I love how much emotional tension you’ve created in these two short pieces. I was thinking about them for days after, all the terse sentences and how I couldn’t decide if the voice felt matter-of-fact, anxious, or arrogant. Maybe a little of all three. Either way, I could feel my blood pressure rising, in a good way. Is this a standard writing style for you, and what effect are you going after with this sort of staccato styler?

It’s great to hear the effect reading these pieces has on you. What drew me to literature from the start was its ability to cast a spell on me. I find when I read something with long sentences the spell is sometimes broken because by the time I get to the end of one I have to stop and remind myself of what was said in the beginning, to make sure I understood it correctly. The short sentence imitates a quickening of breath, a sense of urgency. A great example is Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Every phrase is a breath. I like that it’s unclear whether the voice is matter of fact, anxious or arrogant. Maybe it varies from moment to moment. But it’s especially gratifying to hear that the feeling I get is communicative. 

These pieces remind me a little of Raymond Carver and how often he tests me with complex, flawed characters. How did you conceive of the voice for these two pieces? Are they grounded in any truth or inspired by any other characters you’ve read?

I have a lot of friends who are poets, and in most of their work they seem to be taking a moral stance.  Fiction writers, on the other hand, don’t seem to have trouble creating sympathetic characters with moral failings. I think of Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. Both of my pieces are dreamlike in structure. Sometimes in dreams I feel like I’ve done something wrong, but don’t remember doing it. Sometimes in dreams romantic opportunities arise that don’t arise in waking life.  

For readers who enjoy short fiction, who would you recommend reading?

There’s so much out there. Lydia Davis, Luisa Valenzuela, Etgar Keret, Hassan Blasim, James Tate had one excellent collection of short fiction. There are countless others.

Do you have any forthcoming work? What are you working on now?

Excited to say my novella “The Bored” is scheduled to be published by Alien Buddha Press in early March. I already have copies! I’m currently working on various manuscripts of flash fiction and poetry.