Thanks to Charles Dodd White for the interview with me on his site. His blog is described as promoting the literature of the New South, which doesn’t quite describe me. I’m New York born, Los Angeles raised, and live in L.A., but the bulk of the research and the early writing for this novel was done in Wilmington, North Carolina. It’s even referenced in the book – the writer talks about moving to Willamette, South Carolina (doesn’t exist, so far as I know) and beginning work on a book. The introduction to the novel is pretty accurate about what my life was like in North Carolina. Post 9-11, I moved there with my then girlfriend and we conceived our child. Me, having terror dreams about planes crashing almost nightly – a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing 9-11 while living in downtown NYC. For the years we lived in North Carolina, I basically lived at the New Hanover Public Library, reading every book they had on fringe/freak ideas, ordering some others from far-off libraries. I was obsessed. Check out the interview for more about that period of my life.
I also mention how I’m starting at a loss:
Not only am I writing about fringe subjects that people don’t take seriously, I’m using a publishing platform that people don’t always take seriously.
Which is sort of the point: using a fringle platform to write about fringe ideas. I want to get these ideas out there – I think they’re important – even if it means having to give it away. Then again, if I was published by a Big Publisher, it would be much easier to unload books. I wonder, though, if I would feel the same kind of freedom with the music I’m recording if I was accountable to a mainstream publisher.
While I’m here, here’s a piece from me about the self-publishing movement I wrote recently for 3:AM Magazine.
Related Posts