Pump Up Your Book Chats with AB Bard, author of ‘The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality’

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ABOUT AB BARD

Reclusive Seattle author AB Bard’s poetry has twice been nominated for the Pushcart. He is the author under a pseudonym of two other hysterical novels, or perhaps historical novels, neither of which is funny. Mr. Bard is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Republican Party. Mr. Bard does not Tweet. He was awarded a sheepskin (BAaa) from Reed College Sleeper Cell. His one super power is the ability to repel all conventional measures of literary success. Mr. Bard is lap to a cat, pal to a girl, God to a dog, & dog to the Man.

To find out more, please visit him at http://www.abbard.com

Q: Can you tell us why you wrote your book?

I’ve written three books – two historical novels, and now this crime novel / urban fantasy / sci fi / satire, THE KILLER POET’S GUIDE TO IMMORTALITY under the pen name “AB Bard”. I was beginning research for a third historical novel, but feeling quite heavy under the burden of knowing that I had about six months of painstaking work ahead of me before I could even write the first line. Then it occurred to me to throw off my burden and just write the damned first line – to make up a story out of whole cloth. I had bits of the story in mind anyway – what frustrated poet does not? – about a poet who turns to killing in order to get famous enough to be read, and I’d always wanted to let go of the burden of the omniscient narrator and embrace the anarchy of first person narrative from the perspective of a lunatic. Once I started, the story wrote itself.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

Of course it has many messages but they are laid deep between the lines and depend heavily on what the reader brings to the story, and what he/she is looking for. Perhaps the most pervasive is THINK FOR YOURSELF, which is kind of an anti-message message. Don’t follow cults, in which category I place all organized religion. This is not a denial of our spiritual side, but a celebration of the fact that it can’t be bottled up into a particular dogma. The book also explores the emptiness of celebrity worship, and has a few things to say about the meaning of “success” and so-called “immortality,” which even Christ doesn’t have. It is the essence of the human condition that we are temporary and will be forgotten, and the book ultimate embraces that.

Q: Do you remember when the writing bug hit?

I’ve always been a writer. I remember writing a poem about my cat when I was 7 or 8. Then I read a bunch of Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books, and began stapling together papers and starting “books.” The best was “GIMOR THE TERRIBLE MONSTER” who wasn’t just a monster, but a terrible monster, which I now see was ambiguous. Was he terrible, or just a terrible monster (as in not much good at monster-hood)? Anyway, that one floundered on the chapter titled “Killing a Dead Gost,” not because I misspelled “ghost” but because I never figured out how to do it. Later I was saved from high school doldrums and endless weed-in-the-woods by a wondrous Creative Writing teacher, Gladys LaFlamme Colburn and the rest, as they say, is mystery.

Q: Besides books, what else do you write? Do you write for publications?

I’ll rephrase the question – besides fiction, what else do I write? The short answer is poetry, poetry, poetry. I’ve written a play and a few short stories and essays, but poetry is the main thing. The beauty of poetry is that it helps you know who you are at any given moment, and it teaches you to slow down and really see the world around you. The downsides of poetry are obvious – it’s hard to even give away, let alone make any money at it. But of course that’s also one of its strengths – if there were money in it, it would get fucked up by the pervasive and voracious commercialism of the 21st Century American Empire Machine.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

Yes, and I’ll assume you’ve already heard all the clichés like write! & write what you know. So I’ll jump straight to the unexpected: write what you don’t know. By that I mean don’t plan it all out; write as if you are on a voyage of discovery, sailing over the edge of the known world. “There be dragons” – the words mapmakers used to put beyond the edge of what was explored – should be your destination. Trust your characters – if they are any good, they will get you there and back in one piece.

Q: Would you like to tell us about your home life? Where you live? Family? Pets?

Married to an artist, two kids, I live in the woods near a lake. Three cats, not counting the one on my lap right now.

Q: How do you think book promotion has changed over the years?

It seems almost incomprehensible to us nowadays that as recently as the 1970’s it was almost unheard of for an author to go into a bookstore to peddle his or her wares. Authors were concerned with all matters literary, and left the commercialism to others – agents, booksellers, publishers. I think that the pervasive “celebrification” of writers, and the never-ending struggle for book promotion, poisons our literary life. A few celebrated authors are anointed from each generation in each “genre” – another false classification that elevates commercial over literary imperatives – and the rest are ignored. Celebrification is not based on quality of literary work, but whiteness of teeth and ability to turn a bon mot at a cocktail party. Writers are and should be simultaneously of and apart from the culture about which they write, but commodification of the writer forces him / her to be as deeply of the culture as any insurance salesman or politician. That kills innovation.

Q: What is the most frustrating part of being an author?

The antiquated system of book distribution that means the “worst” place for an author to sell a book is in a bookstore, because by then there’s nothing left over for the author. Then there’s the hidebound reviewers, who mostly refuse to review books from small independent presses.

Q: What is the most rewarding?

Everything about writing and expressing yourself. Living in the flash of inspiration and creation. And then connecting to appreciative readers for whom your work has made a difference in their lives.

Q: Thank you so much for this interview, Bard. Do you have any final words?

From a poem I wrote called Infinite Monkeys:
Einstein was right –
God doesn’t play dice; he fiddles
on our tightly strung gut.
Therein lies the joke.

That howling you hear in the distance,
that’s God, walking his monkeys,
laughing.

Keep on laughing!

ABOUT THE KILLER POET’S GUIDE TO IMMORTALITY

The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality is the riveting tale of a frustrated poet who decides that the best way to get his work read is by pinning it to corpses with a dagger. Alternately profound and hilarious, this novel chronicles in rapid-fire succession AB Bard’s obsessive murder spree, rise to media notoriety, capture, trial, and execution by lethal injection.

Then it presses further, into the future . . .

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

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