About the Author:
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published. The
first two are more adult related, though young adults may enjoy them depending
on their understanding of the themes -
“I’m right here” (spout press) and “Laredo”
(Eraserhead Press). The third story collection is geared to Young Adults -
“Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press).
An additional Young Adult title is
forthcoming in the next few weeks – “As I floated in the jar.” Samples can be
found at –
http://trauch.wordpress.com/
Rauch has been interviewed by the Prague Post, the Oxford
Univ student paper in England, Rain Taxi, has been reviewed by the MIT paper,
Rain Taxi, and the Savanna College of Art and Design paper, among many others.
Rauch’s short stories are imaginative, whimsical, dreamy,
absurd, surreal, fantasy, sci fi, and fairy tale adventures. The underlying
themes relate to
fragility,
uncertainty, impermanence, the mysteries hidden in everyday life, a sense of
discovery, escape, concealment, ennui, regret, loneliness, technology run amok,
eerie vibes, irresponsible behavior, confusion, absurd situations, surrealism,
modern fairy tales, story starters for young adults and reluctant readers,
etc.
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Interview with Tony Rauch:
*I am personally a fan of short fiction, but I know some
people haven't ventured into this realm much. What do you think is so appealing
about short stories?
I suppose every person has different feelings about this,
and it is subjective, but for me the appeals are many, including -
- brevity - they don’t overload you with needless, overly
bloated background info.
- experimentation – they can stretch the limits of fiction
in form and subject matter.
- succinctness – they get to the point and can wrap things
up quickly and neatly.
- volume – being able to experience a variety of adventures
in a short period of time.
*A short piece of fiction really puts the pressure on to
deliver a full experience in a condensed package. Do you think it's harder to
write short stories as opposed to those that are full novel length?
Not for me, no. For me I think longer pieces would be harder
– to keep that momentum and energy going, the pacing. I’m more of a sprinter,
not a marathoner. With shorts, readers can fill in a lot of the details
themselves if you paint with broad strokes. The minds eye of the reader can
fill things in and flesh things out. I see shorts as being like dreams – sometimes you have to
draw some of your own conclusions. In that regard some ambiguity is nice as
leaving things out will get a reader thinking on their own about motivations or
reasons for things.
To me novels often have very contrived, soap opera twists
and turns, whereas shorts usually focus on one single feeling or event. So that
is easier for me to connect with – just focusing on a few things as opposed to
trying to not be ‘all over the place’ with things.
*Pure imagination is evident in all of your stories. Do
you know where a story is going to take you when you get that first initial
idea or are you kind of surprised yourself?
Sometimes. I try to get the endings first, then work
backwards. But sometimes I get a flash of an idea, just a scene or snippet of
dialog that I have to build a story around.
Sometimes I surprise myself in that I think a story is going
one way and it sometimes ends up being something different – I may find that it
works better a totally different way. But that’s part of the surprise and
adventure of it - that point of discovery. But that’s what’s nice about short
work – you can copy and paste and save, thus you can work on different variants
of a story or theme.
Usually I try to have the entire story worked out in my mind
or as an outline before bothering to type it up. If I can’t get something to
work as fragments of notes, or if I can’t get excited about a vague idea, then
it’s probably not worth my time to try to work out further.
Sometimes I’ll look at something months after it’s
‘finished’ and I’ll add some things to it to jazz it up more – an odd little
detail here or there to punch up the weirdness and add more detail and depth.
So re-visiting work after a long period of time seems to help me get out of the
way of myself when bogged down in the initial writing process.
*I am going to assume that your brain is full of ideas
and story inspirations considering how many short stories you currently have in
Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again. How do you decide which ones to
write first? Is it based on what you are most excited to write at that point?
Or do you make a list and stick to it?
What I’m most excited about. And what is needed. When doing
a story collection you need variety. The pieces can’t all be the same. So you
need long, medium, short, and a few very short (flash) pieces. Then you need
some dialog ones, some first person narratives, description ones, internal
monologue ones, and hopefully a second or third person perspective one, etc. You
also need some simple, straight forward pieces and a few more elaborate,
complicated stories. You need a variety of forms and story types.
So in laying things out, often times good or interesting
stories get bumped because they’re redundant to something else in the
collection. To me it’s about balance and not being redundant. Then it’s about
creating a rhythm to the manuscript as far as order of stories go.
So far coming up with ideas has not been a challenge for me,
but that may change at some point. I’m sure eventually I’ll start to repeat
myself, though I do already revisit some of the same themes as often I end up thinking
of a different takes on them.
I usually have a lot of story notes and outlines saved up
and I work on those, filling in the blanks. General ideas are easy, but getting
them to work out as stories is the hard part. But the initial ideas seem to
come pretty naturally for me.
*I love hearing where writers get there work done. Where
can you most often be found writing? And what time of day do you find you are
at your most creative?
Location = on my couch in my living room typing on my laptop
on a TV stand. But a lot of my ideas just pop into my head throughout the
day, so I guess a part of my brain is writing all day long.
Time = late at night. After 9pm. Friday or Saturday night
after 11pm is best for me – everything is done (dishes, laundry, dog walked,
lawn mowed, calls, emails, etc.) and no one is calling me. So that is the
perfect time as my mind is free and clear then. The night feels like a blank
slate, waiting to be filled.
Also when I’m on the bus or walking my dog, doing dishes, cleaning,
or at the supermarket are good times to think about things and work things out
as I have to be at those places or do those things anyway and it’s usually
quiet, so why not get something else done too at the same time. That way I
avoid wasting time with writer’s block in staring at a blank screen and getting
worried about wasting precious time, because I’ve already thought about and
worked some things out ahead of time.
So hopefully later in the day I have some ideas worked out,
packed away, and ready to unravel.
*Do you think you will ever be able to write a story for
all of your ideas? Or do they seem endless?
Hopefully the ideas are different, or different takes on
them, and that no single story could encapsulate all my ideas or themes.
I believe I will run out of good ideas eventually and start
to repeat the same themes, though every writer I suppose revisits themes as
those are the issues they are most concerned about so they’ll probably want to
devote a lot of thought and time to them.
*Who are some of your writing inspirations?
Anyone interesting, imaginative, and concise. Anyone who
makes you think.
Mostly I like short stories as they get to the point
quickly.
I like strange or absurd adventures that are well crafted
and have a meaning to them, and sci fi as it offers ideas –
Older writers:
Donald Barthelme, J.D. Salinger, Richard Brautigan, Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr., Charles Bukowski, Franz Kafka, Leonard Michaels (murderers),
Jayne Anne Phillips, Robert Coover, Samuel Beckett, Antoine de Saint Exupery
(the little prince), Dr. Seuss (cool illustrations), Roald Dahl, Steve Martin
(cruel shoes), W.P. Kinsella (the alligator report), Jim Heynen (the man who
kept cigars in his cap), Don Delillo.
Contemporary writers:
Barry Yourgrau, Mark Leyner, Adrienne Clasky (from the
floodlands), Lydia Davis (Samuel Johnson is indignant), Etgar Keret, Stacey
Richter, George Singleton, James Tate (Return to the city of white donkeys), Thom
Jones, Italo Calvino, Stephen-Paul Martin, Will Self, Denis Johnson (Jesus’
son), David Gilbert (I shot the hairdresser), David Sedaris, Paul Di Filippo.
Bizarro authors:
D. Harlan Wilson, Andersen Prunty, Carlton Mellick.
Science fiction from the 40s, 50s, and 60s:
Rod Serling, L. Sprague De Camp, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K.
Dick, Aurthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Charles Beaumont, Ursula K. Le Guin,
etc.
So that’s a lot of influences I guess.
*What type of books do you most enjoying reading at the
moment?
Biographies because truth is stranger than fiction.
As for fiction, I would recommend James Tate’s “Return to
the city of white donkeys”. That book is all short prose-poems that act as
little short stories.
But art and music also really inspires me. I guess art and
music gets my mind thinking.
*What was your last book about?
A short story collection. Here is the blurb for that one -
"eyeballs growing all over me . . . again"
is a 140 page short story collection of imaginative, whimsical, dreamy, absurd,
surreal fantasy, sci fi, and fairy tale adventures. These fables will make
great story starters for young adults and reluctant readers. Some of the pieces
are absurdist or surreal adventures that hearken back to imaginative absurdism,
sci-fi, and fantasy of the 1950s.
With themes of longing, discovery, secrets, escape,
eeriness, surprises, and strange happenings in everyday life, readers will
delight in these brief but wondrous adventures -
- a man comes home to discover a Bigfoot-like creature
watching his TV.
- a giant robot pays a visit to a couple.
- the new kid at school has some unusual toys to
share.
- an inventor creates an attractive robot in order to
meet women.
- a girl becomes so ill she has her head replaced with
a goat head.
- someone wakes to discover little eyes growing all
over his body.
- small, hairy creatures come looking to retrieve an
object they had misplaced.
- a boy finds an unusual pair of sunglasses in a
field.
These short stories will give a reluctant reader a sense of
accomplishment after reading.
*What is your next book about? When will it be out?
Another short story collection. I don’t know when EHP will
release it, but soon – in the next few weeks/months I’m told. Here’s the blurb
for that one -
“as i floated in the jar “ is a short
story collection of imaginative, whimsical, dreamy, absurd, surreal fantasy,
sci fi, and fairy tale adventures. These fables will make great story starters
for young adults and reluctant readers. Some of the pieces are absurdist or
surreal adventures that hearken back to imaginative absurdism, sci-fi, and
fantasy of the 1950s.
With themes of longing, discovery, secrets, escape,
eeriness, surprises, and strange happenings in everyday life, readers will
delight in these brief but wondrous adventures –
-
a lonely girl finds a small spaceship in the woods.
-
a stranger extracts a baby from a man waiting for the bus.
- a farmer invents gadgets to fight off
infiltrators leaking in from another dimension.
-
a jar falls from a passing wagon, spilling a strange liquid that turns a
mud puddle into something else.
- a gang travels into the past to escape a regression plague that slowly turns people back into
primates.
- strange creatures abduct a man and try to
sell him to a different set of strange creatures.
-
a man gets a verbally abusive amorphous blob as a roommate.
These and other adventures await
the adventurous reader
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Tony, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and answer some questions!
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You can find out more about Tony Rauch and his books on his
Blog.
