The Illustrated Hen - Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the book?

A: I play a lot of Scrabble and Bananagrams, and I used to read science fiction when I was a kid.  I remember having a vivid imagination, and I did a lot of daydreaming. I really enjoyed old movies too (in those days they weren’t really all that “old” – now they’re “classic”).

As an adult I began to read more books about science, particularly quantum physics, and books or articles about consciousness.

So I decided I wanted to put all of those experiences into a novel.

Q: Why did you write it in a short-story style?

A: I’ve been reading short stories most of my life; short stories were my first introduction to reading – O. Henry for example. I progressed to reading novels, and it did seem like those were two very different formats.  But I also read serialized works like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar  and the John Carter of Mars series, which had the same characters but different stories in different books. 

When I read Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and then The Illustrated Man, I saw how a series of seemingly unrelated short stories could present a unified theme, and could even present a consistent framework for a larger story. It could be loose, but still fit together in a single book format.

And if you think of life as a series of events, some of which are predictable, and some of which are random, it does seem a bit chaotic, but our minds see patterns, or assume patterns are there, and it’s possible for a story to emerge from what appears to be chaos.  So I wanted to use that loose structure to present a single story. 

I also wanted to explore how powerful the imagination is, and present a story about the fantasies and illusions of a young man as he tries to cope with growing up. The stories alternate between the “realities” (using that term loosely!) of Ray’s life and his inner world. Each story represents an attempt to put his life into perspective so he can move forward. 

And that’s similar to what I do, and probably everybody else too – they put the events of their life – all those personal short stories - into a particular perspective. So I’ve written short stories over the years (parts of the Hen were written decades ago, starting in 1976 at the Clarion writers workshop) and I finally got around to understanding what those stories meant to me at particular times, and reinterpreted them into a whole, with the perspective of a lifetime of experience.

And that’s what everybody does – they express their life events as a story – their story.  My job as a writer was to find a way to tell the story so that as many people as possible could relate to it, but still keep it unique.

  

Q: What is your favorite story in the book?

A:  Well it depends on my mood.  For me the book really is a novel, and even though it’s in the form of short stories, some of which are allegories or fables, it’s still one whole piece. And I tend to think in terms of how the character transitions from one moment in time to the next, so it’s more a question of which event or transitional point intrigues me. But if I had to answer definitively I would say “The Reckoning”.

Q: Who is your favorite character and why?

A: That would be Ray, because it’s his story.

Q: What challenged you the most in writing it?

A: The shifting perspectives, and the way the story deals with time.

Q: Why the metaphor of The Hen? What does it really mean in the story’s context?

A: A chicken is a simple creature, quite common, and I thought it would be fun to play with the idea of a chicken becoming a magical entity.  

Q: What was your intention behind breaking traditional rules of grammar and style?

A:  If we look as grammar as a way to highlight and emphasize, as opposed to a rigid set of rules, then I didn’t break much. I think the big thing is to make sure the meaning comes through. And I wanted the reader to have fun reading the stories, and I thought playing around with the grammar would help add some interesting accents.

The elements of style – which in this case are the shifting perspectives, and using different writing styles for different stories – came about organically.  Each story has its own world; the stories connect but each on has its own particular voice, and I wrote it that way because we’re dealing with a protagonist with a very active imagination.

Q: Where can you get a copy of the book?

A: The Illustrated Hen is currently available for pre-sale on the 3L Publishing website (http://3lpublishing.flyingcart.com/?p=detail&pid=103&cat_id=) and releases nationwide on Sept. 1, 2019 on Amazon in print and Kindle; Nook on Barnes and Noble; and iBook via Apple Books.