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Why do you think Burt finds refuge in medieval re-enactment? I’ve never been into medieval re-enactment but while researching the novel I came to find something beautiful about it all. I started getting obsessed with the idea that everything—family, culture, history—was a sort of re-enactment.
People have this whenever they go back to their parents’ homes: they fall into the roles again, re-enacting a son or a daughter. Why do people choose the medieval times? Well, I think it’s an obvious sort of retreat from the modern. OK, it’s basic and kind of dull and also wildly fraudulent, especially because nobody really wants to be a medieval peasant or a poxy prostitute, but actually, I’m a big supporter of all flights from reality.
Had you previously studied medieval history? No, but I was always into it. Still am. Like Burt I’m far too romantic to be an actual historian – and if you’ve read the book you’ll know I don’t mean ‘romantic’ in a particularly flattering light.
Was the book also a way for you to give counsel to your own fears and anxieties? Yeah, I was talking to my fiancée about this last night. Others might write from their cock, their depression, anger or love – or whatever part of them they find unmanageable and in need of release through art. I write from anxiety (I think), I’m an extremely anxious person.
How much did your mead intake go up whilst writing the book? I find mead pretty disgusting, actually. But my red wine and beer intake went way up, that’s for sure.
How do you feel about All Shall Be Well... since its publication? It’s published and I’ve got a deal for a second, so... success! As for the book being what I wanted it to be, well, the old saying that you don’t ever finish a book, you abandon it... that holds true.
Is your second novel, The Household Spirit, coming any easier to you than the first? I’d falsely thought that it would be easier but I realised the way I write, the research, the endless sinkholes and depressions and all that is par for my course.
Also The Household Spirit is so wildly different from the first one and I worry that my seven or eight fans might not like that. But hopefully I can pick up seven or eight new fans. Better fans. Sexier fans. Fans with more money to send me, maybe. Can I give your readers my bank account information?
Go for it. So what’s the new book about? It’s about sleep paralysis, a sleep disorder I suffer from and it’s a really fucked-up shamanic journey of sorts. It deals a lot with dreams, DMT—the most potent psychotropic drug known to man—gay fathers, failed experimental musicians, kinky sex... it’s a lot more autobiographical.
You were brought up by gay dads, right? Yes. It was difficult coming to terms with this as a preteen or ’tween. I grew up in a very conservative little town in upstate NY. But I see it as a real blessing now, something formative.
Sorry, did you just say “tween?” Yes. Shit. Can you strike that from the interview? 
The Household Spirit is due out next year. Til then, you can read an excerpt from And All Shall Be Well... here
Interview © 2010 Wheel Me Out. No part can be used for any purpose without prior consent. Please contact editorial@wheelmeout.com
