Featured Interview With John Rachel
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
SHORT THIRD-PERSON BIO
John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter and music producer, a left-of-left liberal, and has spent his life trying to resolve the intrinsic clash between the metaphysical purity of Buddhism and the overwhelming appeal of narcissism. Prompted by the trauma of graduating high school and having to leave his beloved city of Detroit to attend college, the development his social skills and world view was arrested at age 18. This affliction figures prominently in all of his creative work.
He is author of eight novels, four of which are coming out in 2014 and 2015. He has also had over 30 short stories, 7 poems, and numerous political articles published in both print and online magazines. Currently in development is a new novel set in Japan, another in Africa, and a creative non-fiction work, allegedly an account of his extensive travels, but more likely the product of the voices in his head which have plagued him since puberty.
Author Rachel has been traveling through and living in over twenty-six countries since leaving America August of 2006. He is now somewhat rooted in a small traditional farming village in Japan near Osaka, where he proudly tends his small but promising vegetable garden.
“Scribo ergo sum.”
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I started reading when I was four, became obsessed with reading books at eight. I started writing when I was twelve but was a snob and only did “serious” essays.
My mind started to open up at university. I explored composing songs _ music and lyrics _ threw together a considerable number of poems which a friend who I’d asked to give me his opinion on them threw away. Continuing undaunted, as life unfolded into a giant distraction, I wrote songs and some very funny quips on bathroom walls, quickly painted over.
My first serious attempt at “literary” work resulted in a play called “Sex, Lies and Coffee Beans”, produced for the stage in Portland, Oregon. Not discouraged by the puzzled looks on the faces of the few attendees, in 2008 I eventually expanded my passive-aggressive attack on the world by writing novels. My first book was about trafficking adolescent Asian girls for prostitution into the U.S. called “From Thailand With Love”. It was written while traveling through Africa and several countries in Asia, including not surprisingly Thailand. My second book was an epic, written while I lived in Nepal and India. It was called “The Man Who Loved Too Much” but at 820 pages maybe it should have been titled “The Man Who Wrote Too Much”. Since receiving the 500+ rejection letters on that monster, I have had four novels published: “11-11-11”, “12-12-12”, “Blinders Keepers”, and “An Unlikely Truth”, all through highly respected publishing houses which also run gambling casinos behind their main office facilities in the barns where they store stacks of unsold novels.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors include but are not limited to: Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Stanislaw Lem, Studs Terkel, E. L. Doctorow, Jerzy Kosinski, Ken Kesey, Sinclair Lewis, Ralph Ellison, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Howard Zinn, Thomas Kuhn, Aldous Huxley, Neil Postman, and Jared Diamond.
I am inspired by the voices I hear in my head, which have been giving me stock tips and lottery numbers since a bad acid trip in 1972.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
“An Unlikely Truth” is my first work of great profundity, intended to create a spiritual and social paradigm shift, perhaps a global revolution. Or at least inspire a new syndicated comic strip in the hundreds of community billboard ad mailers across the nation.
In this political drama, a bright, young, idealistic, Green Party candidate, in his bid for the congressional seat of a very conservative district in Ohio, teams with a beautiful, fiery African-American intern to combat the slick deceptions and ruthless tactics of a sweet-talking right wing incumbent. It is the inspiring story of a small committed group of activists who either never knew or forgot the meaning of the word ‘impossible’.
Additionally, “An Unlikely Truth” offers a powerful alternative to politics-as-usual in the form of a take-no-prisoners electoral strategy.
The immediate impact of this book is hard to sum up in a few words. But my usual steady stream of character assassinations and death threats on social sites like Facebook has certainly shot up. Also, all of my incoming emails are deleted by the NSA, so the last message I got was an invitation for a high colonic cleanse from a herb shop in Sedona. That was back in early April right before I got put on the international no-fly list.
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