Talking Books with Jon Bassoff Author of Captain Clive's Dreamworld @jonbassoff #Interview

Jon Bassoff was born in 1974 in New York City and currently lives with his family in a ghost town somewhere in Colorado. His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, has been translated in French and German and was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award. Two of his novels, The Drive-Thru Crematorium and The Disassembled Man, have been adapted for the big screen with Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild; Once Upon a Time in America) attached to star in The Disassembled Man. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy. He is a connoisseur of tequila, hot sauces, psychobilly music, and flea-bag motels.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://www.jonbassoff.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jonbassoff

Facebook: www.facebook.com/jon.bassoff

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? When did you come up with the idea to write your book?

A few summer’s ago, I had a terrifying and traumatic experience: I went to Disneyworld with my family. Don’t get me wrong—my kids and wife loved the place. But it wasn’t for me. It was just too much happiness for me, you know? We also spent time in this town called Celebration, just outside of the theme park. It was initially developed as some sort of utopian company town. In fact, they were even going to place it inside a climate-controlled dome. That didn’t come to fruition, but today it still feels like a Stepford Wives town, with perfect streets and perfect paths and perfect lawns. And so I started thinking: what would have happen to a town like this if Disneyworld ever collapsed? And that's what inspired my nightmarish novel.

Who is your publisher and how did you find them?

This is the second novel I’ve published with Eraserhead Press. The first one was called The Drive-Thru Crematorium, which just got nominated for the Wonderland Book Award, which, I guess, is the big award for bizarro fiction. Rose O’Keefe is the head of the company, and she took a risk on both Drive-Thru Crematorium and Captain Clive’s Dreamworld, which are both very strange novels. Eraserhead is a real niche publisher, which is so crucial in this age of the conglomerate publishers. They can take the risks that the big publishers can’t. I’m also really thankful that Blackstone Audio agreed to do the audio version.

Do you believe a book cover plays an important role in the selling process?

Absolutely! I go back and forth on whether the cover or the title is more important. About equal, I think. I’ve been fortunate to have really talented artists work on my covers. Daniele Serra is an Italian artist who worked on five of my covers. His work has this instantly recognizable look to them. He’s fantastic. Matthew Revert has done a couple of the other covers. He’s about the most imaginative artist I know. I’m in love with the cover for Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. He took the concept of those old “Greetings From” postcards and created this creepy design. I think the cover has played a big role in the book’s success.

I hope the book entertains, terrifies, and makes you think at least a bit. Then I will have done my job.

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?

This was my 8^th novel. I wish I could say that the process gets easier, but it’s always a grind. There are those days when everything is flowing, but those days are pretty rare. I think it’s important to stick with process, to write the best page or paragraph or sentence you can that day, and not get too far ahead of yourself. When you start that first page, it’s always hard to imagine that one day the book will be complete. But somehow it happens.

What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

I recently finished a suspense novel called Beneath Cruel Waters that will be published by Blackstone in 2022. I’m finishing up another novel, but I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it yet.

What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

I think the number of literary influences the book takes on would surprise people. Shirley Jackson, Shakespeare, Flannery O’Connor, Jim Thompson. I imitate all of them badly in order to create my own voice.

And so I started thinking: what would have happen to a town like this if Disneyworld ever collapsed? And that's what inspired my nightmarish novel.

Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

I’m not really a message writer, but I think certain themes arise, including the danger of groupthink, the fallibility of memory, and the role of collective guilt. I hope the book entertains, terrifies, and makes you think at least a bit. Then I will have done my job.

Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?

Avoid eating at diners called Mom’s, and avoid wearing matching outfits with your significant other.

After becoming the suspect in the murder of a young prostitute, Deputy Sam Hardy is “vanished” to a temporary post as the sole police officer in Angels and Hope, an idyllic town located in the middle of the desert, miles from any other sign of life. Hardy soon learns that Angels and Hope was constructed as a company town to support a magnificent amusement park – one to rival Disneyland – known as Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. When he arrives, however, Hardy notices some strange happenings. The park is essentially empty of customers. None of the townsfolk ever seem to sleep. And girls seem to be going missing with no plausible explanation.

As Hardy begins investigating, his own past is drawn into question by the people in town, and he finds himself becoming more and more isolated. Soon his phone line mysteriously goes dead. His car’s tires get slashed. And he is being watched constantly by neighbors. The truth – about the town and himself – will lead him to understand that there’s no such thing as a clean escape.

Straddling the line between genre fiction and something more bizarre, Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a terrifying vision of the collapse of the American mythos.

Praise

“Captain Clive’s Dreamworld winds its way through an eerie, Lynchian landscape, populated by Stepford citizenry, cursed lives, and all the bleak sensibilities of the most dire Cormac McCarthy tale. Bassoff’s latest is a must read for fans of the genre, or any reader who prefers their fiction with a sense of the off-kilter. Highly recommended!”

-Ronald Malfi, author of Bone White

“Jon Bassoff’s nightmarish bizarro novel Captain Clive’s Dreamworld reads like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone mixed with Twin Peaks mixed with Dante’s Inferno. Unremittingly dark, this roman noir is a trenchant attack on the empty promises of capitalism…a hopeless rebuke of the bright plastic flesh built around the broken, crumbling skeleton of the American Dream.”

-Jeffrey Thomas, author of Boneland

“Jon Bassoff mines an imaginative seam that remains unexplored by any other writer I know working today. I wish I knew his secret, but I’ll settle for reading Captain Clive’s Dreamworld.”

-Tony Black, author of Summoning the Dead

“Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a masterfully rendered, very disturbing cautionary tale of pathological consumerism and nostalgia for a mid-century America that never was. Jon Bassoff’s vision is relentless and unsparing, his prose like a bone saw laying bare the corruption and perversion lurking beneath society’s superficial pieties.”

-Roger Smith, author of Dust Devils

“In Captain Clive’s Dreamworld, Jon Bassoff has created a haunting, suspenseful masterpiece that straddles the line between mystery and horror with expert skill.”

-S.A. Cosby, award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland