Not Quite So Stories: Interview with Absurdist Literary Fiction Author David S. Atkinson
David S. Atkinson
is the author of "Not
Quite so Stories" ("Literary Wanderlust" 2016), "The
Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes" (2015 National Indie Excellence
Awards finalist in humor), and "Bones
Buried in the Dirt" (2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist,
First Novel <80k a="" and="" appears="" artleby="" his="" href="http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/" in="" is="" journal="" others.="" review="" rey="" snopes="" sparrow="" tticus="" website="" writing="">http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/80k>
and he spends his non-literary time working as a patent attorney in Denver.
For
More Information
- Visit David S. Atkinson’s website.
- Connect with David on Facebook and Twitter.
- Find out more about David at Goodreads.
- Visit David’s blog.
About the Book:
The center of Not
Quite So Stories is the idea that life is inherently absurd and all people
can do is Rudyard Kiping's Just So Stories) is as an attempt by humans to explain and
demystify the world. However, that's hollow. We may be able to come to terms
with small pieces, but existence as a whole is beyond our grasp. Life simply is
absurd, ultimately beyond our comprehension, and the best we can do is to just
proceed on with our lives. The stories in this collection proceed from this
conception, each focusing on a character encountering an absurdity and focusing
on how they manage to live with it.
figure out how they will live in the face of that fact. The
traditional explanation for the function of myth (including such works as the
relatively modern For More Information
- NOT QUITE SO STORIES is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
- Watch the book trailer at YouTube.
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?
I can't really take credit. The
initial ideas for the first few stories popped into my head without any
volition on my part, like the idea for my story Context Driven jumping me while my wife was laughing at me for
mistakenly trying to open someone else's car with my key (it wasn't even the
right model Toyota). The ideas were
so fun, I just wrote them even though I didn't know what I was going to do with
them. Then I ran into authors like Etgar Keret, Amelia Gray, George Saunders,
Aimee Bender, and Haruki Murakami, and I saw that these things could actually
work. I started comparing the view of the world I was developing against
Rudyard Kipling's Just so Stories and
I was off and running.
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?
Some stories came easily, as if
handed to me from somewhere else, but some I had to work over and over. I must
have rewritten G-Men from the ground
up at least three different times before it worked. For stories such as these,
I think the best tip to give is to make sure to get the stories out of your
head for a little before taking them back in and working more. Read them aloud
and try to listen to how they'll sound to another person, have others read them
and try to get how they're actually reacting, all that. The way that these kind
of stories come across isn't straightforward and you can't really get anywhere
with just your reaction. You already know how you're supposed to react, so you
will whether the text actually causes that or not. You have to try them outside
your head early and often to make sure they're really doing what you think they
are.
Q: Who is your publisher and how
did you find them or did you self-publish?
I'm privileged enough to be
working with Literary Wanderlust out
of Denver. I'd been simply having a
good time going out to hear an author I was a fan of. She started recognizing
me and got curious enough to check out my stories. She really liked them and
decided to introduce me to her publisher at an event, giving me a
recommendation and telling us both we needed to have them check out my work.
They hadn't been considering short story collections at the time, particularly
stories like The Onion She Carried,
but that recommendation was strong enough for them to take a look. They loved
them enough that they both decided to publish them and start regularly
considering short story collections.
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
Not Quite so Stories is my third book. My first, Bones Buried in the Dirt, was actually
accepted for publication without me really making the first move. I'd had a
story from it accepted by a journal (it's a novel in story form) and happened
to mention during the process that it was part of a larger work. They were
interested enough to ask about seeing the whole manuscript. Then, to my
delight, they decided to publish it. I was extremely surprised that I hadn't
had to beat down their door to get that to happen.
Q: What other books (if any) are
you working on and when will they be published?
I'm working on a collection of
extremely absurd flash fiction (way more absurd than a bear jumping on a guy's
car and then forcing him to gamble like in The
Unknowable Agenda of Ursines), but that's definitely still midstream. I may
have a novel coming that explores humanity's obsession with the end of times
through a character sick of the fact that the apocalypse happens once a week,
but I'm going to keep that mostly secret for now…and whether or not it might be
coming out next year.
Q: What’s your favorite place to
hang out online?
I have a great deal of fun
bouncing around between writing circles on Facebook. I love how I can jump
between conversations with Enclave/Entropy people one minute, bizarre
writers the next, and something completely different a moment later. There are
so many different kinds of writers working out there right now. It's invaluable
that I can wander back and forth without having to pigeonhole myself. There is
so much more to the writing community than just one group of people and I
really need that kind of crosspollination to operate. Stories like Up, Up, and No Way wouldn’t' be possible
for me otherwise.
Q: What’s your nightly ritual
before retiring for the night?
I do all my usual processes:
brushing my teeth, checking my alarm, scanning for new emails or social media
notifications, making sure clothing is set out for the morning, all that.
However, the one constant and unavoidable routing is the treating of the cats.
We once received a treat ball that could record a voice message for our cat as
a gift and it came with a bag of treats. We didn't know if our cat would go for
them, but she became an addict. Now there's no going to bed without dispensing
treats…and now we have four cats. It's gotten a bit complicated, me having to
provide treats to a number of cats on various levels of a particular cat tree
while my wife hands out individual treat to that original cat a distance away
(cat riots ensue otherwise). There's no use trying to change it, so my wife and
I just do as we're told. It makes the cats so happy, happy enough that they
allow us to then sleep.
Q: Finally, what message (if any)
are you trying to get across with your book?
Before any message, I want people
to have fun and enjoy reading. Messages are significant, but they don't get
across if the reader doesn't have a good time. Still, I'd like people to regain
more of their sense of wonder, to remember just how inexplicably bizarre and
fascinating life is (Cents of Wonder
Rhymes with Orange goes after this theme perhaps more specifically than the
other stories in the book). Keeping our heads above water tends to leave little
time for that, but recognizing the wonder that is the world is what really
makes us able to cope with what it takes to live.
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
Thanks for talking to me! As for final words, I hope I
haven't gotten to that point yet. I've still got a lot of writing to do. If I
had to pick some though, I'd probably go with closing, conclusion, ultimate,
end, finish, last, crowning, and/or terminal. Again, that's only if I had to.
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