Rogue's Angels Present ~ Less Than Human by Allen Long

Please welcome Allen Long author of Less Than Human.

Allen Long will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Less Than Human

by Allen Long

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GENRE: Memoir

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

I began telling stories almost as soon as I learned what they were.  My sixth grade teacher encouraged me to write a short story a week instead of doing the standard English assignments.  I read Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man when I was thirteen, and I loved the combination of good stories and beautiful language.  This is probably about the time I started thinking about becoming a writer.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

My genre is memoir.  You have to capture the most dramatic high and low moments of your life (and leave the boring parts out).  You have to tell the absolute truth about yourself and the other characters and events.  You have to step back and figure out why you and the other characters behaved as they did and how the events affected the characters involved, especially you. You can’t make yourself look better than you are because your book will lose its integrity.  The purpose of a memoir is discovery.  Discovery is based on the examination of truth. You are trying to discover the meaning of your life and share it with readers. In a nutshell, tell the complete and honest truth.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your memoir?

After I’d published several short stories, I decided I wanted to try something different as a change of pace, so I wrote a memoir about my disgust with the sleazy business practices I observed in the management consulting sector of the business world.  Then I wrote a memoir about two girls I had crushes on as a teen—one girl ended up dying in a car crash, and the other girl ended up in a psychiatric hospital.  Then I wrote a more cheerful piece about several girls I strongly connected with during my teen years and how I discovered we still had those connections when I saw them later at my 25^th and 30^th high school reunions.  Then I wrote a piece about the joys of fatherhood.  I kept changing subjects, and the memoirs kept flowing until I realized I’d captured all of the most dramatic high and low points of my life and felt I’d run out of things to say.  Toward the end of this process, I realized I was completing a book.

4. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

I love swimming, which provided a caressing comfort to me during my childhood when I was being physically abused, and I still love it today.  These days, I work as a hospital nurse.  But there was a five-year period not too long ago when I just gave swimming lessons and coached for a successful swim team. I’d probably still be doing that if the pay were better and the jobs came with benefits!  As it is, I still swim four or five days a week.

I’m also a pretty accomplished guitar player.  I used to try to develop my guitar and writing skills equally.  Then I began publishing fiction and memoirs on a regular basis, and I let my guitar playing fall by the wayside.  I can always go back to it, though, and there’s a good chance I will.

5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

Right now I’m writing magazine-length memoirs and short stories.  My next book probably will be a memoir or short story collection.

6. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?

Sure. In the book, the reader learns I was physically abused as a child.  Then, when I was in college, I married Linda, who turned out to be a verbally abusive and cheating wife.  My life finally turned around when I met my second wife, Elizabeth.  Our twenty-first wedding anniversary is July 1, 2016.  Here’s the story of how we met.

I remember only a fragment of our lunch conversation.  Sophia, who used to work at the textile design firm where Elizabeth was employed, brought up the name of a colleague who was agonizing about whether he was gay. 

            Elizabeth surprised me by saying, “If he can’t make up his mind, I’ll make it up for him—he’s definitely gay.”  There was absolutely no malice or derision in her voice; she simply stated what seemed an obvious fact.

            I laughed, pleased by her presumptuous humor.  Also, a few weeks later, the co-worker in question came out of the closet and has seemed contentedly gay ever since.

            After lunch, Sophia made a quick getaway and Elizabeth and I stood in the parking garage near her black cherry Dodge Shadow and talked for another hour and a half.  Again, I remember only one snippet of this conversation.

            “I have to tell you how important my daughter Stephanie is to me,” she said.  “We’re best friends, I love her dearly, and she’s my number one priority.”

            “I understand.  That’s how I feel about my boys,” I said.

            Tears glazed Elizabeth’s eyes, but she didn’t cry.  I felt such a strong connection to her I trembled.

            “Would you like it if I called you?” I asked.

            “Yes, very much,” she said.

            We hugged and fell in love.

7. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

I don’t belong to a critique group, but I do work with a professional editor.  My book has nine chapters.  It took me 3.5 years to write the first eight chapters.  Then I hired a professional editor skilled in language and story content and structure.  Working with him, I wrote the last chapter and five more cover-to-cover drafts of my book.  I sent out my book to small presses in July 2016 and had a book contract in hand a month later, and my publisher took the book as is, with no edits required.  I think if you are in a workshop environment, you have to identify the writers who seem most on your wavelength and only listen to them.

8. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

I started sending out fiction when I was in college, without any luck.  I started sending out and publishing fiction and memoir after I earned my MFA in fiction writing.  As I mentioned, I pretty much knew I was a writer at thirteen, so no one had to encourage to send my stuff out to magazines.

9. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I just start writing, but if I get stuck or need to take my story to the next level, I’ll stop and plan how to get there.

 
10. How do you maintain your creativity?

I read literary novels and short stories, memoirs, and detective novels, which are a guilty pleasure.  I swim, which is similar in a way to meditation, and I like to spend time outside letting my mind wander, usually when I’m walking my dog.  I also keep a running list of story ideas based on dreams, conversations I’ve had or overheard, images that come to me, and true stories I’ve heard or read about other people.  I believe reading quality literature will help produce quality literature.  I also think the mind needs time to wander and play so good writing material can rise to the surface.  Going to the movies or watching quality TV can also stimulate your imagination. I think the more you try to force writing, the harder it is to produce.  Sometimes it’s helpful to write something out of your genre, like writing a book review for Amazon or trying to write a piece of flash fiction if you’ve never tried it.

10. Anything else you might want to add?

Here are a couple of tips for developing writers:

1. Focus on completing a highly polished piece of writing before you even think about sending it out to magazines.  I once took five years to perfect a short story, and it was accepted by a magazine almost immediately after I sent it out.  Concentrate on quality writing, and publishing will take care of itself.
2. Be prepared to write a ton of drafts of whatever you’re working on so you can produce your best work.  I work as an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine, and one of the primary reasons I reject stories is that the writer warms up for the first seven pages or so before the story begins to take off.  The writers of these stories should have eliminated these early pages in subsequent drafts so the story takes off on page one.  When I submitted Less than Human to my publisher, the editor-in-chief asked to see only the first chapter.  He read the first two pages, saw that book takes off right away, and asked to see the entire book.

BLURB:

In Less than Human, Allen Long tells the story of his often nightmarish childhood in the wealthy suburbs of D.C., the wonders and mysteries of teenage love, his ill-advised journeys into corporate America and a hellish marriage, and ultimate breakdown.  And yet, his story is mostly one of triumph.  He draws strength from the joys of fatherhood, he finds true love in his second marriage, and through working with psychotherapists and leading a life rich in self-examination, he overcomes both child abuse and the resulting PTSD, finally learning that instead of being less than, he is, indeed, human.

Less than Human follows an unconventional path, arranged as much by theme and association as by chronology.  These stories take many forms, from driving narrative to lyrical reverie, at times evoking mythic overtones, and this variety, along with an unflinching confrontation with the conditions and consequences of childhood abuse, create its own form of suspense--in what direction will this book take us next?

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EXCERPT:

While the zookeeper threw apples into the makeshift pool and coaxed the elephants to swim to retrieve them, he recited a long string of facts.  These awe-inspiring creatures have 150,000 muscles in their trunks and they can use this appendage to suck up to 15 quarts of water at a time, which they then squirt into their mouths.  Also, he said, elephants can hear with their ears, trunks, and feet.  In addition, these captivating mammals are believed to have the same level of intelligence as dolphins and non-human primates and they can feel grief, make music, show compassion and kindness, mother one another’s infants, play, use tools, and recognize themselves in mirrors. 

When some of the elephants exited the pool, they used their trunks to throw dirt on their backs.

“Dad, what are they doing?” Ben asked.

“Putting on sunscreen,” I said.

           

The boys giggled.

The zookeeper continued to lecture, but we tuned him out and focused solely on the elephants as the great gray wrinkly creatures with the small dark eyes and long eyelashes and formidable, floppy ears shaped like the African continent bobbed and swayed in the hot July afternoon.  Perhaps the boys’ minds wandered briefly to Babar, one of their favorite books about an anthropomorphized elephant, just as mine may have flashed briefly upon the proverbial elephant in the room at home, but our thoughts quickly returned to the magnificent elephants and our simple but immense male joy.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Allen Long was born in New York City and grew up in Arlington, Virginia.  He holds a B.A. in journalism from Virginia Tech, an M.A. in fiction writing from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Arizona.  He has been an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine since 2007, and his fiction and memoirs have appeared in a wide variety of literary magazines.  He lives with his wife near San Francisco.

Sales links:

http://www.amazon.com/Less-than-Human-Allen-Long-ebook/dp/B01B8P1KZE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456200484&sr=1-1&keywords=allen+long+less+than+human

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/less-than-human-allen-long/1123318074?ean=2940152601442  

Author’s Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/AllenLongAuthor/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Allen Long will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1664