#augustofstuff

You reside in New York and grew up in Jersey, correct? How do you think your locale plays into the themes and imagery of your writing? Does it affect your writing in other ways?

Yeah, the east coast definitely plays into my writing. I love New Jersey, the suburbs near the ocean especially (that's where I'm from). I work union construction in NJ too even though I live in NYC. I meet so many interesting characters while doing my work in NJ at powerplants and refineries. NYC is full of the craziest assortment of peeps. I get a real kick out of the vast assortment of weirdos I meet. 

What's the last book you read?

I read Lindsey Thomas' Blind Date at the Glass Eye Disco while doing layout on the interior for Kleft Jaw Press and I loved it. Funny stuff,

wonderful stuff. 

Right before that, I read Swamplandia! That was a real good book, too. 

Can you tell us about UNO KUDO?

Uno Kudo is an art meets lit, full color glossy book  that I edit with Aaron Dietz to raise money for charities (the last book raised some cash for PEN INTERNATIONAL). The writing is paired with exceptional artwork gathered by Erin McParland. Generally it's a once a year affair, and we do a couple big readings to celebrate in New York City and Los Angeles. I'm pretty excited because Uno Kudo 3 is about to drop and this time out it will be available as a print publication and as a ebook for all devices. So, look for that. 

You've been involved with a few other small presses, like Kleft Jaw and now Piscataway House. How did you find them and become involved with them?

Kleft Jaw is a major interest of mine. I do book layout and digital design for their releases. I've also been reading and help to select the poems and short stories that make it into the pub. Frankie Metro and Dustin Holland run things over there and do a real bang up job. I'm also involved with Red Fez as an editor and Jmww as an editor. I do all this editing because I am very eager to improve my own writing, the best way I've found, is to do a lot of writing and communicate with a lot of editors. It's a very eye opening experience. You get to see what works and what doesn't for a lot of people behind the scenes and you can apply as much or as little of that to your own work. 

I'm not involved with Piscataway House, they're publishing a novel of mine, Tollbooth. 

And, to clarify-- I noted that you were 'involved with' Piscataway House when I meant 'published by.' My question is, how do you find small presses like Piscataway to publish your work? Did an agent find them for you, or through your own research, or through the connections and networking that are so vital to writers? 

Oh! That's a great question. I found Piscataway House in a very unconventional manner, the short answer is networking ... Talking to a lot of different writers, paying attention to who gets what published where, following links ... going to readings and events to check things out (Brooklyn Book Fair, AWP, that kind of thing). The long version of that answer goes likes this: I was in a noise band back in 2001, and the drummer and bass player were both incredible musicians and had their hearts set on us all relocating from New Jersey to Los Angeles because that seemed like a better place for a band to live, and try to get picked up by a label, plus ... come on, it's California. 

  The band was playing a show at a bar in NJ, near the ocean called the Brighton, after the show, I said goodbye to my drummer, helped him pack his stuff in his car and then he drove off to go to a party that I wasn't sure if I was gonna go to. I went back in the bar to use the toilet before leaving and I found that the bowl was packed solid with photocopies booklets. I mean, jam packed. I went to the bartender, mentioned the toilet and she said, "Oh god! They did that again!"

  She said it was a local writing 'zine called the Idiom. The publisher of the Idiom dropped off about a hundred copies of it every month and the bar gave them out for free to customers who waned one. Some of the drunks thought it was funny to piss on them and stuff ... The bartender gave me a copy of the Idiom, I went and pissed in the alley. That was the end of the night. The next day, I got woken up by a very fucked up phone call. My drummer had overdosed in his sleep. I was very screwed up by all that. The funeral was one of the worst days of my life. But, a few weeks later, I remember looking through the Idiom and reading some of the writing and, I guess because I'd decided to not play music any longer ... I wrote a poem about the time my local video store burnt down to the ground and I got out of a bunch of Super Nintendo late fees, and when I send it to the Idiom, they accepted it and sent me $75 in the mail, 'cause I'd won some kind of writing contest that they were having and didn't even know about it. So, that right there got me hooked with writing and submitting and as the years went on, the Idiom still comes out and they still give it out for free and over the last couple years, they've started putting out books under Piscataway House. So, yeah, that's the long answer. 

Man, that's some heavy stuff. Speaking of other artists of various mediums... How much interaction do you have with other authors? How do you meet them?

I have a lot of interaction with authors, editors, small press publishers. Living in NYC, pretty much weekly I get the chance to hang with writers and editors who I really admire. Going to readings, doing a reading offers a lot of opportunity to meet and learn from those peeps. My advice to somebody who wants to learn how to write well, take every opportunity to meet people who do what you want to. Networking is no joke and its fun because everybody likes alcohol.  

So, your latest novel TOLLBOOTH is about to be released by Piscataway House. Can you tell us a little about the novel?

It's some pretty twisted literary fiction told from the first person point of view. Here's the synopsis:

"Jimmy Saare works in a tollbooth on the NJ Parkway handing out change of a dollar. He's had a mental snap that has set him away from his pregnant wife, Sarah, and is drawing him towards the 19-year old Gena who leans seductively against the Officetown copy machine. As Jimmy acts on his desires for Gena he is unexpectedly drawn deeper into the strange manipulations of an anarchistic teenager, Kid With Clownhead who wants to start his own destructive cult when he grows up."

I think it's a pretty funny book too though, at least that's what reviewers tell me, so I think the humor kind of saves some of the despicable aspects of the book. But, who knows. 

  What's the scariest part of publishing a book?

It's putting something out and knowing how much work went into it and saying "this is done". Also, there are always errors, small grammar slips and errors, even when the thing is professionally copy edited (I've seen typos in the New York Times and Penguin's books). A person putting a book out, has to accept those errors and just say, "that's life".

You're doing something pretty unique with serializing TOLLBOOTH on your blog, making it free to readers. Can you tell us about your motivation behind that?

I love giving away as much stuff as I can for free. I'm a real bad salesman. I mean, I do readings sometimes and just give books away for free. I love serialized material, for instance, current TV shows like Breaking Bad really make me interested in the idea of serialization. I thought Tollbooth would be an excellent title to split up into digital snippets, chapter by chapter and post online. 

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Have fun with it. Don't become a miserable fuck about things. Also, a lot of it, ya know, is all about actually completing projects instead of starting a project and never wrapping it up. I make time for things but don't let it interfere with my personal life by doing most of my writing on my phone typing with my thumbs on my coffee breaks and lunch breaks. That's about 45 minutes a day, that's all you need, and I write a little bit more at work after my shift is over until traffic dies down. Why would I wanna sit in traffic in exchange for that time?

Aspiring writers should make some efforts to learn what the general rules of writing are and then, at all costs do their own thing and put creativity first and leave the soulless drudgery of what is right and wrong to somebody else. 

Are there any questions I haven't asked that you wish I had? 

What are you currently working on?

I have a book of short stories coming out in December from Kleft Jaw called Lightning Box, so I'm working with editors there to tune the book up correctly. They're all linked short stories, with characters and events and themes running through, so it's kind of closer to a novel than a short story collection. That book will be a little different because the stories all kind of "magical realism" ya know, like--anything can happen, that kind of thing. HBO's Amazing Stories, the Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury meets Bukowski, that kinda thing, I think. 

I'm also writing a book called Teenager, which is two interconnected novellas I'm from Electric Peak, and Teal Cartwheels. Each novella tells a different version of the same story. A kid kills his girlfriend's parents because they've forced her to have an abortion and the teenagers go on the run through America. The first novella is his version, the second novella is her version. It's that classic American Bonnie and Clyde thing, that Natural Born Killers thing, but these two aren't psychos, and maybe things are just slipping away from them and they're trying to keep their love affair going as long as they can despite all that's closing in. 

I'm also shopping around a novel called F-250, which is about a guy growing up in NJ, working for himself as a stone mason, and playing in band, who falls into a three way relationship with two girls June Doom and K Neon right as his drummer overdoses. They all travel up to Mount Mercy to build a tomb for the drummer and things get even farther out of hand. 

So, yeah. Those things. I'm trying to stay busy and I've been lucky to make some great friends along the way who have helped out in unexpected ways. 

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