Hi everyone,

The book publishes in 3 days! I wanted to share this short Q&A I did for the book. Enjoy!

A Conversation with Mike Figliola

Q: What inspired you to write The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue?

A: I tell this story a lot. Growing up in Queens, NY, the streets and the apartment buildings are very much alive here. They are like people in many ways. The brick buildings aren’t just structures people inhabit. The city streets and city blocks aren’t just the paths folk’s travel. They all feature their own unique name or number and a style that invokes a feeling or sentiment in me and quite frankly those who frequent and live in the neighborhood. I liken it to how most people will associate Broadway with theater or Bourbon Street with Mardis Gras—same goes for Cypress Avenue just minus the same sheen. That’s what intrigued me the most. I had walked around these streets for most of my life and while everyone knew Cypress Avenue, what it stood for and its surrounding streets and their names, it wasn’t glamorous or even romanticized. Everyone there wanted to move away and stay forever at the same time—and it was those same streets and buildings that fostered it all. It’s in that dissonance that attracted me to bring to life the people and places of Cypress Avenue.

Q: What do you feel is the overall message of the book?

A: I didn’t go for an overall message, but an idea dissonance that I was talking about above. There is a lot of beauty as well as an ugliness to be found throughout the book. Each character you meet, whether it’s Sam Jean and Dezzy cooped up in the apartment, or Goldie, who almost flat lined at the liquor store or Earl the Fisherman in a sad haze living with his Ma, even Father John; they all exhibit redeeming and sometimes beautiful qualities despite their blatant disregard for common civility or kindness—but that led me to ask myself: don’t we all? Not to the extreme as these characters do, but I see it as all part of the human condition. I see it as our ability to be both Jekyll and Hyde in a given situation. I also used a lot of religious themes and imagery in the book. I am not particularly a religious person, but I did go to parochial school for part of my education and did attend church for a while there. I broke the book up into three parts and made 6 chapters for each part—I again liked the contrast between the Holy Trinity (3 parts) and the 6 chapters a piece (666) which is usually associated with the devil. I have great respect for religion and faith and it was important to me to incorporate those themes into the plot. Queens is known for its cemeteries and churches, and I now remember a poem I wrote (which I read with the incomparable David Amram live at the Cornelia street café in NYC) where I was noting how every work day morning I would walk to the train from my home alongside the length of a cemetery. Beyond that green gated fence were the dead, and there I was: alive walking to and from in that perpetual wake-shower-walk-train-work-lunch-work-punchout-train-walkhome-sleep cycle. I thought of the duality of this a lot during the time I was writing the book and it inspired me to incorporate those themes into The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing this novel?

A: Two moments—same issue. I hit a wall in the middle of writing the “Afternoon” part of the book. I forget exactly what chapter, but I just distinctly remember being unable to write anything I was happy with. I stared at the screen for days and days. That was the worst part of it all: the staring at the unfinished page and just wanting to write. Then it came back—I was off pounding the keys again. A week later I was back in the same spot. That too eventually broke but it took me completely stepping away from the manuscript for a short while before I felt ready to get into it again. The worst feeling when it comes to writing, is not writing what you want to be reading on the page after writing it.

Q: Do you have a favorite novel or author that you drew inspiration from when writing The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue?

A: No. However, I must list these beautiful writers for all that they have done for me and the literary arts: Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, E.E. Cummings, Charles Dickens, Aldous Huxley, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Shirley Jackson, John Steinbeck, and Lewis Carroll.

Q: What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?

A: The late great poet and former poet laureate of NY Robert Creeley once told me “Onward!” This was after I read him one of my poems at some event in NYC. I asked after I had finished the poem if he thought I’d be published one day. That was almost 20 years ago. There I was: just a kid green with everything and he took the time to reassure me that day with that one word: “Onward.” What a great notion to impose on a young writer. Keep going. Never stop. Robert Creeley. What a beautiful idea. What an amazing person. To this day I tell every writer I meet the same thing. I always credit Creeley.

Q: How much of your own life did you bring into the book?

A: I believe that all good writing is always based on what an author knows best, or primarily first hand. This book is inspired by my childhood and teen years, my experiences and regrets, funny and not so funny moments, but mostly because I love writing about the back alleys, the street signs, the cracked cement stoops, the graffiti adorned garage doors, and the sidewalks decorated with gum tar. Queens is a place with so much to offer, good and bad— but always unique. While this story is fiction, I tried to capture the essence of it all while infusing some of my own experiences into the prose. My goal was to dump the reader off in the middle of Cypress Avenue and blend them in without them realizing it. Maybe they will use the lingo offered by the characters or find themselves searching for Nunny’s so that they too can have some of those fabled bubbles. In the end, I hope they laugh and cry and smile as much as I did while writing it.

Q: What is one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you?

A: I write with a ton of stimuli around me. The TV is on, music is on, Christmas lights going, incense burning: the more the better. I can’t explain it. It just works for me.