Four Books I Was Born to Write

Q: I haven't bought your book yet but I read the Times review. That was a great review and I hope it helps with sales! Your blogs are very interesting. I will not ask you whether you are left or right because I read in one of your older posts that you do not discuss sex, religion, or politics with strangers. Can I ask what book you're working on now?

A: Thanks for your support. Let's see . . . I am working on a couple of things right now: a short story collection about serial killers; and an insider's novel about the car sales business.

All or Nothing is an important novel for me because it represents one of the Four books I Was Born to Write: the daddy book; the car salesman book; the church book; and the gambling book.

So I wrote the gambling book. That one is out of the way.

I'm working on the car salesman book now. I'm not going to make too many friends with that book. I'll make it humorous so maybe they don't kill me.

I wrote the church book, sort of, with Churchboys and Other Sinners, a collection of stories--but I am on the verge of completing the church NOVEL, The Faithful.

The daddy book--that one I can't write just yet. I'll write that one when I grow up.

Las Vegas Noir

Q: I just read your amazing story "Crip" in Las Vegas Noir and now I am ordering your novel All or Nothing at Amazon! What a great story! It is monstrous and beautiful at the same time and some of the lines in it are so true. How do you go about writing stories? Where does your creativity come from? Tell me how you wrote that story. Is it based on a true story? It seems so real.

A: Okay, "Crip," hmmm. . . well, that story was written shortly after my mother passed away last year. I got the call for the story while she was sick and started working on it while we were making funeral arrangements and going through that whole process. But I was in too much pain, and so I called the editor and asked for an extension because of the circumstances.

What I was trying to do was write a story about a little boy who witnesses brutality and is badly scarred internally and externally by it, but the narrative voice in my head after my mother's passing was rather dark, due to my depression--too dark to tell a child's story. So I made the child grow up, and he became Crip, the Mustard Man, and the voice worked better now. I wanted him to live in his adult present, but be haunted by the childhood of brutality, and I wanted that haunting memory to help him somehow, or help somebody, in his present. I am a gambler and I know a lot about gambling, so I know of the suffering children of gamblers go through--so here came the innocent little girl and her weak (gambler) father. After that, the story just flowed out--I had the voice, I had the characters, I had the setting--like that.

What I like best about that story is the ending. The ending was done in honor of my mother, a woman who loved stories with a sad, but heroic ending followed by a denouement, or a moral, that put a little sunshine back in.

Thanks,

Preston

Like a Rush Without the Risk

Q: I read your book a few months ago and really enjoyed it, but now I see you have a New York Times review. You should be very proud. Your book is great. Reading your book is like getting all the rush of gambling without having to lose any money. I can relate to almost everything in it. I am a gambler and have gambled in the Florida casinos, though now I live overseas (military). I think I remember you from the casinos. My name is ___ . I am Haitian, very tall, and have a shaven head. I was a school teacher for a while and I think we talked about that a few times? Your photograph looks very familiar and some of the adventures in the book are very familiar. Do you remember the tall transvestite M_____ who used to gamble there all the time? She was a trip. How come you did not use her in the book? I read an episode you wrote about her or someone very similar to her on another website. The website is asili and the story was called "Pretty Birdy". It was a great gambling story, why didn't you use it in the book?

A: No, I cannot say that I remember you. I'm scratching my head thinking, but your name and description do not ring a bell. Sorry. But I do remember M____! I believe that she was a transsexual, not a transvestite--though I have no hard proof. The story you are talking about was only loosely based on her, and I did not use it in the book because my editor and I decided that it did not fit the book's overall direction. There were many such episodes that had to be cut, a few of which were published elsewhere.

I like what you said about the book. "All the rush of gambling without having to lose any money."

Why don't you write me a review on Amazon?

Thanks,

Preston