Kevin McPartland, author of “Brownstone Dreams.”
Why did you become a writer and why did you write “Brownstone Dreams?”
I suppose I was always a writer but I just didn’t know it. I was an avid reader as a youngster in spite of not being much of a student. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I attempted my first short story and although rejected was assured by an editor I had a presence on the page. He suggested I should keep working at my fiction and I did. I’ve successfully published several short stories, been included in an anthology and of course there’s Brownstone Dreams, my first novel that took me five years to write.
I probably wrote Brownstone Dreams for therapy as much as anything else. The book’s main character is styled after a first cousin who was more like a brother than a cousin, someone who met a violent and untimely death after years of heroin addiction. In the writing of the novel I drew from my own street experiences growing up in sixties Park Slope as well as his.
Where did you grow up. Where did you attend school and where are you living these days?
I have resided for the last thirty-one years in South Beach, Staten Island, a community that provides me a short trip across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to my beloved Brooklyn and the Park Slope neighborhood of my youth, a trip I take quite often I might add.
Which genre do you enjoy reading most? Also, do you prefer fiction or non-fiction? And give us a short list of books you have enjoyed reading and maybe two or three popular books that you were disappointed in after hearing so much about them?
Books that disappointed me: The Celestine Prophecy, By James Redfield, Jonathon Livingston seagull, by Richard Bach, and Tour of Duty, by Douglas Brinkley.
Do you have a favorite writer(s)?
I think I would have to say my favorite writer over all is Kurt Vonnegut.
Do you recall your childhood reading? Any one book or experience stand out as a youngster?
I did read the classics as a kid and quite a bit of non-fiction involving the sea.
Are you working on a second novel?
I am writing a second novel at this time, and of course it is set in Brooklyn. I have strayed from it though and intend to write a short story or two before returning to it.
Kevin, thanks for your time.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
For more information on Kevin’s novel, click here.
-Steve
Hoops135@hotmail.com