Adam Maxwell's Fiction Lounge

For Void Magazine – interview conducted via Google Chat with Chris Steib.

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Void: Well, this should be interesting

Adam: I wasn’t even sure it was working

Void: It’s Google, of course it works. Much better than you think — in fact, it’s right now already deciding what to say on your behalf.

Adam: Ha – there is a distinct air of prediction about it all – perhaps they can take over our jobs with predictive text v 2.0

Void: Google can have my dayjob.

Adam: For some reason it is telling me you are busy and I may be interrupting.

Void: Oh, no, I just forgot to turn off the “busy” notification.

Okay. There.

Adam: Aha – that is still beyond my grasp I’m afraid… that said it is good to finally get to speak to you!

Void: Agreed. I hope you don’t mind having the interview this way. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in modern communication — and, to be honest, it’s easier for me to look like I’m doing real work here at the office.

So I don’t have this planned out, I was just hoping to fire off a few questions and see where it takes us. Right off the bat, looking at the PDF here of Monkey, I was wondering: Why “flash fiction”? Or do you not consider your work “flash ficiton”?

Adam: I don’t know really – it became flash fiction… I was trying to write short stories for ages and every time I did I got really bored trying to get them to go somewhere. It’s kind of unlike a novel so it just didn’t hold my interest. In the end I gave up trying to write ‘long’ short stories and just wrote them however long they came out. Sometimes that is long, like “Noise Abatement,” but mostly it’s short. In the end I had written a few and started looking to see if anyone else was doing the same. Then I found out it was called Flash fiction.

Void: Had you been a fan of shorter fiction before (even if it wasn’t labelled “flash”)?

Adam: No specifically although I did gradually become more and more interested in the short-short as a form as I started to develop my own style. In the beginning it came from two things: the fact that I have a SERIOUSLY short attention span and that I rarely enjoyed novels that were so thick you could keep the door open with them.

[connection interrupted]

!?

Void: sorry, first flaw of the day. too many windows open here at the office.,

as you were…

Adam: I think that was it… what do you do in the real world?

Void: Um, corporate writer. speeches, memoes, press releases — the standard 9-7 for a struggling writer in America. I think. You?

Adam: Web Designer and general playing-about-on-the-interweb type thing

And what the hell do you mean 9-7…? Whatever happened to Dolly Parton’s 9-5

Void: yeah, nine-to-five…don’t think they exist any more.

So I think you already answered my next question, which was about short-short fiction and how it relates to reader’s attention span. But many people have said it’s a product of the internet — have you found a lot of outlets on the web for your work, other than Void, of course?

Adam: Well when I first started submitting I just found the internet easier… the print mags had limited readership, virtually no distribution and the would make you wait for six months for a reply. My attention span being what it is I could be arsed with waiting that amount of time.

So I started emailling submissions all over the place (notably only to people whose websites I like). Stories started getting picked up pretty quickly – McSweeneys published one, Word Riot and quite a few others. I don’t know if it is a product of the internet – the form changes as time goes by and I think it is easy to blame the internet. In reality I think that the internet is convenient for a form like the short-short.

There are things like prose-poems and the like that have existed longer but perhaps with not quite as many swear words in as my stories

Void: Do you think there’s a place on the web for the long-long?

Adam: Definitely not. I think the long needs to be printed. Althought I couldn’t say why!

Void: But there’s a place for the short-short in print, as evidenced by Monkey on Tonto Press. A little unfair for us long-long writers, no?

Adam: Perhaps there is a case for them online but I think people’s eyes get tired. I believe it is something to do with dots per inch or some such nonsense.

Void: Is that the expert opinion of a web designer?

Adam: As you know my collections has both forms and I have to say I had far more success with short shorts rather than long longs (!) but that could be because the long ones aren’t very good

Void: I’ll disagree with that claim about your long stories not being good, but I will say the shorts seem to be more organic for you.

Was it hard to find a publisher willing to put the short-shorts to print?

Adam: Yes and no… I had had a few short shorts published in print. Including one in an anthology by another publisher. In truth I didn’t expect to be ‘allowed’ to release a collection of shorts so they were my pet project until I wrote a ‘proper’ book.

So I hadn’t really looked, then I had a long story published through Tonto and the rest flowed from there.

Void: Have you any interest in a “proper” book? Or now that you know you can get away with short-short, you’re sticking to it? You mentioned something about “Self Assembly”…

Adam: I think I’ll play it by ear. Confuse people. Start writing one word stories.

“Go”

What do you think?

Void: Spellbinding. A Tour de Force.

Adam: Ha – I always sort of considered that I was a writer and I love writing short-shorts but as you rightly pointed out, ‘Self Assembly’ is Chapter One of a novel I am around 1/3 through. That is kind of weird because it is short chapters, short concepts choppy like sthe short-shorts… keep you interested I hope. I wanted it to have a similar shaped plot to The Big Sleep. Move the detective and the pulp way to England, bash it on the head, drag it into the 21st century then call it something else.

Void: You’re a big Chandler fan — I found a few discreet references to Big Sleep in your work. Are your creative roots very deep in noir?

Adam: I do like the Chandler… I kind of put the references in as a bit of a piss take and to see if anyone would spot them – you are the first! I have been reading him for years but I also really like it when people distort the form. Like in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski… perfectly warped but it could easily be a Chandler plot.

Void: Couldn’t agree more — perfect neo-noir. But crime fiction & noir is such a sub-genre — people automatically think of it the way they do SCI FI or fantasy. Is there a place in the mainstream of noir today?

Adam: I think so but you have to pretend it isn’t. When you write a story (generally) you don’t think ‘what genre will I write in today… noir… ok, chapter one, it was a dark and stormy night, the dame was murder’

Void: Ha.

Adam: You sit down with an idea and start typing it and it becomes what it becomes…

Christ I sound like popeye – I am what I am

Void: could be worse: you could say “I be what I be”

Adam:

Void: Okay, so, when you write, the noir just kinda comes out?

Adam: There’s a tendency for people to pigeonhole whatever you do. We expect it and to an extent we demand it. It sounds like Aerosmith crossed with The Beatles. As long as it just a jumping off point it is fine but when someone compares you to shit you hate it must kind of piss you off.

Void: So who would you most hate to be compared to?

Adam: There are so many… where to start!

Charles Dickens

gotta be

tawdy shit with descriptions that go on forever

Void: yeah, i could see that. Anyone in the modern realm? Or, to play it safe, what writers today would you like to be lumped in with?

Adam: Who would I like to be lumped in with…well…usually whoever I am reading right now… Elmore Leonard, Kinky Friedman, Richard Brautigan, Chuck Palahniuk from the USA and maybe Will Self from the UK but I feel these guys are in a league above me

Void: What’s your favorite Palahniuk novel?

Adam: Choke or Lullaby …

Choke

Void: Really? Hm.

People usually answer either Survivor or Invisible Monsters. You’re a rare breed, Adam.

Adam: I didn’t finish either of those I have to be honest!

Didn’t keep me interested long enough. They’ll probably string me up for that

Void: No, no. Fair enough.

Okay, so, what other important questions should I be asking you in this groundbreaking digital interview?

How about: will you have a book tour for Monkey? And will there be a monkey on the tour with you?

Adam: There are a couple of events planned – a launch party on Thursday and I have requested an orang-utan but they said that they won’t get one in after last time. Did an interview on the radio this morning and they asked me if I ate a lot of carrots.

Void: um…what the hell does that have to do with anything?

Adam: Good question. 2:51 PM A far better one than the carrots – there was a context at the time it seemed plausible to answer but now I’m not so sure me: phew — thought i missed something critical in your stories about carrots. ha. So here’s a softball for you — what should I be reading? 2:52 PM (other than Monkey, of course, which I read) Adam: Why that is easy… ‘Dial M For Monkey’ by the multi talent…. arse me: har har.