Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Alex Austin

What inspired you to write “End Man”?

Austin: The idea for End Man came from an online experience. I’d been trading pages with a fellow writer. We’d been in this relationship for months, and we thought the swapping beneficial. I emailed her some new chapters and asked her to send her material. She didn’t get back to me acknowledging my new chapters or sending hers. I sent several messages, which also got no response. In her story, her main character was battling an incurable disease. Had she fictionalized her own ailment? Could she be hospitalized—or worse? I checked her Facebook and Goodreads pages, but I found nothing to explain her silence. As I reviewed more of her online haunts, I realized if she had succumbed to an illness, everything she had posted online would remain intact. She would still get likes; people would continue to comment on her posts, friend her, spam her. As if her life went on. How many internet users was this already true of? Was the online world occupied by ghosts? This seemed to be the stuff of a speculative novel. As I developed the plot, I recalled Gogol’s novel Dead Souls in which the main character figures out how to profit off of dead serfs (Gogol gets a shout-out in End Man). Now I had to come up with a contemporary (2030s) business plan to match the Russian author’s slick scam. As to my missing writer, I discovered that—ironically—she was “ghosting” me, a term that came into play while I was writing the novel. To that point, yesterday, Linkedin invited me to congratulate a former colleague on his work anniversary. The man is five years dead.

How did you come up with the names of your main characters?

Austin: Mostly, I choose names that reflect an aspect of the character’s physical self, personality, or motives—but not on the nose. Dickens was brilliant at this. After meeting the character in Dickens, the reader can’t imagine any other name being right. Jason Klaes is one character in End Man. “Klaes” reminded me of key, which is “clé” in French. Klaes is a key in the novel. Masie Sparod is another character. “Sparod” brought to mind the saying “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Maisie Sparod is merciless. Maglio means mallet and a slaughter of livestock. Geo Maglio. Mallet to the world. The choice of “Raphael Winston Lennon,“ for the main character is a little different. John Lennon’s mother, Julia, was killed by a car at age 44. Her death devastated Lennon, and he wrote several songs about her, reflecting his grief. In End Man, Raphael’s mother dies at about the same age of a horrible disease and her memory haunts Raphael. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) was a brilliant renaissance painter. Raphael, too, is an artist, as was John Lennon. End Man is a dystopia in the making. Winston is the protagonist in Orwell’s 1984. It’s also John Lennon’s middle name. David Bowie’s favorite book? 1984. Raphael resembles David Bowie, who created his final album around the theme of death.

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?

Austin: Oscar Wilde noted that the most frightening sentence in the world is when a companion says, “You know, I had the strangest dream last night . . .” I propose that the next most frightening sentence is, “Hey, I’ve got this idea for a novel. What if . . . ” When an idea comes along that I believe has potential, I’ll run it by friends, relatives, and occasionally innocent bystanders. If my test case looks the other way and mentions that gas has risen/fallen another three cents, I drop the idea. If I come up with something that proves interesting to more than me, I write a synopsis, flesh out the characters a bit, and then write a couple of chapters. Then I plan. I create a table with fifty cells—fifty chapters. Intending to fill each cell with a rough chapter synopsis, I reach ten, get impatient, and start writing. I’ll write the whole damn thing, conscious of the plot holes, cul-de-sacs, sketchy characters, cliches, and shaky language. I push through to the end that I don’t have. Then I rewrite, undoing what I have done, doing what I have left undone. When I finish a novel, I look at it as a set of problems I’ve created for myself. Now I’ve got to solve those problems. End Man took about five years to write. More than 200 drafts. Ten-thousand problems minimum.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Austin: "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is a short story by Alan Sillitoe, later made into a film. I view that title as an apt description of the novelist. Writing a novel can take years, and many writers give up during the process. Can you endure? You’ll piss off many people who can’t understand that your story is almost always in your head, grabbing your attention when they want it. You’ll piss off people who think your story is about them, and you were unkind. Every rejection delivers a wound that doesn’t heal. You end up a bloody mess. And the rewards are none too certain. But if you’re bound to do it, then read. Read everything. Know words. You may never use all of them, but you’ll have them at your disposal for that metaphor. Write your first story or novel in the first person and keep it close to your own experience. Swap stories with everyone you can. Learn to take criticism.

What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?

Austin: I have gone through periods when I stuck to a genre: mystery, science fiction, thriller, satire, etc. But in recent years, I’ve trended literary (Booker Prize/New York Review of Books stuff). Of course, any of the forementioned could contain novels I’d characterize as literary. Some contemporary writers I like are Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes. Elena Ferrante, Steve Erickson, Annie Proulx, Michel Houellebecq and Jonathan Franzen. As for my favorite book, I like The Recognitions by William Gaddis. This is a long, difficult novel that demands commitment and concentration. There are scenes of pure unattributed dialogue, some go on for thirty pages and involve dozens of characters and different conversations, and the characters move into and out of the conversations. But the reader with effort can piece everything together, and the reward is a brilliant satire on postwar American culture and the New York arts scene. It’s a story that pits originality against fakery, the genuine artist against the charlatan, and the winners may surprise you.

What are you working on next?

Austin: The publisher has asked me to write a sequel. I’ve been mulling ideas for the plot. In End Man, I set up a new pantheon of minor gods, influencers, and I’m sure they’ve been up to mischief. I’m also finishing a rewrite on a realistic novel called Blood Marriage about a young woman who escapes an arranged marriage in Pakistan. The novel has been up on Radish and attracted plenty of readers, but its second half in retrospect was a mess. The beat goes on.

Learn More About the Author and End Man here:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9066.Alex_Austin

https://twitter.com/alaust70

https://touch.facebook.com/alex.austin.100

https://www.librarything.com/profile/AlexAustin

Interested in checking out the book for yourself?

Find it for purchase here or Kindle Unlimited

Interested in submitting your book for review? Visit my review page for guidelines and submission requirements.

review