“Smoke and Mirrors” has such interiority to it. How did you create your central character, and what informed the choice to stay so close to his inner thoughts? This piece could be a monologue, and I almost want to hear it performed on stage.

“Smoke and Mirrors” was gifted to me at a dinner party in the months preceding COVID by the guest to my left,  a gentleman with a beard and a mane of white hair,  a classic hippy boomer strategically placed next to me because his political views were antithetical to mine.   The hostess was determined that all diners leave with some sense of what others think, and how they live.   In my case she succeeded, but in a way she couldn’t have anticipated.

It happened that this man was the father of my son’s  inspirational and exemplary third grade math teacher, so boundaries fell away within the first few pleasantries, and personal histories flowed.  He spoke of his youthful struggles, the time he and his friends tried to run away from home at age 13 to escape the Cuban missile crisis, his first cigarette,  his first marriage, the daughter he sired  at 19, the several years he spent as a cab driver, with no ballast,  direction, or smokes.  And yes, he related the story of  the day he drove a defenseless grandmother to her future and her end, and his subsequent surrender to nicotine.   The thoughts weren’t mine.   They were his.   I was the translator.   And the embellisher.   No more than that.

Politics never came up.

I loved how cinematically this piece unfolds. When I read it the first time, it immediately evoked Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader for me, especially with how close we are to the narrator, fully immersed in his thoughts and fully immersed in his smoke (a metaphor ripe for the picking).

Can you tell me if film informed this piece at all, and if so, which films and why? If not, can you speak to how you’d characterize this type of storytelling that might share some aspects of cinematic form?

I’ll admit I was concerned when the piece was finished about the risk of it reflecting a type of  cinematic cliche, and indeed one of the first comments I received on it was,  ‘Good stuff, Travis Bickle!’   In truth any artistic connection with film was accidental and inadvertent.   

Short fiction and movies have a natural affinity, I believe, in the need to define time, place and character  in short order,  to draw the reader/viewer in with the minimum amount of meandering.    Longer form fiction has the luxury of time.   Readers typically commit to a novel over days or weeks, while short fiction and film are bite sized by comparison.

When writing short fiction, where do you prioritize your efforts? Character building, world building, dialogue?

When I read a story I’m looking to meet someone new,  a character, so for me everything starts there and fans out.   When I’ve spent enough mental time with someone I’m creating, the character’s world assumes its form around what he desires, fears, and regrets.   Sometimes this approach works, sometimes not, but I find it difficult to employ a sequence of events as the centerpiece of a tale without understanding why any of it matters to the character experiencing it.   Lacking  that basis it’s hard to know why it would matter to the reader.

I loved that this piece is unwilling to give its protagonist redemption in the end. We end with two apologies, instead. My favorite stories are those which avoid idealism, but still tease us with it. We see that he has made attempts to stop smoking, for instance, but as with most addictions, it’s never that easy.

Why did you decide to end this piece with apology? How do you see the character by the end of this piece, and what do you anticipate he does next, if the story continued? Or does ambiguity take the wheel at the end and that’s that? I’m typically in favor of the latter; it’s more fun not to know, but I’m curious as to how you see him and his story unfolding in the void?  

As to where the protagonist in “Smoke and Mirrors” goes from here, I see him aging into a world of simple expectations.   Regret won’t gnaw at him forever.  He will find his way.   It helps that I know, in a sense, that one day he will be loved, experience the warmth and satisfaction of an insular family, that in his grey hairs he will find wisdom, reconcile with his daughter,  and be able to reflect on his past without bitterness.  But at the end of the story he has a very, very long way to go.  All  he knows is that he has glimpsed hope, and redemption, and that in that moment they were a mirage, like the smoke ring designs he tries so hard to revive.   He’s hit many bottoms in his life, but this one might be the most revelatory for him. 

We won’t know what he’ll do in the frigid morning, and the days that follow, but we can imagine that he will walk out of his apartment with a different view of what’s imperative, and what’s possible.   Apologies are the centerpiece of recovery in AA, and I think they apply here, too.   Without contrition there can be no real transformation.   So I think the apologies themselves, though internal,  are indicative of something vaguely hopeful.

What are you reading lately? Anything you’d like to recommend?

My reading hours are about evenly divided between fiction and non, and within the fiction space mostly devoted to  the short form.   Recent rewarding finds include collections by Patricia Highsmith, Tobias Wolf, TC Boyle, and Thomas Ligotti.   

It takes a lot for me to commit to a novel, but I’m looking forward to diving into The Whispers  by Ashley Audrain, a book about women and mothers that, according to one eminent critic, ‘every man should read.’

Do you have any forthcoming work?

I do have a new piece coming out in New Pop Lit  in July, “Something to Tell.”  It will be their feature short story.