Ask the Author: Barry Maher
Answered Questions (5)
Barry Maher
As I've said, Legend was written during one of the toughest times of my life. I was looking for hope and I think working out the story helped me find it.
Barry Maher
Thanks, John. I appreciate the comments. Legend was hard work at a tough time in my life where I was able to find real hope. I think the book reflects that. I certainly hope it does. Thanks for asking.
Barry Maher
I'd probably pass. Fictional book worlds can be wonderul to visit as a reader. But the conflict and strife, the danger that put their characters through so much are a lot more fun vicariously than they would be if you were the one hanging on to the cliff face by your fingernails. Nobdy creates a book world where everything's perfect and the happiness of the inhabitants is complete.
Barry Maher
The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles, author of "A Gentleman in Moscow"
"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"by ransom Riggs. I understand Tim Burton is doing the movie version. I like Tim Buton but control is not his specialty. Going over the top with this one could ruin it.
The List" by Steve Martini. A thriller for everyone but particularly on target for authors. In this one, an under-appreciated author writes a book she feels could be a potential bestseller. So she hires the perfect guy to play the author--with the publisher and the publilc. It works, as many of us have long suspected it would
Lee Child's "Never Go Back" Reading Lee Child is great for authors. It's like reading Hemingway. It tends to pare down your sentences and reduce the excesses. I was reading Proust while writing the initial draft of my first novel. I didn't have any fifty page paragraphs, but I did have to spend much of the next draft, cutting down the sentences.
I keep a couple of bookcases full of books I want to read. So I'm never caught without a ready-made list.
"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"by ransom Riggs. I understand Tim Burton is doing the movie version. I like Tim Buton but control is not his specialty. Going over the top with this one could ruin it.
The List" by Steve Martini. A thriller for everyone but particularly on target for authors. In this one, an under-appreciated author writes a book she feels could be a potential bestseller. So she hires the perfect guy to play the author--with the publisher and the publilc. It works, as many of us have long suspected it would
Lee Child's "Never Go Back" Reading Lee Child is great for authors. It's like reading Hemingway. It tends to pare down your sentences and reduce the excesses. I was reading Proust while writing the initial draft of my first novel. I didn't have any fifty page paragraphs, but I did have to spend much of the next draft, cutting down the sentences.
I keep a couple of bookcases full of books I want to read. So I'm never caught without a ready-made list.
Barry Maher
I awoke feeling so hollow I had to touch my body. Nothing was there!
Barry Maher
When this question was first asked, four years ago, I might not have had an answer. I do now. As I just answered in my blog, awhile back, I was speaking on an Asian cruise when I realized I could no longer figure out what the hands of the clock meant. The next day, during a session, I introduced the ship’s captain. Twenty minutes later I picked him out of the audience and asked him what he did for a living. (The uniform did look a tad familiar.) That same day, I gave up trying to understand foreign currency. Even American money was getting tricky. In Viet Nam, I handed a vendor two hundreds and a five for a $7.00 baseball cap. It was a very nice cap.
Back home, the first thing my doctor did was have me draw a clock face at ten to three. The second thing he did was take away my driver’s license.
Then he sent me for an immediate MRI. The nurse there wouldn’t comment on the results, but when I asked where the restroom was, she said, “I can’t let you go in there alone.”
I explained that bathroom visitation was a particular expertise of mine.
“Like telling time?” she asked. “You need to talk to your neurosurgeon.”
“I have a neurosurgeon?” Just what I always wanted.
I also had a brain tumor—the size of a basketball. Or maybe the neurosurgeon said “baseball.” I wasn’t tracking too well at that point. Still, I quickly grasped he was planning on carving open my skull with a power saw.
“I don’t really need to tell time,” I said. “Or I can just buy a digital watch.”
Everyone said my neurosurgeon—or, as I thought of him, “Chainsaw Charlie”—was brilliant. My problem was that I’ve spent my life around intelligent people, and I’ve always believed human intelligence was overrated. To me, on a scale of everything there is to know in the universe, the main difference between Einstein and Koko the Wonder Chimp was that Einstein couldn’t pick up bananas with his feet. (As far as I know.)
Still, I went under the knife—or in this case, the power saw. Maybe I had a seizure. The doctors weren’t sure. That might explain what happened. Because I came out of the surgery with Lady Gaga singing non-stop in my head and an unforgettably vivid story, like a memory of something that I’d just witnessed.
Reacting to the intrusion, I suppose my brain could have given me a dream or a story, maybe even Citizen Kane or a nice rom/com or a few episodes of Seinfeld. Instead I got open crypts, bizarre spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren version of the Manson Family. “How did my operation go? Well, I’m doing well, but the people in my head—or wherever they were—they went through Hell.”
Lady Gaga went away after a day or so. But the story stayed with me. And when I was able, I spent a couple of years putting it all down, working it out, trying to get it just right. And that became The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon.
And with the cancer in remission, as of September 5th I’ve even lived to see the book published.
Back home, the first thing my doctor did was have me draw a clock face at ten to three. The second thing he did was take away my driver’s license.
Then he sent me for an immediate MRI. The nurse there wouldn’t comment on the results, but when I asked where the restroom was, she said, “I can’t let you go in there alone.”
I explained that bathroom visitation was a particular expertise of mine.
“Like telling time?” she asked. “You need to talk to your neurosurgeon.”
“I have a neurosurgeon?” Just what I always wanted.
I also had a brain tumor—the size of a basketball. Or maybe the neurosurgeon said “baseball.” I wasn’t tracking too well at that point. Still, I quickly grasped he was planning on carving open my skull with a power saw.
“I don’t really need to tell time,” I said. “Or I can just buy a digital watch.”
Everyone said my neurosurgeon—or, as I thought of him, “Chainsaw Charlie”—was brilliant. My problem was that I’ve spent my life around intelligent people, and I’ve always believed human intelligence was overrated. To me, on a scale of everything there is to know in the universe, the main difference between Einstein and Koko the Wonder Chimp was that Einstein couldn’t pick up bananas with his feet. (As far as I know.)
Still, I went under the knife—or in this case, the power saw. Maybe I had a seizure. The doctors weren’t sure. That might explain what happened. Because I came out of the surgery with Lady Gaga singing non-stop in my head and an unforgettably vivid story, like a memory of something that I’d just witnessed.
Reacting to the intrusion, I suppose my brain could have given me a dream or a story, maybe even Citizen Kane or a nice rom/com or a few episodes of Seinfeld. Instead I got open crypts, bizarre spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren version of the Manson Family. “How did my operation go? Well, I’m doing well, but the people in my head—or wherever they were—they went through Hell.”
Lady Gaga went away after a day or so. But the story stayed with me. And when I was able, I spent a couple of years putting it all down, working it out, trying to get it just right. And that became The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon.
And with the cancer in remission, as of September 5th I’ve even lived to see the book published.
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