What inspired you to become an author?
I always wanted to be a novelist. But from the time I first mentioned it, people kept telling me there was no money in it. I needed to find a way to make a living. So, I decided to be a professional baseball player and write in the off-season. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that good at baseball, even before I discovered girls. Which took me from one field where I wasn’t major league material to another.
At fifteen, my guidance counselor gave me an aptitude test. It yielded a long, singularly unappealing list of careers, including, I swear to God, forest ranger, lumberjack and rodeo clown. I thought the test was ridiculous and, moronically, I mentioned that to my Guidance counselor.
"So, what is it you really want to do?" she asked.
“Honestly?”
“Honestly,” she said.
Honestly, what I really wanted to do at 15 was to date Krissy Caperson. Or failing that, almost anyone else. But I didn’t see my guidance counselor helping with that. And mentioning it to her was probably another mistake.
I may the only person you’ll ever meet who actually flunked guidance.
I got through high school and hustled my way through Notre Dame — did you know you can sell blood plasma every week? I was an English major, which is basically the definition of not having figured out the making a living thing. Then I hitchhiked out to beautiful Santa Barbara. Where I could just barely afford to live on the beach. Not in a house on the beach. On the beach. With the sand and the seagulls.
Standing on a roof in the rain, holding the frayed cord of a toilet de-rooter, I realized that I’d rather struggle as a writer than get rich doing what I didn’t want to do. Besides, it wasn’t like I was getting rich. Just possibly electrocuted. Plus, I had an idea for a critically acclaimed, best-selling, novel: Think Harry Potter meets Hamlet, if Ophelia was oversexed, homicidal and undead.
As sure-fire as that sounds, it turns out reading novels — or in the case of books like Moby Dick and Ulysses, pretending to have read them — is a lot easier than writing one. Harry Potter Meets Hamlet died in the first twenty pages.
My next attempt, Legend, took two years to write. Then I couldn't get a single agent to read it. Apparently, a degree in literature means nothing to literary agents. Nobody even asked about my grade-point average. (Actually, nobody anywhere has ever asked about my grade-point average. That would have been a valuable piece of info to get from my high school guidance counselor.)
After years of submitting Legend to publishers — none of whom had Krissy Caperson's gift for speedy rejection — it ended up in the clutches of an aging book packager. Quoting Freud and promising “wealth, fame and beautiful lovers,” plus a decent advance and a shot at the national book award, he signed me to my first book contract.
If you’re checking, not only did I not win the National Book Award. I never even got most of the advance. Eventually — to keep me from regaining the rights—he published Legend under his own microscopic imprint. No fanfare, not even a press release. And a world-class-ugly cover that misspelled the word "hindrance."
Then he died. I swear I was 3,000 miles away at the time. I have witnesses.
His imprint was absorbed by a not-quite-so-tiny publisher. In a cloud of purple whale manure about movie deals, they brought out the highly unanticipated second edition of my novel. This one had an excellent cover except for the spot where they called the book an allegory. It sold about as many copies as you would expect an allegory to sell. Maybe a few less.
Then, miraculously, Legend someone made it onto a UPI Ten Most Underrated list, just seven places below a Meryl Streep movie about a dingo that ate a baby. I got an agent. For 58 days. Then she also died. Buried and everything—I checked.
Her surviving partner talked me into writing a business book. I put together a proposal, which he sold within three weeks. You wouldn't believe me if I said he died, too. So I won't.
But he did. This writing business had a considerably higher mortality rate than I'd expected. It was like "Dawn of the Dead" out there. But I was an author. If not exactly a working novelist.
Do you write in different genres?
My novel, Legend, made that Ten Most Underrated List and remained spectacularly underrated. On the other hand, once my nonfiction book was published, The Wall Street Journal called. And TIME. A trade association asked me to speak. I turned them down. I’d never spoken. Then they mentioned the fee, which was exactly half of the advance on the book that had taken me almost a year to research and write.
I did the presentation. To my surprise, they didn’t ask for their money back. And from that point on, I talked for a living—and wrote nonfiction books on the side. My speaking clients were largely generated by those books and coverage in everything from The Today Show to The New York Times to Funeral Service Insider. I became a mini-celebrity or a quasi-celebrity or a B.S. celebrity, I'm not sure which. If you're thinking that you've never heard of me, that's the difference between a make-believe celebrity and, say, Taylor Swift or Tom Hanks or Jack the Ripper.
I'm someone reporters quote when Tom Hanks or Jack the Ripper isn't available. My mother would be so proud.
What would your readers be surprised to learn about you?
The next part of the story was as much a surprise to me as it might be to my readers. I was speaking on an Asian cruise when I realized I could no longer tell time. The next day, during a presentation, I introduced the ship’s captain. Twenty minutes later, I picked him out of the audience and asked him what he did for a living. (The uniform did look a tad familiar.) That same day, I gave up trying to understand foreign currency. Even American money was getting tricky. In Viet Nam, I handed a vendor two hundreds and a ten for a $7.00 baseball cap. It was a very nice cap. But not $210 worth of nice.
Back home, the first thing my doctor did was have me draw a clock face at ten to three. The second thing he did was take away my driver’s license. He sent me for an immediate MRI. The nurse there couldn’t comment on the results, but when I asked where the restroom was, she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t let you go in there alone.”
I explained that bathroom visitation was a particular expertise of mine.
“Like telling time?” she asked. “You need to talk to your neurosurgeon.”
“I have a neurosurgeon?” Just what I always wanted.
I also had a brain tumor—the size of a basketball. Or maybe the neurosurgeon said “baseball.” I wasn’t tracking too well at that point. Still, I immediately understood he was planning on carving open my skull with some kind of power saw and slicing the tumor out. Suddenly telling time didn’t seem nearly that important. Besides, I could always buy a digital watch.
Everyone said my neurosurgeon—or, as I thought of him, “Chainsaw Charlie”—was extremely intelligent and skillful. Still, I’ve spent my life around intelligent people, and I’ve seen some of the dumb things they’ve done. To me, human intelligence seems way overrated. Especially if it’s planning on slicing open my head with a power tool. If you think about it, on a scale of everything there is to know in the universe, everything there is to understand, the main difference between Einstein and Koko the Wonder Chimp was that Einstein couldn’t pick up bananas with his feet. (As far as I know.)
But my brain was running out of room in my skull. So, I let Chainsaw Charlie carve away. Maybe I had a seizure during surgery. The doctors weren’t sure. But I came out of it with Lady Gaga singing non-stop in my head, and a vivid, fully-formed, horrific story, like a memory of something that I’d just watched. Complete with open crypts, dark spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren version of the Manson family.
Lady Gaga went away after a day or so. But the story stayed with me. And when I was able, I spent a couple of years putting it all down, trying to get it just right, bringing out all the suspense and the humor. And that’s The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon. And I became the working novelist I set out to be all those years ago.
How did you come up with the title for your latest book?
Obviously, The Great Gatsby, a novel about a tragic love, and Moby Dick, a novel about a giant Whale, are the same story just worked out differently for their different eras. Or maybe not. Still, they’re both about someone’s desperate struggle to overcome a failure that threatens to define their entire life. So, The Great Gatsby /Moby Dick, if someone were to write that story today, why not call it, The Great Dick? No giant whale, no tragic love. But a demon, dead bodies, strange cults, deadly sins, bizarre rituals, and a hero who starts out by admitting he’s an ass, then seems to set about proving it.
And if you want to know about the dysfunctional demon part of the title, you’ve got to read the book.
Do you title the book first or wait until after it’s complete?
I’ve done it both ways. In this case, The Great Dick came to me after several drafts. The subtitle came after the book was finished and approaching publication. First, it was The Great Dick: And the Demon, but the publisher wanted something that would indicate the book’s humor. Thus, it became The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon.
If this book is part of a series…what is the next book? Any details you can share?
The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon was written as a stand-alone novel. However, the excitement and the characters were so great, and it’s been so well received, that I couldn’t resist doing a follow-up to investigate what happens next.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
When I speak to writers conference, most of what I have to say comes down to a single word. “Write.” If you want to be a writer, write. Treat it as a job. Maybe not one you can do 40 hours a week, but the more you write, the better you’ll get and the sooner you’ll develop you own voice.
Write when it’s flowing like liquid gold. Write when it you can barely come up with a coherent sentence. Then re-write—in both cases—and re-write some more. Don’t tell me you’ve got writer’s block. Doctors aren’t allowed to have doctor’s block. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block. This is a job. If you sit around waiting for inspiration, you’ll still be waiting while others—some of them with less talent—are autographing books for their fans.
And if you want to sell books get a platform. That’s what speaking did for me. It doesn’t matter what your platform is, if it’s social media, or a newsletter or column or podcast or a radio show, as long as it gives you a following. Once you’ve got a big enough audience, publishes want to work with you to get access to that audience.
When you’re not writing what do you do? Do you have any hobbies or guilty pleasures?
Discovering you have brain cancer focuses the mind. It made me realize that I no longer wanted to spend my life in airports and hotels doing all those speaking gigs. I still do some. I love speaking. But I wanted to be what I always wanted to be, a novelist. I also started writing the Slightly Off-Kilter column which is not only fun to do, but makes up for giving up some of my speaking platform. Fortunately, Creators syndicate decided to syndicate it. So writing is both my job and my hobby.
My other hobbies include reading, films, hiking, music. I’ve also been trying to learn Spanish, pretty unsuccessfully, for a while now.
Do you have a song or playlist that you think represents this book?
Playlist for The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon
Spotify YouTube Music Apple Music
There are nineteen songs positioned throughout the story. When you come to one, you can:
1. let it play in the background at whatever volume you like while you continue reading;
OR
2. you can stop and focus on the music;
OR
3. Or you can ignore the music altogether. The story works without it just fine. (All those rave endorsements came from people who read the silent version.)
CHAPTER 1
Page 19. At the beginning, play:
Sunny Side of Heaven by Fleetwood Mac
CHAPTER 5
Page 45. After ”She bounced up the stairs quickly.” Play:
Moonlight Mile by the Rolling Stones
CHAPTER 7
Page 68. Zfter “The rain had yielded to a heavy mist” Play:
Ain’t No Ash Will Burn by The Renegades
CHAPTER 10
Page 95. After “Stephen was brave. At least when I knew him.” Play:
From Silver Lake by Jackson Browne
CHAPTER 11
Page 107. After “Then R. Dean Taylor began to sing his only U.S. hit,” Play:
Indiana Wants Me by R. Dean Taylor
CHAPTER 13
Page 131. After “then turned, apparently randomly, at various other passageways” Play:
Blue Moon by The Marcels
CHAPTER 15
Page 172. After "Would you like to smoke some dope?” Play:
Let Me Touch You for Awhile by Alison Krauss & Union Station
CHAPTER 18
Page 193. After “a fringe‑covered Victoria with long straight hair” play:
Coming Back to Me by The Jefferson Airplane
CHAPTER 20
Page 237. After “climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.” Play:
Working Girl—Let the River Run by Carly Simon (The Film Band)
CHAPTER 25
Page 282. After ”and inside the crypt it felt contaminated.” Play:
Dust by Fleetwood Mac
CHAPTER 28
Page 206. After ”I wanted her to want me too as badly as I ever wanted anything” Play:
Land of Hope and Dreams by Bruce Springsteen
CHAPTER 30
Page 330. After “my grandmother’s house on the morning after her death.” Play:
The Maker by Daniel Lanois
CHAPTER 32
Page 348. After “I got dressed, got in the VW and just drove.” Play:
Will You Remember Me by Rosanne Cash
CHAPTER 33
Page 369. After “within minutes was either asleep or pretending to be.” Play:
Same Mistake by James Blunt
CHAPTER 38
Page 402. After “Hampert reached over and flipped a switch.” Play:
Bring You Joy by Argent
CHAPTER 43
Page 435. At the beginning of the chapter, play::
Downtown Train by Rod Stewart
CHAPTER 46
Page 457. After ‘Before she allowed me to die.” Play:
A Whiter Shade of Pale
EPILOGUE
Page 483. After “In that case,” she smiled, “I’ll call him Gavin “ Play:
Going Home by Mark Knopfler
AT THE END Play:
Night Rolls In by Al Stewart
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