What
is your name and/or pen name?
Adam Bertocci
What
genre do you write?
Whatever I feel
like at the moment! Humor, pop culture non-fiction, a little YA, a little
literary.
What
made you want to be a writer?
You know what’s
weird, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been asked this before, at least not
enough that I have an answer ready. I guess I enjoyed it and thought I was good
at it and that was enough to get me started. I was sort of a strange person in
that I was writing screenplays in middle school. Already I’d figured out that
dialogue was my strength.
What
do you use to keep yourself inspired while writing?
Ideally if I’m
actually writing I won’t need inspiration. I believe in getting your outline
hammered out to the point where you should know where you’re going and that
most of your surprises in the process should be pleasant ones. That doesn’t
always work out, of course. So I’ve had a certain amount of success listening
to a song, or thinking about a scene in another medium entirely that gets at
what I want, and asking myself, what’s the feeling you get from this, and how
can you translate that feeling into words on the page?
How
do you feel about the writingcommunity as a whole?
Boy, broad
question. The best thing I’ve observed in my interactions with the writing
community is the tough-love attitude. There are enough people willing to come
along and give a budding writer the critique they need to hear.
Have
you or will you be willing to collaborate with other authors in the future?
Well, I’ve
collaborated with Shakespeare a time or two, and he’s always been easy to work
with. You know… coming from screenwriting, collaboration is a given; even if
you’re the sole writer, you’re still taking in feedback from the producer or
director, and the end result is very much a product of someone else’s mind even
if by some miracle every word spoken came from you. So on one level that seems
natural to me. The co-authoring arrangement is hardly as common in prose, and
it’s not something I’ve really thought about myself, but if the right person and
the right project came along, why not?
Tell
us about your book and if it’s upcoming or already published.
I am most famous
for “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski”, published by Simon & Schuster in 2010 and
somehow still in print. It’s a mashup retelling the movie “The Big Lebowski” in
the style of William Shakespeare. I often refer to it as surprisingly
educational.
Is
your book or upcoming book an eBook, paperback, or both?
Paperback, set
up just like the Shakespeare paperbacks you might have had in school; the text
on the right-hand page, scholarly annotations and period illustrations on the
left-hand page. An eBook is available, but, maybe I’m showing my age here, I
think the joke works better in the print format.
Is
this your first book?
Yes, and the
funny thing is, it wasn’t even intended to be a book. It began life as an
elaborate Internet joke that was designed to call attention to me as a writer
and try to land me other gigs. I had no idea it would have any life of its own.
The publishing industry came to me, not the other way around. Nice work if you
can get it.
Are
you planning to write more?
I dabble in
short fiction, which has taught me a lot; I put out a couple of stories a year
on the Kindle store. As for books, I already have written more—outside the
Shakespeare-movie-mashup subgenre, I stress—but without success pitching them
so far. Which is fine. My wheelhouse sort of lies outside the mainstream and
I’m not sure the industry knows what to do with it. Look, I don’t think “Two
Gentlemen of Lebowski” would have been successful as a book pitch all by
itself; it took off on its own, brought directly to the people, and then the
industry came calling.
Is
there anything you would say to other writers, that want to write and publish a
book?
Try to have a
sense of who your book is for, what demographic of person would buy it, what
sort of media they already enjoy. I meant this as publishing advice, but maybe
it’s not bad writing advice either, keeping a sense of your audience in mind.
Where
can my readers find your book and how they can follow you on social media?
Leave only links that you want open to the public.
These days the
book is most easily obtained at Amazon:
Social media:
Thanks!
Your
welcome Adam and thank you for sharing with us. I can relate with you when you
talk about music while writing. Before I even start writing, I pick a theme
song for the story I’m working on. To play over and over again to keep me
focused on it.
If
you would like to check out Adam’s book or follow him on social media, use the
links above.
As
Always, Happy Reading and Writing Everyone
G.
D. Talbot
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