Author: Isaac Constantine
Genre: Literary fiction
Publisher: MP Publishing
Release Date: February 17, 2015
Format: eBook & Print
Blurb/Synopsis:
“A child petrified by the shadows in his bedroom. A boy shrinking from the anger of his father. A wandering adolescent who sees the Twin Towers as the legs of an interplanetary god. A new adult battered by the absence of that god.
Burdened by the weight of the past and the uncertainty of the future, Jeremiah sets out in search of the answers to his own mysteries, embarking on a journey that will carry him from the raves of New York to the Latin tropics to Israel's Independence Hall, and back to an autumn evening in The Sheep Meadow when the world was still whole.
A story of fathers and sons, self and shadows, Jeremiah's Ghost traces the path of a young man through a landscape where memory is just another kind of fiction.”
A genre-bending coming-of-age odyssey.
Where do the ideas for your books come from?
I
generate lots of material from my personal experience, which is inseparable
from my imagination. My early stories
featured characters and scenarios I invented, though each was modeled in part
on a person I knew. Jeremiah, my novel’s
protagonist, is a stand in for me in many ways, and like most artists I have a
vivid imagination. That affords me the
chance to indulge and describe my fantasies freely while keeping the work
grounded in realism.
Have you ever co-written book/books? If so was it difficult? If
not would you ever consider co-writing with another author?
I worked
once as a ghostwriter, and another time as a co-author on projects that went
unrealized. Both experiences were frustrating
for several and obvious reasons. Today
I’m open to collaboration, though I insist on payment upfront. It’s not fun working fifty hours on a book
for a major publisher only to have the “author” or co-author back out. When an editor sends you through bureaucratic
hoops to collect a paycheck, until you give up in frustration, it adds insult
to injury.
Where do you get your character names from?
I choose
names that seem to both describe and inflect a character’s essence. People have all kinds of associations with
names, and it’s impossible to anticipate or control how thousands of readers
will respond to them. At the same time I
think it’s possible to use names to evoke a certain feeling, and characters’
names tend to alter or punctuate the meaning of their stories, if that makes
sense.
What type of research goes into your writing?
Very
little went into my novel. I read a lot
on the history of Israel for the chapter where Jeremiah visits. I’ve been to Israel, too, but it was
important for me to try to keep my facts straight around themes that are inescapably
political and potentially combustive.
My next project involves a great deal of research. I do a lot of it at home on the internet, in
books and print articles that I read, and the rest through field research –
experiential learning, visiting and immersing myself in various communities, talking
to people, hearing their stories, participating in their rituals, adapting to
their cultures, etc.
Are your family and friends supportive of your writing?
Not
always. I have a small group of close friends whose support I can rely on unconditionally. I’m lucky to have them. The life of a writer
is difficult with that support; without it, life would be unbearable.
Do you remember when your interest in writing came about?
At 18 I
arrived at a point where I needed a creative outlet for my emotional storms. I drew and painted a lot in my youth and
gravitated more to the visual arts. I
preferred paintings to poems and movies to books. Then, as a late-teen, my relationship to
language changed. I felt certain for the
first time in my life that I had something to say. Writing presented
itself as the obvious path on my quest to discover my most authentic and
powerful voice.
Other than writing what are your interest?
My interests
are varied and change often. I trained
in martial arts for a few years – Muay Thai mostly and a bit of Jiu Jitso – and
I’m doing a lot of strength and fitness training now to prepare for competition
at the amateur level. I’d like to fight
in Thailand someday and write about it. I’m culturally and spiritually curious and
adventurous, so I like to travel a lot both within and outside of the state of
California, where I reside currently. I
had a regular, almost-daily meditation practice for years, and trained to be a
meditation instructor, though I left the school I was studying at after
completing my teacher training. I took
up yoga a few months ago to manage stress and correct my skeletal alignment
from years of typing on my laptop. I
love nature, though I haven’t enjoyed it enough lately. I’m a passionate activist, too. I was involved in the Occupy Wall Street
movement and I’ve been fighting corruption in business and politics, and
advocating for social and economic justice ever since.
Did you learn anything from writing your books, if so what was
it?
“You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll
be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.”
--Kenny Rogers
What are your current WIP? Can you share with us?
Saving
The World Through Touch: a Lover’s Guide to Revolution is part transformational-memoir, part
political treatise. It’s a personal
account of my divorce, my move my from New York to California, and the infinite
shifts that occurred in my life when I left the city I’d lived in for 29 years
to start a new life. It’s a work of
personal adventure and political journalism written like a novel – with all the
tools and dramatic conceits of a novel.
I’ve been writing the first draft on Facebook in collaboration with some
friends of mine. It’s an experiment, to
say the least. It will be epic.
Faves
Food
Indian, Italian and Mexican lately
Color
I don’t have a favorite color.
Quote
See Kenny Rogers…
Movie
“Serpico”
Music
Too many favorites to name.
This
or That
Day or Night
Night
Rain or Snow
Snow
Facebook or Twitter
Facebook
Mac or PC
No preference
Coffee or Tea
Coffee
Where did the inspiration for this story come from? What is the story behind the story so to
speak?
It’s a
story I’ve wanted to tell since I was an undergrad. I might have first had the idea during my
year away from school. I was sent home
for a year after one semester. Back home
in NYC, for the first time in my life I became aware of having experiences that
I thought would make good stories, which I wanted to tell. When I returned to school I enrolled in an
intro to fiction course. In truth, I was
turned away when I first applied. It was, and remains a competitive course at
my school, with a great professor. But I got in the Fall semester of my junior
year, which is when I wrote the earliest draft of a story that many years later
merged with and became a chapter in my novel. And Jim Shepard, my undergraduate
fiction professor, wrote me a great blurb for the front cover. Thanks, Jimbo!
Tell us about the book cover. How does it represent your
book? How did you choose the artwork?
I met the
artist at a book fair in San Francisco.
He was selling etchings, or lithographs of the image. I was looking for cover art at the time and
the image seemed perfect. My publisher
had to crop it to fit it on the cover, which is unfortunate because the
symbolism is less apparent in the reduced image. If you look closely at the reflection of
trees in the water you see the façade of the Twin Towers. It’s the artist’s rendering of the reflecting
pools at the 9/11 memorial. For me the
cover resonates with the 9/11 theme, which is prominent, and with the somber
gothic tones of the work itself. It’s a
dark book, though there are lighter, happier and more humorous moments throughout. The cover doesn’t suggest that maybe. Never let an author choose his own cover art,
I guess. I’m surprised my publisher
did. Their description doesn’t
help.
Isaac Constantine was born in New York City in 1978. He attended Williams College, where he earned his BA in English, and Columbia University for an MFA in Fiction. Constantine worked briefly in publishing as an editorial assistant at The Paris Review and Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. He is a blogger, a freelance writer and editor, a veteran of the Occupy Wall Street movement and an activist associated with the Anonymous hacker collective. He lives in San Francisco.
Places to find Isaac
Amazon Author Page
Places to find Jeremiah's Ghost
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Print
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I would love to hear your thoughts. :) HAPPY READING !!!!