Fringe Dwellers – Interview Jennifer Prado (on her Blog)

Monday, July 27, 2009

Author Interview - Shane Joseph
Fringe Dwellers - Stories of People Living on the Edge

Q: Hello, Shane. Thanks for participating in this week's interview. What struck me most about your short story collection, Fringe Dwellers, was the variety of voices, the sophistication and maturity of the content, and the way that friendships and romance, between sometimes oddly-matched couples were so eloquently portrayed. My first question is, where do these stories come from?

A: The stories come from personal experiences, conversations, observations, dreams, movie scenes, books, poems, and voices in my head. Sometimes they are an amalgam of some, or all, of the above. For example, the title story "Fringe Dwellers" was spawned by many conversations over the years with my neighbour, a war veteran who had lost a limb in WWII.

"Beggars" was born through direct observations of a young man and woman operating their scam in a mall - I used to sip a coffee in a nearby shop and watch them at work. Their favourite gimmick was to say that they had run out of gas on the highway and needed money to refill a bottle and drive their car to the nearest gas station; the problem was that the guy could not keep track of the people he had scammed and after awhile was approaching the same people over and over again, and they would laugh at him and say, even before he began his spiel, "Oh, you have run out of gas again, have you?

"Valentine Promise" came from a poem given to me by a friend.

"In the Cemetery" arrived while spending an afternoon in a graveyard, and "Silence" after a weekend at a Jesuit retreat.

"Rage" was generated during a speed writing exercise with a writing group; we were asked to look at a ragged Halloween doll and write whatever came to mind - when I got home that day, I saw the threads of this story emerging from amidst my scribbles. And so on...

Q: Many authors tend to write thinly-veiled autobiography, but it appears that you have an ability to enter into the soul of a character and speak through his or her voice. I noticed that you have a background in theatre. Do you think that experience helps you achieve this result?

A: Theatre has helped me with scene and mood setting, and with dialogue. I write in scenes and have often been told that my books would be good to convert into movies. And yes, getting inside the character's head was expected when playing dramatic roles on stage. All this has helped with my writing. When acting a character role in a play however, the actor is able to focus on playing one character to the hilt; to even melt into that character's psyche. The writer has a more complex task: to project his own voice through many characters, while keeping the characters' voices authentic. Therefore, the writer needs to pick the appropriate characters who can do that for him. His own voice should only pervade very subtly.

Q: From reading your biography, I noted that you have lived in several countries and came to Canada as an adult. How has this geographic displacement influenced your writing? Do you consider yourself to be a citizen/resident of more than one country or culture?

A: As the eternal immigrant, the question of "home" has been an important one for me. I have written an immigrant novel, The Ulysses Man, which I hope will be published shortly, and which deals with this concept of home. I have come to accept that home exists only in the present, and to cling to the past - either to a time or geographic location- is fraught with disappointment, because the past is over. The future too is illusory, as it never comes. You are always in the present and that is where you need to make your home. So I am home in the place I am in right now, nowhere else matters.

That said, my writing has morphed into two streams: North American themes, and South Asian themes. And I have also recently started to experiment with cross-over stories which are primarily immigrant stories - where the search for home predominates.

Being "of a place" is important in order to write convincingly about it. Two years ago, I moved into a small town in Ontario after spending twenty years in Toronto. I feel fairly empowered to write stories set in a big North American city given my Toronto experience, but I feel that I have not yet earned the right to write about small towns. Hopefully, that will come with more immersion in my new abode.
The immigrant experience is a very rich one. And having gone through that process twice and moved home several times even within one country, I find that these moves have made me appreciate what I have, because in the blink of an eye, what you have can also vanish. This theme of losing and trying to regain lost ground runs strongly through Fringe Dwellers and my other work.

Q: Also, I have noted that you have dabbled in many professions, as well as, have a long track record in the business world. Yet you have still managed to fit many well-regarded, writing programs and projects into your life. Can you describe your writing routine and how this fits into your schedule with your other obligations with work and family?

A. I gave up writing for 20 years while I built my business career and my family - there was no time for writing during those years, although that hard disc called "memory" must have absorbed a lot of impressions and experiences during that time. I work as a business consultant now and my children have left the nest, so I have the flexibility to give my writing the attention it deserves. Over the last eight years, since I resumed serious creative writing, I try to write every day. Like any form of art, writing needs constant exercise and you can't kid yourself that good writing can be delivered through an "on again, off again," relationship with the craft. I regret that I was unable to pursue my writing during those missing 20 years, but this was a trade off that I had to make as an expatriate living in the Middle East and later as a new immigrant in Canada, struggling to get back to base, like one of my Fringe Dwellers.

Q: At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer and what book, event,or story helped to determine this?

A: I discovered this calling when I was 17. I was fortunate to have the guidance of a writer in Sri Lanka, the late James Goonewardene, who became my mentor. He showed me the depths of humanity that can be experienced through literature. So I dumped all my westerns and detective stories and plunged into Hemingway, Greene, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Solzhenitsyn. I was not only captivated by their writing but by their lives, some heroic, others tragic - but all insightful. They took me to a level hard to experienced on my own. I was also idealistically inspired by these writers who would sit in their garrets, experience wine, women and song, send out tomes that the world would lap up, and accumulate wealth and property in different parts of the world. I have since come to realize that some of these things may be the reality of the writer, but not all of them - as there are more readers than writers today, it appears. I have still to experience the "wealth and property" bit of that dream, but many of the other components, including the resulting angst that accompanies a writer, have come to pass, and I have had the good fortune to live and travel to many parts of the world.

Q: Can you discuss how you found your publisher and how it was to work with your editor? Also, what have been the high points of promoting this collection?

A: I have had my share of rejections slips. Some queries were responded to after many months and some never responded to at all and assumed rejected anyway. Some of these rejections make good stories in themselves.

I met my publisher Richard Grove of Hidden Brook Press at the launch of his first North Shore Series - a series featuring authors from eastern Ontario. I liked the content he was publishing, primarily poetry at the time, but emerging into quality literary prose.Shortly after the launch I sent him a few sample stories and he responded within a couple of days, expressing his interest - I knew this quick spark meant that I was on to something good. My editor Jake Hogeterp, the editor I have used the most, is a fellow writer as well, and we have known each other over the years and have developed a healthy rapport when it comes to giving and receiving feedback. Jake is quick to point to things that do not sit well but he leaves the writer to make the final decision.

As for promoting this collection, I have been featured in many blogs like yours, and in the local radio, newspapers, magazines and e-zines in eastern Ontario. I was fortunate to get an interview on Quill & Quire, Canada's magazine for book news and reviews, an interview on Authors Audio ( AuthorsAudio.com) and an upcoming interview on September 1st on Blog Talk Radio with Rita Schiano (8.30pm EST.) In addition, I have done, and continue to do, readings at book clubs, book fairs, authors groups and literary festivals across Ontario. Trailers of all my books, including Fringe Dwellers are on You Tube.

I have my own website ShaneJoseph.com and my own blog Blog

I am also an active member on social networking sites such as Goodreads and Facebook where I promote my work.

Q: Can you describe your next writing project?

A: My third book, "a dystopian novel of hope" as it is called, After the Flood, will be published by Hidden Brook Press in November 2009. This novel which has been seven years in the writing, is a speculative fiction on what the world would look like should a major catastrophe wipe out most of the earth due to climate change. I was interested in exploring the beliefs, behaviours and practices that would survive this cataclysm, and find out if humans could succeed in wiping out the past and create a new utopia on what was left of the planet, despite being constantly hobbled by that one drag - desire.

This is a topical book for our times given that some of the events I wrote about seven years ago, when I first started this novel, have already come to pass.
In addition, I have two other novels in final draft stage and enough short stories to fill two separate collections. I would like to see them all published eventually.

Q: Can you tell me a joke that you are never tired of hearing?

A: Well, when I first met my wife Sarah, and she discovered that I was a writer, she asked to read a sample of my writing. I promptly e-mailed her "The Librarian & the Professor" (which is in Fringe Dwellers), a story about a man who takes an oath of celibacy and a recent widow who is strongly attracted to him. The story had recently won an honorable mention in a literary contest and had been published in Existere magazine. After hitting "send" I immediately realized my faux pas. Sarah replied quickly, "I hope you have not taken the 'oath' as well?" I was soon tripping all over myself to explain that I had no intention of doing such a thing, at least not in this life!

Thank you, Shane Joseph, for your highly enjoyable short story collection, Fringe Dwellers, and best wishes for your continued success and future projects.

EMERGE - New Authors

Posted by Jennifer Prado at 9:18 PM