Featured Interview With Nicholas Ponticello
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’ve been writing for over a decade and I’ve got about three other books lying around on my hard drive gathering digital dust, much like Jim’s brain in Do Not Resuscitate. I’m interested in getting at least one or two of those other books in shape for publication. But there’s no hurry. Writing has always been a hobby for me–a way to gather my thoughts in one place, rearrange them, test their strength and validity. I try to write my characters into situations that may seem outlandish, but are really quite plausible. Then I kind of wait to see what they’ll do. And that always says a little something about me and a little something about what I think of humans in general.
I teach. That’s what I really do. I don’t even want to pretend for a second that I’m a bona fide writer. I teach high school maths–the stuff you used to hate when you were in school. I’d like to think I make the maths a little more likable than they were when you were in school. They really are likable–maths.
I also coach, well I recently stopped coaching, but I used to coach high school cross-country and track. That’s another one of those things you used to hate as a kid–running. I am a bona fide runner. That I can say. I think I’ll know it if I’m ever a bona fide writer, but for now my writing is to ________ what jogging is to running.
Pets? Yes. Five freshwater fish. One freshwater snail. And a whole bunch of happy plants.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Does one have to have a fascination with books to be a writer? I think the word “fascination” does not do it justice. When you are fascinated with something, there is an implication that it is beyond you or “other.” Reading is integral to my life. Books form the basis of my education. I’m not fascinated by books. I’m indebted to them.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I don’t think genre is very important to me, so long as there is honesty and insight in the writing. My favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Victor Hugo, Isak Dinesen and, yes, Jane Austen. If you’ve got something to say about the human condition, then I’m all ears.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Do Not Resuscitate is inspired by all the terrifying realities you read about in the headlines today, and it attempts to imagine the near future in the context of those realities.
The main character, Jim Frost, thinks that when you’re dead, you’re dead. Gone. Finished. Kaput. But on the eve of his seventy-third birthday, his daughter suggests he have his brain downloaded to a microchip for safekeeping, and Jim is forced to consider what it really means to die—and what it might mean to live forever.
Do Not Resuscitate is the firsthand account of Jim Frost, an aging misanthropist who witnessed the rise and fall of the United States as a world power, the digitalization of the planet, the advent of the water wars, and the near collapse of the global economy. Yet he remains impervious to it all. Concerned more with his plasma TV, high-speed Internet, and continual supply of hash, twentysomething Jim takes an under-the-table job off Craigslist delivering mysterious red coolers to strangers in cafés in an effort to pay the bills. But when Jim’s enigmatic employer asks him to fly to North Korea for a delivery, Jim starts to wonder what he’s gotten himself into.
Do Not Resuscitate became available on April 1, 2015 in paperback and Kindle formats. I started writing it a couple of years ago, and wrote the bulk of it during a summer holiday in Paris. That’s why much of the subplot takes place in Paris. It was a very easy city in which to imagine intrigue and adventure. In the intervening years after I wrote the first draft, I had to come to a decision about making the story available to readers. And so it is available. Now.
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