TimKinsella

My new book Danny B is out TODAY! If it’s not in your local bookstore, please ask them why not

It’s been 10 yrs since my last book & I’m just gonna tell you exactly what I’m trying to do here cuz obviously we don’t live in a book-reading world like we once did so I’d rather help explain how to understand it than be coy & hope people pick up on it

The story is over the top & sensationalistic. & It’s very close to the true story as told to me by the main character & it includes all the tabloid thrills: sex, drugs, punk rock, dead bodies, motorcycles. The narrative is sorta 90s noir

But its form is set in direct tension against the adrenaline that thrills like this are most commonly used for in entertainment. There’s a structuralist method to how it’s told, like a Haneke movie or maybe even Robbe-Grillet, like a lot of the action happens in-between the scenes

But the edges are softer than that. I was thinking of it as little puffs that dissipate, like smoke signals; images from dreams you can only half-glimpse in the morning; ancient Chinese poetry like Li Po

Which basically means there’s a lot of white space on the page. & I wouldn’t have been drawn to telling this story in a more conventional form & I wouldn’t have dared to suddenly try my hand at poetry about the mists of rocky waterfalls— It’s the tension between the form & content that interested me

I started work on it in 2014. I can’t guess how many thousands of hrs went into sculpting it since then. It’s sparse, just 23k words, down from I dunno… 8 million?

& Up until the very last proofread, I was pretty sure it sucked & I’d screwed it up. & I dunno how these things happen, but now I think it’s really good, like I really did make the thing that I set out to make

Endless gratitude to @dannybelrose & @featherproof_books

Here’s me & Danny w/ a pizza somewhere in southern OR maybe 2012? & Last time I saw him last yr

Chicagoans join us at @real_rainboclub 10/25. Me & Danny will DJ the Jinx Scene Soundtrack; I’ll read from the book; Danny will answer questions; & @tj.fuller whose new book is also out now on Featherproof will also be reading from his new book

Audiobook & e-book both available soon