Brian’s Comments (group member since Nov 27, 2011)

Brian’s comments from the Q&A with Brian Krans group.

Oh. I'm so sorry I missed this post, Kenna.

To answer your question, the next book is going to be out summer 2014. Here's more about it, if you haven't seen it already...

http://briankrans.tumblr.com/post/441...

As always, you're very welcome.

Kenna asked if I have ever received a suicide letter as feedback from A Constant Suicide. Thankfully, I have not.

Some have accused me of glorifying suicide—namely by the chapters addressed at how to successfully take your life—but I in no way condone it. In having dealt with the matter myself, as well as directly in my family, I can say that suicide solves nothing and no one should take anything I write on the subject as matter of expert opinion.

I have no idea what happens after we die, but I do sympathize with those whose daily lives are so fraught with worry, anxiety, and other legitimate mental illness that death may offer the calm they searched for in life.

I'm going to end that there.

Ben asked this question:"As a rollerblader Justice was my favorite character. Did you model him after anyone in particular like an old skater or old friend? I kept picturing him as a little bad ass Matt Mantz for whatever reason."

Actually, Justice was very loosely based on a kid I used to volunteer. The name remained the same, as well as the general spirit of of his devil-may-care/honey badger outlook on life, but that was also a compilation of other kids I've known, including myself.

The real Justice is an extremely talented skateboarder, but since I rollerblade and have a god-like ability to change details just for the fuck of it, Justice became a rollerblader.

Still, Justice is one of my favorite characters I've ever assembled.

Ah, yes, the genesis of Freeze Tag.

I used to volunteer at this Christian-run indoor skate park in Iowa called Skate Church. It was a really fun place with lots of fun kids. And by fun I mean hyper, loud, charismatic, and awesome kids.

In the summer of 2007, we took some of those kids, loaded them up in two vans, and went down to New Orleans for a mission trip to help clean up after Hurricane Katrina. Before we got there, we spent a day rafting in the Ozarks.

There, one of the kids was running around like crazy. It was pretty awesome because he was fucking hilarious. That's when an older kid face-palmed herself and said, "Ugh. I forgot to give him his medication. If I don't remind him, he won't take it and he'll keep going crazy like this."

Which brought to mind two questions: "What's wrong with him like that?" and "What would one do with all of those left over pills?"

That moment, I took off running to find my notebook and jot some ideas down. By the end of the trip, I had fleshed out the basic landscape in my mind.

Also by the end of the trip, I had two New Orleans sheriff's deputies point their guns at me and was kicked off the trip by the larger Christian group running the organization in New Orleans. Both events were entirely separate.

The book continued to take shape for a while, but it wasn't until my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer that I had the main motivation to drive Jake to become who he is in the book. It was my way of personally dealing with the idea that the woman who always stood by me might not be there to give me guidance when I still very much need it.

So, to answer your question, the book came from volunteering with kids, one special rafting trip, and some cancer cells in the mammaries that nursed me during the first months of my life.

It's also a cathartic way of being able to do things that you wouldn't normally do in real life. You can make your characters make extremely poor decisions or put them in situations you don't see yourself getting into on your own. It gives you a kind of god-like presence, which is kind of weird in and of itself.

I moved this to its own post. C. asked, "On the back of ACS, it says "Part-memoir,part-fiction." Could you give an example of each - a part that's true and a part that's fiction? "

All of my writing is a mix of fact and fiction. To boil it down to its simplest, I steal from my own life, but start making things up to make it more interesting.

In A Constant Suicide, I pulled directly from my own college experience. The scene where Ethan and Chris met is how I met one of my best friends at college, although he did know the girl he was helping move in. She's now his wife.

I had a roommate in college, but his nickname was STD Keith. He's the one that told us the story of the Subway bag.

I killed a whole bunch of koi fish in college. That, too, was an accident.

I lived in "the Attic house."

I didn't have a friend in college who killed himself, but I attempted suicide in college.

The most important part of the book that's fact are Ethan's journal entries. Many of them are my own from college. It was very cathartic to take all those feelings of pain and turmoil to see them in print. It helped a lot.

Hope that answers the question. Thanks for asking, C.!

I'd like to thank all of you for participating in this Q&A. After receiving many personal messages about my books, writing style, and writing habits, I thought I'd do a Q&A here so hopefully I can better answer everyone's questions.

Feel free to ask anything you might have wondered about, or post your opinions on anything related to my work. Feedback is always greatly appreciated.

I'll post some of the commonly-asked questions and give my replies to get things started.