Adelaide Literary Magazine no.30, November 2019

Revista Literária Adelaide
Luck

Wearing designer clothes Luck has a toxic twin called
and sleek jewelry, Misfortune covered with
she traipses along willy nilly gloom. Dressed in dusty
throwing golden kismet rags, stupor-like he selects
wherever whimsy calls. unsuspec ng vic ms.

Some think luck chooses their Stomping helter skelter
goodness or hard work. Perhaps clutching the throats of
they were blessed at birth? both meek and mighty.

The wise know luck wears a Everybody who gets in his way
visor tripping over herself will be pushed down, their
favoring both mean and lazy. muffled cries barely heard.

About the Author

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven
Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Poet Warriors, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright
Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A
Hurricane Press Publica ons have accepted her work. Her latest tle, The Muse In Miniature,
is available on Cyberwit.com and she has four Best of the Net nomina ons.

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FIVE POEMS

by Simon Perchik

* as another word for leaving
Hiding on this ny rock –you burn with ashes
its light is falling arm over arm
brought down as hammer blows taking hold the emp ness
to let the fire go
and mountains clinging to the sun become airborne :a season
the way mourners will gather
and aim for your forehead among the others, fi ed inside
two rivers, close to clouds
–it’s not right for you dead where there was none before.
to lower your eyes once they’re empty
–they have so much darkness *
You s r this can before it opens
are s ll looking for tears as the promise a frog makes
and all around you the Earth when asking for a kiss :the paint
spli ng open a single a ernoon
warmer and warmer will become
up close –you are touching seawater an a ernoon with room for mountains
without anything le inside and breezes close to your shoulder
to take the salt from your mouth.
though that’s not how magic works
* –there’s the wave, the hand to hand
Between the tall grasses and water holes spreading out between the silence
the next hiss would be its last
though you splash these iron bars and your fingers dressed with gloves
as if it was a burden and the brush
with no way out and wait raising your arm the way this wall
smell from smoke and death
–it’s a cheap grill, made for a backyard needs a color that will dry by itself
leave a trace :a shadow not yet lovesick
and the need for constant water no longer its blanket and cure.

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* *
With the rigging that lowers sails All those nights two suns running free
you dead anchor :every grave –with a clear look at each other
becomes a full-blown sea could see how bright her face becomes

though you keep dry when the window pane unfolds on fire
the way ra ers are gathered spreads out that long-ago a ernoon
for dust as a place to rest end over end though the shade

be showered by minute by minute is reaching for the sill –a constella on
and the small sparks mourners leave and s ll her arms are frozen open
to jump-start the night sky as if this snapshot was trying to breathe twice

–between two a ernoons make you think you are covering her eyes
you are burning rope are in the room alone, holding on to what’s le
as if there was a name for it le ng it flicker, wait for something in the light

and now, lit, where nothing shines to move closer together, fit into her mouth
but this shadow you let come closer so it can see you as the bed no longer made
stay, red from the start. as the wall and empty picture frame.

About the Author

Simon Perchik is an a orney whose poems have appeared in Par san Review, Forge, Poetry,
Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collec on is The Gibson Poems
published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019. For more informa on including
free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Reali es” please visit his website at
www.simonperchik.com.

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HELPLESS

by Brian Rihlmann

Helpless Three worlds

never had I seen you if only it were as easy
so helpless to obsess about the rice paper moment
as when I put my arms as the page turns or tears
around her frail body
to walk her down about how ice water feels
those three snow covered steps as it trickles down your throat
that thanksgiving on a hot summer day

you stood watching on the subtle scent
finally extended a hand of a honeysuckle kiss
but your eyes were wild blown by a breeze
and confused
like a cornered animal on the first rays of the sun
as they flash across windshields
un l that day and taut sunglass faces
at the hospital
when you glanced toward her or the vibra ons of her voice
from across the room the meaning
then stared at your shoes behind the words
and said “there’s nothing I guess”
as it is to get caught
then you were gone in dusty cobwebs
and by morning in old doorways
so was she
but you s ll have to wander lost in musty
your own helplessness and forgo en tunnels
to face beneath the city

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and to read again Home Everywhere
the faded graffi
on those walls the sheer mystery of it
like standing
or be sucked into the endless vacuum at the edge
the white space of a sheer cliff
of an infinite, unwri en page is too much
for most of us
like someone broke a window we get dizzy
at 30 thousand feet we swoon
and there’s no oxygen and step back
onto solid, familiar ground
Ver go
we lean on the hardness
a father of stone tablets
spins his li le girl recline in feather beds
on a merry go round of unques oned faith
at the park so as angel’s wings
as she squeals
and yells “faster” but endure the ver go
and finally disembarks of the view
dizzy and falling down from the edge
but laughing find a home there
and I remember and you are home
doing the same everywhere
as a boy
on a backyard re swing
and how I loved
the ver go
the drunken feel
of the world
turned upside down
now I feel like that
most of the me
but I don’t laugh at it
anymore

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I Smile Adelaide Literary Magazine

soon I’ll hear and wonder
the last cricket what my song
of summer would sound like
sing his song or if I’d sing at all
to the chilly night
tonight I sit in my room
and I’ll think alone and listen
of the last man through the open window
or the last woman
fewer but s ll several
there will be one fiddling in the dark
someday
you know for now
I smile
I imagine myself
in their place

About the Author

Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. He writes
free verse poetry, much of it confessional. Folk poetry, for folks. He has been published in
The Blue Nib, The American Journal of Poetry, Cajun Mu Press, The Rye Whiskey Review,
Alien Buddha Zine and others.

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GRIND

by Tina Dybvik

2020 cinquain Grind

Post growth Why so
Climate chorus Profound a break
Losing wet bulb tempered With fine espresso grind
Faith; blue ocean blues-y busking To morning brew French pressed anew
Tips fate. Rou ne?

About the Author

Tina Dybvik: My verse has published in print with Chronogram Magazine, Southwest Journal,
Melancholy Dane Quarterly, Saint Paul Almanac, and Iron Horse Literary Review, and online
at Red Bird Weekly Read, The Lo Literary Center, and KAXE Northern Community Radio /
PRX. I write poems when met with mystery.

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INTERVIEWS



JOHN CASEY

Author of a novel DEVOLUTION

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. It has always been difficult for me to sit s ll for any length
of me, except of course when I was in the pilot’s seat during my Air Force days. A er I re-

red from the military I had to learn to get my fix in other ways—usually at the gym. I enjoy
occasional running and weightli ing five to six mes a week, but my real passion is playing
racquetball. I started when I was in college and have been playing ever since. I am sponsored
by Gearbox Sports and compete in USRA sanc oned tournaments throughout the year.

2. Do you remember what was your first story
(ar cle, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

Although I had always felt I possessed the ability to write, I never really tried un l later in
life. In 2014 I came up with an idea for a novel and began pu ng it into words. About 50
pages in, however, I was unhappy with how it was progressing and decided to set it aside for
a while. To pass the me I elected to try my hand at poetry, and the first poem I wrote was

tled ‘Stupid’. I was living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the me and on that par cular day I
was fed up with some of the inconveniences I was experiencing. My intent was that it would
be a funny poem, and it was for me and my colleagues there—we knew what it meant. Later
on I would rewrite ‘Stupid’ and include it in my first book, RAW THOUGHTS.

3. What is the tle of your latest book and what inspired it?

My latest book is tled DEVOLUTION, characterized as a psychological spy thriller and book
one of a trilogy. I am now working on the second book, EVOLUTION. REVELATION will fol-
low. Each tle was chosen to capture the essence of 1) the plot, and 2) what goes on in
the mind of the main character as the story unfolds. I wanted to create a story where the
depth and complexity of the main character, Michael Dolan, were just as compelling and
important as the plot. As spy thrillers go, this series has everything readers of the genre
crave: ac on, suspense, cli angers and mystery. What makes the story so unique and
that much more cap va ng, however, is Dolan’s dark and labyrinthine psychological strug-
gle as he navigates the challenges of his top-secret mission while confron ng the demons
of his past.

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4. How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

It took about one year to write DEVOLUTION; however, if you count the four-year break I
took a er wri ng the first 50 pages, it was much longer than that. Once I picked it back up
it went pre y fast. I wrote the next 250 pages between February and September of 2019,
which equates to around 360 words per day.

5. Do you have any unusual wri ng habits?
Not really. I suppose that it might be considered strange that the majority of my poetry has
been wri en on an iPhone, however. I’ve had to travel quite a bit in my daily work, and I
would o en use this me to work on my poetry.

6. Is wri ng the only form of ar s c expression that you u lize, or
is there more to your crea vity than just wri ng?

I think at this point in my life I’ve given up on succeeding with other forms of ar s c expres-
sion. I’ve tried pain ng and drawing (fail), piano (fail), and even singing (I was in a choir in
college—also a fail). An important lesson that took me many years to learn is that there are
many things I like to do that I have no par cular gi for doing, and a very narrow scope of
things for which I have. This does not mean I’ve given up everything outside that scope, I
simply adjusted my expecta ons in those areas and now spend more me doing things for
which success comes naturally. These are my passions, and one is wri ng.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your wri ngs?
The one poet who influenced me the most was Charles Bukowski. I didn’t even know who
he was un l I’d wri en quite a few poems. When I first dug into Love is a Dog from Hell and
You Get so Alone, it was difficult for me to see his wri ng as poetry. It seemed more like
short stories to me. But a er a while, I began to understand and it opened an en re world
of freedom and expression to my work.

On the prose side I would have to credit Vince Flynn and Tom Clancy. Both writers created
incredibly enjoyable and successful spy thriller stories that are so difficult to put down—they
are that good, and I aspire to that level of novelism.

8. What are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I am currently wri ng EVOLUTION, the sequel to my psychological spy thriller DEVOLUTION.
I am also working on refining RAW THOUGHTS CODA, a not-so-sequel to RAW THOUGHTS. I
am hesitant to call CODA a sequel per se, as I feel it is more of an elabora on, or maybe an
extrapola on of the first book. In this sense, it is as if the first book is incomplete without the
second, and vice-versa. This was not a mistake; the whole is meant to be greater than the

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sum of its two parts. I believe that once readers have experienced and contemplated both
books they will understand and agree.

9. Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

When I wrote RAW THOUGHTS, I did so with the idea that the reader is everyone. My intent
was to create something that could be appreciated by the majority with enough imagery
and poe c complexity to sa sfy the MFA-tou ng echelon. And although much of the book is
largely accessible poetry, RAW THOUGHTS is not a poetry book. There are 40 black and white
photographs in it as well. But it is not a book of photography either, nor some photo-poe c
montage, and it is by no means a ‘collec on’. There is an underlying philosophy to it that is
explained in the foreword and in the epilogue, something that sets it apart from, well, just
about everything else out there. Though I think almost anyone can enjoy the evoca ve and
thought-inspiring nature of RAW THOUGHTS, or even just the poetry and photography for it-
self, it will be most appreciated by those who have endured or are currently working through
emo onally difficult life situa ons.

DEVOLUTION, EVOLUTION and REVELATION will appeal to those who love the spy thriller
and mystery genres. Those who prefer psychological thrillers will enjoy them as well, as the
ongoing explora on of Michael Dolan’s dark and labyrinthine psyche adds as much to the
reading experience as the tense ac on and cli angers peppered throughout.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?

See my answer to the following ques on.

11. What is the best advice (about wri ng) you have ever heard?

It is a cliché, but that doesn’t make it wrong: Keep wri ng. Like anything else in life, repe -
on catalyzes improvement. That’s the first thing. Second, go back through your work as of-

ten as is realis cally possible. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. You will almost always find
ways to improve what you’ve wri en. Enlist the help of others in prereading your work—a
second or third (or fourth!) set of eyes will catch things that you won’t (pride of authorship
is a trap!). Finally, don’t force it. If you can’t write it beau fully, correctly, or in a manner that
is useful in some way, don’t write it. The bo om line is, your poem or story must make the
reader feel something. It must be evoca ve. If what you are wri ng doesn’t do this, take it
in another direc on and reassess.

12. How many books do you read annually and what are you reading now?
What is your favorite literary genre?

I am usually reading two to three books at the same me, and I’ll take about a month or two to
get through them. I get bored easily and will put one down to start another. I am currently work-
ing on The Gi of Anger by Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi (who I had the chance
to meet with recently). I am also reading The Spy Who Came in from The Cold by John le Carré.

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13. What do you deem the most relevant about your wri ng?
What is the most important thing to be remembered by readers?

RAW THOUGHTS is much deeper than it appears on the surface. You have to read it, think
about it, experience and absorb the book a while before you will truly understand what I
mean by this. The same can be said for the upcoming sequel, RAW THOUGHTS CODA.
The DEVOLUTION trilogy books are not typical spy novels. They look and feel and read that
way, on the surface, but fi y or sixty pages in the reader will realize there is something
more there, ed to the strangely foreboding psychological struggle of the main character
that he must deal with as he navigates the challenges of his deep-cover CIA missions. The
depth, complexity, and atypical workings of Michael Dolan’s mind are just as compelling and
important as the plot itself, adding a unique and interes ng dimension to the reading expe-
rience without detrac ng from the pace of the story.

14. What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

There has been a trend toward digi za on for a quite a while now. This trend has made it
much easier for people to get their work out there, mainly via self-publishing and online
journals and blogs. Anyone who has wri en a book can make it available on Kindle without
having to wait for a publisher to accept it, or to invest thousands in self-publishing services.
But this has also made things more difficult for those whose goal is to succeed in a wri ng
career. The digital book market is flooded, and a great piece of wri ng can be lost if it is not
marketed well. I think if an author is to succeed, he or she must work diligently with their
publisher to ac vely and intelligently market their work in ways that gets it broadly no ced
within the targeted demographics.

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JOHN BALLAM

Author of a novel THE MARY HOUSE

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

I am probably the most avid reader you will ever encounter. Long books and short ones,
over the course of a year I read on average one new book every 36 hours. The longest thing
I’ve ever read is the Mahabharata, which is apparently about the same size as the complete
works of Shakespeare six mes over. That one ruined my average for a while. I also love mu-
sic and have a par cular fondness for jazz, Baroque and Early Music; but also folk, bluegrass,
early country western, pop 50s-70s… I’m a pescatarian who loves to cook. I’ve never enjoyed
sports and can’t swim at all. For exercise, I like hiking – up to 20 miles is a good day’s work. I
studied La n fervently and have now forgo en almost all of it. My spoken Italian produces
some blank looks and indulgent smiles, but generally speaking, accomplishes its aims.

2. Do you remember what was your first story
(ar cle, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

Yes. When I was fi een I wrote a scathing sa rical poem about my Algebra teacher. Friends
got hold of it and I was made to read it out in class. From there I went on to replace the lyrics
of all the songs I’d ever heard. A er that I wrote something like 300+ sonnets to all the girls
I successively had crushes on. Probably 300 each, in fact.

3. What is the tle of your latest book and what inspired it?
The most recent thing I’ve done is a novel called The Mary House. I grew up in the Appala-
chian Mountains, where storytelling is as much a part of living as ea ng and drinking. There
are, I think, quite a lot of books set in Appalachia nowadays, but the characters in these books
are seldom people I’d recognize and their stories seem to follow certain predictable pa erns.
For me, the people I knew there were more like people everywhere else – a li le lazy, a lit-
tle selfish, a li le lusty etc, but fundamentally decent, hard-working, generous folks, with a
good sense of humour, confused by the world and their own feelings about it. For me, what
is different about the Appalachian experience is the abiding sense of personal isola on: from
oneself, from friends and family, from community and from the world beyond the hills. This is
what I wanted to capture – mostly ordinary people of different races, genders and economic
strata whose experiences across three centuries are marked by a culture of deep aliena on.

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4. How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

No one ever really knows where the beginning of an idea is. For me, once this one be-
came irresis ble, I was sure there were things I didn’t know and wanted to. I spent a
year in researching the details for the project – folklore, forgo en historical facts. I read
thousands of pages of indigenous American and African-American narra ves trying to
gain insights, perspec ves and informa on that had fallen out of the mainstream. I then
spent another year in making very systema c plans of how the whole thing would work,
what would go where, how it would knit together. Once those notes were all in order I
got down to it and wrote the first dra in about nine months. As an experienced writer,
and as a teacher of wri ng, I know that it is too easy to get bogged down, crea vely fro-
zen or self-indulgent on a manuscript of this size, and my way out of this was never to
have a daily minimum of ‘words to write’, me to spend wri ng or similar, but instead,
to have a maximum of 1000 words a day. When it all is going well – and all the planning
upped my odds on this, as I never had to sit and think ‘What shall I write today?’ – 1000
words is not hard to do. The hard part is stopping there regardless of where the axe falls,
and the hunger to just do ‘the next bit’ will keep it growing in the mind un l the next
irresis ble session at the desk.

5. Do you have any unusual wri ng habits?

See above. As Hemingway reputedly said, ‘Write drunk but edit sober.’ I don’t write drunk,
but I do frequently write while listening to indigenous American instrumental music, as it is
so profoundly upli ing. As for edi ng, any piece that has not by its last sentence moved me
in some way – ideally to actual tears or actual laughter – feels second-rate somehow.

6. Is wri ng the only form of ar s c expression that you u lize, or
is there more to your crea vity than just wri ng?

I tried singing – un l everyone who loves me offered me the same advice… My only other
real ar s c talent is to be a super-enthusias c audience-member for anyone else’s art: the-
atre, literature, pain ng, sculpture, dance…

7. Authors and books that have influenced your wri ngs?

Everybody. For this book, my most earnest thanks would be to Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro,
Marilynne Robinson, Lorrie Moore and Ron Rash. All of these writers share with Tolstoy a
heart that is open to everyone, no ma er how wise or how foolish.

8. What are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

Two things are ruining my sleep. One is a novel about four homeless boys in Appalachia
during the Great Depression. The other is a collec on of stories about more ordinary folks
who can s ll laugh a li le, in spite of the pain, in spite of the bewilderment.

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9. Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

To borrow a thought from Oscar Wilde, people enjoy literature in which they absolutely
see themselves, or in which they absolutely don’t see themselves. I’ve always tried to write
about people ge ng by – trying to make their ideas work, trying somehow to gain a li le
security, a li le joy, a li le relief. Most people can iden fy with that, so they are likely to see
themselves here – their moods and regrets and fantasies are all displayed. For others, this
novel (and the stories inside it) will be a world away from anything they are likely ever to
have known. I have done my best to write with as much authen city as I can muster. The
result is a portrayal of lives that can seem very curious indeed – plausible, and yet remote.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?

My day job is giving advice to new writers and authors. The main thing is: Love Your Work. If
it is not giving you joy (and in art, there can be a kind of joy in the representa on of suffering,
if the result is to show that that suffering has not been ignored or denied or experienced
alone) then do something else. If you love your work, doing it will always be sa sfying. Never
envy others. They have their stories to tell and the voice for that will be their own. If you try
to borrow it, you will ruin your story and your pleasure in that story. Write honestly and give
it to others to read honestly. That will be the truth that will connect you.

11. What is the best advice you have ever heard?

It’s a paraphrase of Stephen King, I think: ‘Never stop at a good stopping point.’ That’s advice
for life as well as wri ng.

12. How many books you read annually and what are you reading now?
What is your favorite literary genre?

See above. At this par cular me I am reading a lot of 20th-21st-century Russian and con -
nental European wri ng in transla ons. Though I can get excited about anything from specu-
la ve fic on to post-structuralism, romance to horror, my favourite genre remains Realism
– typical people who, when scru nized show what an extraordinary thing Life is.

13. What do you deem the most relevant about your wri ng?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

The thing that makes this book different is its stance on ‘culture’. We talk a lot nowadays
about ‘cultural appropria on’ and its rela onship to various injus ces. This is a discussion
that needs to occur and which will con nue to develop. What I’ve tried to do here – and I
am aware that this may be cour ng controversy – is to represent a single geographical area
across a period of me in which cultural verisimilitude is readily apparent, yet which when
explored from contras ng perspec ves, reveals that at a significant (or ‘meta-‘) level it is a
community populated by folks contribu ng to a single culture. Different races, different eco-
nomic groups, different eras and social prac ces do not stand apart from one another, but
instead, in a complex way, influence one another, making each one even in reac on a part

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of its neighbours’. The violent, the vic mized, the glorified and the ignored cannot really be
understood if they are not seen in their vital juxtaposi ons. The many points of view taken
in this novel are an a empt by one author to allow compe ng voices to speak for them-
selves – some mes in chorus, some mes in contradic on. To me, taking only one of these
viewpoints would be implicitly to discredit any other.
14. What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and

about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?
The ‘problem’ most of us have in making any sort of choices is not in finding what we want,
but in actually knowing what it is we want. The advent of digital technology in publishing
has created opportuni es for writers to reach audiences on a scale never seen before. Yet it
has also created so many such opportuni es that readers can feel a li le overwhelmed. It is
as if the main shopping street in your town suddenly has 100 new bookshops on it – some
specialist, some with entrances you cannot locate. Nowadays, readers need more savvy than
ever before to locate the authors they’ll enjoy. The same is true for writers. It used to be that
writers only had to understand readers (ie most publishers did the same things). Now, writ-
ers have to understand the challenges that publishers face, and ask themselves how they
can form a real partnership that allows for genuinely shared ideals about books to commu-
nicate to the readers eager to hear about good books. It’s an exci ng me, in my view, and
really professional writers will embrace it.
15. What is your opinion about your publisher – Adelaide Books?
I’m thrilled to be a contributor to Adelaide’s por olio of new works. Everything about the com-
pany shows exper se and promise. Readers can be thankful that Adelaide is working for them.

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CAROL LAHINES

Author of a novel SOMEDAY
EVERYTHING WILL ALL MAKE SENSE

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

I am a lawyer by training and thus accustomed to evalua ng compe ng narra ves and ar-
riving at the truth by assembling various and contradictory accounts. This type of mental
exercise has helped me immensely as a writer; there’s a useful cross-pollina on. A few of my
stories were based on actual court cases.

2. Do you remember what was your first story
(ar cle, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

My first published story, “Cosmos,” appeared in The Nebraska Review over fi een years ago.
It was a farcical story about a sixty-five-year-old lawyer who finds himself living in his ninety-
nine-year-old mother’s basement a er he is disbarred.

3. What is the tle of your latest book and what inspired it?
Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, my first novel, was published in February 2019 by
Adelaide Books. In the novel, we follow Luther van der Loon, a harpsichord player and pro-
fessor of early music (needless to say, an eccentric!), as he navigates the stages of grief a er
his mother’s un mely death. The tle comes from a fortune tucked inside a fortune cookie.
I wanted a fortune that reflected the narrator’s conundrum. Is it possible to go on a er the
death of a loved one? How to go on then. What is the meaning of life? As I like to say, the

tle is both ironic and aspira onal.

4. How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

I write 1-2 pages daily, rereading the previous day’s work before I con nue and mulling over
the WIP throughout the day. It took me a year to write the first dra of Someday Everything
Will All Make Sense; now, it takes me about 6 months to write a 60,000 word dra .

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5. Do you have any unusual wri ng habits?

I write in a very ritualis c fashion. I complete my prewri ng phase (rereading the previous
day’s work, mapping out a path in general terms) in silence, but listen to music while I’m
actually wri ng. I listen to string quartets (late Beethoven and Shostakovich are my favor-
ites; also Janacek, Borodin, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden). I try to write con nuously
so I do not have a chance to overanalyze and overornament.

6. Is wri ng the only form of ar s c expression that you u lize, or
is there more to your crea vity than just wri ng?

I am a musician as well. I play classical piano and various styles of guitar. Right now, I’m
learning flamenco.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your wri ngs?

My earliest and greatest influences were Woolf and Nabakov. I was also very enamored with
David Foster Wallace in my twen es. Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy
are also favorites. The Russians, par cularly Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol, and their wis-
dom regarding the human condi on. Melville’s Moby Dick and Bartleby were also influen al
for me. Recently, I have been enamored of W.S. Sebald, impressed with his elegant and
rhythmically balanced lines and the themes he evokes. His method is that of an archivist and
his digressive flights are wonderful. Also Calvino, whose imagina on astounds me.

8. What are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I’m always working on something. There’s a queue! I have 2-3 other manuscripts complet-
ed and I am finishing another. There are a couple more pinging around in my head. Things
live in my head for a while as I mull over the right narrator(s) and structure(s) for the work.

9. Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

I write literary fic on, so I think the work appeals to that kind of reader. I am in love with
language and wordsmithery. Voice is a principal considera on of mine. I tend toward a
dark and absurdist kind of humor that I think would appeal to fans of, for example, Confed-
eracy of Dunces or Stanley Elkin or even Ka a’s The Trial.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?

Read, read, read, read some more. Study how a writer chooses to tell the story. Who is the
narrator? What is the narra ve voice like? How is the story structured? I just completed
Ties, by Domenico Starnone, a writer whom I very much admire. Ties is the story of a man’s
affair and of its ripple effects on the family. The novel is divided into three sec ons. The first
sec on is an epistolary rant from the wife about the husband’s infidelity. The second and
longest sec on is narrated by the husband at a me thirty-five years in the future. So, first off,
we know they are s ll together. We are curious as to why they have stayed together, what

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type of arrangement they’ve worked out, what has become of the mistress. The couple re-
turns from a vaca on to find their apartment ransacked, which provides the opportunity for
further puzzling out of the past. There are leitmo fs throughout, like a cube of the husband’s
and various containers. Containers give shape but they also imprison, underscoring the
themes of the book. In the third sec on, narrated by the daughter, we learn of the effects
of the affair on the children. The son is a kind of lothario; the daughter never married. This
interlocking structure provides much more depth than a simple, straight-through narra on.

11. What is the best advice (about wri ng) you have ever heard?

I tend to shun wri ng bromides like “show don’t tell,” etc. Every rule can be broken under
the right circumstances.

Wri ng should be analyzed according to its own rules; that is, it should be evaluated as to how
well it succeeds in accomplishing the objec ves it sets forth within the four corners of the page.

You should be willing to depart from any outline. The writer has to balance a fine line be-
tween knowing, in general terms, the arc or theme of the story, but not knowing too much,
else the work feels overdetermined and unsurprising.

Recently, I saw a quote from Lydia Davis that “you do not want a steady diet of contemporary
literature. You already belong to your me,” a sen ment with which I agree.

12. How many books you read annually and what are you reading now?
What is your favorite literary genre?

I read about 20-30 books a year. My favorite genre is perhaps unsurprisingly literary fic-
on. Most recently, I’ve read The Beginning of Spring, by Penelope Fitzgerald; Embers, by

Sandor Marai; Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante; The Leopard, by Lampedusa, The
Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad; and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino.

13. What do you deem the most relevant about your wri ng?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

Calvino, especially, speaks of how sadness and profundity and humor are entwined; how
seriousness is best expressed in a lighter register. I think humor and an ironic stance only
serve to underscore the tragic.

I think in musical terms, s ll, and tend to rely on musical structures or concepts in my wri ng – for
instance, recursion, leitmo f, theme and varia ons, or riffing off words or sentences as in jazz.

14. What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

The publishing industry is diffuse; it is opaque and can be difficult to navigate, par cularly
for a first- me writer. Everything seems geared toward pub date, with increasing frene cism,
which seems to diminish in a few weeks as we’re on to the new writer. I intensely dislike the
idea of “trends,” which are inherently fickle. Work that stands the test of me o en defies
trends and is unappreciated in its me.

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RICHARD W. WISE

Author of a novel
REDLINED, THE NOVEL OF BOSTON

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

I was born and grew up in a small town outside Providence, Rhode Island. Of course, Rhode
Island is so small, every town is just outside of Providence. I simultaneous flunked and was
tossed out of high school at age 17. Unfortunately, I was dyslexic and had ADHD long before
either was diagnosable, so I was being constantly told that I was not working up to my po-
ten al. What saved me? I was a voracious reader.
I Joined the U. S. Coast Guard and mustered out at 21 with a high school GED and a two
year college equivalency cer ficate. Armed with those I was able to talk myself into junior
college and went on to get my AA and then transferred to the University of Rhode Island and
received my BA. I was awarded a full scholarship and teaching fellowship from the University,
but got bored and dropped out just short of an MA in Philosophy.

2. Do you remember what was your first story
(ar cle, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

I wrote a book called Harpy the Frog when I was about 12. It was about a smart frog with
a huge pocket from which he could pull anything from a bomb to a phone booth. He had a
sidekick, of course, a big, fat, dumb frog named Slobolian. My mother printed it on her office
mimeograph. I think I stole the idea from a guy up the street

3. What is the tle of your latest book and what inspired it?
When I was in grad school I read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Like many children of the
60s I set out, a er college, to save the world. I became an Alinsky style organizer. Redlined
was inspired by a successful organizing campaign I ran in Boston in 1974-75.
3a. Saul Alinsky was and is quite controversial. Some people say he was a Communist, oth-
er’s that he was a devil worshipper. What’s the truth?

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Most of what you read about Alinsky is pure horseshit. If the Communists ever took over, Alinsky
would have been one of the first guys stood up against the wall and shot. Alinsky was an icon-
oclast. If you could categorize him, poli cally, you’d have to say he was an Athenian democrat.
You’ll hear a lot of talk about Alinskyism. There’s no such thing. It’s not an ideology, it’s a
methodology, a tool kit of techniques based on the belief that man is fundamentally mo -
vated by self-interest. A method is poli cally neutral. Alinsky’s techniques have been adopt-
ed by everyone from Act Up to the Tea Party.

4. How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

I am driven, but unorganized. I am a fast, sloppy writer. The Redlined manuscript published
by Adelaide is the 14th revision. I don’t right at any fixed me and I don’t write daily, but
a er a few days, guilt drives me back to the page.

5. Do you have any unusual wri ng habits?
I write on a computer. I Love it. I much prefer an empty screen to the bare page. There is
something much less sacred about words on a screen. Just click select and delete.

6. Is wri ng the only form of ar s c expression that you u lize,
or is there more to your crea vity than just wri ng?

Wri ng is about it. Beyond that I am a collector. I collect art and rare books.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your wri ngs?
Hemingway is a big influence. I don’t write like him, but I find his work, the best of it, to be
inspiring. In For Whom The Bell Tolls, the words seem to dissolve away and you more or less
effortlessly absorb the narra ve. I’m also a big fan of Frederick Forsyth’s thrillers. I like his
style and the step by step how-to he threads through his stories. A er reading The Dogs of
War, I believed, I too could take over a small African country.

8. What are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

My latest is a Prehistoric novel set about 35,000 years ago in France. My inspira on is the
wonderful charcoal drawings found on the walls of Chauvet Cave in the French Dordogne.
How could anyone call the ar sts who produced those masterpieces, primi ve?

8a. How do you research a book like that?
The book is set in what’s called the Aurignacian Period (35-40,000 BCE). We don’t really
know that much about the period; what people were like, how they lived, which means I can
make up a lot of stuff and who can argue? Archeologists, anthropologists and others such as
ancient life re-enactors have put together quite a plausible picture of life in preliterate mes.

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My first novel, The French Blue, is a historical novel set in the 17th century gem trade. It tells
the backstory of the Hope Diamond. Working on it, I discovered the joys of historical research.
Recorded history covers barely 8,000 years. Given the advances our species has made in re-
corded me, is it reasonable to believe that for the first over 190,000 years of our existence,
all we could do was scratch beneath our armpits and grunt?

9. Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

You know, I’m not sure. I’ve wri en three and a half books and each one is different. The first,
Secrets Of The Gem Trade, is a connoisseur’s quality guide. The second, The French Blue is
a historical novel.
When it comes to novels, I like a good story, well told with interes ng characters and unusual
situa ons with a lot of adventure sprinkled in. The latest style in literary fic on, which fea-
tures the quo dian ramblings of uninteres ng people bores me to tears.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
I became a goldsmith and got involved in the gem trade in the early 1980s. I received my
Graduate Gemologist diploma and started wri ng ar cles on gemstones in my early 40s. I’ve
published dozens of ar cles and been a columnist for two major trade magazines.
I started wri ng fic on seriously at about 50. When I turned 68, I re red to write full me. By
that me, I was pre y secure financially. In today’s world, a writer, even a very good writer,
has a tough road ahead if he/she expects to making a living.

11. What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I guess I could ra le off a few quotes from the great and near great, but how’s this: “The
American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.” Richard M. Nixon. Then I’d add;
“It takes no longer to sell a product for ten thousand dollars than it does to sell one for ten
dollars.” I followed this advice throughout my career un l, that is, I became a writer.

12. How many books you read annually and what are you reading now?
What is your favorite literary genre?

Lord, reading is a passion. I never counted. Maybe 50, 100, depends on the year. I love his-
torical fic on, straight history, art history, adventure, philosophy and biography. Have I le
anything out? Oh yes, Science Fic on, some Fantasy and the odd Dystopian novel as well.
Currently, I’m reading The Hunger by Alma Katsu and a book about one of the few female
Baroque ar sts, Artemisia Gen leschi. She was a follower of Caravaggio.

13. What do you deem the most relevant about your wri ng?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

The theme is human nature. I’m afraid my view is pre y dark.

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14. What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and

about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?
I wish I knew. It’s a brave new world that doesn’t work well for writers. More and more of
the marke ng is piled onto the author’s shoulders. It’s the strangest business in the world.
As a gem dealer it was pre y straight forward. I give you the gem, you pay me the money.
In publishing, the author supplies the product o en a er years of hard work. He doesn’t
get paid. The publisher prints the book and ships it to the wholesaler who doesn’t pay for it.
The wholesaler ships to the retailer who also doesn’t pay for it un l or unless it’s sold. If the
retailer doesn’t sell it, it’s simply sent back, o en in unsalable condi on. As I said above, it’s
a tough profession.

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