.: Despite your reference to Porcupine, my sense is that what you really want me to do is go all Sophie’s Choice here or relate some kind of parable about how I had to steal bread to feed my children and whether I believe it was truly justified on some kind of moral or ethical level.  Then again, maybe you just want me to tell an elaborate lie.  I could do any of that, and I of course would do anything for you, but instead, like you, I will discuss artistic survival because really, outside of cash flow problems, this odd rash I have and the general state of the world, everything else is going just swimmingly for me. So, caveats aside, in my recent novel Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine I totally and unabashedly plagiarized both The DaVinci Code and The Time Traveler’s Wife then tried to pass it all off as a nonfiction tale rife with family pain, substance abuse, hubris, and an epic fall from grace that initially leads to profound disillusionment, but ultimately ends in triumph.  This was done of course because I was desperate.  My kids were hungry.  I wanted to boost sales.  And I really wanted to get on Oprah.  I’m not sure that your readers were aware of any of this, but I suggest that they go buy the book and read it as a means for verifying these fairly incendiary disclosures.  After that they should feel free to blog about how reading Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine changed their lives, link to my blog and publisher, and maybe even give the book a freakishly positive shout-out on Goodreads and Amazon.

P.S.: You had me at elaborate lie.  Please, tell a lie, a secret, and a little known fact and then we’ll just invite our kind readers to jot down which they think is which.  At the end of this interview, we’ll reveal the real answers and those of you with all three correct answers will WIN A FREE PRIZE that will both literally and figuratively blow your mind.

B.T.: Great question, and very Zellweger of you. Here you go:

(1)     I once wrote Parker Stevenson a fan letter and asked him his advice on how one goes about becoming an actor.  I sent it to Teen Beat where he had a column during the 70’s. He never responded and years later when Kirstie Alley left him I felt vindicated.
(2)     I auditioned for the role of the son in The Shining.  They told me I didn’t seem creepy enough, something a number of women I dated in high school would later strongly disagree with.
(3)    When I was kid my parents would leave my brother and I at movie theaters to watch movies two even three times in a row.  Between showings I would eat the popcorn that people left behind and to this day I have an intense craving for stale popcorn every time I watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

P.S.: Thought you’d appreciate that.  Okay.  Enough flirting, let’s do this.  Every story depicts the world a certain way.  Describe the world in your novels.  Feel free to talk about how some specific characters might see their lives and situations.

B.T.: I did appreciate that and I have appreciated the flirting as well.  I would add that I think this is a very good question and that you sir are a fine interviewer.  Was that also flirting?  Anyway, the world I am drawn to is one where the inhabitants are confused.  Confused about how they find themselves wherever they are and about why things happen to them, anything really.  Why they make or don’t make certain decisions, how to think through what they’re feeling and more than anything why the world and their place in it doesn’t make more sense to them.  This is not a world where people necessarily struggle with good and evil or issues of morality or spirituality, honor or bravery, though they could.  What they struggle with is what they feel or don’t feel, the inability to communicate what they are feeling and how it is we connect with others.  And as they struggle with these things they turn to drugs and violence, video games, and running; they hurt themselves and they lose themselves in conversations about pop culture, anything to avoid discussing, or even thinking, about what’s going on for them or how they should they feel about it.

In my first book Lucky Man the character of Sammy is surrounded by a bunch of self-destructive guys, one is suicidal, another is a cutter, a third is really into drugs, and he never quite gets what’s going on around him or really even asks.  He is detached from everything: his friends, the world, himself, much of the time existing as an observer, and rarely self-reflective.  His detachment in some ways probably saves him, he doesn’t feel anything deeply enough to explode until in a burst violence he is finally confronted with his own sense of disconnection and inertia.  Now will that be enough to move him in some way?  Hard to say.  Hopefully.  Maybe.  In Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine the main characters Geoff and Jen don’t try to avoid getting into relationships, but they do assume that all relationships are doomed to implode, that something, somehow will break whatever’s good and when something breaks that’s it, there’s no fixing it.  They don’t understand why this is though or how to address it, so they constantly avoid trying to talk about it and feint at all times in all conversations, until maybe they don’t, again hard to say what will happen for them.  In my new book You Can Make Him Like You we have a guy named Keith who knows enough to know that he does not want to sleep with his intern, or any number of other people; kill his neighbors or allow himself to be overwhelmed by the idea of having a baby, and yet all of these things have the potential to happen and he isn’t exactly sure why they are happening even as he consciously recognizes he’s creating the situations.  His problem, among many, is that he refuses, almost reflexively, to try and better understand why this is.  He could almost get some insight if he tried, but he won’t, or can’t, and there he is caught again and again in untenable and confusing situations of his own making.

P.S.: Wow, struggling with feelings and numbness and not having a language to express either, getting lost in pop culture, that’s the new great American pastime, for sure.  Alright, out of all your characters who’s your least favorite and why?  Describe in detail how you might physically assault that character.

B.T.: This is a tough question for a variety of reasons.  First off, like the cheesy parent I am, I have a lot of affection for all of my characters, and while I should maybe be more comfortable disliking them, it’s a weird feeling to me and so I realize I risk copping-out on this question.  Second, I must admit, that the question makes me a little uncomfortable, which is good, I need to be uncomfortable, but while I write about violence, and I’m fascinated with violence, and even get a certain kick out of the more cartoonish violent movies, violence for the sake of violence, gratuitous, nihilistic violence, Fight Club-type violence, is very upsetting to me, which means in reacting to this question, I also risk coming off like kind of pussy, which frankly, is embarrassing in all its own way.

Still, I’m all in. So, a two-part answer.

First, if I need to identify a character I like least, I will say Keith in my new novel You Can Make Him Like You.  Many of my characters lack a needed level of curiosity to get a better handle on what it is they struggle with and why, but Keith is more aware of this lack of curiosity than any of my other characters which just makes me mad.  Keith’s reactions to various situations, as well as his political views, are initially more reflexive than other characters I’ve written, meaning he’s more reactive than thoughtful because that’s how he’s always been, and so that’s that, it must be right.  I can’t stand that.

Second, fighting to me is like sex in some ways, okay, many ways.  I haven’t slept with everyone I might have slept with, almost all of them to be honest, and there are moments when those people, or those situations, will cross my mind, mostly at work, but also when I’m writing for sure.  Fighting is like that to me as well.  I fought a lot as a kid, but I didn’t fight everyone who bullied me or my friends, or who taunted me, and I have those moments as well, flashing back to the kids or situations and how I may have acted differently.

This is especially the case following being assaulted in New York City several years ago.  It was quick and out of left field and I never knew why it happened or what prompted it.  It just happened.  And so I think about fighting when I feel threatened, and when I am writing, and when I do I tend to flash back to childhood when fighting was the norm, not the exception.

There was one kid in particular who terrorized us in middle school and I never challenged him, but I can still picture him, and can still think of moments when I might have, and when I needed a bully in my first book Lucky Man I used him as a reference, though unlike in my real life, two of the characters kick the shit out of him:

“We kick back in the car for a couple of hours, not saying much, and killing the twelve-pack. We wait and wait, the moon hovering somewhere off above us, The Dark Side of the Moon playing endlessly on my tape deck – “How I wish, how I wish you were here.” We know Pat will appear eventually and when he does all the pain will go away.

And then he appears. He looks a little nervous as he leaves his house, his shiny face glistening in the moonlight. We let him get a block or so away before confronting him with what we know. He tries to deny it, but it’s pointless, we don’t care and we don’t hear him. We are angry, we are lost, and he has to get what’s his.

We converge on him and he has little chance. He lands maybe a punch or two, but I don’t even feel them, I am oblivious to pain, and oblivious to Pat. He is not a person to me anymore, just the object of my rage and despair. Sammy does a lot more watching than participating, but when Pat is finally down, heaving and crying, bloody and beaten, Sammy does the most amazing thing – he kicks Pat in the balls and says this is for Gabe.

Our work is done. We leave Pat there on the sidewalk and head to the Pine for Jack and Gingers. Summer has officially begun.”

So there you go.

P.S.:  Thanks for digging that deep.  I too think violence can be surreal.  I once had about ten guys invade my home in ski masks and shove a gun in my face.  After taking a few valuables they tried to hustle me outside and I thought I was dead for sure.  I won’t tell you how it ended but I will tell you that for years I’ve actually been thankful for this experience because I’ve felt like it forced me to deal with my own mortality.  A little more honest with myself these days, I’ve been thinking about another side to what happened that day: what it did to my sense of trust.

I forgot to ask a question.

B.T.: One time I was in a very crowded bar and this very drunken guy got upset that I was trying to order a drink by leaning in behind him.  I imagine he felt that I was in his space, that it was somehow rude of me to try and get the bartender’s attention at his expense.  He was enormous, drunk and sweaty, and he made some kind of threatening comment to me and for a moment I wondered what it would be like to hit him in the face with a glass.  Back then whenever I felt threatened, and that might mean a sudden loud voice in the middle of the night, or someone suddenly coming up on me on the sidewalk, I would always visualize hitting them as hard as I could.  This has faded with time, but not entirely. Similarly, I once had a panic attack after a multi-day drug binge and for years whenever I felt stressed my chest muscles would spasm and constrict.  This faded as well, though recently I got very stressed at work and at home and with my writing and one day I had to rush to pick up my son at school and I felt my chest constrict.  It lingered for about a month, and now it’s a subtle ache, more dormant than anything, a reminder of sorts.  So, what am I saying?  It’s not clear to me why someone decides to hit you or why one drug binge goes fine and another doesn’t.  Or how you get your hand caught in the moving blades of a lawnmower when you’ve cleaned one a million times.  It’s also not clear to me why a parent may move out or not, or why your kid is born with some ridiculous form of colic and someone else’s is not.  So, I write about these things, because if I cannot make sense of them at least I can try to get some control over them.  This is also why I invoke humor, even pop culture, into my writing, my interviews, even my conversations.  I don’t want everything to feel bleak and unbearable, because that isn’t how I view the world, or at least how I prefer not to view the world.  How’s that?

P.S.: Perfect.  You’re right, no matter how much shit we go through, we do have the power to joke about anything that happens to us.  What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?

B.T.: I really want to say something about Vanilla Ice here.  But I won’t.  And it’s funny because the funniest thing I’ve ever seen is probably some video on YouTube I don’t even remember or more cheesily, something one of my kids did that has since blended into some massively happy, but somewhat indistinguishable memory of them during another time in their life.  I was also thinking that I could reflect on the first time I saw Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip or Raw, Animal House or Slap Shot; or maybe the first time I read Mad magazine, National Lampoon or Mr. Natural as a kid and found myself absolutely floored by them.  I could tell you that the hardest I’ve ever heard any group of people collectively laugh was when we saw Swingers one night here in Chicago before anyone had really heard about it.  Or, that I recently re-watched the Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley Chippendale’s skit from Saturday Night Live and nearly spit out my drink.  But as I sorted through these memories I found myself flashing back to a really late night when I was up with my dad and we watched Andy Kauffman doing a show at some club where he came out very serious, stayed serious, didn’t make any jokes and berated the crowd.  The crowd grew increasingly furious but he didn’t care, he stayed in character throughout, lecturing and pontificating and never wavering.  When they heckled them he fought back and we just kept waiting for some kind of joke, or a wink or something, but it never came. It was tense and uncomfortable, and funny.  He was so incredibly committed to that tension and that performance and it was so singular.  I would like to do something like that some time.  Create something so tense and funny and painful that it makes some kind of long-lasting impression on someone.  Anyone.  That I think would be pretty cool and well worth the endless rejections, misfires and doubt that can plague me even on a good day.

P.S.: Ah yes, your dad’s a painter, right?  How do you think his art might have influenced your writing?

B.T.: My dad.  Yeah.  It’s funny, no one ever asks about him despite how much fathers, both those present and not so present, loom in my novels and stories.  I think I’m mostly appreciative that no one has asked, but I’m glad you have, so there you go.  I’m acting all Gemini on this question.  Or maybe I’m just nervous?  Either way, even though my dad was clearly a painter and we knew this and I spent a lot of time at galleries and art fairs when I was a kid.  I realize now that I never quite thought about what he was working on or what it all meant to him.  But then he passed away.  It was nine years ago this month and about a year after he died there was this retrospective of his work at this museum, and as I walked around the show and saw all of these paintings, how good they were and how well they all “hung” together, it really hit me, he was a painter, and he had all these ideas and themes going on.  He was really interested in the “other” – sideshow freaks, circus performers, jugglers, Tai Chi practitioners, Palestinian protestors, the tattooed, Kafka – all outsiders, all people who are without a voice and looking for a community.  And when I saw this, I saw him differently.  He was this Bronx-born, high school dropout, activist, Jewish artist in upstate New York who felt like the other and was also always searching for a community.  My characters are not the other and they have a community, as I always have, but they haven’t found their voice.  Of course, that’s just the top line stuff, so let me try and go a little more Totem and Taboo for you.  My dad really struggled with being a painter, creating work, selling work, obtaining success, finding community, and especially living as both an artist and a parent, because he was unwilling not to embrace the latter even if doing so would have enhanced the former. Being an artist was hard for him, he suffered, and I never wanted to be like that or feel like that.  I didn’t start writing until I was 30 for the simple reason that I couldn’t avoid not writing any more, but I also couldn’t do it like he did.  I have stayed focused on having a day job, and not just because I need one or because I enjoy what I do, but because I have felt like I need to temper the insanity of wanting to create and protect myself better than he did from the inevitable disappointments.  Ironically though, the more I’ve gotten into writing and the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve become like him.  I want more time to write and I want to expand upon how I think about myself as an artist, which I think will require building more flow and flexibility into my day and fighting against the very restraints I have embraced. I’m not actually sure I know what this would look like, I just know that I want it to be different than it is now.

P.S.: And how do you think your job as Director of Communications has influenced your writing?

B.T.: I think there are two ways that my job as a Director of Communications has influenced my writing.  I now write all the time.  And I worry about words all the time.  I’m endlessly trying to capture the right tone and flavor, always seeking to be sparse and punchy.  It’s like cross-training.  I am always working my writing muscles and I am getting to work on things I’m into, and I want to believe that makes me a better, more focused, more limber writer and thinker in general.  Along with that though, doing the kind of work I do now is different than what I did for a long time when I focused on strategic planning, board development, credentialing, and work that involved long days facilitating other people’s creative processes.  It was structured and driven by time frames and agendas, and dependent on other people’s time, needs and ideas.  I like doing that kind of work a lot and yet here I’ve wanted to figure out how there could be more flow during my day, more time to think and be creative.  I was also ready to welcome more overlap between my work and writing life because I had been really rigid about that and I began to wonder how that might potentially be stifling me in ways I didn’t recognize.  I still have deadlines, but I’m paid now to think and write and be creative as much as I can and so while the whole day is still structured, it is much less so in the moment.  It’s definitely cool and makes me want to figure out how I could achieve even more balance between my work like and writing life.  Do you have any suggestions?

P.S.: Heh, wish I did.  I’m unemployed and about three seconds from being homeless so unfortunately I don’t have any suggestions, sorry.  What I do have is the prize for our readers who guessed correctly about your lie, secret, and little known fact!  So if you’d please do the honors…

B.T.: Thank you any way, I know you would help if you could.  And now some answers:

(1)     I once wrote Parker Stevenson a fan letter and asked him his advice on how one goes about becoming an actor.  I sent it to Teen Beat where he had a column during the 70’s. Like I said, he never responded.

Quite true.  Quite wrong, but true.

(2)     I auditioned for the role of the son in The Shining.  They told me I didn’t seem creepy enough, something a number of women I dated in high school would later strongly disagree with.

A blatant lie, this was a friend of mine.  That said the women I went to high school with were not as into the whole Wiccan thing as Parker Stevenson led me to believe.

(3)    When I was kid my parents would leave my brother and I at movie theaters to watch movies two even three times in a row. Between showings I would eat the popcorn that people left behind and to this day I have an intense craving for stale popcorn every time I watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

This is a little known fact.  Well, it was.  That said, sharing it with the world has been cleansing for me, so thank you for that.

And thank you for doing this as well, it was a lot of fun.

P.S.: Thank you, Ben.  This sure was fun, much more so than the mind-numbing excuses for interviews I usually do on my self.  You’re not only a great writer but a great person and I encourage everyone reading this to order themselves a copy of  Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine on sale for $10 through Orange Alert Press at: http://www.orangealert.bigcartel.com/product/most-likely-you-go-your-way-and-ill-go-mine-by-ben-tanzer.
And now, the moment of truth.  I’m using the honor system here so anyone who incorrectly guessed Ben’s answers regarding his lie, secret and little known fact, please stop reading this.
Okay, now that it’s just us, here is the prize as described in my third question.  I offer you the wisdom of my 39 years on this planet.  I do apologize for not being able to offer you more, but the limitations of text on a computer screen are vast, and true wisdom is pretty hard to come by.  So here it is…
1. Floss.  Yeah it’s boring, slightly irritating, and totally unglamorous, but when you’re old and still have your teeth you will be able to attract far better looking specimens of our species.
2. Drink plenty of water.  Come on, do I even have to mention this?  87.9% of the world population is dehydrated to some degree at any given moment.
3. Don’t be afraid of your emotions.  Being totally cerebral is really in vogue right now, but deep in your heart you know thinking isn’t living.  Pain does suck, but it also leaves you open to feel pleasure.
4. Try to love everyone.

Ben Tanzer: This Blog Will Change Your Life