Ask the Author: Greg Rohloff

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Greg Rohloff One project tends to lead to another new idea; that and looking at bills, the age of my car, the balance on my mortgage, and real life obligations.

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What are you currently working on?

Greg Rohloff

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I have started a Master of Fine Arts degree through the low-residency program at the University of New Orleans. And I am drafting out "Running from a Lion I Met a Bear," working on backstories, settings, and structure. Here is the prologue:

If she shot me, most would say I had it coming. Me included, at times, but then that would be too easy.
What made me want to face her again? What was in my heart? Or, more likely, what was missing from my heart that I couldn't remember. Did I walk away from her, or did she walk away from me first? Truth comes in the telling, and that is where she has the advantage. One word from her lips and I'm dead to those I love. One twitch of her finger and I'm dead before I hit the ground.
I can't imagine her owning a gun. Maybe she'd prefer bolts of electricity rising from the ground where I stood, surging up through both feet, up my legs and converging on my torso with the power that blasts transformers apart so that my heart and soul would turn to ash, and with the blast that would split me like a dried up stump of a tree, the ash would scatter as my scorched trunk collapsed into the dirt, poisoning the ground so that nothing would grow on that spot for all eternity. She said that once with a look.
Lucky for me I don't have to face her today. Unlucky for me, I will face her today, drawn back to her like every time before. The memory of our last pleasant moment tugs me toward the edge where she stands, so close that I can touch her arm, look into the blue eyes and the smile that softened me, and somehow I fuck it up, sending me over the edge, hurtling away from her as she drops her glance to the ground, her smile fading, shaking her head as she walks away from this crash, exactly like the last crash and every crash before it.
All I have to do is pick up the phone if I can find her number. But what do I say? Hope your life's fine because mine is, or is not, or is – I don't really know how it can be now. It all seemed so simple and noble. I'd admit my wrong; she'd thank me and smile about my Emily, telling her how much she admired how she had tamed me, that she was really jealous, but in a good way, and we would return to our lives refreshed and ennobled. I could not have been more wrong. Worse, I did not, or could not, see this coming, how my wife may abandon me as she recovers from cancer, and my former girlfriend, if she had ever been that, will not rest until I am a wreck.
(hide spoiler)]

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How do you deal with writer’s block?

Greg Rohloff I read something that I've been interested in, whether it is a book, fiction or nonfiction, or an interesting magazine article. Then I write for myself my thoughts on what I've read -- what I found interesting, what I liked and disliked about a character in a work of fiction, how the writer makes a case in a nonfiction magazine article.

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What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Greg Rohloff Being a writer involves a search for truth, regardless of the topic. I can start with an idea, even a fictitious story, but before I can write on that idea I have to gather my thoughts and my current understanding, then I have to consider the thoughts of others and weigh that information. Writing becomes a refining process of what I know and believe.

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What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Greg Rohloff Read as much as possible, both news and current events, and fiction and nonfiction books. In news, read human interest stories, world affairs, state and national government news. And if your ambition is to write books, whether fiction or nonfiction, pay particular attention to how your favorite writers tell a good story. Figure out their thought processes, and see how they build emotional connections with readers, and how they pull their stories along to keep your interest. Then imitate what you have learned.

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Greg Rohloff When George H.W. Bush ran to succeed President Reagan, White House observers quoted administration officials that Mr. Bush had fallen out of favor with Reagan's inner circle and was not in the loop on the Iran-Contra scheme. After he was nominated, a political analyst questioned who would be his vice presidential choice, since this falling out was interpreted that Mr. Bush was an under-achiever, and he could not afford to be out-shined by his V.P. One story arc in "Dog on a Rope" is an alternative history assuming that this formula for Republican candidates allowed the GOP to build the kind of dominance Democrats enjoyed starting with Franklin Roosevelt. It is set in 2008 in which the GOP president is weighed down by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the faltering economy as he seeks re-election to a second term. As bad news mounts, he relapses into the cocaine habit from the the early 1980s. Meanwhile, the Democrats seek to break their cycle of losses with a Ronald Reagan-type candidate -- an elder statesman, folksy, blunt spoken and an outdoorsman -- who has health issues to maneuver around as a candidate. The underlying question is one that has been repeated for several past presidential elections: Are these candidates the best we can do?

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