Do you have a specific writing style?
I write in a quick, dialogue-infested style with simple prose and lots of cultural references.
How did you come up with the title for your latest book?
It was based off of Milton’s Paradise Lost. I wanted to write about horrible things happening in a beautiful place. Paradise Rot.
Is the book, characters, or any scenes based on a true life experience, someone you know, or events in your own life?
The psych ward scene was pretty realistic. I’d gone bonkers once and had to be strapped to a gurney and told by a guy how I should just sit back and enjoy the ride. I’m better now, I think.
What books/authors have influenced your life?
Vonnegut, Hunter S Thompson, Carl Hiaasen, Walt Whitman! “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a big influence on me. HOWEVER! I get a tremendous amount of inspiration for dialogue and plot from movies. Tarantino, Scorsese, Anderson, Hitchcock – big influences.
What book are you reading now?
I just finished reading Martian and The Bone Clocks and now I must kill both authors because they were that good. I’m currently reading Ernest Cline’s “Armada.” Him too – has to die.
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
Here’s a fun paragraph: Stanis Barfield stood behind the counter in his stationary store, Ink & Paper, watching customers mill about, dropping various items into their red plastic baskets. Every time the door opened, Stanis’ eyes darted to the entrance. He was waiting for his brother to come through the door acting as if nothing had happened since their last contact, which was a sad and sloppy fist fight in the parking lot of the Safeway five years ago.
Do you have to travel much to do research for your books?
Travel? We have the interwebs! I use Wikipedia like a heroin addict uses a spoon. I love research because it often takes you down alleys you never would’ve thought to walk down. Some amazing things come out of research. For instance the buzzing of a fly’s wings is in the key of F.
Who designed the cover of your latest book?
Me. I’m a former art director and photo illustrator. I tried working with another designer but it just wasn’t happening and we were both getting frustrated. I’m happy with the cover re-designs I did for Booktrope (my publisher).
Do you have a song or playlist (book soundtrack) that you think represents this book?
Yes! 70’s pop was a huge influence both in writing and as a place setting in the book. Pablo Cruise, Orleans, Dave Mason, Seals and Crofts – and Jimmy Buffett. Huge influence in writing this book – along with tons of dub reggae.
Paradise Rot
The Island Trilogy
Book One
Larry Weiner
Genre: Satire/Dark Comedy
Publisher: Booktrope
Date of Publication: May 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5137-0031-1
ASIN: B00YLDWX66
Number of pages: 211
Cover Artist: Larry Weiner
Book Description:
Kyle Brightman—late of the advertising industry and soon-to-be-late of the 5th floor psych ward—has a job offer he can’t refuse. A new resort in the Caribbean is looking for an art director.
Kyle soon finds himself on the Isle of St. Agrippina working alongside a beautiful copywriter with an icy handshake. Questions arise: Why does the resort management team sport spray-on tans in the Bahamas? How can the resort offer such cheap vacation packages? What does one do with vats of Astroglide?
To get the answers, Kyle must first navigate a series of wildly unpredictable events with a cast of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including a seductress jungle assassin, her partially paralyzed talking Chihuahua, an Ivy League Rastafarian seaplane captain, Kyle’s ex-psych ward roommate, a former Haliburton mercenary, and a French tavern owner with a fondness for goats, all set to the greatest hits of the 70’s. Pablo Cruise never felt so right.
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/Yxscfui-5Tg
Amazon BN
Excerpt:
Chapter One
“THERE’S A REASON WE PUT PATIENTS IN
RESTRAINTS THIS WAY,” Hap the orderly explained. “See before, when it became
necessary to administer a four-point restraint on someone, we’d just do the
standard two feet to each side of the gurney and two wrists by the waist. Now
we have you done up with the POS 2206 restraint which you’d have to pretty much
be motherfuckin’ Houdini to get out of, see what I’m sayin’? We got one arm up
and one down so you don’t pop your shoulder out of your socket. Does that
matter to the average whack job that comes through here all spun out screaming
about the end times or how the government implanted tiny computers in their
heads? Nuh-uh. They just keep wigglin’ around as if their super human powers
are gonna set them free. Forget it, son. Your body belongs to the St. Eligius
psych ward, fifth floor, Seattle, Washington, in these United States of
America.”
It was true.
Kyle Brightman
lay restrained on the gurney looking something like a flamenco dancer striking
a pose horizontally. Unlike flamenco dancers and their elaborate sequined
outfits, Kyle was in jeans and a faded Clash T-shirt covered in eggs, tapenade,
and mace. Also unlike flamenco dancers, Kyle had been tased in a supermarket.
But then it had been a weird week in an off kilter year, so in retrospect it
seemed fitting to be held down to a gurney in a hospital corridor getting a
lesson in the history and technique of human body restraint from Hap, the large
African American orderly schooled in human confinement arts.
Kyle fully
submitted to the restraints, finding them rather soothing— Temple Grandin was
on to something, he thought. He also thought about the starting place on the
long road of his downward spiral: from being fired from his advertising gig as
an art director, to mowing the grass for a local golf course, and finally to
freaking out on a couple of elderly women blocking the aisle in a supermarket
because they wouldn’t move their carts a few inches over when he’d asked.
All in three
months’ time.
In truth, the
brain lock up had been a long time coming. A bitter divorce that had cost him
his waterfront condo and his cat, Lester. The passed over promotion at work to
a younger junior art director. The diagnosis of Bipolar II. The drinking. The
petty shoplifting at the local Rite Aid. It was a perfect storm of anxiety and
neurosis crashing down upon an already paranoid and erratic man with authority
issues and a tendency toward drama.
But the idea of
his mental state as a tornado gathering energy as it swept across his life was
nothing new to Kyle or those around him. His moods were a dangerous balancing
act of wit, anger, and a general cluelessness that on the best of days came
across as mercurial.
He knew this
about himself, and though countless therapists had talked him through his
childhood, his mother, his school years, and subsequent launch into adulthood,
everybody had yet to find a cure. As a creative director with similar
tendencies had once put it to Kyle, he’d best learn to be an asshole with
serious repenting skills if he was to survive at all, let alone in advertising.
In Kyle’s mind,
every time he met a woman, took a job, or made a friend, he imagined a stop
watch starting, ticking off the days, hours, minutes, seconds until eventually
they would learn the truth about him: that his moods were like forecasting the
weather. It was a seemingly mundane twist of fate then that Kyle Brightman
would completely lose his shit because two aged, upper crust cronies wouldn’t
move their shopping carts over enough for him to pass. If only he had known
what they had been discussing (the cost increase in septic pumping/ whose
Mexican gardener was better) he might have picked a more symbolic moment to
melt down. But then, he had realized as he began cursing at the top of his
lungs that he really wasn’t in the driver’s seat. And when he began to throw
eggs at them, followed by a jar containing tapenade while knocking over a
display rack of various energy bars, it became clear that he was now entering
new territory.
Territory that
would require restraints.
“When do I get
out of the restraints?” Kyle asked Hap.
“That depends on
you,” Hap said. “If you cooperate and let us do our job and you do yours you
won’t see restraints again. But if you start to go sideways, we put you in the
metal room, hose you down and go to work on you with rubber Billy maces.”
“What?”
“I’m fuckin’ with you. You’ll be fine. We’re
gonna take you to your room. You’ll meet your roommate and we’ll get you on the
road to recovery.”
Kyle hadn’t
thought about recovery until it was mentioned. It was a rare instance that he
lived in the moment. He was aware, strapped to the gurney, that he was
extraordinarily tired.
“What if I don’t
recover?” Kyle asked.
“You will,” Hap
said. “I been doing this a long time and I can tell the ones who are gonna make
it and the ones who fall through the cracks. You’re the first one.”
“What do you
tell the ones who you know are gonna fall through the cracks?” Kyle asked.
“Same bullshit I
told you,” Hap said.
About the Author:
Larry Weiner is the author of PARADISE ROT (BOOK ONE), ONCE AGAIN, WITH BLOOD (BOOK TWO) and the forthcoming HINDU SEX ALIENS (BOOK THREE) that make up the Island Trilogy. Larry earned a degree in film from CSULA and was an award-winning art director. He lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two kids and a gaggle of animals. He plays bass and thus has poor hearing.
Visit his site at: http://www.larrynweiner.com
Join his Twitter feed at: @LarryNWeiner
Like him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/larrynweiner
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