Mort Castle

I’m glad we could all get together like this at the Fourth World’s International and Regional Writing Conference and Hound Dog Taylor Memorial Bar B Que. There are still plenty of pot stickers, veggie whips, prunes, and sticks of butter on the hors d’oeuvre table and the cash bar will remain open another seven or ten hours.

As you know, I’ve been a writer since Jesus’ bar mitzvah (truth: there was some trouble with the Haftora, but all in all, it went well), so I’ll be glad to attempt to answer any questions you might have about this craft and sullen art …

Q: Why don’t you write a best seller?

A: Because I never thought of doing that. There are so few bestsellers that it’s obvious many writers likewise have never thought of doing it.

But it’s a great idea. I think I’ll do one about a code and the end of the world and love. And there’ll be a continuing series character, too. Crippled and brilliant. I think maybe ethnic, too. A brilliant crippled Laotian profiler. I like it. Just as soon as I have a few more prunes, I’m getting moving on a bestseller.

Q: The cover of one of your novels, THE DEADLY ELECTION, was lousy. Why didn’t you get a better one?

A: Well, publishers always seek a writer’s input on cover design, and I had a choice of three other covers, one of which had a nice painting of Abraham Lincoln and a cute cat and a naked woman, but I was hoping THE DEADLY ELECTION’s cover would not attract buyers. I even suggested that the title be white lettering on a white background.

At the time, I thought it would be too cool to be a “cult novelist,” and you can’t be a “cult novelist” if there are thousands upon thousands of people in your cult. Nobody thinks of the Methodists as a cult, right? They’re not like The Presumptive Church of Knotty Pine Paneling that meets in Buford’s basement on alternating Thursday to await the coming of King David in a 1974 stock Mustang II.

Q: Do you think you’ll ever self-publish?

A: Certainly will. Probably on the same day we find three pounds of potato salad for my brain transplant.

Q: Do you have any advice for poets?

A: No. Compassion, yes. Sometimes half a sandwich. But advice, no.

Q: Why didn’t you do your own artwork for the comic books you’ve written?

I could have drawn BUZZ MASON: THE ORIGINAL INTERGALACTIC HERO or MONOLITH, or darned near anything, because I am preponderously multi-talented. And you can bet I can color inside the lines, too. But I have a generous nature. Just like comics writers, artists need to have work. It’s not as if they could write a comic as well as draw it. In fact, some of them can’t even read a comic.

Q: You have not yet written a memoir. Any plans to?

A: I suppose I have the qualifications. My mother, father, sister, several uncles, my wire haired fox terrier, and the guy at the car wash were all quite mean to me. But frankly, until recently, I didn’t want to tackle a memoir because I thought my life was not all that interesting. Like those “Christmas letters” you get every year: “The antibiotic ointment has pretty well cleared up Leola’s itch and we’re seriously thinking of adjusting the contrast on the Vizio flat screen … “

But I’ve recently come to realize that a memoir is what is termed “creative non-fiction.” The creative gives you license to rearrange, imaginatively recall, and selectively embellish the truth. So now I feel almost obliged to memoirize:

I was born in Auschwitz, the son of a camp guard and a Romanian Jewess who went on to start the first hot air ascension organization in Eretz Yisroyal. Despite losing my arms and legs when I fell unconscious across two sets of railroad tracks (both the Northern Pacific and the Southern Pacific got me), I went on to become lead guitar for MOBY GRAPE and to play third base for the Chicago Cubs …

It’s a story that cries out to be told. It could be a bestseller.

Q: Will the “new” media ever replace traditional publishing?

A: It already has. I think it was last Thursday. I’ll check with one of my self-publishing poet friends. He plans to have a cyber bestseller real soon.

Q: Why don’t you let them make a movie of one of your books or stories?

A: Hollywood people are just so annoying. The other day, Clint Eastwood calls. Had me on the phone for 20 minutes. I couldn’t understand a word he said with that scratchy whispering he’s into.

And then there’s the Disney crew. They don’t let you alone. They want to do CURSED BE THE CHILD as an animated 3D film. They’ve got toys planned for Burger King. The Demon Child. The Creepy Pedophile. Could I have a pervert with my whopper?

All these silly shmagegs have to offer is … money! Money’s no concern, now that I’m planning to write a bestseller.

Q: Is it true there are no stupid questions?

A: No, these have all been stupid questions.

Fortunately, we also have stupid answers.