Book: Nothing To Get Nostalgic About
Q1. Hello Sir, can you please introduce yourself? Readers would love to know more about you.
My name is Eddie Brophy, I am a published and award-winning writer and poet. My poems have appeared in several print and online literary magazines which include The Parliament Literary Journal, Terror House Magazine, Better Than Starbucks, In Parenthesis Literary Magazine, and Ghost City Press. I have a short story entitled “The B.K.R. Killer” that was published by Haunted MTL. I am the author of Nothing to Get Nostalgic About which is my debut novel that was inspired by my childhood growing up between 1994 and 1998.
Q2. What were the key challenges you faced while writing ‘Nothing To Get Nostalgic About’ book?
Revisiting traumatic events in my life and having to relive a lot of the pain that I had spent a significant chunk of my life trying to mitigate through escapism and self-medication. There came a point where I could not write entire chapters without being completely manic or hysterically crying. I just felt that it was something I could no longer elude for the sake my six-month-old son at the time. I did not want him to grow up the way I did, and I feared that if I didn’t find some way to purge all of the negative and detrimental feelings about my childhood it was going to be detrimental to his life…almost like a cruse that I had no intention of passing on.
Q3. What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
Its hard to say that no books or authors directly influenced my writing because anyone who reads this or has read if will surely pick up on some notable Stephen King vibes. What can I say? I grew up in New England. Historically? This place has a VERY spooky history. I grew up with a penchant for the macabre, so I was drawn to 80s horror films, Stephen King, and grunge music. Initially, I had wanted to be a poet/lyricist based on my love of Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Maynard James Keenan’s lyrical content.
Q4. What’s your favourite spot to visit in your own country? And what makes it so special to you?
Growing up as a kid, one of my favourite places to go was Pine Banks Park. I do not know why; I just took to this place immediately. When I was younger, I used to love seeing the animals they used to have. As I grew older, I just had an affinity for walking around in the woods with my headphones on. Maybe I found some sort of serenity there, I am not too sure. I just loved sitting on the rocks with a notebook and pen and enjoy any moments of clarity of creativity came from it. When my oldest son was born, I used to take him to the same playground I used to play at and take him to the water to see if we could spot any turtles or frogs. For someone who does not like to consider himself nostalgic I guess I cannot help it when positive memories of my childhood take me to a better moment in time before so much of my life turned upside down.
Q5. Is there lots to do before you drive in and start writing a book?
I would not consider myself a very disciplined person when it comes to approaching a book. I know lots of authors and writers who subscribe to a myriad of different techniques before diving into their work. I have always been a big fan of stream of consciousness. I guess I think the more preparation I try to put into something the more likely I am to talk myself out of committing certain thoughts or choices to paper. It can also be spontaneous or sporadic how ideas or material manifest. I might hear a song or see something, and it’ll resonate with me so profoundly that I am able to create an entire narrative around it.
Q6. How long did it take you to write ‘Nothing To Get Nostalgic About’ book?
The initial writing started in the fall of 2017. I was a new dad, had just turned thirty and still reconciling over the lack of emotional and mental resolution that lingered after my father passed from cancer in 2014. We had a very contentious relationship and his death brought up several existential concerns and memories that I realized I could not ignore or outrun. In that sense the story’s primary protagonist Charlie is very much me. I reached a point where the book just became so exhausting that I had to walk away from it. Prior to this manuscript I had already finished four previous manuscripts that had been rejected by hundreds of agents. In the spring of 2018, I found myself compelled to finish Charlie’s story and close the proverbial chapter on my own life. When it was finished, it was met with the same futility of all the other manuscripts I tried to land an agent with. In 2019, I nonchalantly just decided it to submit it to Atmosphere Press with zero expectations. They were the right publisher at the right time. Typically, it can take me anywhere from two to six months to finish a manuscript. This one was more challenging because of how autobiographical a significant portion of it was.
Q7. On what all platforms readers can find ‘Nothing To Get Nostalgic About’ book to buy?
It is available through Indiebound.com which I love because it helps support independent book stores. You can also find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, etc. Indiebound is the one I try to promote the most due to the fact that I love the idea of supporting local businesses and smaller book retailers.
Q8. Tell us about the process of coming up with the book cover and the title ‘Nothing To Get Nostalgic About’
The cover was created by Josep Lledó who works with Atmosphere Press. Nick Courtright (the founder of Atmosphere Press) asked me to send him some covers of books that I really loved so he could get an idea of what I wanted conceptually. I wound up sending him a lot of old horror paper backs from V.C. Andrews, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, etc. I really wanted a cover that would either entice readers based on the strength of the artwork or scare them so badly they would be morbidly curiously about the content of the book. I was showing the mockups to my wife, and she immediately felt a connection to this one. It checked off all the boxes for what I wanted. It did not give anything away about the book and it looked like a paperback that I would have found in my big sister’s closet in the 90s (she was a hardcore horror novel nerd).
Q9. When writing a book how do you keep things fresh, for both your readers and also yourself?
Even though the story dealt heavily with the 90s, I wanted to make subtle gestures to notable events that were going on in present day. Particularly the ubiquity of fear going on in the country. Initially, the Jimbo stuff was ENTIRELY different. It was based off my relationship with a good friend of mine and our respective battles with depression. I had gone into a liquor store one night to self-medicate and as I approached the counter the clerk who had become something of an acquaintance had started talking about the potential of a civil war and had offered for my wife and baby to go up north to stay at a bunker he had. I remembered walking out of the liquor store thinking…what in the actual hell is going on? Yet, that moment felt oddly apropos of where I was in the writing. Charlie is a man who can’t outrun his past and yet, his future seems destined to resemble so much of the toxicity he grew up around. I grew up with a glorified sociopath who once threatened to burn the house down that his ex-wife and children were sleeping in. At that point and time, the world felt like one perpetual version of that very scary night in 1992 when I was a young boy.
Q10. Are there any secrets from the book (that aren’t in the blurb), you can share with your readers?
The house and the lore around the house are very real. I grew up in a haunted house with a sordid history. Frankly, I don’t know if my family was always bound to turn into a train wreck or if the house managed to exacerbate some of the issues that had been subdued prior to living there.
Book Is Available On Amazon
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