Until recently, your background as a fiction writer was mostly in the literary genre, but with your current serial, Lars Breaxface, Werewolf in Space<\/em>, you are segueing into speculative fiction. How, if at all, has that transition changed your approach to writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n My stories have always tended toward the weird. A man\u2019s mid-life crisis unfolding in a taxidermy factory. A widower and his baby daughter visited by demons. A mysterious bottle of unicorn tears, or the strange white neighbors next door. With Lars Breaxface, Werewolf in Space<\/em><\/a>, though, I think I\u2019m just cranking the weird-o-meter up to 11. It\u2019s a send-up to all the sci-fi and monster movies I\u2019ve been watching since I was a kid, and I\u2019m trying to keep it as ridiculous as possible. My ten-year-old self would love it.<\/p>\n Lars Breaxface<\/em> releases a new installment every week or two. Prior to the launch of chapter one, did you plot the entire serial, or are you allowing some elements to develop organically as you go along?<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to your fiction, you also write poetry and nonfiction. How is your process different (or similar) for each?<\/strong><\/p>\n Story ideas are like earworms–they infest and evolve, they\u2019ll gestate for days or weeks before I finally put them on the page. Poetry tends to be more spontaneous. An idea pops in and I just write it in one brief sitting, usually focused around a central image. Nonfiction, so far, has only been the paid kind, mostly in the form of short portraits of artists and performers involved in local events. I love it\u2014I love talking to people who are creating art and are passionate about what they do. But it\u2019s a whole different animal from the creative stuff.<\/p>\n Out of your published pieces so far, do you have a personal favorite?<\/strong><\/p>\n Probably \u201cWhite People,\u201d which came out in The After Happy Hour Review<\/a> this spring. It\u2019s my newest published piece (minus Lars Breaxface<\/em>, which I won\u2019t count since it\u2019s still ongoing), so maybe that\u2019s why I\u2019d call it the favorite. But… it is pretty hilarious. I laughed out loud writing it. I\u2019m also still partial to my first published story, about God and the Devil playing chess. At first I\u2019d written that story as a joke, a kind of challenge to see if I could turn the clich\u00e9 on its head. It was such an affirmation to have that piece be my first in print. It was the complete opposite of the Raymond Carver knockoff bullshit I thought I was supposed to be writing. Also, I wrote a story about a robot on a park bench that was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I feel obligated to list that among the favorites. It\u2019s called \u201cRobot on a Park Bench<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Where would you like your writing career to be in five years?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shopping a novel and a collection. With Werewolf in Space<\/em>, I\u2019m still feeling out the process of novel writing, something I\u2019ve been trying to learn for the past three years (two aborted\/on-hiatus projects still bear the scars of my novice attempts to push beyond 4,000 words). Whatever happens with Lars after his space-faring serial, I hope to apply this writing process to future projects. As for the collection, I\u2019m about halfway there. Seven stories finished and published, a handful of others in the pipeline. I\u2019ve got a graphic novel project in the works with Pittsburgh artist Ross Kennedy of Armature Tattoo, and I\u2019m also mulling the idea of a kids\u2019 series. More adventures with monsters and silliness, R.L. Stine-style.<\/p>\n Big thanks to Brandon for being part of this week’s author interview series. Find him at his website<\/a> and on Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Happy reading!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For this week’s author interview, I am pleased to\u00a0spotlight writer Brandon Getz.\u00a0In fact, I’m pleased to say that today’s post\u00a0marks a first for this site. Unlike the previous interviewees who I\u00a0found through the vast\u00a0expanse of the world wide web, I actually met Brandon in real-life. Yes, writers do indeed exist in places other than online! 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<\/a>I started writing stories independently (not for school assignments) when I was ten. My first story, “A Dangerous Dude,” filled 64 pages in a Taz notebook. It\u2019s a ten-year-old\u2019s mishmash of \u201890s action movies, super-soldier serums, inter-dimensional travel, cyberpunk futurism, and all the guns from Doom. Pretty ridiculous. I\u2019ve been writing ever since. It\u2019s more of a compulsion than a vocation; I can\u2019t not write stories. I think my head would explode. Current favorites are China Mi\u00e9ville, Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Lethem, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood. Neil Gaiman inspired me to write my first \u201cliterary\u201d short story when I was sixteen. George Saunders was my idol later on, especially in grad school. I still love his work\u2014a fantastic blend of satire, pathos, and genre elements borrowed from sci-fi and horror. I\u2019ve read \u201cSea Oak\u201d probably 20 times.<\/p>\nTotally organic. When I wrote chapter one, I didn\u2019t even know who the mysterious stranger he meets in chapter two was going to be. After I introduced Jay, I got a rough idea of what I was going to do, a couple of classic monster riffs I wanted to introduce as characters (witch, zombie, creature from the space lagoon\u2026), and where I thought the story would end up eventually. Almost seven chapters in, all of that is holding together pretty well, but if the story decides to take me somewhere else, I\u2019m gonna follow.<\/p>\n