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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET SEAN BEAUDOIN
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| Sean Beaudoin |
There was a leather chair in my father’s study. It was pushed into the corner on a diagonal, so there was just enough space behind it for my four-foot frame, a pillow, and a book. I spent a lot of time reading back there.
What writers influenced you most when you were growing up?
Jim Carroll, Charles Bukowski, Anthony Burgess, Roald Dahl, and Kurt Vonnegut.
When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career?
I was pursuing the idea that I should be widely acknowledged for
what was soon to be dozens of brilliant novels, but at that time there
was only a few notebooks filled with clumsy poetry.
If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?
I think I never had a choice. Once I started writing regularly, it seemed
as natural as anything else I was doing. Like walking or having relationships.
What was your first job when you graduated from college?
I was a roustabout for the circus for a while. Mostly, I unloaded trucks
and washed the tent. I also ran the cotton candy machine, which is hazardous
and highly unpleasant.
How soon after that was your first book published?
Far too long to have been inspired by that evil pink cotton.
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?
Pretty much immediately. I probably would have been better off in the long run if it had been roundly rejected.
What are the topics are some of your books?
Alienation, boredom, churlishness, deviancy, eschatology, Freud, Godot,
harpies, inappropriateness, japes, kwashiorkor, lunacy, memes, NORAD,
onions, Pashtuns, Quonsets, rationing, stamens, topiary, unctuousness, vipers,
Walendas, Xanadu (Olivia Newton John version), Yoric, and Zombie-dom.
Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?
The one I’ve just finished is invariably the one I’ve most enjoyed.
In that case, it would be YOU KILLED WESLEY PAYNE, which will be released fall
2010 by Little, Brown. It’s a noir thriller that has been called “Grease meets
The Road Warrior by way of Dashiell Hammett’s little brother’s addled imagination.”