“making less happen and just letting things meander a little”

a mini-interview with Kevin Maloney

Back in 2014 when my first book was coming out, I was meeting a lot of other writers online and Kevin Maloney was one of them. The following year Kevin’s book Cult of Loretta came out. I remember literal laugh-out-loud moments I had reading it, and also just getting a vibe of, I think this is a voice I could be friends with. Like, He gets me. Or, Damn, I wanna smoke a joint with this character.

This year Two Dollar Radio published Kevin’s book The Red-Headed Pilgrim and again I had the LOLs and moments of feeling like I’ve met a character like this in my own Pacific Northwest past, or I rubbed shoulders with them twenty years ago as someone handed me a beer outside in front of a fire. The protagonists of these books is totally someone who I can imagine a version of myself sitting with on the tailgate of the El Camino, our hands in a baggie of mushrooms at dusk.

As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Kevin to respond to three to five questions from a total of eight offered.

How did/does the pandemic change your creative process?

Before the pandemic, my life and art were completely tied to my day job. Five days a week, from 9 to 5, I worked at a marketing-PR firm in the suburbs of Portland. Most of my writing took place in or around my job. I wrote during slow times at work, on my lunch break, or after work at a coffee shop before driving home. Anywhere I could snatch a minute or two to make progress on a story or novel.

When Covid hit, I started working from home—first as an employee, then later working for myself as a freelance web developer. My relationship to time totally changed. At first it was hard to structure my day. There was more free time, but I didn’t use it efficiently. It took me almost a year to get into a good routine, but eventually I started organizing my day around to-do lists. I try to get my day job responsibilities done by noon or one, then spend the rest of the afternoon writing. I might start by editing an existing chapter or writing a new one, then upload what I’ve been working on to my phone. I put on headphones, and use the “Read Aloud” feature on the MS Word app to listen to what I’ve written like it’s an audio book. I do this while going on long walks around my neighborhood. There’s a park near our house full of hundred foot fir trees. During the height of Covid, I’d walk under those tall trees, thinking about the weird beauty of the world, how the pandemic had shrunk our lives down to a spartan simplicity, all while listening to some new story or novel I was working on.

I found this process by accident, but it seems to have become the way I write everything now, even as our lives return to normal.

Photo by Kevin Maloney

What story, writer, or book are you most enamored with right now?

Lately I’ve been revisiting two writers whose work I love. The first is Charles Portis. A few years ago, multiple friends recommended Norwood and Dog of the South. I read both and loved them. Portis’ sense of humor and levity are really close to what I try to do in my writing, but his comedy is a little more subtle and cumulative whereas mine is zany and in your face. I love reading funny writers because it pushes me to find new ways to be funny in my own writing. Recently I read Gringos. The plot doesn’t work quite as well as in Norwood or Dog of the South… it’s a little more meandering than those other books, but I sort of loved it for its sloppiness. It felt like Portis didn’t really have an idea where the book was going. I love books that aren’t driving you furiously toward an endpoint, but just sort of plunge you into a dark, comic world. It feels more like life when events unfold randomly, without necessarily advancing the plot or conveying meaning.

The other writer I’ve been revisiting is Tim O’Brien. I read The Things They Carriedyears ago and was totally blown away by it, but for some reason I forget about it when I’m thinking of the books and authors who have influenced me most. Recently I watched the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary, which led me back to O’Brien. Right now I’m working my way through If I Die in a Combat Zone. It has all of the same amazing writing as The Things They Carried, but since it’s an earlier book of his, I can see a little better how it’s structured and how he put it together. These days I’m really interested in novel structure— how to jump around in time and pivot between scenes, while keeping a natural flow like it’s all being done organically. Some writers like Vonnegut and Frederick Exley are so good at it I get intimidated, but O’Brien is a writer I can really learn from.

Tell us about what you're working on next.

I just recently finished the first draft of a new novel. Like The Red-Headed Pilgrim, it draws heavily from my own life, mixing it with a healthy dose of humor, fiction, and absurdity. The novel takes place in 2007-2008 in Portland and captures the feeling of a transitional phase in my life, after my divorce, single again, with a 6-year-old who lived with me part time, trying to put the pieces back together. It also dives into my dad’s death from cancer, while sort of keeping those events in the background as a counterpoint to the lightness of the main plot. I feel more confident about this book than anything I’ve written… in part because I think I’m getting better as a writer but also because I’m having more fun with it and being more playful and not trying so hard. I’m confident in making less happen and just letting things meander a little.

The book has a title but I don’t want to share that quite yet until a handful of people read it and it starts to feel more polished and like an actual thing. I’m always worried about jinxing a project by talking about it too early, but I think this novel is far enough along that I can at least start whispering about it.