We are pleased to share our interview with author Jose Serrano Pasqual. Below he talks about his writing process and his novel Walking Back from Key West. To read more about Jose, visit his website.
Brief Bio:
Born in Chicago, Illinois to a single mother, I was raised
as an Irish Catholic under the name Joseph S. Kennedy. At age fifteen I discovered my birth
name. I was playing junior varsity
football and the coach called me in and said "Kennedy, you’re out for today’s
game. Get your damn birth certificate
into the principal’s office." I had no
idea that Mom hadn’t ever given it to the schools.
When I finally got my birth certificate I found out what my
given name was. Mom always told me I was
named after my grandfather. My maternal
grandfather was Joseph S. Kennedy, a Chicago commodities trader. Mom hadn’t really lied to me, though. Jose Serrano Pascual was my paternal
grandfather. So when she put my name
down on the birth certificate she had changed the spelling of the last name
from C to Q.
I studied history, economics and comparative religion at
college and graduate school. After
graduate school I worked doing ethnographic histories in South and Central
America. From there began my career as
an author. Presently, I divide my time
between Chicago, Il, Naples, FL,
and Sittee Point, Belize.
What made you want to be a writer?
Stories
are the history of who we are, what we’ve been and what we hope for the
world to be. The written word is
what gives permanence to those stories.
The power of that word and its ability to transcend time and place
has always fascinated me.
How long have you been seriously pursuing a
career in writing?
Outside of academic writing and
my work in recording ethnographic histories, I’ve been pursuing creative
fiction writing as a career for a little over twenty years.
If you had
to choose three words to describe your writing nook/office, what would they be?
Mobile, chaotic, base
From where
do you draw most of your inspiration?
There are times when, seeing a person or a situation,
I begin immediately trying to understand them by making up a story around
them. Unfortunately I recently decided
to make small talk with a person whom I’d already imagined a story around. What was unfortunate was that her story was
the story that was already formed in my head.
I now no longer talk to my characters when I run into them.
Give us a one
sentence pitch for your latest novel.
Have all the fun, enjoy all of
the terrors, absurdity, and disappointments of a visit to Key West without being
arrested, broke or hung over, in the comfort of your own chair.
Are you an outliner or a
seat-of-your-pantser?
My method is a combination of the two. Normally I’m struck by a moment, a scene or a
person that is so perfect that I cannot help but imagine a pivotal or
concluding moment in a story. Another
such moment then appears to be an opening usually presents itself. Finally the third moment comes to me and that
is when I commence work. Characters
then quickly populate my world. They are
what drive the story and often take me to points I’d never previously imagined.
If you could
meet any author, living or dead, who would it be? Why?
Jorge Luis Borges. The Southern Literary Renaissance and the Latin
America Boom share a common thread of agrarian folk influence that’ s been
refined by political scars that cut the people and the earth alike. There is a way of speaking, thinking and
expressing life that in the Spanish is represented by Borges. In the American experience Flannery O’Connor
and William Faulkner embody that same intensely vital form. I would want to
meet Borges to see if I found the soul of the earth, the artist or the man when
I spoke to him.
If you could meet one character in your book,
who would it be? Why?
Emory. He was the first character that started
talking to me before I committed to writing Walking Back From Key West. I’d wanted to hear more from Emory. I had hoped that he would share more of his
story and life with me.
Favorite
quote/personal motto:
It is my hope, that in my own life,
when the completion comes, it does so without notice. I would prefer, that like the characters I
follow, that I never realize that the last page has arrived and nothing more
will be written. Then, perhaps, if you
page back through my life and story, you might still find me there as myself,
troubled only by the completion of the book I am writing.
If you could
give any advice to other writers, what would it be?
Writing is not an aspired to
vocation or avocation. It is an affliction. You manage it by writing daily, to relieve
your soul of the constant stress of the unarticulated thoughts and visions that
crowd your mind. If you are fortunate
enough to possess an innate understanding of the rules of the language in which
you express yourself then the affliction is manageable with the help of agents
and editors. If you are like the rest of
us, and nearly invincibly ignorant of the standards of usage for your primary
language, then writing is a daily torment.
Your best option, in either case, is write daily, stop before you are
done and develop a hobby to keep your mind off of writing.
Blurb:
No One Ever Really Leaves Key West.
Links to purchase novel:
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