Interview- AD and JS

AD: That brings me to another question… What made you decide to put those quotes at the beginning of every chapter, anyway?   JS: Well that was really something weird, the way that sort of came about. It’s a kinda funny story — funny peculiar though, not so much funny ha ha…       When […]

AD: It seems like you quote Nietzsche alot. Is he your favorite author to quote from? JS: Not at all… I just happened to stumble across a book of Nietzsche at the exact time I was going through the whole process of writing and editing Narcisa, and then the Narcisa character just spontaneously became like […]

AD: One alcoholic helping another, right?   JS: Absolutely. That shit is like some crazy healing magic… At some point when this guy was lamenting to me about how hard it all is, being in recovery and living with someone who’s suffering the torments of the damned from the very same stuff you’re recovering from […]

AD: How is the dynamic between Cigano and Narcisa universally relatable? JS: At the risk of being accused of false modesty here, one of the few human character defects I’ve actually rarely fallen pray to so far (Laughs)… I should mention that there really are no new stories under the sun, just endless variations on […]

AD: What were your reservations, if any, when writing Narcisa? Was there anything holding you back? JS: No, nothing. Absolutely nothing… It’s almost the opposite in fact. It’s as if I was being compelled to write this thing so strongly that once it started rolliing, there was no holding it back, there was just never […]

AD: How did you wind up meeting this girl in Tijuana? JS: Ahh, you hadda ask that, hein? Yeh, well that’s some more of that crazy synchronicity shit I was just talking about, all these mystical events, seemingly unrelated coincidences that eventually weave together into some kinda higher destiny.     So how did I […]

AD: What was your inspiration behind the Narcisa part of the title then?  JS: What was my inspiration behind it? Well obviously that’s the name of the book’s main protagonist, of course. And there’s all these different levels of sub-text behind a name like Narcisa, isn’t there? Because it’s just such a perfect name when […]

AD: Just to give the title switch a little background for anybody who might eventually be reading this, I should say for the record that the original title of the book was Savage Grace. Unfortunately when a movie was released with the same name, you backed down and changed it. As poetically appropriate as that […]

AD: I always wondered where you came up with the title. You may have told me already, but if you did, I’ve forgotten… JS:   That name came about as a sort of epiphany in the sudden quest for a new title, remember? I was really attached to my original title… Savage Grace was originally […]

AD: When did you know there was really no turning back? JS: What? You mean there’s no turning back? Shit. (Laughs)… I guess at some point somewhere along the way as I surrendered more and more to the whole process, I just sort of realized one day that I was on some sort of journey […]