The Reading Frenzy: **GIVEAWAY** Interview with Brett Garcia Rose

Happy Monday all! It's -10ºF today and isn't going to warm up all that much so the best thing for a cold day is a good interview, a great read and a super Giveaway. Well I've got all those bases covered. I'm interviewing debut author Brett Garcia Rose who is filling us in about his new release, Noise. I LOVE the cover!
Brett's publicist Kelsey McBride PR is offering one paperback print copy US only for a Giveaway!! Giveaway details below!

ISBN-13: 9780991549405
Publisher: Brett Systems, Inc.
Publication date: 6/13/2014
Pages: 236

Overview

The world is an ugly place, and I can tell you now, I fit in just fine.

Lily is the only person Leon ever loved. When she left a suicide note and disappeared into a murky lake ten years ago, she left him alone, drifting through a silent landscape.

Or did she?

Brett's PR Firm Kelsey McBride PR
is offering one print copy of NOISE
to one lucky entrant US ONLY
please use the Rafflecopter form below to enter
Thanks Kelsey!
Good Luck!

Read an Excerpt:

Twenty-Eight

The sounds I cannot hear: The whistle of the hammer as it arcs through the air. The wailing of pain and the begging of The Bear. The dripping of blood from thawing meat onto the wet concrete floor. The beautifully crude threats.

My own hideous voice.

I drag The Bear into a walk-in freezer by the hook sunk through his shoulder and toss him into a corner on the floor. When I reenter the freezer, dragging the oak table behind me, The Bear is hard at work on the hook, trying to muscle it out, but it’s sunk deep, through the tendons. Hope is adrenaline, fear masks pain, begging helps no one.

I yank him up by the hook and then hold his hands outstretched, one at a time, as I nail his wrists to the table with railroad spikes. I put all of my 240 pounds behind the hammer, but even so, it takes several swings. His body shakes, the nails sink further into the wood, his face is pain. He screams, but I cannot hear.

The building above burns a deep blue hue with my smuggled-in accelerants.

The sound of the hammer into The Bear. The pain in his eyes. I have never seen so much hatred. It is beautiful to me, to reach this center, this uncomplicated base, to disassemble the past and honor a new history. It is another film, also homemade and rough, an overlay, an epilogue. The Bear is broken but I have spared his face, and to see those eyes, that is what I needed; to see his hatred flow into me, my own eyes sucking down the scum like bathtub drains. His life whirls into me and I taste the fear, the hope, the sharp sting of adrenaline pumping and the reeking muck of despair. His pain soothes me, a slow, thick poison. We will all die.

I know it now; I am a broken man. I always was. I imagine Lily watching me, Lily keeping score, making lists, balancing all. As a child from far away, she was the queen, even more so than her mother. But she didn’t survive. The world was not as we had imagined, not even close. The world is a cruel, bastard place, Lily cold and lost somewhere, me hot and bleeding and swinging my hammer. Life as it is, not as we wish it to be.

The sounds I cannot hear: The laughter of the watchers. The groan of my sister as The Bear cums inside of her, pulling her hair until the roots bleed. The Bear screams and shits himself inside the dark freezer. Lily’s wailing and cursing and crying. I scream at The Bear with all my mighty, damaged voice, swinging the hammer at his ruined hands, hands that will never again touch anyone. Lily at the end, beaten and pissed on and begging to die.

Lily is dead. I am dead. It will never be enough.

I remove the stack of photos from my wallet that I’d printed at the Internet café a lifetime ago and place them face down on the table in front of The Bear. I draw an X on the back of the first photo and turn it over, laying it close to the pulp of his ruined hands.

The Bear offers me anything I want. An animal can feel pain but cannot describe or transmit it adequately. The Bear both is and is not an animal. I lack hearing, so the Bear cannot transmit his experience to me unless I choose to see it. His pain is not my pain, but mine is very much his. I swing the hammer into his unhooked shoulder, and then I draw another X and flip another photo.

His lips move, and I understand what he wants to know. Five photos.

In my notepad, I write: you are a rapist fucking pig. I put the paper into the gristle of his hands and swing the hammer against the metal hook again. It’s a sound I can feel.

Anything, The Bear mouths. He is sweating in the cold air of the freezer. Crying. Bleeding.

In my pad, I write: I want my sister back. I swing the hammer claw-side first into his mouth and leave it there. His body shakes and twitches.

I turn over his photo and write one last note, tearing it off slowly and holding it in front of his face, the handle of the hammer protruding from his jaw like a tusk. You are number four. There are a few seconds of space as the information stirs into him and I watch as he deflates, the skin on his face sagging like a used condom. He knows what I know.

I turn over the last photo for him. I turn it slowly and carefully, sliding it toward him. Victor, his one good son, his outside accomplishment, his college boy, the one who tried to fuck him and they fucked my sister instead.

I remove another mason jar from my bag, unscrewing the metal top and letting the thick fluid flow onto his lap. I wipe my hands carefully and light a kitchen match, holding it in front of his face for a few seconds as it catches fully. He doesn’t try to blow it out. He doesn’t beg me to stop. He just stares at the match as the flame catches, and I drop it onto his lap.

The Bear shakes so hard from the pain that one of his arms rips from the table, leaving a skewer of meat and tendon on the metal spike. I lean into his ear, taking in his sweet reek and the rot of his bowels and, in my own hideous voice, I say:

“Wait for me.”

Brett Hi! Welcome to The Reading Frenzy.

Tell us a little about the novel.

Noise is a short noir thriller about a deaf man searching NYC for his missing sister. It’s short, violent, and has been called beautiful, acerbic, and powerful (among many other adjectives). Noise will appeal to readers who like action movies, and fast-paced books, and who dislike lengthy, wordy, narrative works.

I love the cover and will many times choose a book just because of one. Did you have any input into the cover design and what made this design win?

I had a few choices presented to me, ten, I think, but I immediately went to this one, though people tried to talk me out of it. The other covers were much more beautiful and realistic, some had the polished look of best-sellers, but I felt that this one best captured the tone and theme of the book. Silent rage, simple and explosive. It also had a literary, edgy feel to it, and went well with the title.

Brett you have quite an eclectic resume. Are you in the always wanted to write column, or are you an accidental author?

I started writing in college, and was a journalist for years. I started publishing short-fiction around 7 years ago. I never thought I’d write novels, but there you go, so yes, that part, at least, is accidental.

Noise is your debut novel and the premise is insightful and thought provoking. Was there a certain catalyst/event that made you choose a deaf man for your protagonist?

I think my stutter had a lot to do with choosing a deaf character, although I can’t recall the exact moment that I incorporated the deafness. But it does contribute significantly to the character in terms of loneliness, isolation and frustration. His deafness is one of the main reasons that the book escalates so quickly; it is a core part of his self-determination, and it is presented as neither a handicap nor a justification for his actions. The protagonist just couldn’t care less about sound.

Brett do you enjoy the camaraderie of a critique group or are you a lone-wolf writer?

Lone-wolf all the way. I don’t even have beta-readers. It goes from me to my editor to you. I lead a compulsively simple life, and my writing life is the same.

Now that your first novel is out there in the world what will you/have you changed as far as the writing process goes?

I’ve noticed that the process of writing a novel, for me at least, is remarkably different than writing short stories. In short fiction, the process is more comprehensive…I write and edit and polish in the same pass, so I pretty much know how it will turn out when I first begin to write. There are still drafts, of course, but they’re far more tweaking and tightening than rewriting. The novels, however, take a much dirtier approach. I’ve learned to accept horrible writing just to move forward, to let the story drag me instead of trying to meticulously build it from the start. Most of the time, I have no idea what my next scene will be, or what the characters will encounter, so I try not to get bogged down in the writing or the transitions until later drafts. It’s like racing through a dark forest and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Once I reach the end, I go back and reconstruct the journey. The first draft is more than an outline, but far less than a book. I’ve learned to embrace that process, rather than fight against it.

You are a very socially connected author. Is it a necessary evil or do you love tweeting and pinning?

Ha, I don’t feel very social, so I suppose it’s a necessary evil. But I do love talking about writing and reading, and connecting with other authors and readers. And I definitely don’t like tweeting. Twitter is the angriest place on earth.

Brett you’re hard at work on your second novel, Ren. First was it intentional on your part to pick one word titles? Second, can you give us any hints about the book?

It wasn’t intentional, no, but it goes with the simplicity of the writing, and my life in general. Also, I usually cringe whenever I see a book title longer than two words. If an author needs five or ten words to present a book, that alone tells me a lot about what to expect from the work that follows.

Ren is the name of the main character and will be the start of a series. It’s more of a commercial thriller than Noise, and it’s written in third-person past tense, which is more traditionally acceptable, not to mention easier to write in. But it’s also a more complex work, with more characters and subplots. So, harder to write, in that respect. There will be similarities in tone and characterizations, but Noise is intentionally simple and sparse, whereas Ren is a more faceted work—with more depth and activity—but I still try to keep it short, likely still less than popular trade length.

Brett there are two different schools of writers those who are readers and those who are not. Which one are you?

I’m a reader…I think you have to be, but I’m very picky, and think nearly all of the books I read are at least twice as long as they need to be. I’ve learned to tell if a paragraph is necessary just from reading the first line, and I often skip passages that add nothing to the work or, worse yet, serve as a distraction. If an author describes a red barn to me, at length, and I later find out it has nothing to do with the story, I feel like he or she has stolen my time, even in otherwise enjoyable books. So yes, I’m a reader, and always looking for recommendations.

Brett thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions, good luck on this and all your future novels too!

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MEET BRETT:

Brett Garcia Rose is a writer, software entrepreneur, and former animal rights soldier and stutterer. He is the author of two books, Noise and Losing Found Things, and his work has been published in Sunday Newsday Magazine, The Barcelona Review, Opium, Rose and Thorn, The Battered Suitcase, Fiction Attic, Paraphilia and other literary magazines and anthologies. His short stories have won the Fiction Attic’s Short Memoir Award (Second Place), Opium’s Bookmark Competition, The Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction, and have been nominated for the Million Writer’s Award, Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. Rose travels extensively, but calls New York City home.

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