Featured Interview With Wes Verde
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Born and raised in New Jersey: home of the 24-hour diner, haunted asylums, and the setting for the majority of movies and TV shows about the Mafia. There’s also a great deal of history, which I have only recently started to appreciate. My early years were largely spent exploring the woods behind my parents’ house. Now, I’m trying to encourage my own sons do the same thing.
When I travel, I prefer to do so by car. I don’t consider “seeing the inside of an airport” to count as traveling to a place. I like to see things and that usually means driving.
Making things has long been a hobby of mine. I spent my childhood building models of all kinds. When I’m not writing, I like to roast coffee and brew beer.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I had the good fortune of having a mother who read to my sisters and me every night. Better still, she liked to improvise. It was a rarity that she read the same book in the same way twice. In what was intended to wind us down before bedtime, she usually managed to have us rolling and laughing in stitches. And my father could always be relied upon to have at least a couple spy thrillers lying around which I soon acquired a taste for.
Despite the best efforts of my formal education to turn me off from reading (19th Century English Literature was truly wasted on my teenage self), I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated with books. Goosebumps saw me through grade school. By middle school, I discovered Heinlein. I distinctly remember sitting in the parking lot before high school reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Fight Club.
College was a weird time… The DaVinci Code was my first exposure to “fast food fiction” as I think of it. Read Harry Potter for the first time. Wicked too (I was trying to impress a girl).
Since then, my interests have expanded and I have not lacked for reading material, only time with which to read.
As for writing, I typed my first short story in middle school – some nonsense about a zombie apocalypse. This was still fresh at the time as zombies had yet not become the cultural force they are today. It was printed on inkjet, stapled together, and distributed to a dozen or so of my friends.
Whether it was strictly writing, or drawing comics, I’ve been doing it in some form or another ever since.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
A decade ago, I would have said Patrick Rothfuss and George Martin (this was before the success of the show, mind you). There’s foul opinions aplenty when it comes to these two… and I won’t add my voice to the chorus. I simply can’t badmouth an author whose books have held my interest through multiple readings.
Instead, I’ll say Scott Lynch and Andy Weir. The Lies of Locke Lamora is a damn fine amalgamation of the heist and fantasy genres with lovable scoundrels and a solid “buddy” relationship at its heart. I could go on all day. And as for Mr. Weir, I cannot help but marvel at a man who turned a series of blog entries – done in his spare time – into a bestselling novel which turned into a movie which turned into a series of novels. Andy Weir, I salute you.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Jalopy is simply the story of a young woman and her car.
In our modern world, we take high speed travel for granted, which is why the setting of the 1920s United States is important. Our main protagonist Etta spends a lot of time walking – it’s part of the drudgery of her daily routine. The ability to travel beyond the range of one’s feet holds a world of possibilities in her mind, as it undoubtedly did for many at the time. The introduction of the automobile (first run of Model T’s was 1908) had economic and social effects that are difficult to overstate.
The secondary protagonist, Art, comes at things from the opposite side – an almost hyper mobile upbringing, where his salesman father frequently moved the family to chase better prospects. For a reserved, introverted young man, this was unbearable. Thus, the lake and rural life have a particular appeal for him.
I’ll say this: while I take certain liberties with timeline, much of what you read is of things that actually happened. I’m one for authenticity. In fact, there’s a “Historical Note” chapter dedicated to such.
Avoiding spoilers here… a significant plot point involving a certain Navy Depot was a read world event. Biggest explosion in the state’s history. Yep. Big boom. People are still affected by it today.
Much of Etta’s day-to-day was borrowed from a conversation that took place with my grandmother over the course of an afternoon. While she was born in ’32 – some years after the setting of the novel – her experiences growing up on a farm in then-rural New Jersey provided a solid framework to build from.
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