Author Interview - Shane Joseph

Talks about his Short Story Collection, Fringe Dwellers

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...

For complete interview, go to:

http://jenniferprado.blogspot.com