Salm still doesn’t think of himself as children’s author but plans to “Continue with the world that I made…” But don’t be put off by its placement in the children’s sections of book stores and libraries. Each novel-there are others planned-will feature a different character and will overlap a little but then carry the action forward in time. A third book in the series, “Actually” (there’s a common thread here), is in the works. The protagonist is Max’s friend Allie, and, unlike Max’s first-person narrative, this story is told in the third person. “However” features the same kids, including Max, but it’s written from a different point of view. Someone in his audiences inevitably asks how much of Max is himself, and he replies that there are similarities-some of the incidents are drawn from his own life, like the spaghetti episode-but Max is “cooler and smarter than I was.”Īnd of course readers want to know, what’s next? Will we be seeing more of Max, or does Salm plan to tackle that dark, disturbing adult work? Well, the sequel is already completed and being shopped by his agent.
He’s spoken at San Diego Writers Ink, Warwick’s, and Barnes & Noble locally and will soon be taking his show on the road. Since the book’s release on May 1 st, Salm has started making the rounds, doing readings and signings. The book’s subtitle is: “A Story About Me with 138 Footnotes, 27 Exaggerations, and 1 Plate of Spaghetti,” and for me the charm of Max’s narrative is his digressions in the form of footnotes, a tribute, Salm says, to David Foster Wallace.
He created Max as his protagonist, and that was the beginning. But just to limber up, he decided to write a story for his daughter, who was thirteen at the time, about an experience of his own when he sat on a plate of spaghetti. He never saw himself as a children’s author. As Salm tells it, when he started writing, his intention was to write dark, disturbing adult comedy.
0 kommentar(er)
