Writer William Luvaas chats with me about his new literary climate fiction short story collection, THE THREE DEVILS and Other Stories.
Welcome, William. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I believe a fiction writer needs a broad experience of the world. I felt boxed in as a young man growing up in Oregon, hungry for a wider purview. At twenty I became a VISTA Volunteer, working with poor black sharecroppers in Jim Crow Alabama for racial and economic justice. It was a crash course introduction to the wider world. After graduating from UC Berkeley, I lived for a year in a crude shelter I built in the Northern California redwoods, then drifted sideways through the Age of Aquarius, trying this and that. I’ve worked as a carpenter, craftsman, window washer, and freelance journalist. I taught writing workshops in New York city schools through Poets in Public Service before deciding I wanted to teach at college level in my late forties and returned to school for an MFA degree. For the next fifteen years, I taught creative writing at San Diego State University and U.C. Riverside. I’ve lived in New York City, Upstate, England, Spain and Israel, and many places in California, now in Los Angeles with my wife Lucinda, a painter and filmmaker.
I have published four novels: The Seductions of Natalie Bach, Going Under. Beneath The Coyote Hills, and Welcome To Saint Angel, and two story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle—The Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. My new collection The Three Devils And Other Stories is just out from Cornerstone Press at the Univ. of Wisconsin. Dozens of my stories, essays, and articles have appeared in many publications, including The Sun, North American Review, Epiphany, The Village Voice, The American Literary Review, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, Short Story, and the American Fiction anthology.
What do you enjoy most about writing short stories?
Early on, I saw myself as a novelist. Short fiction seemed impossibly hard: all that compression, no diversions, everything working together to one end. Over the years, I’ve come to love the discipline and focus of short stories, the gratification of polishing a story to a high sheen. The novella is the best of both worlds: the intense focus of a short story combined with the expansiveness of a novel.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your short stories – perhaps some of your favorites?
A critic once said, “Luvaas always writes about something,” as if that is a fault. I consider it a compliment. Currently, I’m writing stories about how severe weather events resulting from global warming (like recent wildfires in L.A. fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds) impact personal lives–not in an abstract way, but up close and personal. I like putting characters in peril and seeing how they respond. They often manage to overcome, at least to cope with their troubles, no doubt because I’m something of a dreamer; I believe we can overcome.
What genre are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
Climate Fiction recently, because global warming is an existential threat to our civilization. Sadly, there’s no longer any avoiding it. Scientists, including some of my friends, say they need artists and writers to help them bring the threat of it home to people. Beyond that, it offers much opportunity for drama.
What exciting story are you working on next?
A story titled “Under The Heat Dome,” wherein Angelinos endure months of deadly heat that compounds and distorts the personal troubles my characters are facing.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in college, I was deeply moved and inspired. To touch a reader’s heart the way he did—Wow! I wanted to do that. But it wasn’t until my late twenties that I began writing my first (ridiculously-long) novel, The Uranian Circus, about a commune of hippies living in the redwoods. Still, I didn’t consider myself a dedicated writer until I began my first published novel The Seductions of Natalie Bach in my mid-thirties.
How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for writers?
In a word: tirelessly. Writers Market lists hundreds of book publishers and journals. A number of websites note publishing opportunities both for books and short fiction: New Pages, Duotrope, Poets & Writers, et al. Poets & Writers Magazine regularly lists open calls for submissions, including to writing contests. Of course it makes sense to read what journals are publishing to judge whether your work fits in. However, it’s impossible to read them all unless you are a world-class speed reader, so I often submit blindly.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I often incorporate what could be called “found objects” in my fiction, always on the lookout for real-world settings, characters, and events to include in my work. I shamelessly kidnap people and places and turn them into fiction. My new collection is set mainly in my Los Angeles neighborhood and inspired loosely by some of my neighbors (don’t tell them). Faulkner once warned people not to trust writers. We steal whatever suits our fancy.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Definitely not a writer. My handwriting was awful and still is. I’m told that when I was first learning to write I wrote backwards. Thinking back on that now, it seems a promising omen.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
For those of you beginning writing careers, I would just say that you will face rejection and disappointment at times. We all do. Don’t let it get you down; you can’t please everyone. There is only one rule when it comes to submitting your work: Never ever ever give up.
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