MEET AN INTRIGUING NEW AUTHOR, AND READ ALL ABOUT HIS BOOK, HIS STORIES, AND WHAT HAS INSPIRED HIM:
U. L. HARPER
1. In perusing your website and other interviews you’ve conducted, I see that you began writing at a very early age. Also, that you were “controversial” back then. Would you like to share some of those experiences?
Years ago I did a lot of experimenting with tone. In turn, I touched on many subjects that weren’t close to me but close to other people. The result was what could be looked at as insensitive writing. It happened here and there with my poetry. I would never purposely insult anyone or where they came from. Though just because you don’t try to do something, it doesn’t mean you didn’t actually do it, come to find out. Lesson learned. The time that sticks out is when a friend’s father found a poetry chapbook that my friend and I had published, The Body Politic. In it I had a poem that talked about how people had become overly politically correct and too sensitive to words. So at risk of offending people and losing potential readers, here are some of the lines that offended my friend’s dad: “Someone needs to put the mother back in f…r.” and “Someone needs to put the God back in damn.” And so on and so on. As a Christian it was his duty to be upset. Shortly after that he gave me a bible. He’s an amazing man and father. This is the same person who took me in when I was homeless. The entire family is amazing.
2. You studied journalism in college…very brave, since your early educational experiences were less than encouraging. Did you feel that reporting was a way into the world of writing, and if so, what about those experiences led to your current projects?
I thought I wanted to be a journalist in high school but the class had nothing to do with writing. I don’t know what we did. It was horrible. They wouldn’t let me take creative writing. Basically anything I was interested in during high school I wasn’t allowed or encouraged to do. It struck me as odd even while it happened. All they did was try to push me towards not following my dream and at the time I accepted it. However, in college when I heard they had a reporting class and there was a newspaper, oh, I was on that. By then I was big into questioning government and my creative writing was happening effortlessly. I did get a job on a newspaper and this is when I first started doing real research for my creative writing. On some levels I began approaching my fiction like news and it made all the difference. Now I did research. Now I paid close attention to dialogue. It wasn’t until then that I knew what it meant to be read.
3. I like the snippet about how your short story led to your book “The Flesh Statue.” What can you share about how that came about?
A friend of mine held a weekly discussion group that I attended. We discussed art and politics and religion and whatever came up. It didn’t matter. There were never more than about six or seven of us. There was a teacher in there with a publisher and a newspaper person (me) and a high school student etc. But what if we met to solve problems in society, I thought. What if we were an underground movement, I thought. What if this group were politically empowering. What if it had influence? What if we changed people’s lives? Then I made a plan for how we might do that and presto a short story. Years later the themes of this story matched many of the themes in The Flesh Statue so I slowly let the characters from the two stories meet. After that I let them do whatever they were going to do.
4. I like the part about using your downtime in your job at the movie theater to fuel your inspiration for “The Flesh Statue.” What other inspirations led to that particular book?
To this day I think this: The less trash the theater makes, the less work is to be had. You could gauge how well business was that day by how much trash was produced. That right there was the basis for a character. Bert stimulates his job in fixing cars by denting them himself in his off time. His thought process is that there is an industry based on just cleaning, fixing or rebuilding stuff in society. Bert at one point also had a short story based on him. I wrote it.
5. Your own life experiences with your grandfather were obviously instrumental in creating this book. Were there other personal moments that contributed, and if so, what were they?
There are too many real life moments I put in this story. Here goes one. In the first chapter when the police officer hits the guy who is arguing with his girlfriend—that really happened, except it was a man and his male lover who were quarreling, really. But yeah there was blood everywhere. About fifteen cop cars arrived at the scene, already wearing latex gloves and everyone thought, what are they trying to hide. It was horrible. Later you’d hear all sorts of stories about local police killing people unjustifiably.
6. Tell me how you come up with your story ideas; do your characters lead the way?
In a way my characters lead the way. Let me explain. Just yesterday my supervisor told me about a cohort of mine who is leaving the country temporarily to arrange her wedding with a priest. My first thought from this was this: What if she wasn’t meeting the priest for the wedding but rather she needed an exorcism for herself? So for whatever reason I pictured her arriving at a doctor’s office but meeting the priest there. You know, she barely gets there on time for her three o’clock exorcism appointment. In the office, the doctor says, “How are you today? Nope, don’t answer that. We’ll talk after we get that demon out of you.” Now if I want to make this into a story I have to figure out whom this person is who is going to get her exorcism on her own? From here I let the character go for it and whatever changes come about are fine. The tone might change and it might not be about an exorcism anymore. It might be that she’s leaving the country to marry another man besides her current fiancé. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t need exorcising. Though maybe she needs to exorcise her demons in another way. So goes story writing. Actually, after writing this I’m quite interested in the priest. I might have just written the beginning to a story. Who knows?
7. What is your typical writing day like?
I don’t have one anymore. I do so much promotion and prep for promotion that I simply write in sporadic moments. I’m always writing a press release, seeking ways for exposure, setting up ad space somewhere, planning a show, making a flyer, dealing with my website and I work full-time. So I write sporadically, which isn’t professional but I’m not getting paid to do this yet, so… Realistically, when I write I do it for about an hour or so. A lot more time goes into getting ready to write, though. I read or watch a movie and I read what I wrote previously and roughly edit my previous work. Then I write, take a break and complain to myself about how I really need to get out and promote. At the same time, if I don’t write I feel useless and cheated. So there’s that.
8. Do you spend much time on the Internet, blogging and connecting with other writers?
I don’t connect with enough writers but I do have contact with them. I do connect with whom I consider more quality bloggers. Some bloggers, you can tell they’re going to be around for a while and people will love what they do in the future. Others are simply introverted. It’s similar to the difference between writing a journal and writing to be read. I spoke with a few authors who are skeptical about blog reviews and interviews, which I understand. My thoughts in it are this: If you want to interview me that’s amazing. I spent years writing this book and I want to talk about it with everybody. If you want to review my book then that’s amazing too. I wrote it and I want to be read and talked about. Period. There is a risk. Sometimes I can tell that the audience of the blog won’t like my book and I fear the reviewer will adhere to their audience, as not to disappoint them, even if they like the book. But that’s fear talking, not truth. So I’ll take that risk.
9. Have you ever considered writing another type of novel, and if so, what intrigues you?
I would love to write a horror novel. I know I can do it but it would have to be a series of short stories or something I did on the side, maybe with a different name. A name like Storm Truth or Larry Killburger.
10. Are you working on another book now, and if so, what can you share about it?
Us authors are always writing another book. The one I’m writing now is about some young adults turning into adults and discovering how to get over their childhood. I can’t tell you what happens because it’s in some serious early stages.
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