Kevin Michaels is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel Lost Exit. Called the ‘voice of urban fiction’, his short stories and flash fiction have appeared in a number of magazines and indie zines, including The Literary Review, Word Riot, Six Sentences, Dogzplot, The Foundling Review, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, and Tuesday Shorts, among many others. Other short stories have been included in the anthologies for Six Sentences (volumes II and III) that can be found at Amazon.com.
In the past few weeks, Kevin has had not one, but two, stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize, a fantastic vindication of the quality of his writing. (Full details and links to the stories may be found at his blog, A Cold Rush of Air.)
So with no further ado, over to you, Kevin.
In the past few weeks, Kevin has had not one, but two, stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize, a fantastic vindication of the quality of his writing. (Full details and links to the stories may be found at his blog, A Cold Rush of Air.)
So with no further ado, over to you, Kevin.
Tell me about your book.
Lost Exit is my attempt at proving Thomas Wolfe wrong. I always believed that you can go home again, at least as a writer. The novel is about a self-destructive college basketball player named Timmy Davenport who comes home to Atlantic City for the summer. It takes place in the late 1990s as the city is transforming from a desolate, faded resort into an entertainment Mecca and Timmy feels like he doesn’t belong any more. His friends have changed, he’s unsure of where he’s going in life, and a bloody neighborhood rivalry between mob gangs has left a trail of bodies scattered throughout the town and might have something to do with his family. It’s all about lost opportunities and last chances in a city filled with drug deals gone bad, mobsters, cops, bullets, a past littered with pain and scars, and a family that has lost faith in him. Kind of a coming of age story that blends basketball and friendship with the emotional struggle of a character searching for his own identity while looking for love.
At the end of the day, Thomas Wolfe was right … you can’t go home again. Everything changes and nothing stays the same.
What was your motivation for writing it?
Aside from the love affair with the city where I grew up and some semi-auto-biographical aspects, it was a little bit of an homage to some of the local characters I grew up with — low-rent gamblers, mobsters, neighborhood basketball stars, and friends looking for direction and purpose in life. Most of whom never found what they were looking for. But the draw was creating Timmy Davenport — he’s a flawed character with a past filled with broken relationships, bad family dynamics, and pain so bad that at times he tried to kill himself. With his addictions and that hurt in his background, he was easy to visualize and I was drawn to his character. I never set out to write a sports book and making teen suicide a significant part of the story wasn’t my original intention, but the book took on a life of its own and charted its own course. And then there was that idea of coming home to Atlantic City …
How important is a good title?
A good title is key — that’s the first thing an author uses to hook a reader, followed by a good cover. Press releases and marketing plans and YouTube book trailers don’t matter much if your cover doesn’t leap off the bookshelf or out of the e-reader and grab the reader’s attention. The title worked for me on a couple of different levels. I loved the imagery of the main character and the people he comes in contact with being lost and in search of an identity or purpose. Timmy Davenport is a character searching for an identity, trying to figure out who he is, who loves him, and what he can do with his life.
And for anyone who ever lived in New Jersey, the typical question people from out of state ask is: ‘What’s your exit?’ (like where you live and who you are can defined by where you reside in relation to the major highways like the Garden State Parkway or New Jersey Turnpike).
And to set the record straight, we’re not all like the characters you see on The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, or Jersey Shore. If you want to piss off somebody from New Jersey, ask us how close our lives are to what you see on Jersey Shore and if we know Snooki.
Lost Exit is my attempt at proving Thomas Wolfe wrong. I always believed that you can go home again, at least as a writer. The novel is about a self-destructive college basketball player named Timmy Davenport who comes home to Atlantic City for the summer. It takes place in the late 1990s as the city is transforming from a desolate, faded resort into an entertainment Mecca and Timmy feels like he doesn’t belong any more. His friends have changed, he’s unsure of where he’s going in life, and a bloody neighborhood rivalry between mob gangs has left a trail of bodies scattered throughout the town and might have something to do with his family. It’s all about lost opportunities and last chances in a city filled with drug deals gone bad, mobsters, cops, bullets, a past littered with pain and scars, and a family that has lost faith in him. Kind of a coming of age story that blends basketball and friendship with the emotional struggle of a character searching for his own identity while looking for love.
At the end of the day, Thomas Wolfe was right … you can’t go home again. Everything changes and nothing stays the same.
What was your motivation for writing it?
Aside from the love affair with the city where I grew up and some semi-auto-biographical aspects, it was a little bit of an homage to some of the local characters I grew up with — low-rent gamblers, mobsters, neighborhood basketball stars, and friends looking for direction and purpose in life. Most of whom never found what they were looking for. But the draw was creating Timmy Davenport — he’s a flawed character with a past filled with broken relationships, bad family dynamics, and pain so bad that at times he tried to kill himself. With his addictions and that hurt in his background, he was easy to visualize and I was drawn to his character. I never set out to write a sports book and making teen suicide a significant part of the story wasn’t my original intention, but the book took on a life of its own and charted its own course. And then there was that idea of coming home to Atlantic City …
How important is a good title?
A good title is key — that’s the first thing an author uses to hook a reader, followed by a good cover. Press releases and marketing plans and YouTube book trailers don’t matter much if your cover doesn’t leap off the bookshelf or out of the e-reader and grab the reader’s attention. The title worked for me on a couple of different levels. I loved the imagery of the main character and the people he comes in contact with being lost and in search of an identity or purpose. Timmy Davenport is a character searching for an identity, trying to figure out who he is, who loves him, and what he can do with his life.
And for anyone who ever lived in New Jersey, the typical question people from out of state ask is: ‘What’s your exit?’ (like where you live and who you are can defined by where you reside in relation to the major highways like the Garden State Parkway or New Jersey Turnpike).
And to set the record straight, we’re not all like the characters you see on The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, or Jersey Shore. If you want to piss off somebody from New Jersey, ask us how close our lives are to what you see on Jersey Shore and if we know Snooki.
What are your views on e-books?
The future is e-publishing. Time to embrace the change. Aside from the ease at getting books into print and the benefits of making more money, e-publishing allows writers to get their stories to market much faster (and isn’t that the goal of every writer: to get what we’ve written in front of readers …) without the obstacles and barriers put in place by the publishing establishment. E-publishing offers a realistic alternative for every writer who wants to bring their own stories to an audience hungry to find them. Lost Exit, a novel that agents and publishers told me would never be ‘commercially viable’, ‘mainstream enough’, or worth the ‘financial risk’ of publishing in print, has found an audience. It hasn’t been an overnight success, but it has gained momentum and keeps moving forward, even showing up on a few of Kindle’s Top 100 lists once in a while.
Instead of wasting hours and hours querying agents, submitting to publishers, and hoping for a chance that someone will read my sample chapters and synopsis, I have been able to become prolific. I am now doing the thing I always dreamed about doing: writing.
What aspects of marketing your book do you enjoy?
I love the new creativity involved in marketing books. It’s like building a brand. I love interviews and working with book bloggers/reviewers, and social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn have been tremendous assets in the overall marketing of my book. Like buying a car, it gives readers a chance to go out and kick the tires … along those lines, I recently worked with a media company to create and film a book trailer that we just put out on YouTube so the audience can learn a little about Lost Exit.
Shameless plug: here’s the link.
I’m not on Twitter … I honestly don’t know how interesting I could be for an extended period of time, so tweeting is lost on me …
What are you currently working on?
My second book is already finished and in the pipeline — entitled Nine In The Morning, it’s a collection of short stories that I’ve written (some that have been previously published as well as a few new ones). After that, I’ll be releasing a third book called Still Black Remains which is probably grittier and a little more hard-edged than Lost Exit, although it’s one that I’m proud of. Beyond that, I’ve got some short story commitments and then once those have been completed I’ll be sitting down to begin work on my fourth book (I have a strong idea about characters and plot, but I’m still fleshing out some of the direction and details). One of the things I love about the creative process is that you can start out at one point, thinking you know which way you’re going, and your story or the characters or some small aspect of what you’re writing can take you in an entirely different direction. That’s the fun part of the journey.
The other thing I’ve been working on is a community based organization I founded that develops literacy through the art of writing. We develop literacy, self-expression, and self-esteem, and give under-served teenagers and young adults in my area the opportunity to write their own stories which can inspire them to discover the strength and power of their own voices. For me, it’s a chance to make a difference.
How can we keep up to date with your news?
Other than knocking on my door and inviting me out for a drink, I can be found at Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as on my two blogs.
I post my fiction and periodic updates at A Cold Rush of Air, and I show up occasionally at my other blog: Sliding Down the Razor's Edge to offer my opinion and POV on topics not too earth-shattering in size, scope, or detail. And those few, sick depraved people who really want to know more are always welcome to email me.
What would your epitaph be?
'Damnit, I told you I didn’t feel well …’
Seriously — I’d like to hope that by the time that day comes, I’ll have made a difference by the words I’ve written and the things I’ve done. It’s all about giving back, at least a little.
The future is e-publishing. Time to embrace the change. Aside from the ease at getting books into print and the benefits of making more money, e-publishing allows writers to get their stories to market much faster (and isn’t that the goal of every writer: to get what we’ve written in front of readers …) without the obstacles and barriers put in place by the publishing establishment. E-publishing offers a realistic alternative for every writer who wants to bring their own stories to an audience hungry to find them. Lost Exit, a novel that agents and publishers told me would never be ‘commercially viable’, ‘mainstream enough’, or worth the ‘financial risk’ of publishing in print, has found an audience. It hasn’t been an overnight success, but it has gained momentum and keeps moving forward, even showing up on a few of Kindle’s Top 100 lists once in a while.
Instead of wasting hours and hours querying agents, submitting to publishers, and hoping for a chance that someone will read my sample chapters and synopsis, I have been able to become prolific. I am now doing the thing I always dreamed about doing: writing.
What aspects of marketing your book do you enjoy?
I love the new creativity involved in marketing books. It’s like building a brand. I love interviews and working with book bloggers/reviewers, and social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn have been tremendous assets in the overall marketing of my book. Like buying a car, it gives readers a chance to go out and kick the tires … along those lines, I recently worked with a media company to create and film a book trailer that we just put out on YouTube so the audience can learn a little about Lost Exit.
Shameless plug: here’s the link.
I’m not on Twitter … I honestly don’t know how interesting I could be for an extended period of time, so tweeting is lost on me …
What are you currently working on?
My second book is already finished and in the pipeline — entitled Nine In The Morning, it’s a collection of short stories that I’ve written (some that have been previously published as well as a few new ones). After that, I’ll be releasing a third book called Still Black Remains which is probably grittier and a little more hard-edged than Lost Exit, although it’s one that I’m proud of. Beyond that, I’ve got some short story commitments and then once those have been completed I’ll be sitting down to begin work on my fourth book (I have a strong idea about characters and plot, but I’m still fleshing out some of the direction and details). One of the things I love about the creative process is that you can start out at one point, thinking you know which way you’re going, and your story or the characters or some small aspect of what you’re writing can take you in an entirely different direction. That’s the fun part of the journey.
The other thing I’ve been working on is a community based organization I founded that develops literacy through the art of writing. We develop literacy, self-expression, and self-esteem, and give under-served teenagers and young adults in my area the opportunity to write their own stories which can inspire them to discover the strength and power of their own voices. For me, it’s a chance to make a difference.
How can we keep up to date with your news?
Other than knocking on my door and inviting me out for a drink, I can be found at Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as on my two blogs.
I post my fiction and periodic updates at A Cold Rush of Air, and I show up occasionally at my other blog: Sliding Down the Razor's Edge to offer my opinion and POV on topics not too earth-shattering in size, scope, or detail. And those few, sick depraved people who really want to know more are always welcome to email me.
What would your epitaph be?
'Damnit, I told you I didn’t feel well …’
Seriously — I’d like to hope that by the time that day comes, I’ll have made a difference by the words I’ve written and the things I’ve done. It’s all about giving back, at least a little.
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