I’m choosing to talk about a project that’s just getting started—a wedding-themed novel in ten parts. But I want to take a minute to plug a couple other things. Brooklyn Arts Press will publish a collection of my short fiction this fall (the title is still in negotiation). And I’m now inking the last page of the third issue of my comic, RUNX TALES, so look for it in April.
Also stay tuned for my Next Big tag-ees for February 27: essayist and poet Lisa Wells and cartoonist (and my former collaborator!) Amanda Verwey.
Here goes:
What is the working title of the book?
The Hitch: An Agamist Manifesto
Where did the idea come from for the book?
Fascination/torment. From being a guest and working as a caterer at weddings.
What genre does your book fall under?
Right now I’m envisioning it as ten separate chapbooks that could be read in any order. Some lean more toward fiction, some toward nonfiction, some are image+text. There is narrative overlap. Despite being created as ten separate books and called a manifesto, I’m thinking of it as a novel.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Typical wedding stuff: heavy symbolism; tension between the mystical and the carnal; often comical attempts at idyll; Bacchanalic reveling that can tip that idyll over the brink into the realm of the sinister; the bizarre commingling of people from vastly different strata of the happy couple’s lives.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Its characters include a control-freak wedding planner; his romance-novelist mother; a tyrant bride; a victim bride; a groom who is really a tattered newspaper clipping; a cynically poetic caterer; and me. All of these characters are fairly easy to inhabit.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It will first be printed in limited letterpress editions over the next couple years. I'd like to later adapt it to a trade edition. So ideally, both, although it doesn't seem like something an agent would take on.
