I interview myself about my novel, Evertype

Evertype is now available. I decided to interview myself on this occasion.

Me: So what's this story about?

Me: A guy who tries to leave his old life behind, including digital tech, and remake himself.

Let me guess. He gets a typewriter, right?

OK, that was predictable. And yeah, there is lots of stuff that I bet will appeal to typewriter nuts like me.

What else?

There's "the surveillance, terror, disease, and demagoguery of our age," as I put it in the blurb.

So this is some kind of ideological screed?

Well, I hope not. And it's definitely not a satire. American reality has become so extreme that it's unsatirizable. I tried to take the opposite approach: dial it back, make it more ambiguous, make it small-town-sized.

What's your genre?

I'd say it falls into the catch-all basket of "literary fiction," but with some thriller elements. I enjoy plot twists and suspense, so I tried to work some in.

Did you take inspiration from thriller writers?

No, my main inspiration was Paul Auster. I also found moods I liked in Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.

Is there any relationship with The Typewriter Revolution?

Sure, some of the same concerns and obsessions. But there's a big difference between fiction and nonfiction. The nonfiction author has to do a lot of telling, and you want to keep that to a minimum in fiction, showing the action and hoping that it doesn't reduce to some theoretical point of view but actually comes to life.

How did the story come about?

I drafted it in two months, ten years apart. The first part was written for National Novel Writing Month in November, 2010. I thought I was done, but exactly ten years after typing THE END, I launched into a second part. The story was very incomplete without it. Both parts were drafted by typewriter, of course, and published on this blog. Over the next five years, I did several rounds of rewriting. I worked with Trent Reker, a graphic artist and typospherian, who created the cover and illustrations. Linda M. Au did the layout.

Is the text all typewritten, like in the Cold Hard Type series?

No, but there are typewritten elements—letters, stories, poems, and so on—that I did type on a variety of machines. So there's a mix of digital fonts for most of the story with images of typewriting that I hope create some visual appeal.

Did you work out the plot in advance?

Not at all. In the first scene I wrote, my protagonist literally can't see any farther than his headlights, and that's how I proceeded. I did know that typewriters would be involved, and I vaguely wanted a couple of moods and themes, but I had no idea what was going to happen. That was much more fun, I think, than filling out some outline. What I especially enjoyed was seeing the conclusions of each part suddenly come together in my imagination. 

Is the plot complicated?

Judge for yourself from this "webwork" diagram I created following the techniques of Harry Stephen Keeler. 

Are you nuts?

Arguably. 

Isn't Keeler a notoriously bad writer?

"Bad" is subjective. Objectively, he's very clever and innovative. I wanted a complicated plot, and I followed his advice: start by having the main character (the thick black line in the diagram) intersect at least four other plot elements, with each encounter causing the next. That leaves you with enough threads to weave a webwork. I think my story reaches Keeler levels of complexity, but my tone is more serious and I hope my style is more elegant.

Tell me about your opening line.

"The most conspicuous act is withdrawal." The narrator is withdrawing all the cash from his bank account, but obviously there's a broader meaning. I want to explore questions about privacy, secrecy, and whether it's possible to disentangle ourselves from the modern world.

So is this novel any good?

That's not for me to say. I'm an amateur, self-published fiction writer, hoping my story will click (pun intended) with some readers. Literary taste is a very personal thing—and I'm probably the only person on earth who can recognize where some details of this story came from.

Thanks for your time.

Sure. Let's hang out together again sometime, OK?

I'll call you.