Mike Schneider's Blog, page 78

This is what an adaptation of TBDNE would look like.

This is what an adaptation of TBDNE would look like.

Interview with Digital Book Today

I ANSWERED SOME QUESTIONS FOR DIGITAL BOOK TODAY

Including… 

Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way? Did this lead to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before?

None of the writing in the book makes me uncomfortable; I know where the story is headed after all. But there are certainly sequences that are designed to make the reader feel tense – and those were perhaps my favorite sections to write (the Burning Club Incident is my personal top pick). Having said that, in early drafts I wrote about more than a few private moments from the relationship I was in that broke apart and motivated me to begin working on this book. Doing so was uncomfortable. Wisely, I think, I omitted those passages from the final text.

To answer the third part of the question, I firmly believe writing This Book Does Not Exist allowed me to come to terms with the end of my relationship, with a woman I considered to be the love of my life. It would not be an exaggeration to say that writing this book saved my life… which you can interpret as you wish.

You can read the entire interview here.

As a bonus, the ebook edition of my novel This Book Does Not Exist is free through Sunday on Amazon.

New Review: "Such a fun read."

If only it had been as much fun for me to write :) 

The Controversial Ending & How We Broke Up

Note: This post contains spoilers regarding the conclusion of  This Book Does Not Exist . If you would prefer to be surprised by the resolution, and you have not yet read the book, don’t read anything past this word. 

I’m learning something about the end of my book: It has polarized readers. Namely, those who have taken the time to either write me or review the work on Amazon seem to fall into two camps. One group responds enthusiastically to the imperfect but optimistic conclusion, which acknowledges that even when things fail to work out how we imagine they should, hope can still be found elsewhere. The other camp is disappointed, I think, that Mike’s love for Naomi does not in fact conquer all. They wish Mike and Naomi would have gotten back together. They want Naomi to put her issues with Mike in concrete terms. They want romance and sunsets and weddings and children and probably puppies too.

While I completely understand the emotion behind wanting a fairytale ending, such a resolution would have been impossible for me to write. My relationship, with a girl I believed at the time was the love of my life, did not end well. It started to fracture and then it shattered. We tried to put it back together… We tried so hard, and we failed. The broken pieces cut us both. We bled along the way. First and foremost, in writing the novel - a combination of memoir and fiction - I had to stay true to my own experience and my own emotions. I had to figure out what happened in order to survive losing the person who had become my best friend. And as I searched for reasons why we didn’t make it, I realized there was no reason. At least, there was no specific event. Nobody cheated. It was circumstance that got in the way. We grew older. Our interests evolved. Our personalities shifted. We wanted slightly different things than when we met. At one point it seemed as if we were meant to be, and at another - after all kinds of yelling and name calling and terrible shit, even after we yet again found peace - suddenly we weren’t. The relationship wasn’t broken by a sledgehammer; instead it was dissolved by a haze, something vague and threatening that could be felt and witnessed but not explained.

Ultimately then, the only choice I had was to write from my perspective, to tell a story for people like me, for those who had gone through a breakup, who knew the relationship they endeared was over and now they were stranded, scared, and depressed, hoping for some sign that they could be okay. I wanted them to understand, as I had after I finished writing the book, that this too would pass, that someone else would arrive, that happiness would again be found, that life is all about peaks and valleys and the goal is to not quit while you’re languishing at the bottom. 

I thought that was an inspirational ending. I find it fascinating that for some readers it was in actuality a disappointment. 

Peter Biskind on THE DEER HUNTER

If you’ve already read This Book Does Not Exist then you know the Michael Cimino directed, Robert DeNiro-Meryl Streep-Christopher Walken-John Cazale starring movie THE DEER HUNTER plays an important role, in part because my dad rocked me to sleep while watching it when I was a baby and also because sections of it were shot in Cleveland, which is the principle setting for the story. 

Yesterday morning, I went through the offensively long list of cached articles in my Instapaper account, and I found an article entitled “The Vietnam Oscars.” The piece, by Peter Biskind, examines the first two successful films about Vietnam - COMING HOME and of course THE DEER HUNTER.  

From the article —

“The celebrated wedding scene was filmed in Cleveland in a magnificent Russian Orthodox church, obscenely ornate, actually, given the poverty of the fictional surroundings.”

If you haven’t seen it before, this is the exterior of the church, St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the Tremont neighborhood —

And here is the full article by Biskind, which I recommend to anyone interested in movies, Hollywood, or the manner in which art interacts with society.

A Collection of Very Short Stories by Me

If you’ve finished reading TBDNE, then you know about the chapter that is centered around the movie Milk. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been writing brief stories about my experience watching other films that could be characterized as of a similar nature. The stories can be found at the following links: 

THE ARTIST IS PRESENT | THE TRIAL | DIAL M FOR MURDER 3D | SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

One of the most frequent questions I receive from readers concerns when I’m going to write another book. For now, consider these stories a precursor. I expect the series to expand in the future, as I see fit - although I admit to being unsure where exactly all of this is going. If you enjoy what you read, please watch this space as well as onemikey.com  for updates. 

Thanks for caring,

Mike

Cool Books That Will Get You Laid

When I began writing TBDNE, I stated an ambition: To write a cool book for cool people. The novels I saw coming out of the big publishers in New York serviced four types of readers - the high brow literary elite, those interested in derivative works of Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter, women who enjoyed chick lit, and men and women who wanted escapist series-based mystery/suspense/thrillers. Many of the books in the literature category were period pieces. Few authors seemed interested in writing about the contemporary world (I don’t know why; it’s complex, it’s changing rapidly, and it’s fascinating). I had a difficult time imagining a recently released book getting a college kid or a teenager laid, as I perceive at least novels of the past like Less Than Zero and American Psycho did. A discernible edge was lacking in literature. No one was writing books for me and my friends. I wanted to fill that gap. 

I leave it up to you to judge whether or not I was successful in achieving this goal with my first novel. Either way, I think the point remains. There is nothing equivalent to the indie movie or indie music scene in publishing - there is no venue like Pitchfork - and that void is something I’d like to exploit by creating a movement of cool books for cool kids. 

Please share this post with like-minded individuals. And if you know of any novels that fit the mold I described above, please write me via Facebook, Twitter or email. I’d like to help champion them.

TBDNE: The Video Game

I learned how to use a computer by first playing text and then point-and-click adventure games, e.g. King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Maniac Mansion… I’ve always believed there was a touch of those games in TBDNE, given the puzzle-like nature of the plot and the literal quest of my surrogate. In a perfect world, I would actually be spending some time right now developing the novel into a game for iOS.

I was of course compelled to tap the “Read Later” button on my phone then when I came across a post on famous books that should really be video games in the Twitter feed of the great high brow video game mag / blog Kill Screen.

"Strange, Melancholic, Familiar" - Latest Review

The latest review. Deeply appreciated, especially on a night like tonight.

In the Event of My Death