John Brandon Author Interview +Giveaway
John Brandon is the June Author in the Spotlight on Booksnob this month and he has an written an excellent book called A Million Heavens that takes place in New Mexico. Read on to learn the back story of his books and to find out where he currently teaches. He also has some really great authors on his list of favorites.
1. Tell
us a little bit about yourself?
I grew up on the Gulf Coast of
Florida, where my family still lives. I
went to college at UF, and since then I’ve lived all over the country, in about
a dozen different states. I did an MFA
at Washington University in St. Louis and then spent several years working in
factories and warehouses before my first book, Arkansas, was published. After Arkansas, I was awarded the Grisham
Fellowship down at Ole Miss and then the Tickner Fellowship at Gilman School,
in Baltimore. Now I teach at Hamline
University in St. Paul, permanently I hope.
- What
is the inspiration behind your story “A Million Heavens”?
I always start with setting, and
this novel was no different. My wife and
I lived in New Mexico several years ago and I always knew I’d use the place as
a setting. There was something
mysterious and open about it. I sat on
it for a year or two and then started thinking about what I could do with the
desert. I knew this was my chance to
involve magic and the mystical. I knew I
wanted to have a lot of characters all blowing around in the desert wind, some
of them strongly connected, some barely connected at all. Having a wolf character occurred to me. I hadn’t written decent characters, good
people, so that was new too. Well,
they’re decent compared to my previous characters, anyway.
- Usually an author puts some of his own
life experiences in the book. Did
you do that? Do you have anything
in common with your characters?
Some of Reggie’s childhood
memories are my own, and some of Arn’s work experiences. That’s probably about it. Oh, and I had that job Cecelia has, where you
go around and fix the A/V equipment. I
was as bad at it as she is.
- Why
did you decide to become a writer?
The first time I wrote a story, as
a sophomore in college, I knew it felt different than anything else I’d
tried.
I found myself taking it
seriously.
I’d been pretty good at
sports as a kid, but I didn’t really
care about it.
I wasn’t competitive like you’re supposed to
be.
I was terrible at math and science,
and not even particularly good at writing academic papers.
And then here was this thing I seemed to care
about a lot, and I seemed pretty good at it.
In high school it didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer, but
Gainesville had a bunch of them.
I
figured if they could do it, maybe I could too.
- Do you
like to read? What are some of your
favorite books and authors?
Some of my favorites: Tom Drury, Joy Williams, Padgett Powell,
Barry Hannah, Charles Portis, Lewis Nordan, Mary Robison, Alice Munro. I could name a lot more. Denis Johnson. Lorrie Moore.
- What
are some of the issues that you feel are integral to your book?
Well, my idea while I was writing
it was to make the narrative ride mimic real life. So sometimes wild things happen and sometimes
nothing happens. Sometimes characters
are strongly connected and sometimes they’re not connected at all. Some endings are cornily happy and some are
sad and some are sort of neutral or don’t feel much like endings at all. I didn’t want each character to announce in
their first sentence what their purpose in the book would be. I didn’t want them to say, I’m so-and-so and
John Brandon will be using me to fill the roll of, you know, whatever. I wanted the characters to feel sort of
found, and then as you go you see how their stories intersect or speak to each
other. Or how they don’t. I wanted it to be a novel that didn’t read
like a novel.
- What
is the most important lesson/idea you want readers to take away from A
Million Heavens?
No particular lesson. I just want them to feel like they’ve been
immersed in a world they’ve never been in before, that I’ve given them a
thorough experience of my vision of the desert.
- I love
the cover art on your book. Did you
get to choose the book title A Million Heavens and the cover art?
My editor Eli Horowitz had a lot
of say about the cover. There are
usually a few discussions at the beginning of the cover-art process that I’m
privy to, during which they let me give input if I have any. Usually I’m pretty eager to just hand it over
to them and see what they come up with.
The same artist did all three of my covers, this guy Keith Shore. I can take credit for one idea, but it isn’t
on a cover. In my novel Citrus County,
on the page that says Part 1 there’s a spider, then on the page that says Part
2 the spider has moved down the page, then part 3 he’s moved even farther. That was my idea.
As far as the title, my suggestion
was The Dry Measures. It got voted down,
maybe because it was a little punny. A
Million Heavens comes from the book, something Cecelia says. Eli picked it out and said it sounded like a
title.
- How do
you carve time out of your busy day to write?
It’s not easy. I’m more a crack-of-dawn type than a
midnight-oil type. I get up early and
sneak out of the house before the kids are awake. Summers and Christmas Break are important, of
course. There’s no such thing as a
weekend for me. Whatever day I can
write, I write. I don’t treat Sunday any
differently than Tuesday. I’ll write on
Christmas.
- Tell
us about your first and second books?
The first was Arkansas, which is a
weird literary crime novel. The second
was Citrus County, which is a weird literary kidnapping novel.
- Are
you currently working on a fourth novel?
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
I have an idea for a novel set
back in Civil War times, but I’ve been too intimidated to start it. This summer I’m fixing up short stories for a
collection that will come out early next summer.
- Tell
us in one sentence why we should read A Million Heavens?
Oh, I’m not much of a
salesman. If you like something
different, something that finds its own way, you’ll probably like it.
Thanks John!!
