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Thursday Thirteen: 13 Questions for Christopher Allen!

13/9/2012

22 Comments

 
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Four years ago, while I workshopped the original short-story form of Ask Me if I'm Happy on a writing site called URBIS, I read some excerpts from Christopher Allen. We got to be online friends after I rated the excerpts and shared my thoughts on them, and soon we were chatting about things other than books or writing. I thought he was funny and definitely talented - ask other folks, they'll tell you the same! - and I expected to see more of his URBIS project soon.

Well, it took a little longer than expected - these things often do - but now the big day has come! So please, allow me to share with you:

Thursday Thirteen: 
13 Questions for Christopher Allen!

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1) What one thing would you want readers to know about you?

That I mean them no harm. I want them to laugh until their bellies jiggle. I want their tear ducts to be cleansed through uproarious giggling fits.

2) Is there a genre you'd like to write in, but haven't tried? If so, why not?

I’ve written in just about every genre out there except western. Is that still what they call it? I remember reading several western mysteries as a teenager, and I liked them very much. I wouldn’t want to write a western, though. Although I have dabbled in science fiction, I’ve never finished a story. Definitely science fiction. Something like Stargate. Big fan.

3) Your previous stories have often had a contemplative or bittersweet quality to them. The new book seems to be a departure from that. Was there a reason for this?

I think contemplative and crazy are just two parts of me that come out at different times. Conversations with S. Teri O’Type has been a wild book to write, and I hope it will be just as wild to read. It’s humor and parody and most of all satire. Nothing here is serious except everything.

4) How much of your real life informs your writing?

My inner life—my worries and my dreams—informs my writing a great deal, but if you mean my day-to-day life of teaching and mowing the lawn and making dinner, etc. I try to keep that separate. There are times that certain situations will spark an idea for a story. The oak in the backyard keeps giving me stories. Then the hedge gave me one. I should spend more time out there.

5) Where have you been published previously?

Most of my work has been published at literary ezines, most recently at SmokeLong Quarterly. Others include A-Minor Magazine, Blue Five Notebook Series, Gone Lawn, Referential Magazine, Every Day Fiction, The Legendary, Pure Slush and Metazen (where I’m an editor). I’ve had non-fiction published at Connotation Press and BootsnAll Travel, and several of my creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul (print, mass market). I’ve also been very fortunate to have landed in cool short story/flash collections like Flash Fiction Fridays and STRIPPED, a collection of anonymous flash fiction.

6) You live in Europe but you're from the US. Does being an expat affect your writing style?

It certainly does, I’m just not sure how. I wish I could go back and forth between parallel universes and see Christopher Allen in Nashville vs. Christopher Allen in Munich. I’m sure I’ve become a different person, so of course my writing style has developed differently. Maybe this is the science fiction novel I’ll end up writing. Or not. I am certainly more secluded her than I would have been if I’d stayed in Nashville. Seclusion is good for writing.

7) What is your typical writing workday like?

I wake up at around 6a.m. I used to get up at 5a.m. but I’ve trained my body to lie there and suck it up for another hour. I turn on my computer and let the old bag boot while I make coffee. I check my e-mails, I check facebook, I check my blog, I sip my coffee, I check Twitter. I chat with people in the US who’ve not gone to bed yet. I sip my coffee. I notice the piles of reminders on my desk. Here are the ones I’m looking at today. March AWP! Indie Author News! Check SmokeLong! Message classes about tomorrow!! Gay Book Club NYC!!! Edit “Furniture”! My notes tend to scream at me. I start checking off the things on the list, which is much longer than this. I haven’t listed the names of people I’m working with on interviews and such. I take a nap because my shoulder is hurting. You get the picture. I should be writing, but I’ve just come back from vacuuming the kitchen.

8) Which writers have influenced/inspired you?

I love writers like Chuck Palahnuik and Daniel Handler and Lucy Ellmann and Julie Innis. One of my favorite writers is Jincy Willett. I love all these people for their sharp wit and exciting prose. I want to be all of them when I get taller. I’ve never lost hope.

9) Do you have a "target audience"?

All people on planet Earth would be nice. Doing the math, I think that would make me the richest man on planet Earth. But let’s say that doesn’t happen. I would hope that people—not just gay men—who love humor and stories that break away from the mold just a bit would love, or at least read, or at least buy, Conversations with S. Teri O’Type. The cover is very pretty, so it would look great on coffeetables and bathroom shelves. It is a story about a man in his mid-forties who has never learned how to be gay, so . . . um . . . I see this is the next question. Moving right along . . .

10) What is this book about?

So Curt, a dysfagtional man in his mid-forties, enlists the help of a self-proclaimed “gayru” to help him get gay. It’s a farcical jaunt down the Road to Greater Gayness, an absurd tale, a train wreck of sorts between a guy who thinks he knows nothing and a monster who thinks he knows everything.  

11) When did you first get the idea for this particular book?

I wrote the first Conversation on an online workshop in 2008 I believe. Fifteen of the 30 Conversations were born in the online workshop, but the story actually took shape much later. It has been a long process. Deciding what Curt, the narrator, really wants came much later than 2008.

12) Was this book inspired by anyone in your life?

It’s funny you ask that. My partner, who read half of the book on a plane last week, thinks he’s Curt. And maybe there are aspects of Curt in him. I remember once when we were living in London in 1998, he hung all the pictures in the living room very very close to the ceiling. I was shocked, and we had a “little” argument about it. Everyone knows pictures are supposed to be hung at eye-level, don’t they? This may have been the first time I thought, Hmmm not all gay men can hang a picture. And this might have been the germ for the book. Other than that one moment, Teri and Curt represent an elephant-in-the-room dialogic among gay men: To Be or Not to Beyoncè—which became one of the later Conversations.

13) You really are adorable, aren't you?  (readers of Christopher's I Must Be Off blog will get that one...)

Yes! I really really am adorable. It’s true. Some people don’t believe it, but when they meet me in person, they often pinch my fat little cheeks. Just don’t shove past me in a bar. 

If you'd like to purchase Christopher's book, click on the cover above or go to any Amazon site, worldwide!
Christopher Allen is the author of the adult cartoon satire Conversations with S. Teri O'Type. In 2011, Allen was a finalist at Glimmer Train and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He blogs at www.imustbeoff.com.
22 Comments

Wow! It's Write On Wednesday!

8/2/2012

1 Comment

 
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Here's what I'm sharing for this week's
Write on Wednesday Blog Hop
which is hosted by the lovely and talented Suzannah Burke.



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Teaser One:
Let the Right One In
by John Ajvide Lindqvist

BLURB:
Oskar and Eli.  In very different ways, they were both victims.  Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. 

And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself.

Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge.  He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he’s frightened.

Eli is the young girl who moves in next door.  She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day.  She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood.

Excerpt/Opening Paragraph:

Blackeberg.

It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. "A respectable life." You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.


Purchase Let the Right One In by clicking on the image above.


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Teaser Two:
Ask Me if I'm Happy
by Kimberly Menozzi


BLURB:
Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest ones to ask.

Emily Miller is forced to spend a day in Bologna when she'd rather be catching her flight to the US. Determined to put ten years in Italy and her marriage behind her, she wants to have nothing to do with anything - or anyone - Italian ever again.

For Davide Magnani, chivalry isn't yet dead. He accompanies Emily to Milan, if only to reassure himself of her safe arrival. The following morning, he's stunned to realize he's fallen in love with someone he's only known for twenty-four hours - and it seems that she feels the same way.

One year later, Emily and Davide reunite. As their relationship strengthens, unforeseen events reveal deeper, troubling connections all around, which drive Emily away from the first man she's ever really trusted. Can she forgive the lies she's been told, or the truths which have been hidden from her? And how can Davide prove to her, once and for all, that Italy is precisely where she needs to be?

Excerpt:

When he turned, he saw her watching and his smile lit up his face again. His eyes met hers fully and she looked away, her cheeks tingling as she turned to the window and the countryside emerging in the growing daylight beyond it.

In spite of herself, her eyes shifted to follow him yet again when he stepped away from the row with the broken window.

His hair had been tousled by the wind, and upon settling back in his seat he ran one hand cautiously over it, taming any wild, out-of-place waves. His dark eyes behind the oval frames of his glasses flicked in her direction before he turned toward his own window. She thought it was clear that he was trying not to be obvious about watching her.

Purchase Ask Me if I'm Happy by clicking on the image above.


1 Comment

WOW! Write On Wednesdays Blog Hop Post

1/2/2012

1 Comment

 

It's Write On Wednesday!

Here's what I'm sharing for this week's
Write on Wednesday Blog Hop

which is hosted by the lovely and talented Suzannah Burke.


First, the blurb and a teaser from the first page of the book
I'm currently reading, which is
Stephen King's 11.22.63
(available at Amazon, of course, or just about anywhere else you can think of.)


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_Blurb:

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.


Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.


_Teaser from Chapter One:

I have never been what you'd call a crying man.

My ex-wife said that my 'nonexistent emotional gradient' was the main reason she was leaving me (as if the guy she met in her AA meetings was beside the point). Christy said she supposed she could forgive me not crying at her father's funeral; I had only known him for six years and couldn't understand what a wonderful, giving man he had been (a Mustang convertible as a high school graduation present, for instance). But then, when I didn't cry at my own parents' funerals -- they died just two years apart, Dad of stomach cancer and Mom of a thunderclap heart attack while walking on a Florida beach -- she began to understand the nonexistent gradient thing. I 'was unable to feel my feelings,' in AA-speak.

'I have never seen you shed tears,' she said, speaking in the flat tones people use when they are expressing the absolute final deal-breaker in a relationship. 'Even when you told me I had to go to rehab or you were leaving.' This conversation happened about six weeks before she packed her things, drove them across town, and moved in with Mel Thompson. 'Boy meets girl on the AA campus' -- that's another saying they have in those meetings.


And here are the blurb and a teaser from Chapter Fourteen of
my own novel, Ask Me if I'm Happy,
which is also available on Amazon worldwide as well as
many other online retailers,
in ebook and paperback.

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_Blurb:

Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest ones to ask.

Emily Miller is forced to spend a day in Bologna when she'd rather be catching her flight to the US. Determined to put ten years in Italy and her marriage behind her, she wants to have nothing to do with anything - or anyone - Italian ever again.

For Davide Magnani, chivalry isn't yet dead. He accompanies Emily to Milan, if only to reassure himself of her safe arrival. The following morning, he's stunned to realize he's fallen in love with someone he's only known for twenty-four hours - and it seems that she feels the same way.

One year later, Emily and Davide reunite. As their relationship strengthens, unforeseen events reveal deeper, troubling connections all around, which drive Emily away from the first man she's ever really trusted. Can she forgive the lies she's been told, or the truths which have been hidden from her? And how can Davide prove to her, once and for all, that Italy is precisely where she needs to be?

_ 

_Teaser from Chapter Fourteen:

Neither of them spoke while they rose to the fourth floor. The only sound was the quiet hum of the elevator itself. When the doors slid open at her floor, Davide’s heart sank.

This is it. This is where we say goodnight—and goodbye.

He followed her to her room, the suitcase in his hand seeming to grow heavier with every step, until he considered setting it on the hallway carpet to take a rest. Before he knew it, however, she was moving to slide her keycard and open her door.

With wonder, he watched her miss the slot. Her hands were shaking hard enough for him to see and she took a deep breath before trying again. This time the keycard slid home and the small green light blinked, a soft click signaling that the door was unlocked.



1 Comment

WOW! Write On Wednesdays Blog Hop Post

14/12/2011

1 Comment

 
Here's what I'm sharing for this week's
Write On Wednesday Blog Hop

First, my book teaser from Ask Me if I'm Happy:

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_"Just a minute," she said, then came out of the bathroom clad in flannel pajamas, her familiar, shy grin on her face. "See? Nothing too revealing."

His eyes narrowed, trying to make out the pattern. He reached for his glasses before remembering he‘d left them downstairs in his coat. "Che cos‘è? What is that?"

"They‘re penguins," she said cheerfully. "Penguins holding martinis."

He arched an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes.

"It‘s cute, Davide. Penguins don‘t drink cocktails."



Teaser for the book I'm currently reading -
Inside the Peloton by Nicolas Roche:


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_As well as playing football and rugby, I continued to race and, as an under-fourteen, was selected for Ireland the first time. I had been picked alongside Páidí O'Brien, Stephen Adair and Michael Concannon for the Manchester Youth Tour in England. Although I didn't do anything in the race itself, riding for Ireland was all new to me and very exciting at the time. We were up at 5 a.m. to get the bus to Dun Laoghaire to catch the ferry. We got off the boat about nine and headed straight for McDonald's. It was like a school trip with bikes.

1 Comment

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    Kimberly Menozzi

    Author. Happily Married. Survivor of life with two deranged kitties.

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