Roy Pickering’s large volume of short stories and sports articles is available in print and online.  His novel Patches of Grey is sold at Amazon.com and MahoganyBooks.com and his novella Feeding the Squirrels isproduced in electronic format. He “tweets” as @authorofpatches and blogs at http://www.lineaday.blogspot.com while working on a second novel.

Muse: Roy, first of all, Whispers of the Muse welcomes you and Patches of Grey to the site. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Pickering: I was born on the idyllic island of St. Thomas, USVI  and now reside with my wife and daughter in a quaint New Jersey town.  In between I grew up in the Bronx, NY which I used as the setting of my novel.  I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to be a writer.  The library was my favorite childhood destination.  After reading my first full length novels, a couple classics by Jules Verne, I concluded that extracting stories from my mind and putting them down on paper for others to enjoy is what I eventually wanted to do with my life. My initial attempts at writing were made early on, and being quite ambitious from the start of my writing life I attempted novel length material prior to eventually getting around to short stories.  Once I graduated NYU, my writing output grew increasingly prolific.  Any slow period at work provided an opportunity to work on a tale, and just about anything (even a can of parmesan cheese once) provided inspiration.  Next thing I knew I had completed several short stories and the earliest draft of Patches of Grey.  My writing pace is no longer what it was when I first seriously caught the bug and had far fewer responsibilities, but over time quality has overtaken quantity as I’ve worked on mastering the intricate arts of rewriting and editing.

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Pickering: John Irving, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Robins and John Updike top my list for consistency of amazing novels I’ve been fortunate enough to read over the years.  The list keeps growing as I make new discoveries.  Most recently I’ve fallen in love with the prose of Chuck Palahniuk, Junot Diaz and Richard Russo. 

Muse: Why do you write?
Pickering: For the same reason I breathe, I suppose, though it takes considerably more effort.  If I could think of a more fulfilling endeavor, I’d switch over to it.  But so far nothing has come to mind.  Immortality is also a benefit.  If I leave my stories behind then I’ll never really exit this world.

Muse: What is your writing regimen? How often do you work on a novel? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Pickering: I’m about as undisciplined as a writer can be.  When working on a novel such as I am now, I frequently put it aside for considerable stretches of time.  I definitely write in bursts, which isn’t to say that I go for long periods without writing.  Rather, I go through stretches where I’m working primarily on short stories, others where I’m writing mostly sports articles, others where I’m writing a lot of editorial pieces on my blog such as during the recent presidential election campaign.  Most of my deadlines are imposed from outside, such as when I decide to write a short story for a particular contest or anthology.  And when I’m in a groove I write at a feverish pace to keep up with my racing thoughts.  I’m definitely dedicated to my craft, but certainly not regimented about it.  My New Year’s resolution every year is to become more structured in my writing habits, and perhaps one day I will succeed at this.

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Pickering: Absolutely.  The majority of my fiction writing touches upon issues that are of interest and importance to me.  This does not mean I’m preachy or trying to hammer home a message.  Most issues are multifaceted and seen differently by people who approach from varying perspectives.  I’m not so much interested in telling readers how I feel about a matter.  Instead I find it more compelling to approach subjects from multiple points of view, none of them absolutely right or wrong necessarily, but often in opposition to each other.  Complete resolution does not frequently take place in my fiction because I strive to be true to life, and life is rarely about dilemmas ending up wrapped up and tied neatly shut with a bow.  I typically don’t create good guys versus bad guys, but people with various agendas in confrontation.  Race relations is a central component of Patches of Grey.  I have very strong views about racism in this country which no doubt guided my hand in choice of plot, but the book is not a simple expression of my opinions in the guise of fiction.  It’s a story that everyone will read in different ways according to their own personal history and belief system, and pages will quickly turn because I never aim to teach or moralize at the expense of entertaining.

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Pickering: As mentioned above, a story once came to me from looking at a can of parmesan cheese.  Another one occurred to me when a friend said he was looking forward to having the chicken he had bought from the supermarket for dinner, but every morning he forgot to take it out of the freezer to defrost so it remained uncooked.  The first story that resulted makes brief mention of parmesan cheese and the second has nothing to do with a chicken dinner.  These were merely the prompts that somehow sparked my imagination and creativity.  Such triggers are the norm.  They are arbitrary, always unexpected, nothing I can count on to arrive when needed for they simply happen when they happen.  Dreams, music (one of my short stories was inspired by a line from a song), and nature are all potential triggers, but so is just about anything that catches my notice in a less than ordinary way.

Muse: Tell us about Patches of Grey. What was your inspiration for this novel?
Pickering: Chronicling the concept of “keeping it real” that prevails in urban neighborhoods in the African American community at the expense of striving to improve circumstances was a major inspiration.  If encouragement comes neither from home nor from peers, it can be very difficult to strive for improvement because your efforts are labeled as “selling out”.  Tony Johnson is a young man who finds himself in this situation.  He is intelligent and ambitious, but these are not particularly viewed as attributes in his environment, so therefore support is in short supply.  When he becomes involved in an interracial relationship this is seen as further evidence of shame, proof that his aspirations indicate lack of pride in his ethnicity.  He stands up for the right to make his own choices for his own reason, but when he encounters resistance to his relationship with Janet Mitchell, his belief system is shaken.  I am no stranger to the opposing feelings experienced by Tony throughout the course of the narrative, not that the book is biographical, but it did come from a place I can relate to.     

 Muse: What is your favorite scene from the book and why?
Pickering: There are several passages that stand out.  If I had to pick just one I’d go with the scene that takes place in a bar.  Lionel is drinking with his best friend and complaining about the state of his life.  Up until this point readers have probably formed a strong negative opinion of him.  They’ve seen him bully his wife and their eldest son.  He is an angry man who expects to be respected at home primarily because he is feared.  But in this scene we catch a glimpse of his pain and disappointment and learn how his outlook on life has been formed by misfortune and selflessness.  He transforms in this scene from a simple monster to a complex man who has been continually let down by life and sincerely wishes to protect rather than intimidate his family.

Muse: Have you written other books?
Pickering: My novella Feeding the Squirrels is published in electronic format by SynergEbooks.  I’ve never read an ebook actually, nor am I inclined to believe that electronic readers such as the Kindle will eventually reinvent the wheel and do away with books as we’ve known them for centuries, but I’m proud have an ebook as well as a traditionally printed book to my credit.  I am about ¾ of the way through my second novel, Matters of Convenience. 

Muse: Tell us about your other books?
Pickering: Feeding the Squirrels was an experiment.  I decided to write about the sexual exploits (though it’s not a work of erotica) of a pleasure seeking man of leisure exclusively from his point of view, with each encounter a story unto itself, tied together primarily by having the same narrator.  Eventually I decided to tie the loose ends together so that it could be read as a single work rather than a series of unrelated episodes.  Once done I realized I had written too much for it to be considered a short story, not enough for it to be considered a novel, and since I was not interested in padding it I settled on declaring it a novella.  I knew it would be easier to attain publication for a work of this length as an ebook rather than ink and paper, so after some research in previously unchartered waters I found a home for it at SynergEbooks.  Matters of Conveniece is basically a love rectangle.  It follows two men and two women who each aim to end up with their soul mates, but instead compromises are made and they then try to right what they perceive as unfortunate scenarios, making messes of their lives in the pursuit of elusive happiness.

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace?
Pickering: Even before our economy tanked, the focus of publishers (particularly the big guns rather than the independents) was on publishing “guaranteed” bestsellers rather than quality literature.  Great books continue to find their way to the shelves of Borders and Barnes and Noble, but many other fine works of prose are not deemed commercial enough.  Fortunately technology came to the rescue, making print on demand affordable and therefore self publishing much less of an arduous project and major sacrifice for writers in need of an outlet for their stories.  As result, a greater amount of both duds and gems is now out there waiting to be discovered than ever before, and I’ve always favored diversity of options over monopolies.  Writing Patches of Grey and eventually getting it into print were the relatively easy parts of the equation.  Now I find myself trying to create awareness among readers without a great deal of money or time to throw at the situation, but no shortage of passion.  To paraphrase Field of Dreams, I’ve built it and now fingers are crossed that they will come.  Reviews and feedback has been exceedingly complimentary to date, so I remain optimistic about the power of word of mouth.