Q: Would you consider seeing that you have everything you need to write SNEAKING PAST THE GATEKEEPER a breakthrough?
A: If I act on it, yes.
If I don’t, no.
Q: Why wouldn’t you?
A: Habit, I suppose.
Temperament.
I have a Calvinistic streak.
I feel guilty about doing something I’m not paid to do.
About enjoying what I do, possibly. I feel I don’t deserve to enjoy it. I have to earn it. I’m not suffering enough.
I let these feelings darken my mood.
My publishing history has something to do with it.
I’m suspicious of good fortune.
Q: Your history is no reply or a form letter rejection slip.
A: Exactly.
Or a returned query letter with, “Help, I’m trapped in the corporate maw” written on the bottom.
Q: One way to untrap yourself is to not trap yourself in the first place.
A: That’s the only way. But it’s hard to resist the temptation.
Q: Monk said you have to be strong in your mind to go it alone.
A:
Monk plays the Beatles.
Q: It’s enough to make you wonder if they knew
what you were about.
A: It’s enough to break your spirit.
Grant Peeples doesn’t like what he’s doing.
He has to do it to be a rock star. Or an alt-country singer/songwriter.
Tour, do concerts, try for air play on the radio. Go to industry events.
I don’t have to do that to be an underground writer. Chat people up.
Make nice to greedy, superficial assholes.
I can be a recluse. A troglodyte. A fool and a churl, as Emerson said to Whitman.
To snooker means to fool or bamboozle.