Hello David, “How to disappear completely” is the most downloaded self-published ebook on Feedbooks with over 50k downloads since you first published it a little over a year ago. How do you feel about this ?
I am completely baffled, honored, and really excited about it. When I published on Feedbooks, I thought it might be a good way to share my ebook with a few friends and family. Then a short while later it was the top original book on Feedbooks and has stayed there since. There are a lot of things that happened because of my book being on Feedbooks. A German translations is on its way, a screenplay deal was discussed, and people all over the world have blogged, commented, reviewed, Tweeted, and donated money to help fund the writing of a follow-up through my website. There is no other avenue of free distribution that could have spawned so many wonderful things.
Your background is in music rather than literature, did music influenced your writing ?
I think that everything we do influences every other aspect of our lives. If it weren’t for my parents being so supportive and letting my try things that I wanted to try as a child, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to branch out and try something that I had little to no experience in. Music and literature are both things that most people need on some level. We don’t need them to live, but we need them to keep us motivated and interested in the world around us. We listen to music not just to pass the time, but often consider our favorite songs as part of a soundtrack to our lives. Most of my youth I can identify certain years with certain records while those songs healed broken hearts, led the charge of motivation and brought me closer to others. That’s a powerful force and for a lot of people you could do the same with literature. Books aren’t just something to keep you occupied for a while, they can take you into a new world or show you your own world in a new light hopefully bringing you out on the other end with something new in your heart or mind.
The action is set in Boston in your novel and the city itself is an important element of the story, now that you live in Los Angeles, should we expect a SoCal influence in an upcoming novel ?
I think I originally chose Boston for the storyline because I wanted to be comfortable with my process. Having spent several years in Boston for college it seemed an appropriate choice for those characters. Not being a studied writer, I thought that the more I knew about the stage for the characters to fumble around in, the more I could put into making it feel real. Surprisingly enough that’s one of the most frequent comments I’ve gotten about the story. A lot of people assume that it’s mostly non-fiction because of the feeling that it’s not the telling of a story, but rather the re-telling of it. All artists embellish their stories whether they’re writing it or singing it. This is a very drastic embellishment of some things that were going on in my life at the time. I believe you can feel many of my emotions and sentiment, though the exact events are mostly fiction.
What a fun read! Great story. Thanks for the “trip” to Boston, too, David.
Just finished reading it. It left me with the same feeling I had after “The Break-up” finished. Much better though:) Thanks
Excellent writing I like the characters. Great book thank you this is great forum to find new authors. I will read more of your stuff.