K. A. Laity is the award-winning author of Owl Stretching, Unquiet Dreams, The Claddagh Icon, Chastity Flame, Pelzmantel and Other Medieval Tales of Magic and Unikirja, a collection of short stories and a play based on the Kalevala, Kanteletar, and other Finnish myths and legend, for which she won the 2005 Eureka Short Story Fellowship as well as a 2006 Finlandia Foundation grant. With cartoonist Elena Steier she created the occult detective comic Jane Quiet. Her bibliography is chock full of short stories, humor pieces, plays and essays, both scholarly and popular. She spent the 2011-2012 academic year in Galway, Ireland where she was a Fulbright Fellow in digital humanities at NUIG. Dr. Laity has written on popular culture and social media for Ms., The Spectator and BitchBuzz, and teaches medieval literature, film, gender studies, New Media and popular culture at the College of Saint Rose. She divides her time between upstate New York and Dundee.
She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about John Donne and Kierkegaard.

John Donne’s poetry spans sensuality and lapsed Catholicism, do you think the dialectic between the two tells us anything about the man?

Oh, just like a pro, you go right to my weak spot! I love Donne. And what a career in contrasts! You’d never think the young hedonist would change so. The sneering cynicism of the poet of “Song” who thinks it easier to catch a falling star or find where the mermaids sing than to find a woman who could be true. He’s the master manipulator of “The Flea” who uses the insect to seduce a woman, refolding the metaphor as if it were origami. The smug seducer of “Elegy XIX” doesn’t hide his triumph as his lover strips, claiming each part of her as it’s revealed, crowning it with that conqueror’s cry, “Oh, my America, my new found land.” Of course all cynics are just disappointed romantics and when he meets Anne he is “undone” in so many ways: not just being thrown in jail and giving up his political career. I’m not sure there’s a more beautiful poem of lovers parting than “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Donne assures her they can no more be parted than the twin legs of a drawing compass and the further he has to go from her, the more she pulls him back to the center. He’s devastated by her death. His sudden surge of faith—although raised by Jesuits he had been required to join the Anglican church in order to secure a position—seemed to have much more with yearning toward death and reunion with Anne. For his final monument, he posed in a shroud, ready for the grave. He couldn’t really wait for that bell to toll for him. An exquisite wordsmith.

What do you think Kierkegaard would make of the present obsession with genre?

Is this a three stages of life question? Because I’ve never left the first one, which I think he considered shallow and inadequate. Everything is possible, I laugh at accidents, I mix fiction with truth and dare anyone to figure out which is which. Sørre, as all his pals called him, was a twitchy sort and came down on that big Either/Or decision with a lot of certainty, so he’s see those of us who want to blur boundaries between genres as somewhat overly aesthetic and immature, but then again he could never relax enough to really enjoy life so I think modern medicine would mellow him considerably so he’d come around to a more inclusive view of genre. Then again, he did write “Once you label me, you negate me,” so I owe him for swiping that.

If you could give advice to yourself as a younger woman what would you say?

Your family doctor is an ass. Don’t let him fob you off with ‘your changing body’ pamphlets. Make your parents take you to an endocrinologist. You have serious thyroid problems. Get out of your home town even sooner. Don’t try to impress anyone; just write the stuff you want to write and FFS send it out, get used to rejection and get *better* at it. Oh and when you go to London that first time, don’t leave. But stay away from drummers — seriously, they’re trouble.

The public talks about violence today. Do you think reading Hrafnkels Saga would be educational to them?

There’s no violence like the classics. Hrafnkel, the man who went from violent fanatic to peaceful atheist. Hmm. When people talk about violence, my mind always returns to poet/adventurer/viking Egil Skallagrimsson who had a head hard enough to withstand the blows of a sword, could out drink (and then subsequently, outvomit) any man who ever lived as the infamous drinking contest story in his saga demonstrates. You have to be hard core to vomit down the throat of another man just to make him vomit even more. His dad Grim and granddad Kveldulf (evening wolf) were rumoured to be shape shifters and when you pressed one of his victims for a descriptive word about the assault, they were inclined to say “wolfish” of course. And he wrote immortal poetry. Enough with your hard case street thug. Egil would have finished him off without breaking a sweat, wrote a poem about it, defeated Queen Gunnhild’s magic (again) with some runes of his own, and then took off plundering.

A real man from the tenth century; they dug up his bones (http://www.viking.ucla.edu/Scientific_American/Egils_Bones.htm). I’ve been to his farm. Nice place.

Tell us about your novel.

I’ve a bit of an embarrassment of riches at the moment. I’ve got a “Shamans vs Aliens” novel out from Immanion Press called OWL STRETCHING. My dark story collection UNQUIET DREAMS is out from Tirgearr Publishing. Stories run the gamut from crime to spec fic — with a zombie western thrown in, too — it’s got something for everyone. I’m also wrapping up the first draft of a new supernatural crime novel WHITE RABBIT. It’s got fake psychics, designer drugs, a murdered socialite and a weird would-be religious cult. Sort of Philip Marlowe in Blue Sunshine in a way; the PI is an ex cop, James “Jawbone” Draygo who’s fallen on hard times. Noirish black humour. And later this month will see the slithering release from Fox Spirit Books of WEIRD NOIR, which features one of your stories, as well as folks like Paul D. Brazill, Andrez Bergen and Joyce Chng. And the first volume of my sexy thriller trilogy is out now, CHASTITY FLAME — as you might guess, she’s a sort of female James Bond and has a lot of sexual escapades between doing her best to try to save the European economy from a nasty computer virus. The second volume, LUSH SITUATION, comes out in January. I’ve got stories in OFF THE RECORD 2: AT THE MOVIES and coming up soon at SHOTGUN HONEY. It keeps me off the streets.

Who are your literary influences?

Who isn’t? Okay, Dan Brown isn’t, but so many others are. I got early into nonsense so there’s a wide streak of Lewis Carroll running through all I do and a good bit of Edward Lear as well. They prepared me well for more adult humour like Dorothy Parker, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and PG Wodehouse. The funnier stuff ends up going out under the Kit Marlowe name (like my comic Gothic novel The Mangrove Legacy) but I think it’s safe to say there’s humour in almost everything I write, though often it’s more dark, Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson and even Lester Bangs. Comedians like Peter Cook and Spike Milligan taught me so much about timing (and sometime I’ll get around to the non-fic book on the Gothic in Cook’s work). Crime writing I’m still kind of under the shadow of the masters like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and the always fascinating Patricia Highsmith. A lot of darkness and horror came out of Poe at an early age, Shirley Jackson expanding that and Ramsey Campbell and Clive Barker giving the old one-two Liverpool punch. Literary classics like Beowulf, Chaucer, Behn, Austin, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot opened up my head in the best possible way and I can’t begin to say how much Jorge Luis Borges did for the natural surrealism in my head. And I’d probably give a slightly different list tomorrow. There’s just so many giants out there.

What do you think Aphra would have said to Cervantes?

I think she would have said, “When a man looks to the past for happiness it will always elude him, and while we all have a tendency to tilt at windmills, you have to live in the here and now to truly enjoy life. But I wish I had made better use of my prison time as a writing retreat. Well done you.”

How important is transgression in fiction in terms of its cultural evolution?

I think it’s always important to transgress the perceived boundaries and received wisdom and every era has its own kind of transgressions. The pity is that too often ‘transgressive’ is just a lazy impulse to épater le bourgeois. Any snotty teen can shock somebody’s parents and the desperate attempts at ultraviolence that fueled some of the explorations into the worst of the so-called ‘torture porn’ were just that juvenile. Why use a sledgehammer when a stiletto wil do the trick? With the global world now a tweet away, it’s easy to find that taboos vary regionally and sometimes what you thought oh so transgressive is tame to folks in other places. The real transgression in fiction is innovations that aren’t just empty gestures of style, but come with a compelling narrative that changes forever the art of storytelling. And sometimes they have to be repeated: you have to have Naked Fire before people will accept Infinite Jest (if they do). True transgression keeps the wonder of fiction fresh: but not every story has to be transgressive. We will never lose our thirst for a good tale well told — or even a good tale badly told. This best seller lists are chock full of examples. Keep readers turning pages and they won’t care if you’re transgressing the rules of form—or even if you write well. Despite all our innovations, we’re still telling stories around the campfire.

“You know what date is on this coin?”
What do you make of Anton Chigurh’s philosophy in No Country For Old Men?

Ah, the mystic destiny of the awe-ful avenging god! What a great character. What would be in less sure hands a mindless killing machine becomes a man who creates the whole universe over with himself at the centre and a ritual invoking the arbitrary (and to his way of thinking, completely fair and objective) decision of fate to run it all. His philosophy expands just as far as it needs to do: the coin has spent what is it? 22 years? traveling hither and yon, just to be present at that moment and offer the illusion of choice. The shopkeeper, too, is just there to demonstrate Chigurh’s power and ironic ‘mercy’ because he isn’t just some crazy killer, oh no. He’s impressing order on a disordered universe. In the same way Sheriff Bell tries to impose order on the chaos around him to assuage the guilt of his failures. We need our illusions to build a sense of purpose. Chigurh makes himself the centre of that purpose; Bell tries to right wrongs, so he puts the needs of others at the heart of what he does. That’s the difference between a good guy and a bad one — but neither of them are particularly happy. They’re trying to make the world over into something it’s not.

Why can’t you stick to one genre?

I wish I knew. Like a lot of creative people I know, ideas come from anywhere and everywhere and I have more ideas in my head than I could ever write in several lifetimes. So I have to pick and choose, although some just shout louder than others. But they all seem to want to mix together things that ought to be like oil and water and try to make something that actually gels. So I write zombie westerns (High Plains Lazarus) and shamans v aliens (Owl Stretching) and Elizabethan gonzo psychedelia (Fear and Loathing in Deptford). But nobody knows where to look for me on the shelves at the bookstore. Ebooks help a lot: they’re tagged in a variety of ways so people can find books more by fiat, although even Amazon makes suggestions based on typical genres. I write under a couple of other pen names; at least they stick to one specific genre each. I’m trying to be smarter about sticking to one genre (crime) as much as I can lately, but even so it keeps wandering across the borders. The crime novel I’m wrapping up, White Rabbit, has some supernatural elements in it and the anthology Weird Noir that I edited mashes up traditional noir with eerie horrors. I guess that like me, my muse is a kind of gypsy that just likes to wander. Of course if I could sell off all those extra ideas I’ll never have time to use to the people who always ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I could probably make a better living than I do from my stories. Alas.

Thanks Kate for a great interview.

© S. L. Johnson

Links:
Find K. A. Laity at her website, Facebook, and Twitter.
A few of Kate’s books:
Owl Strething can be had in digital and paperback editions:
Kindle at Amazon US and UK and paperback at Amazon US and UK
Find Unquiet dreams at Amazon US and UK
Chastity Flame is at Amazon US and UK as well
Get a copy of The Claddagh Icon at Atlantis, and Amazon US and UK
Pelzmantel and Other Medieval Tales of Magic is available in digital and paperback editions:
Kindle at Amazon US and UK and paperback at Amazon UK
Unifirja is in digital and paperback at Amazon US and UK
And a hard copy of Jane Quiet can be found at Amazon US

John Kenyon is a crime writer and editor of Grift magazine. He has been published in Thuglit, A Twist of Noir, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp, Pulp Modern and more.  He’s also going to be on the slate of readers at the Snubnose Press edition of Noir at the Bar, Oct. 5.

John met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the sanitisation of crime and the preoccupation with genre.

Do you think there is a demand for fiction to present a sanitised version of crime?

Demand is a funny word. There is the call of the marketplace, and then there is the imperative. I’ll tackle the commerce side of things. Yes, there definitely is a demand for a sanitized version of crime in fiction; just look at the bestseller list. The PIs are all broodingly handsome, the femmes fatale all stunning, the criminals all devious masterminds bent on destruction. Yet what is most real crime? A bumbling guy with a decreasing range of options who decides to take a wrong turn out of perceived necessity, often making mistakes that put the cops on his trail in quick fashion. It is driven by economic desperation more than inherent evil. Even what we think of as “realistic” crime fiction is a hyper-stylized, compressed version of reality. Interestingly, I suppose this take isn’t “sanitized” so much as buffed and polished. If anything, the alternate demand is for things that go well beyond reality, spilling buckets of blood, running off round after round of ammunition and blowing things up. Again, the preponderance of crimes are decidedly less dramatic, but who wants to read that?

Who are your literary influences?

I always find this question interesting. Who worse to answer this than the writer himself? I can tell you who I love to read, those whose work I aspire to equal, who write the kind of stories I try to write, but as for actual influence? Ask someone who has read my work.
I find it difficult to write something without humor rearing its head. In real life, we cut-ups do this to lighten dark situations. I suppose humor serves the same purpose in crime fiction, to alleviate some of the torpor of depressing events, to give the reader a breath (and to make the hard stuff hit that much harder in contrast). People like Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen and Lawrence Block do this very, very well. I also come from the world of journalism, and can’t help but draw inspiration from writers like Michael Connelly or Laura Lippman, who found ways for that no-nonsense storytelling style to evolve into a voice that is at once poetic and gritty. And Connelly is joined in my shrine to the holy triumvirate of crime writers by Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, all three pure storytellers who come as close to capturing real life as anyone. There is a thin line between being influenced and practicing mimicry. I hope my work is the former.

Do you think fiction is being held back by too much emphasis on genre?

I believe certain readers are depriving themselves of quality books because they give the notion of genre too much credence. They either feel they are genre readers and rarely venture beyond it or dismiss genre as less worthy than literary fiction and ignore vast bodies of work. That’s why, as much as I love crime and mystery fiction, my favorite writers are those who push at the boundaries of the genre. George Pelecanos writes about crime, but can he be considered a crime writer anymore? Or Tom Franklin? Or James Sallis? They don’t let the notion of genre constrain them, and those of us who read them benefit.

I find it silly when authors consciously decide to write in a genre. John Banville’s books as Benjamin Black are well-regarded, and everyone knows it’s his work, so why the silly pseudonym? Why not be bold enough to say, “This is what I’m going to write this time out. If you like me, come along for the ride. You just might like it.”

Tell us about your novel.

My novel, Grace Falls, tells the story of a mid-sized Iowa city two years after a devastating flood rolled through the area. Four newcomers of various vintage pick up the threads of their lives when they arrive – a newspaper reporter, a mob thug, a privileged CEO and a rookie cop – and those threads begin to weave together into a larger story about drugs violence and corruption. The overarching story being told is this: what happens to the natural order of things when Mother Nature decides to level the playing field? It’s being read by some friends for feedback in anticipation of shopping it around to interested parties this fall. Stay tuned.

Beyond that, I’m halfway through a heist novel that finds a member of the 1% under siege from those who have had enough, and am doing research and plotting on a third with a bit of a supernatural twist.

Is there a particular event that has influenced you and changed your life?

Nearly eight years ago, my wife and I lost our first son to prematurity. He was born at 24 weeks, or 16 weeks early, and weighed about a pound. He spent three months in a neonatal intensive care unit – on what I have described as a backward rollercoaster ride in the dark – before finally succumbing to the challenges stacked against him. I have never felt such sustained sorrow, and nothing else in my life has had such influence. We spent hours by his bedside on a daily basis, willing him to improve, educating ourselves about the intricacies of his treatment and care. I learned more about myself in those three months than I thought possible. My notions of pain, heartbreak, hope, fairness, faith and possibility were challenged, broken down and rebuilt throughout that time. I emerged with a new sense of purpose. My core beliefs strengthened – ours is not a fair or just world; good guys rarely finish first; you would be amazed what you can endure. Anyone wondering why I found a home in crime fiction should wonder no more.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m putting the finishing touches on the first novel and slowly making my way through the second. I’m also working on a contribution to Paul Bishop and Mel Odom’s “Fight Card” series, which has been a blast to write, and should be out in early 2013. Beyond that, I chip away at short stories as the muse strikes. Just this morning, I hit upon a way to finish a story that I have been working at off and on for the past two years. I haven’t touched it in months, but suddenly it all seems to have fallen into place.

Beyond that, I’m hard at work on the second print issue of Grift magazine. That means reading through dozens of short fiction submissions and working with writers on non-fiction pieces as well. I’m finding it to be like the sophomore effort for anything: you have your entire life to do the first one, and a few months for the follow-up.

How would you like to be remembered?

You mean beyond the whole “wonderful father, loving husband, pillar of the community” sort of thing? As someone who worked hard at everything he did, who labored to raise the profile of the genre and literary works in general, who turned out some prose that was worth the time (and occasionally the money). As someone who did what he said he would do.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

I would argue that the size of that piece of ice is directly correlated to the quality of the writing. If graphed, it would look like a bell curve. If you have no ice in your heart and constantly worry about what others will think, your prose will suffer. At the other end, if your heart is a block of ice, your lack of empathy likely renders your prose too clinical. You can be a detached observer of the life around you, but only to a degree. Somewhere in the middle, with just enough ice to say convention and decorum be damned, but not so cold as to lack the ability to feel for your characters and readers, is where I want to be, and where I think the best writers reside.

How much sexual pathology do you think is tied up in murder?

It depends entirely on the crime. I’m sure Freud would say that it is tied up in every one, but I would beg to differ. Rage, and the differing abilities people have in tamping that down and/or channelling it more productively, is the real driver. Is that sexual in nature? Perhaps at its base level. Rage, ego, ambition, drive… all of these are tied to sex and our constant lizard-brain pursuit of it, right?

What do you see as the future of publishing?

It’s all about putting writing in the hands of readers? No matter how that occurs, there always will be that relationship. I don’t think print books are going anywhere – witness the resurgence of vinyl album sales over the past decade for precedent – but I do think more and more people will turn to digital means for material. That’s not great for the printers of the world, but I believe people actually are reading more, and the successful writers, publishers, vendors, etc. will be those who figure out the way to take advantage. I think a great example of the possibilities ahead came with the way Reagan Arthur handled George Pelecanos’ What It Was. It was offered as a cheap ebook (I bought it for 99 cents before realizing there were other options), a cheap paperback ($10) and a deluxe, slip-cased hardback. That hits pretty much everyone, and it was released that way all at once. You hit someone who just wants the story itself, someone who likes paper in hand, and someone who wants something collectible. That is the future.

I took that to heart to an extent with my collection, The First Cut. The fine folks at Snubnose Press put it out as an ebook, but when I heard from friends and well-wishers that they wanted something to put on a shelf, I made it available in paperback as well. If there ever was demand for a hardbound version, I would pursue that, too. In other projects, I’ve chosen the format based on the audience. Grimm Tales, a short story anthology I edited, was issued as an ebook so we could maximize its reach for the 17 contributors, while Grift, my magazine, was limited to print because I wanted to give its contributors the chance to have a tangible way to get their stories out there. Each has had its benefits and drawbacks, and either project could be offered in another format if there is demand.

Thanks John for a great interview.

Links:

Get a copy of The First Cut in Kindle format at Amazon US or UK
And in paperback at CreateSpace

Pick up a hard copy of Grift Magazine Vol. 1 here.
For more information about Grift Magazine – news, submissions, etc. – check out the online site here.

Grimm Tales can be had at Untreed Reads here.

Versatile, eclectic, Andrez Bergen is an expatriate Melburnian who currently resides in Tokyo. He is an author and photographer, as well as a music, movie and anime journalist. His novel Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat is a hybrid that has received great reviews. It’s a dystopian novel about Melbourne. Andrez is currently working on a new novel. He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about music and exile.

How does music influence your visual consciousness?

Music is hugely important to me – I make music on the side under silly aliases like Little Nobody and Nana Mouskouri’s Spectacles, and music has in many ways soundtracked my life. If I think of particular tracks or songs I can remember certain incidents or timelines. For instance ‘January’ by Pilot makes me think of hanging out at my grandparents’ place in Richmond, Melbourne, in the ’70s. When I watch movies the score is also vital – doesn’t matter how good the film is, if there’s a bad soundtrack it kills the story. While writing I often play music to inspire and/or tweak my imagination. On the train I often jack into my iPod Shuffle. But then there are the natural sounds – cicadas in summer, like I’m hearing now outside the window – which are their own form of muzak.

What does Australia mean to you?

Things like ‘Waltzing Matilda’, Vegemite, and Liza Minnelli’s ex-hubby Peter Allen singing a rousing rendition of ‘I Still Call Australia Home’…? I’m kidding, but not about the Vegemite. I love my Vegemite. What does Australia mean to me? In my wistful, nostalgic moments – I’ve been away for 11 years – I think of good fish & chips, great beaches, nice weather, and my parents and friends back in Melbourne. Other days I remember the bad TV scheduling, a culture sometimes too fixated on sports, and the difficulties we had pushing underground electronic music there in the 1990s. Then I kick myself. Melbourne is a great city, I love the multiculturalism there and the Victorian architecture, and the food rocks.

Is Japan your exile or your counter-culture?

Interesting proposition – a bit of both? I originally came here in 2001 to explore new grounds, have easier access to international travel (Tokyo is far closer to most countries than Melbourne), and satisfy a childhood yearning to indulge in all things Japanese. At the same time I was frustrated with the direction my record label IF? Records was doing in terms of releases and gigs, and I felt that Tokyo (and Japan) could be the next step up since the population here is six times Australia’s. The initial plan was for six months. I didn’t know how completely I’d fall in love with this country. The funny thing is, after three years, I kind of shelved the label in terms of live gigs – not that they didn’t work here, but I wasn’t so desperate to prove a point. As much as I cherish Melbourne, I think Tokyo has satisfied me on other levels. The two together make my world.

Have you thought of starting a new form of performance art?

Actually, I’ve been thinking about a revival of the old school flea circus – getting the little buggers to wear tiny microscopic costumes and doing things like trapeze, acrobatics, the Human Cannonball (well, we’d have to skip the human bit) and so on. You see these things in ancient Warner Bros. cartoons, and I think we’re truly missing out.

Tell us about Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat was my first novel, published in April last year through Another Sky Press in Portland in the U.S. It’s a mixture of noir detective story with dystopian sci-fi, as much influenced by Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick as it is by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The thing took half my life to cobble together, and I’m not kidding here. It started out as a four or five-page short story, which then developed into the first version of the book in 1991. A second version came together in 2002, and by 2007 I had the deal with Another Sky and we seriously focused on putting together a final novel. Basically it’s a book about serious issues – fascist oppressive government, big business, environmental degradation, self-indulgent plastic surgery and the economic gap – undercut by a sense of humour (I hope) and a fetishist love for cinema. And alcohol. The narrator, Floyd, is a lush.

Do you think the publishing industry has become parochial through an obsession with genre?

I don’t think just publishing, but the music industry as well. Everything needs to be categorized and slotted into a niche, which is a frustrating inclination if a musician or writer wants to draw in on several styles or set about debunking the pigeonholing system. I understand why genres are used – it gives the audience a better idea of what to expect – and as a journalist I’ve used them myself plenty of times. But separating the styles with a “never the twain shall meet” attitude is counter-productive. Genres can compliment one-another within the same book, or during the same DJ set.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have a few different projects in the mix.

Chief among these is novel #3, titled Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? It’s a superhero romp with its heart torn between 1930s/40s detective noir – with the accompanying golden years of comic books – and the more street-smart, flippant silver age pop art of Marvel in the ’60s (which I actually prefer since I grew up with this). In some ways it’s also my love letter to Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Jim Steranko and those creative types at Marvel in the ’60s. The novel brings something full circle for me, since I really wanted to be a comic writer/artist when I was in high school, and the central character is someone I created back then and actually ran by Stan Lee – who dug it, but had retired, and the newer editor-in-chief wasn’t so keen. Long story. Hopefully the novel is shorter! But I’m right into it, finished the first draft, and currently working on the second.

Another novel in the works is called The Mercury Drinkers, which is a straight crime/noir procedural set in contemporary Tokyo. I’ll be focusing on that one once I wrap Heropa. Plus I have a few short stories to do, and an anthology to finish – based on the world of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

Is there a particular incident that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

As with anyone, I guess, there’ve been lots of minor, middle-road and major events that have changed the course of things – narrowly missing being run down by a tube train in London while quite inebriated, moving to Tokyo, meeting my wife Yoko. Incidents with friends and family. But I’d have to say that number one would be the birth of my daughter Cocoa in 2005. This affected me on so many levels – this tiny life that was dependent on us meant I had to stop being so damned self-centred. She’s been an amazing experience. I wouldn’t give up that ongoing journey for the world.

How do you think it all ends?

With a whimper. Or a bang. I’m not sure which – can I reserve judgment till it happens?

If you were to give advice to yourself as a younger man what would you say?

Ye gods… what a good question. I think I’d tell my younger self to get off his arse and get motivated – in my 20s I had some great ideas, especially regarding filmmaking which was my passion then, but never really followed through on anything. I gave up too easily. Part of this had to do with insecurities. I was a painfully shy teenager, and it took a long time to believe in what I was capable of doing. Even now I have a chunk of self-doubts as baggage, but the trick is to ignore these niggling buggers, or at least put them on hold temporarily. But what I did do was travel a lot, and I’m grateful I followed through in that aspect. Other advice? Hmm. Maybe to get some exercise.

Thanks Andrez for a great interview.

Links:

Get a copy of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat at Amazon UK and US

Look for One Hundred Years of Vicissitude on 26 October 2012 via Perfect Edge Books or pre-order now at Amazon UK and US

Andrez Bergen is Senior Writer/Editor at Impact magazine (UK)

He’s a Writer/Editor at Forces Of Geek + Anime Update / Gaijinpot / JapaneseCultureGoNow! / Yomiuri Shimbun

And he hacks together electronic/techno tunes as Little Nobody and Funk  Gadget