10 Questions with Joseph D. Newcomer

I’ve been interviewed a few times in the last couple of weeks. The questions are fairly predictable: Where do you get your ideas? Advice for new writers? What’s your genre?

All good questions, but they get asked a lot. None of the interviewers have read SPARK or this blog – yet. Maybe they’ll come over to check it out.

I decided to do something different. I only want to interview writers whose work I’ve read and enjoyed. That gives me a chance to ask then about their book with a bit more insight. The first is Joseph D. Newcomer. I’ve reviewed both of his books on this blog and follow his blog. Here’s my 10 questions with him:

Joseph D. Newcomer is an author of speculative and literary fiction and the Founder of DEAD STAR PRESS. He was born in the blue-collar, Northwest Pennsylvania city of Erie in 1980. Currently, he resides in the Arizona desert, where he continues to write his Thought & other Absurdities blog and follow-up novels to his debut, El Camino Blue, and his second novel, Diminishing Return.

Joseph spends his spare time Photoshopping his daughter, Ari, and his girlfriend, Andrea (the two greatest loves of his life) into art from comic books and curating Ari’s comic book collection. In the future, he hopes to be sucked into The Twilight Zone or an episode of Black Mirror, though he suspects that we already were.

1. Any regrets about publishing El Camino Blue? Were you truly such a jerk when you were younger?

I don’t regret publishing it. I think it was a very candid piece. I was young, angry, prideful, and more naive and ignorant than I would have admitted back then. I think many of us who have grown beyond our childish roots look back and think similarly. I exaggerated a little of what’s in the book to make it a bit more entertaining, but I think many of us were a little jerky at that age, and that’s what made it relatable. It’s definitely not my finest work, but it may be my most accessible. It’s the book that every writer is supposed to write, think better of releasing it, and throw it away, but at the time, I wasn’t sure if it would be the only book I would ever write, so I said screw it. Also, I’m far from anything that could be misconstrued as a perfectly wonderful person now. I can definitely still be a jerk at times. I think the most significant difference now is that I realize it more quickly and apologize more frequently.

2. The change from non-fiction (El Camino Blue and your blog) to fiction in Diminishing Return was impressive. Please share the story behind both the change and the genesis of Diminishing Return.

El Camino Blue is taken from a journal, but it isn’t entirely non-fiction. But yes, it’s a different beast altogether when you go from a story that is adapted from life. In El Camino Blue, I already knew everything that would happen. Inventing an entire situation, setting, and plot was much more rewarding for me. Ever since I was introduced to Vonnegut and Serling, even before El Camino was turned into a book, I’ve always had a predilection for stories with a sci-fi aspect. I was a big comic book kid. Maybe that’s why I connected with it. I also loved more realistic books like The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersesian, High Fidelity by Hornby, Ethan Hawke’s books. Those books felt very natural. They were writing what they knew. I’m sure they all have quite a bit of the author’s own experiences built-in. They inspired what El Camino eventually became. The switch to Diminishing Return felt natural to me, though I can see how they are viewed as wildly different books. The idea for Diminishing Return has a few influences. I had just switched jobs from work that kept me absurdly busy and running around for 70 to 90 hours a week to a 9 to 5 office job where I had tons of spare time. It was fantastic, but the stillness and sometimes boredom of the work had me staring at the clock, wondering if it had moved or if it was going to. So, naturally, I started writing a book about what might happen if time stopped and why it might happen. I had also been reading a lot more news with my extra time, and a few things seemed repetitious. Everything was being rebooted, reused, and remixed. There were a ton of lawsuits for music being too derivative. And, of course, the political and social unrest, which I saw eating away at not only society in general, but at family dynamics and people’s personal relationships. It only seems to be getting worse, though, so I guess my book didn’t fix it. LOL. All of that and more made it into the manuscript.

3. Let’s talk comic books. What are you adding to your daughter’s collection? Is it really hers?

Ah! Comic books. Yes, the collection is all Ari’s. Even what I had from my youth. One day, when she was just a month or so old, we were at an outdoor Halloween light event in Glendale, AZ, and we stumbled across a comic bookstore called Drawn to Comics. Andrea, my more significant other and Ari’s mom, and I talked about how cool it would be to get Ari some comics and put them away for her. The staff was so incredibly inviting that I decided we should make it a new monthly tradition, and we would take pictures of every visit so that we could look back on every month of her life. It’s probably the single most satisfying thing I’ve ever come up with. She’s five now. Looking back on those pictures is already incredible. If anyone wants to see all of her visits, they can go to the dropdown of the bio tab on my website and select photos. Click on Ari’s trips to the Comic Book Store, and you’ll see every picture we’ve taken each month. It will be an amazing thing for all of us to have down the road. What we collect isn’t set in stone, but I try to get female characters, key issues, cool variants, number 1s, and anything with cover art that we like, like Alex Ross, Scottie Young, Josh Middleton, and Adam Hughes. We don’t actually read most of them to keep them in the best condition possible, but we buy graphic novels and read them at bedtime. Ari’s obsessed with Teen Titans Go! Right now. Her best item in the collection is the first appearance of Spider-Gwen. Someday, I want to get her the first appearance of Batgirl, but it’s really more about having a fun way to remember her at every stage in her life.

4. Night owl or early bird? When did it become that way?

I was always a night owl until age and having a baby took hold. My day job and getting Ari off to school have me up at 5 AM through the week. My body struggles to sleep past 5:30 AM, even when I’m not working. I’m not impressed with my body’s need to be awake at that time, though. I’m a reluctant early bird, I guess.

5. Please describe the perfect setting for you when you write.

I don’t really have a perfect setting for writing. I do a lot of it when I’m in the shower. I have to keep my phone near the tub to take quick notes before forgetting my ideas. I guess that’s my perfect setting. I can pretty much write anywhere where there aren’t major distractions. 

6. Are you in any writer’s critique groups? What’s your take on them?

I’m not in any groups. I probably should be. People seem to get quite a bit out of it. I have some incredible people who beta read and help edit. My High School Senior English teacher is a friend. He helps immensely. Andrea catches a lot of stuff I miss as well. That’s my main group. I’m not opposed to other groups, though. I’d like to think that if I had more free time, I’d start or join one, but I’m pretty sure I’d just take more naps. I have more than enough to read now that Andrea and I started Dead Star Press. Just keeping up with submissions is more reading time than I have.

7. Your blog can be snarky and yet there’s a strong compassionate thread that runs through Diminishing Return. What tips the scale between them?

I’d like to think my snarky stuff is driven by compassion. I think we can be sarcastic and caring at the same time. Maybe the major difference is the amount of time I consider and flesh out an idea before publishing it. Of course, the blog is sometimes very much a gut reaction to things I see or read. A book, though, you have to sit with it, and you get into the true reasons for your emotions and others’ emotions. You get to inspect on a deeper level how we are all broken in different ways, and compassion is the side effect. In Diminishing Return, the main character has had lifetimes to mull over all of his feelings. After that amount of reflection and solitude, I imagine it would be easier to forgive and accept. I think the alternative in his situation, maybe any of our situations, is simply to go mad—seems like that is something that is happening everywhere I look these days.

8. Star Trek or Star Wars? 

Hmm… I enjoy both. I’ve probably spent more time with Star Wars, and I love most everything involved with it, but I also have a real soft spot for old TV. To me, it always felt like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone were cut from the same cloth. 

9. Has turning your blog into a podcast done what you hoped it would do?  What were your goals for that addition?

I didn’t really have any expectations for the podcast. I just have some friends who enjoy the medium, and I wanted to make my writing more accessible to them. Not everyone enjoys reading, and I figured a podcast would be a great way to reach people. Sometimes it feels like I’m just shouting into the ether, but I have a few listeners. As long as they enjoy it, it’s worth doing.

10. What non-financial advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?

Nothing that I would have listened to or really even could’ve changed when I was 20, but go back to school, stop smoking, and work less in your thirties. You hold yourself to a higher standard than you need to, and you could enjoy your life more if you didn’t.

Here’s where you can follow, stalk, or just learn more about Joseph D. Newcomer:

Links

Thought and Other Absurdities Podcast

Facebook Pages

https://www.facebook.com/joe.newcomer.9

https://www.facebook.com/JosephNewcomerAuthor

Websites

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