Kevin Tudish: The Interviewening

My new fav author agreed to the Maderer Inquisition -- which, just like the Spanish one, no one expects.

1) How did you come up with the title?

Can I save that as a surprise in the book? It’s not like a plot twist in a murder mystery, but it does become clear about halfway through.

2) Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to come away with?

I think part of it is about the ramifications of choices, how they can have a compounding effect over time. Taking responsibility for those choices, and making the next ones based on what you’ve learned so far.

A lot of it is about what you do for love, how your life takes shape around the way you love your spouse and child.

Some of it is about how each generation tries to teach the next one.

The struggle to ensure your child’s success as well as your own.

The exploratory, evolutionary experience of parenting.

Not an overt message so much as a portrait of how these things manifest themselves in the life of this family.

3) How much of this fictional memoir is real and how much is fiction?

Some of the stuff, like my dad’s stories of Guadalcanal, or the story of wrecking two cars in one night, is completely real. Some of the stories of my complete failure as a parent are embarrassingly real. The emotional stuff is all real, but in the interest of a more compelling story, I created circumstances, or hybrids of circumstances, to convey those things.

4) Which books/authors have most influenced your life?

James Agee’s “A Death in the Family.” John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Galway Kinnell (especially “Body Rags”). Frank O’Hara (we had the minister read “Having a Coke with You” at our wedding). 

Richard Hugo, Rubens, Turner, van Gogh, Monet, Daumier. And now a bunch of visual artists that I follow on Twitter.

Nureyev. Baryshnikov. Martine van Hamel. Peter Martins. Twyla Tharp. Christine Uchida (when she was dancing with Twyla Tharp). Finis Jhung (my favorite ballet teacher).

Miles Davis. Stan Getz. Sonny Rollins. Chopin.

I don’t limit my opportunities to be inspired.

5) Where can I find more Kevin Tudish books?

No where. This is the first. Though I plan for more.

(Editor's note: Ahem -- sure as fuck hope so!)

6) What are you working on now?

Another first-person novel about my experience of moving from Boston to Los Angeles. How massive and isolating Los Angeles can be. Economic disparity. How extreme violence becomes a social norm.

 A light-hearted story of a young man going west. Not another fictional memoir, but using my own experience as a starting point. I’m toying with the idea of actually having a plot, though that’s still up in the air.

7) What inspired you to write, and write this particular book? 

Art of one form or another has always been part of my life (thank you to my parents for always indulging my interests). Over time it became evident that language was the most natural fit.

I wanted to write this book to paint a picture of a life that I think a lot of people lead: the struggle with surviving in the current political and economic landscape, trying to successfully negotiate marriage and parenting, ending up with a life that was not at all what you imagined, trying to make some of what you imagined materialize before it’s too late.

I wanted to get some of my work out there, find an audience, put my two cents into the conversation.

8) What is the most challenging aspect of the writing process?

Finding time. The actual writing isn’t a problem, but finding blocks of time so that there’s a continuity to the experience. Fortunately, my wife and I support one another’s interests, and make sure each of us has time to devote to what we love. But even with that, it’s pretty much limited to a few hours on Saturdays.

9) Who is your favorite author and what is it that really moves you about his/her work?  Who are you reading now? What book(s)?

I don’t have a favorite. Right now, I think Gabrielle Hamilton, who wrote “Blood, Bones & Butter”, is pretty amazing. The opening of that book has some of the best prose I’ve ever read. I think what I learned from reading that is to indulge in the thing you’re writing about, let it wander the way your mind does sometimes, one thought or memory setting off another.

The writers I mentioned above, especially James Agee. “A Death in the Family” has some some of the most beautiful writing ever.

10) Who designed the cover?

I designed the cover. In addition to everything else, I have a professional background in animation and graphics, so it was easy to open Photoshop and create something.

11) Did you learn anything from writing your book? If so, what?

That if you sit down regularly and work, you end up with something. Well, if you do it with an end in mind. I was regularly working on another longer novel that didn’t seem to have an end. The pages were accumulating, but the end of it was somewhere over the horizon. With this one, I put some boundaries on the story before I started. That approach doesn’t impede the organic evolution of the piece, but it makes you write toward a destination.

12) Do you have any advice for other writers?

Write as much as you can. Write what you want, write to your own aesthetic. Write about something in which you’re interested. When you have a first draft, let someone else read it to see how it plays with someone who doesn’t have unfettered access to your head. You don’t have to agree with the feedback, but you need to see how it plays with an audience.

Thank you Mr. Tudish! 

You can find his book,

' health, happiness, LOVE, longevity, peace, prosperity, SAFETY'

on Amazon.