Interview with Christopher P. Ring, author of Electricity
Much of his fiction draws on the experiences and discoveries of his life as a “rambler”. Growing up in Long Island, New York, he developed an insatiable thirst to escape the confines of conventional living, spending his twenties and early thirties travelling the globe to off the beaten path places in search of adventure. He has called many regions of the U.S. his home and has also lived in Ireland, the Andes of Colombia, and Vienna, Austria. As with the cultures and places he has visited, the settings in his story shape the events and characters profoundly.
You can learn more about Christopher P. Ring and check out other writing of his at www.mortalsandfools.com.
His next book, The Glow, a collection of speculative fiction short stories, will be available in April, 2015.
Author Website: www.mortalsandfools.com
Author Blog: www.mortalsandfools.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/untermarmot
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13084642.Christopher_P_Ring
About The Book
Author: Christopher P. Ring
Publisher: Independent Self Publishing
Publication Date: December 5, 2014
Pages: 73
ASIN: B00QOBEIX4
Genre: Literary / New Adult / Short Stories Collection
Format: eBook (.mobi / Kindle), PDF
Buy The Book:
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/electricity-christopher-ring/1120893130?ean=2940149963393&itm=1&usri=electricity+christopher+p.+ring
Book Synopsis:
A teenager wrestles with the meaning of love when his parent’s high-voltage marriage turns deadly. School boys playing chicken with a commuter train, search for answers about life and death. An American teacher working in Peru struggles to reconcile the gap between her idealism and the reality of poverty when an act of kindness leads to a frightening episode. Covert baptisms, duels of love and highway robberies: the coming-of-age stories in Electricity share a vision of America marked by tainted innocence and misguided idealism.
Book Excerpt:
But Licho remains tall. Scanning the horizon of the classroom, his
hand blocks out an imagined sun. Micah
follows his vision across the walls.
They are tacked with pictures she has torn from history books and
language books. There are pictures of
Quechua farmers from the hills re-enacting ancient Inca dances for Inti-Ramin,
and next to those, pictures of Gene Kelly and Audrey Hepburn dancing on the
Seine in Paris. On the back wall there
are pictures of conquistadors and ancient emperors, Pizarro paired with
Atahualpa, Cortez paired with Pachacutec. And then Licho’s face expresses the
consternation of a soldier under attack.
“Look,
Injuns,” Licho calls, pointing over Micah’s head. “Man the fart.”
She
laughs. “It’s fort.”
“Fort!”
he says. “Man the fort!”
He
leaps off the desk and runs for the far wall.
Then he comes back slowly, touching the ground and smelling his hand,
like an Indian tracking an animal. This,
from a man who kills pigs and tars roads.
Nothing seems to phase him. Yet,
she knows she would starve if she had to do these same things to feed herself.
“I
thought you worked nights only?” Micah asks.
“What happened to work tonight?”
Licho
leaps to her desk and scurries across it like a crab.
“Stop
it Licho. What happened?”
“No
work,” he says, falling backwards into her desk chair. It groans as he slides backwards. Suddenly he seems sullen. “How do you say in Amer-eeca. Fried?”
“You
got fired!”
“Now
you.”
Licho
springs to his feet and nudges Micah towards the stack of chairs. “Now you.
Tell what you see.” He slides the
desk closer and jerks his head in an upward motion.
“No,”
she says, listlessly.
“Vengas. I will hold chairs.”
She
feels silly doing this, but thinks she owes it to him. After all, he has given up the afternoon,
reading to one group while she read with another. And she has seen a world he has not seen, a
world he wants to see, and she feels sorry.
Yet, this is what scares her. She
is afraid of what he might expect; with her, he could escape it all. She climbs on to the desk and feels his hands
pushing and holding her waist at the same time.
The stack of chairs is a teetering ladder and for a moment, looking down
on him, Licho seems small.
“What
do you see?” he yells out to her excitedly.
Shhh! Micah puts a finger to her lips. The principal is in his office a few rooms
down the line from hers. Micah should be
gone already. With a free hand she grabs
at the tiled windowsill. The moon is
streaking down across the courtyard, the dirt pale and white like dried bones.
“I
see the moonlight,” she says. “And
dirt. And a pencil in the moonlight.”
“Si,
si. More. What else?”
“Nothing.” The game feels silly. She is thirty, not twenty-one. What she has seen in Peru has made it hard to
pretend. If she really wants to look,
she already knows what she will see - the things she has not been able to look
beyond. Alcoholics littering the streets
with empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, stray dogs, piles of garbage clogging
the river, four year old children selling candy, dirty children, poverty. A city still recovering from an earthquake
twenty years earlier. Decay. “Nothing,” she retorts.
“Liar. Let me look.
I will show. I can see.”
From
her perch the emptiness of her classroom seems out of tune with the life her
students bring. Licho reaches up for her
hand and pulls her down. His hand goes
up the back of her shirt and it pinches her.
She stiffens.
“That
hurt,” she says.
“Sorry.” He puts one hand to his lips, reaches out
with the other. His finger tips are
coated in tar, small pebbles dried into them.
“No com off.”
Micah
relaxes. It is his right to imagine, to
hope for something better. He has
dreams, damn it. They, too, must
pinch. She can still feel where his hand
touched her, perhaps as much as he had hoped for, but she gives him a shoulder
and helps him up. He rises against the
glow of the window.
There
is silence.
“Hmm,”
he says. “Oh yes. I see.”
Licho
talks about getting a job as a handyman in an apartment building in
Denver. He paints dreams of ten hour
work days and coming home to sit on a balcony that overlooks the freeway, and
sipping Pisco Sour’s. A movie theater is
a block away and there are three markets on the corner. Nothing changes in his America but the
numbers. There are more jobs, more cars,
twice as many food stands, trains and buses going to more places, elections
every week. Micah stands by the door and
looks out.
“Maybe
you have apartamento on other side of road.
We sit on balcony and wave to each other after work. Maybe you com over. We have ceviche or
MeecDonald’s. Yes, I see.” He looks at Micah in the doorway and
squints. “You see, yes?”
He
climbs down and turns her towards the stack of chairs. “I show you,” he says. She can feel his hands against her ribs as he
urges her to climb again, but she doesn’t want to. This is unrealistic. It is a fantasy she knows not to encourage,
yet she does not want to break it. She
grabs the edge of a chair and resists.
With her legs she pushes back against Licho. She feels the back of her head knock into his
teeth.
“Puta!”
he says, pinning her with his rough hands.
The stack slides up against the window sill. Down the hill there are people working and
walking the streets, but they are miles away at this point.
“Mentirosa!”
he spits. Liar. Micah is gated between his arms and the
chairs and she can feel his breath on her neck.
Its sweet smell of cola mixes with the dried tar on his shirt. Twisting her by the arms he wrenches her
loose as the chairs topple over in a big crash.
The small room is split in half by the meager courtyard light. Where they stand by the desk the light is
soft and dusty, but the far end by the doorway is darkness. She winds her way through the fallen desks,
stepping on markers and crayons that she had to purchase with her own
money. Holding close to the back wall
Micah finds herself crossing out of the light, but away from the doorway. She remembers the old woman squatting on the
corner a few days earlier whom he had scolded, swatted at the woman’s head with
a rag he was carrying. “Puerco,” he’d
said. Pig. She’d gotten mad at him for that, though at
the time it seemed innocent. A woman
should not have to see that, he’d said.
“Puta,”
he calls over softly, leaning into the desk.
The single drawer is open. In his
hand he is waving something, her passport.
For a moment her breath is paralyzed.
Author Interview
Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning? Where did you come up with the idea to write your book?
The book is a collection of short stories so there isn’t any one idea that inspired Electricity. If anything, it is the result of my taking a unique path into adulthood. I did everything I could to avoid a common life and there are some problems that come with that. I wrote a collection of stories that share a common theme, stories that engage the reader with universal questions, approached from unique points of view. Every one of the stories is a coming-of-age tale. Two of them are YA stories that reflect the challenges young people face in their journey to adulthood when, in fact, the adult lives they witness seem so thoroughly demented. Because it’s true isn’t it? For all that we can say about growing up and maturing, our adult peers are often the worst role models. And I’m not just talking about the bad parents. I look at my middle aged peers (self included) and see habitual behavior, reliance on stability over the joy of discovery, and grouping behaviors that lead to division and loneliness rather than shared enlightenment. Beyond that, the other stories focus on the new adult years of life, that time when we put our ideals and philosophies into the game, so to speak, and see how they really play out. What an exciting time. What a hard time, too. All that freedom, all that maturing and intellectual development (or lack of) can make every moment so vivid it’s hard not to be excited. These are times in my life that served up great opportunities for storytelling. So new to the world, our personal characters are going to be challenged at every turn.
Q: How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?
Short stories are challenging. They demand a lot out of your craft and your sense of character and plot. They’re also like little statues. There is a level of attention to detail that you can put into short stories that is difficult to achieve in the vastness of a novel. Great novels, of course, do this, but the power of those details, that character quirk, that turn of a phrase – they shine brighter in a short story. Writers benefit greatly from writing in the short form. I read a lot of novels that just aren’t tight enough to keep my interest even when the arc of the story is great. When I read these I often think the writer should have spent more time crafting short stories. But everyone is looking to write the great American novel. Nobody talks about the great American short story collection. Yet, tales like Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower and When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine, by Jhumpa Lahiri offer me everything a novel has to offer and the chance to enjoy it like a fabulous desert.
Q: Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?
I self-published this book. I used to go through the traditional process of submitting my stories to magazines and literary journals. It’s a ton of work and for several years I lived abroad, which only made it the process more difficult. When my first short story got published – the title story to Electricity - it was a very anti-climatic experience. I have none of those fears many writers have about putting their “baby” out into the world, but if I’m going to do that, I want to do it right. The balance between effort and respect for my writing pointed me to self-publishing.
Q: Is there anything that surprised you about getting your first book published?
Learning how the book industry works and discovering all that independently published talent out there was a wonderful surprise for me. I learned that through the process of publishing this book myself. Some of the Indie books I have read are among the best I have read in recent years.
Q: What other books (if any) are you working on and when will they be published?
I group my collections thematically. This spring I will be publishing a collection of stories I would classify as speculative / literary fiction. I am also working on a novel; a black comedy set in Ireland.
Q: What’s your favorite place to hang out online?
I don’t really hang-out on line. I’m too busy being a father and writing. I spend a lot of time outdoors, as well. But the internet is a fabulous tool and I use it like that.
Q: Finally, what message (if any) are you trying to get across with your book?
Life is a quest for understanding. Keep seeking your answers, stay young, but remember, sometimes answers aren’t necessary to be happy in this world.
Q: Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?
Thank you. I’m always excited that there remains so much diverse interest in storytelling.
The book is a collection of short stories so there isn’t any one idea that inspired Electricity. If anything, it is the result of my taking a unique path into adulthood. I did everything I could to avoid a common life and there are some problems that come with that. I wrote a collection of stories that share a common theme, stories that engage the reader with universal questions, approached from unique points of view. Every one of the stories is a coming-of-age tale. Two of them are YA stories that reflect the challenges young people face in their journey to adulthood when, in fact, the adult lives they witness seem so thoroughly demented. Because it’s true isn’t it? For all that we can say about growing up and maturing, our adult peers are often the worst role models. And I’m not just talking about the bad parents. I look at my middle aged peers (self included) and see habitual behavior, reliance on stability over the joy of discovery, and grouping behaviors that lead to division and loneliness rather than shared enlightenment. Beyond that, the other stories focus on the new adult years of life, that time when we put our ideals and philosophies into the game, so to speak, and see how they really play out. What an exciting time. What a hard time, too. All that freedom, all that maturing and intellectual development (or lack of) can make every moment so vivid it’s hard not to be excited. These are times in my life that served up great opportunities for storytelling. So new to the world, our personal characters are going to be challenged at every turn.
Q: How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?
Short stories are challenging. They demand a lot out of your craft and your sense of character and plot. They’re also like little statues. There is a level of attention to detail that you can put into short stories that is difficult to achieve in the vastness of a novel. Great novels, of course, do this, but the power of those details, that character quirk, that turn of a phrase – they shine brighter in a short story. Writers benefit greatly from writing in the short form. I read a lot of novels that just aren’t tight enough to keep my interest even when the arc of the story is great. When I read these I often think the writer should have spent more time crafting short stories. But everyone is looking to write the great American novel. Nobody talks about the great American short story collection. Yet, tales like Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower and When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine, by Jhumpa Lahiri offer me everything a novel has to offer and the chance to enjoy it like a fabulous desert.
Q: Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?
I self-published this book. I used to go through the traditional process of submitting my stories to magazines and literary journals. It’s a ton of work and for several years I lived abroad, which only made it the process more difficult. When my first short story got published – the title story to Electricity - it was a very anti-climatic experience. I have none of those fears many writers have about putting their “baby” out into the world, but if I’m going to do that, I want to do it right. The balance between effort and respect for my writing pointed me to self-publishing.
Q: Is there anything that surprised you about getting your first book published?
Learning how the book industry works and discovering all that independently published talent out there was a wonderful surprise for me. I learned that through the process of publishing this book myself. Some of the Indie books I have read are among the best I have read in recent years.
Q: What other books (if any) are you working on and when will they be published?
I group my collections thematically. This spring I will be publishing a collection of stories I would classify as speculative / literary fiction. I am also working on a novel; a black comedy set in Ireland.
Q: What’s your favorite place to hang out online?
I don’t really hang-out on line. I’m too busy being a father and writing. I spend a lot of time outdoors, as well. But the internet is a fabulous tool and I use it like that.
Q: Finally, what message (if any) are you trying to get across with your book?
Life is a quest for understanding. Keep seeking your answers, stay young, but remember, sometimes answers aren’t necessary to be happy in this world.
Q: Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?
Thank you. I’m always excited that there remains so much diverse interest in storytelling.
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