Interview with Jamie S. Rich Reader Views would like to welcome Jamie S. Rich, author the pop-culture novel, “The Everlasting.” Jamie is being interviewed by Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views. Juanita: Hi Jamie – thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. You have just released your new book “The Everlasting.” Would you tell us the storyline?
Juanita: I understand that this is the second book in a trilogy. Would you tell us more about this series, and do readers have to read the first novel to understand “The Everlasting”? Jamie: The unofficial title of the series is “The Romance Trilogy,” and no, you don’t have to read them all to understand one. Though they do share supporting characters in common, it’s more a thematic arc than a plot arc. The first book was my debut prose novel, “Cut My Hair,” which is the tale of a boy wrestling with his identity and where he belongs in the world. I suppose the conflict of that protagonist, Mason, isn’t necessarily that different than Lance’s, but there is a definite difference in where a person is at in life and how they engage with people when they are 19 and when they are 25. The idea is that when you put the three together, the books will give a bigger picture about relationships. In that sense, “The Everlasting” is kind of the dark middle. Juanita: What inspired “The Everlasting”? Jamie: I started it almost immediately after the publication of “Cut My Hair,” so back in 2000. I was about 29 at the time, and I had just put to bed a novel about being at the tail end of your teen years. With a lot more experience under my belt, I knew there was more to be said about the fundamental questions posed in “Cut My Hair.” While I didn’t use the same protagonist, some of my thinking was, “Where would Mason be six years later, and how would that measure up with his expectations.” I know 25 was a crucial age for me. The quarter century mark. That year started with a feeling that anything was possible, that it would be my year, and ended with a bit of a comedown. “The Everlasting” was born out of wanting to capture that feeling, and once I had invented Lance and decided he would be my main character, it fell into place pretty easy. Juanita: Jamie, would give us a little more background into your lead character, Lance Scott? Is he the typical 20-something man? Jamie: I don’t know how typical he is, but he definitely represents a certain type. I’ve worked in comics, I worked in an indie record store, I used to haunt clubs and see shows, and I met many guys who were like him. They’re maybe more sensitive than they should be, wrapped up in the trivialities of pop culture, have a caustic sense of humor. I definitely resemble that description a little myself. I was somewhat conscious of the fact that I was representing that segment of the population, but as I wrote, I didn’t worry about it. Rather, I just tried to make Lance’s reactions make sense for him. Reader response has been to the positive, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who see themselves or someone they know in the character, and that is about as gratifying as it gets. Every writer wants to capture something that’s real. Juanita: What is Lance’s fascination with Paul Weller, and how does this strong musical accompaniment, influence the story? Jamie: The Weller connection grew out of my decision to make Lance a mod. Paul Weller’s band the Jam was at the head of the style’s revival in the late ‘70s, and he remains an icon in that kind of r&b-inflected rock music to this day. The mods have pretty strict rules about what music counts and how one dresses, and I’m actually against those kinds of rules myself. I like style, but I’m more of a set-your-own-code person. I liked the idea that Lance would be mod-identified, but yet he didn’t fit in, almost willfully--which is a contrast to Mason in “Cut My Hair,” who was trying very hard to be a punk. These decisions grew naturally out of my own music-obsessed brain. I am a music fiend, and I listen to a lot of stuff, there is constantly something playing in my house and when I am working. I wanted to take that to the nth degree, to really have Lance wrapped up in it. Like, he can’t make a move until he picks the right tune to go along with it. From there, it evolved into a larger statement about how people communicate through pop culture, both to the good and to the bad. Juanita: What are your thoughts on pop-culture and the strong impact/influence it has on this generation? Jamie: I actually really enjoy a lot of it. Sometimes I do feel like maybe it’s discussed too much, that maybe we let greater issues slide in order to talk about last night’s episode of “Weeds” or whatever, but I’m not ready to say definitively that it’s currently better or worse than it ever was. I think we like to support a myth that people 100 years ago were a lot more aware of politics and religion and things, but to me, that just fulfills a need for some people to make today seem all the more worse than yesterday. Plus, to hate on pop culture too much would be hypocritical, since I am attempting to contribute to it. Technology worries me more, actually. It seems like it’s shortening how we communicate. No one has time to say anything anymore, they need shortcuts. It makes me laugh when people use just the initials for complicated titles, and it seems like it would take longer to figure out what the letters are than it does to type the full name. Juanita: What is the significance of Lance’s spoiled little feline, Sadie? Why is she so lucky to receive all of his affections? Jamie: I suppose that’s the one place in the book where there’s no denying how much I borrowed from my own life. Sadie is sitting next to me right now, getting all mad at another cat running around outside our window. I’ve always been a big fan of cats, and sticking her in “The Everlasting” started as a bit of a giggle but then it took on its own life, as these things often do. Cats are interesting to observe, because they have mood swings and behave in their own ways. There has been a mythology around the species for centuries. I think humans see things in felines that they can learn from. A woman once visited my apartment and saw how I interacted with Sadie and commented, “Why do I always seem to meet boys who talk to their cats more than they talk to me?” How we end up this way is something I have yet to figure out. Juanita: Jamie, tell us a little about the women Lance has recently dated, and why is he struggling with his relationships with women? Jamie: Someone on MySpace recently asked me why Lance and just about everyone she knows chases after the wrong people. It’s an eternal quandary and one people have a real hard time breaking. The first woman in the book is Ashley, and he goes with her because she’s attractive and they share some laughs, but it’s pretty clear rather quickly that they want different things in life. She’s followed by Mandy, who is flighty and artistic, and she may represent for him some of that youthful ideal he is always chasing. When Chynna Clugston, an amazing comic book artist, did the cover for me, I think she really captured Lance’s problem. He’s in an embrace with a wonderful woman, and while she is very much into the kiss, he’s looking at something else. The question he has to answer for himself is why he can’t see what’s in front of him, why he is always thinking he is about to miss something else. Juanita: Who is the mysterious blue haired girl? Jamie: Everyone and no one, really. A ghost, a concept, an excuse. The one that always gets away. Juanita: Does 25 year-old Lance ever face his fear of committing to just one woman? Jamie: There are more stories to be told with him. He learns things in “The Everlasting,” to be sure, but I’m not done with him. His younger self is actually a supporting character in my comic book series with Marc Ellerby, “Love the Way You Love.” I like having him in there because there is a lot of talk in “The Everlasting” about what Lance was like as a teenager, and in the comic, we get to see that. (I also like that my prose and my comics have crossed over.) I’ve also done some serialized online fiction, he has his own live journal at http://lancescott.livejournal.com/. This past summer I serialized a story called “Romeo may be Bleeding, but Mercutio is Dead,” and he’s definitely putting some of those life lessons from “The Everlasting” to work. But like I said, these patterns are harder to break than we think, and I’m starting to wonder just how far we ever get out of our own traps. Juanita: It must be an interesting challenge crossing over characters in your various creative works. Would you comment on the mediums of prose and comics, and the different outcome your can reach with each style of writing? Do you have a preference at this point? Jamie: I don’t really have a preference. For me, the writing of both gives me two different spaces to work in. In particular, in this stage of my prose career, I am very much working towards a specific goal and all the stories have walked that line. The comics have allowed me to experiment with different techniques and moods, and so they can provide a welcome break. It’s like prose is one type of exercise, like running, and comics is swimming. I like them both, they both burn calories, and I’d get bored if I did one exclusively every day. Juanita: What statements are you making towards the realities of love, and the ideal of love in “The Everlasting”? Jamie: I’d like to think, actually, that I’m reaffirming that there is an everlasting out there, and that the biggest problem to finding it is how we get in our own way as individuals. For all his clumsiness, Lance keeps going. In the end, you have to pick yourself up and try again. Juanita: Jamie, you use quite a bit of sarcasm and wit in “The Everlasting,” adding a humorous element to your story. Would you comment on that? Jamie: Well, duh. You picked up on that, did you? Ha! Sadly, it’s just the way I’m wired. I’m a judgmental bastard. It’s true. That’s my horrible confession! Juanita: There are some obvious similarities between you and Lance Scott, and you really seem to know this character very well. How much of your personality and experiences did you weave into “The Everlasting”? Jamie: It’s a really difficult question to answer, because as soon as I pick an element and say, “Oh, this piece here, where Lance goes to this party, that was like a party I went to,” I then start to think of all the ways I changed it for the story. Nothing comes out the way it really happened, and sometimes the most fictitious element sucks in real life when I’m not looking. Like, I recently put another graphic novel to bed, a book called “12 Reasons Why I Love Her,” which I did in collaboration with Joelle Jones. It’s a story about one couple, and you’d automatically think that the man is more like me than the woman. And yet, there are a lot of little things in her that are more me. Like, there’s a story of her as a child getting a ticket for running a red light on her bike. That happened to me. Or the chapter where she tells bad, tasteless jokes, much to her boyfriend’s horror. That’s my sense of humor, I wouldn’t be the one horrified, and I’ve certainly shocked people I was with. The same can be said of Lance. We may share the same cat and taste in music and feeling about birthdays, but a lot of stuff happens to him that never happened to me. Or, like the birthday example, though it started off as him ranting in a way I might, because his family is so different than mine, it goes off in completely different directions. If you put all of my characters and I in a field and ask who Spartacus is, we’d all be Spartacus. Juanita: Jamie, what are do you ultimately want readers to understand by reading “The Everlasting”? Jamie: Really, I just want them to feel like they’ve spent some time with the people I write about and got to know them. Nothing is better than hearing someone say they felt like Lance was a friend and how frustrated they got with his decisions. The joy as an author comes from people telling me what they got out of it. I know what I learned, but I don’t truly understand what I accomplished until the fans start telling me what it meant to them. So, I try not to be too explicit when I talk about my books, I don’t want to set anything in stone. Juanita: Who is your reading audience? Who do you think would enjoy “The Everlasting”? Jamie: Music and pop-culture freaks like myself will definitely find something to enjoy in the book, but hopefully it extends beyond that. I hope people who like romantic stories will buy my books and enjoy them, because I’m trying to write the sort of romances I would enjoy, something modern. I think for a lot of people, too, if they don’t listen to a lot of music or never went out to clubs and things, they might be intrigued by this glimpse into a lifestyle different than their own. In the end, I just want to write good, emotional stories, and I cross my fingers that others will get on board. Juanita: Would you give us a little prelude into the final book in the series? Jamie: It’s called “Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?” and I finished the first draft this past summer. It’s actually set up a little bit in “The Everlasting.” Lance’s younger half-brother, Percy, is a kind of pop-philosopher who disappears during “The Everlasting.” The story picks up eight years later when someone finally finds him, and as he is lured out of hiding, we discover all the things that caused him to run away. It has echoes of my novella, “I Was Someone Dead,” in that it’s about a man in exile, hiding from the pain of his past, and how another person entering his life unexpectedly forces him to engage with reality once again. At its heart, it’s about a man and a woman who are both hurting, but who can be a helping hand for one another. I’m hoping to have it out next summer. Juanita: How long have you been a writer, and how can readers find out more about you and your endeavors? Jamie: Right out of college, so starting in 1994, I edited comic books. My first book, “Cut My Hair,” was published in 2000, and I’ve been working ever since, leaving editing in 2004. Oni Press (http://www.onipress.com) is my primary publisher, both for prose and comics, and they have everything there, as does your regular retail outlets, online and off. I also actively maintain a blog, Confessions of a Pop Fan (http://www.confessions123.com/jamie/mainpage.html), where I keep people up to date with what I am working on, link to my reviews at DVDTalk.com, write about music, confess to getting pedicures, whatever strikes my fancy. Naturally, I’m on MySpace, too: http://www.myspace.com/jamiesrich. For those who may want to meet me, I will be attending the Small Press Expo in Bethedsda, MD, on October 13 and 14, 2006 (http://www.spxpo.com/) and the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, OR, on October 27 and 28 (http://www.stumptowncomics.com/). That will be followed on November 2 with a gallery show for “12 Reasons Why I Love Her” at Floating World Comics in Portland (http://www.floatingworldcomics.com/). I’m a busy boy! Juanita: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today Jamie. We certainly encourage readers to stop by one of your upcoming events to meet you. It is obvious that you are well on your way to a life-long writing career, and we wish you all the best. Do you have any last thoughts for your readers? Jamie: I’m really excited by everything I do. I’ve had a tremendous good time writing these books. I hope that enthusiasm comes through. And “Studio 60” is the best thing on television. |
Social Media NetworkQuick Links
Sign up for email updates Services for Authors
Literary awards and contests
PreViews
Inside Scoop Live
Review the Book
Reader Views Kids
First Chapter Plus
Blogging Authors
Book Marketing Connections
Authors Access Forum
Book giveaway
|
Along with our book reviews we offer affordable services to meet the needs of our authors in the growing book publishing industry. Our service packages are budget friendly, effective, and will assist the author in showcasing their book to the reading audience.
