What inspires you to write?
These days, I’m inspired by free time. As you approach (and maybe even surpass) middle age, you start to realize how precious that time really is, and you want to find the most creative and pleasurable ways to fill it that actually remind you that you’re alive. I’ve spent enough time being passive and excessive in my misspent youth, and it’s easier to write with a lifetime of experiences under my belt, and no pretentious notions about doing this for posterity, wealth or fame. Writing is and should be fun. Not “man, this is easy” fun, but the pleasure that comes with working your ass off to do the best job you can while also recognizing that you get to spend your time in a world of your own making playing god for awhile.
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
When I’m not writing, I’m frequently wishing I was. Of course, when I AM writing, I frequently look for any reason not to be, and having the internet piped through the typewriter might be the best/worst thing to ever happen to writers. Mostly, I like to spend time with my wife and kid, friends, being spontaneous but not exhaustively so. I used to write and perform sketch comedy and much as I loved it, I aged out of the bracket enough that it started to seem like an unseemly unpaid hobby. Middle-aged sketch comics should be well-paid with way more TV and film credits than I have. I love movies, comics, reading, all the usual stuff that us pasty genre-writer-types are into. Also, sleep. Sleep is terrific. Never get enough of the stuff.
What is your favorite book of all time & why?
Wow, that’s a tough question to answer without changing my mind and my answer halfway through. I love Hunter Thompson’s “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” for the wild thrills it gave me as a teen, the balls-out fearlessness in both prose and narrative that made me feel like I did when I heard punk rock for the first time. I love Don Delillo’s “White Noise” for showing me that you could be a grown-up writing literary fiction and still have a crazy science-fiction brain. I love Philip K. Dick’s “Valis” and “A Scanner Darkly” for being batshit scifi of the mind that felt like it was happening next door and to people I knew. I love Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” for making me believe that his weird heroes had long histories and adventures sprawling out behind them that were better hinted at than known. I love Brubaker’s “Captain America” run for reminding me that comics could be grown-up and fun. And I owe a huge debt to Austin Grossman’s “Soon I Will Be Invincible” for waking me up to the idea of the growing genre I’m currently working in, superhero fiction, or as some call it “capepunk.”
Are you writing more books? If so, what is your next release?
I am on the verge of releasing “The Eternity Conundrum,” a short prequel to my novella “The Villain’s Sidekick” that will go up for FREE on Amazon very shortly. The full-length sequel, “Citizen Skin,” should be finished by the end of this year and out early 2015 (free time willing).
Tell your readers something about you that they might not know yet.
I am so totally an Aquarius who does not believe in astrology.
