The Next Big Thing

The lovely Rachel McKibbens has tagged me in this thingamajig. I learned a long time ago to do pretty much exactly what she tells me to if I know what's best for me so here it is, albeit late as all get out:

What is your working title of your book (or story)?
I have two that I am working on, currently. One is The Devil's Radio, which has managed to be a finalist for the Linda Bruckheimer series in Kentucky literature, and the Gell
but has, as yet, not found a home. The other is my NEA funded project, which has the working title of Dark Hollow: An Appalachian History in Verse, but I am sure I will change that, as that title sounds pretentious as hell.


Where did the idea come from for the book?
The ever-growing piles of poems that were not in a book, that inter-related gave birth to The Devil's Radio, which started as a culling from a much more terrible book called The Broken Heads of Saints that is now pretty much safely dead. The history is pretty much what it says on the can, although calling it history is pretty generous. More of a collection around the central theme of what it is to be an Appalachian, how untenable it is to stay, or to go, to live with a homeland that you can never return to, to live in exile, and to be the last culture where they sell your teeth as a gag in a vending machine. Expect poems about Moonbeam Mcswine, and guns, and giant, monstrous, mutated catfish the size of volkswagen buses and absolutely true family history of murder, baloney knives and hair grease.



What genre does your book fall under?  Poetry, I hope.



Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? ...Harry Dean Stanton and Brad Dourif can play everyone except the women...probably most of the women too.



What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  Hillbilly book learnin' and witchery


Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? (if this applies - otherwise, make up another question to answer!)
I hope someone wants this damn thing already.Agents tend to avoid poetry like it's catching, so I am assuming maybe a merciful small press will be interested in us making a lot of no money together.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript My whole damn life.


What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? IreneMcKinney's work, Diane Gilliam Fisher's work, the Spoon River Anthology, Murder ballads, Jack Tales, Grimm's and Borges, with a healthy sprinkling of T.S. Eliot and Anne Sexton...sounds like a godawful mess, doesn't it?


Who or what inspired you to write this book? Probably Thomas Merton can be blamed. And that time my cousins fed me whiskey when I was four. All the chemicals in the river.


What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? I don't know..If I haven't sold you yet, it seems unlikely that I will pull you in with some sparkling fact.  I guess Jethro Bodine will probably put in an appearance, somewhere along the line.