📚 A Bookish Chat with 'Pinball Wizard' Michael D. Meloan | Author Interview | #AuthorInterview #BlogTour #Interview
Michael Meloan traveled extensively to England, Germany, and South Korea supporting the Department of Defense as a software engineer. He met the real Top Guns at Ramstein, Germany. He also wrote short stories for Larry Flynt, Buzz, Wired Magazine, and many literary journals. With his brother, Steven, he penned a published novel called The Shroud. Also with his brother, he wrote journalism for The Huffington Post.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Meloan was friends with Charles Bukowski and his wife Linda. Bukowski enthusiastically encouraged his writing and invited him and his wife Cathy to many Hollywood events.
Meloan was also good friends with NPR monologue artist Joe Frank. Their regular brunches at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills were among the most fascinating encounters of his life. They discussed sexual failure, the nature of existence, godly realms, and the existential abyss. Meloan had the privilege of co-writing a number of radio shows with Frank that appeared on the NPR syndicate. The documentaries
Bukowski: Born into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There both contain interviews with Meloan.
Visit the book’s website at www.pinballwizardbook.com.
Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book, Pinball Wizard, has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. How did you come up with the idea to write your book?
Three story arcs had been rattling around in my head for years—my parents' dramatic and acrimonious divorce, my work in Europe as a software engineer supporting Top Gun fighter pilots, and my early friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski.
Recently, over a period of a few years, I started writing vignettes based on each of these themes. And I posted many of them as shorts on Facebook, where I have 5,000 friends. During the same timeframe, I began unifying all of the elements into a cohesive whole.
Can you give us a short excerpt?
“You’re starting to piss me off,” Bukowski replied. “If it wasn’t for me, I don’t know what the fuck you’d be doing. That shitty little restaurant would be out of business in a week. What would you do if you had to go out and get a real job? I guess you could make Slurpees at 7-Eleven. Or sell oranges on a freeway on-ramp.”
“You’re the kind of vile piece-of-shit that makes people jump off buildings or blow their brains out. You have a genius for sucking every ounce of hope and joy out of anyone around you.”
“At least I have a genius for something. How many even have that?”
“You’re right. I’m sure Hitler was a genius, too.”
“Why don’t you move out? Go ahead and go! Do you think you’re the only woman I can get?”
“No, I’m well aware that the lure of fame—even second-rate fame like yours—is a powerful aphrodisiac for trailer trash women.”
“That’s it!” Bukowski planted his foot underneath the wooden coffee table and kicked it over, launching glasses of wine into the air. “Get out of my house! You DON’T live here anymore! I mean it. We’re through!” Bukowski and Linda stared at each other. Linda’s jaw flexed rhythmically. Then he moved in close. “I mean it! LEAVE!” he screamed, spewing spittle in her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She stood up and looked at me. “Get me out of here,” she said.
“OK,” I replied.
What part of the book was the most fun to write?
Figuring out a way to integrate the disparate elements of my parents’ acrimonious divorce, my friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski, and my work as a software engineer supporting Top Gun fighter pilots was the most challenging and rewarding aspect. My readers tell me I pulled it off.
What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?
I called it a novella, but almost all of it is true.
What other books are you working on, and when will they be published?
I have been posting flash fiction/ memoir pieces on Facebook for years. I have 5,000 friends. It is a good proving ground to test new material. Within the next year, I will release a collection of those short-shorts with supporting photographs. In addition, I am preparing a collection of short stories, many of which have been published in magazines.
Finally, is there a message you’re trying to get across with your book?
A major theme of PINBALL WIZARD is the quest to find a life path that is a good fit. The protagonist, Ralph Hargraves, is being buffeted by various forces—his father, his Department of Defense job, and the writer Charles Bukowski. Ralph is asked at one point, “Are you the Pinball Wizard or the pinball?”
That question haunts him throughout the book.
Title: Pinball Wizard
Author: Michael D. Meloan
Pages: 136
Genre: Novella / Romantic Action / Adventure
Michael D. Meloan’s new novella PINBALL WIZARD is a story of love, sex, jets, and Bukowski. Ralph is buffeted between a controlling father, international intrigue in the US defense industry, and a friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski. A wild girlfriend also ratchets-up the action.
“Are you the Pinball Wizard or the pinball?” asks Ralph’s manager inside a nuclear hardened bunker in England. That is the question driving Michael D. Meloan’s new novella–a story of love, sex, jets, and Bukowski.
Lights flash and bells ring as Ralph is buffeted between a controlling father, international intrigue in the US defense industry, and a friendship with the writer Charles Bukowski. A wild girlfriend also ratchets-up the action.
But in the end, it is Ralph’s turn at the controls.
“My mailbox contained a surprise a week or so ago: PINBALL WIZARD, a novella by Michael Meloan. It is one of the most satisfying reading experiences I’ve had in recent years, in part because it handles a famous writer (Charles Bukowski) as one of its main characters with nonchalant deftness. Meloan’s slightly picaresque story is hard to classify, which is one of the things that makes it such a pleasure to read. He has a gift for writing unapologetically masculine prose; it’s flavorful without being exotic, and it doesn’t hurt that he has a fine ear for dialogue.”–Bill Mohr, writer, critic, and English Literature Professor at California State University, Long Beach
More information on the book PINBALL WIZARD can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Pinball-Wizard-Michael-D-Meloan/dp/1733386483/.
The Writer’s Life
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That article you shared was truly fantastic, thank you so much!
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