Unfiltered Smoke

by Mike Romard

Jordan Stewart is a writer living in Saint John, NB. His latest book, Greetings! From Gumdrop Mountain, is a collection of 22 short stories available from Loose Teeth Press.

Disclosure: Jordan and I are both members of a writer’s group called The Vagabond Trust.

Mike Romard: So tell us about Greetings! From Gumdrop Mountain. How did this book come to be?

Jordan Stewart: Uh well I guess it started when I decided to take a break from writing poetry and start writing short stories. Since I’m an attention whore I needed a place online to post them so I set up brokenchairessays.com and tried to update it as often as possible. About 6 months in, Mike Lecky messaged me asking me if I wanted to cull these little beasts into a little book. Since I like making books and not paying for it, I agreed. We hammered out some details like a loose theme, title and some art. Then I waited a while and a box showed up with some books with my name on them.

Mike Lecky from Loose Teeth Press, that is.

MR: You’ve got a few websites, and you seem to put a lot of your work online. A lot of authors and would-be authors are really uncomfortable doing that sort of thing. Is this something that ever worried you?

JS: No it never has really. I’ve never really had a professional mindset with my writing or been worried much about plagiarism. Even with brokenchairessays, I just put them online without a second thought. Firstly, it directly resulted in a publishing deal, and secondly if some dude wants to steal a couple stanzas from me to impress his friends, or pass creative writing, or maybe get laid, well, you know, good for him. I mean, I hope he dies and lives eternity in a flaming hell and all that, but what am I really gonna do about it, you know?

I can understand writers not being comfortable with it though and I don’t know, maybe just stick an “All Rights Reserved, 2010″ at the bottom or something.

MR: So, some of the stories in this collection are from brokenchairessays, but not all of them. Do the other stories in Gumdrop Mountain appear elsewhere, or is this their debut?

JS: All the ones not on Broken Chair are brand new for the book. I wanted to have as many new ones as I could get in there to make it worthwhile to regular Broken Chair readers.

MR: Were the new stories written with the book in mind? Like, were you working towards the loose theme when they were written? Or were these stories that you had already written, but hadn’t yet published?

JS: The book’s theme isn’t so much a theme as an excuse to write ridiculous stories. Having a theme of “This is a place where crazy things happen all the time” is a pretty easy one to work with. Anyway, by the time we had that figured out I sort of took a break from submitting to broken chair and wrote with the intention of putting ‘em in the book and finishing that up.

MR: And a lot of crazy things do happen here. You’ve got a world where yard sales get broken up by SWAT teams. You’ve got Hugh Grant shoplifting. You’ve got bicycle rain. You’ve got an escaped mental patient at the grocery store. And that’s just scratching the surface of the crazy. What draws you to writing this particular sort of story?

JS: I’m a pretty huge fan of books and stories and movies that present a future, or an alternate reality where things are similar, but not quite the same. Where things are very human, but with a twist. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, for example, we’re presented with a picture of humans in the future where everything is somewhat the similar, except that books are very much outlawed. The occupation of fireman gets re-written to show up and burn books instead of put out house fires. It’s insane, and weird and beautiful. It’s that small twist of insanity that I try to recreate in my stories with illegal yard sales or wine drinking robots, or suicidal grizzly bears.

MR: You mention Bradbury. Who (or what) else influences your writing?

JS: Hmm, I’d say Vonnegut would be of the more influential of writers, but it’s hard to say really. It’s hard to pinpoint one writer or musician or source of inspiration. I get inspiration from a lot of different places all the time. One of the biggest influences for me has been my writer’s group The Vagabond Trust, and just hearing those drunkards spout the poetic greatness week after week.

Also the guy who writes the “Herman” comic everyday in the paper. He inspires me with how terrible his comic is, and how I must try to make my art better than his.

MR: That’s a pretty admirable goal.

So what’s next for you? Are you working on anything new?

JS: I’m kind of going the other way again, back to poetry for a bit. I’m working on a long poem for the Vagabond Trust compilation I think. Poetry is harder than I remember it though, so we’ll see. Other than that I want I want to start updating tiredeyes.net again daily and brokenchairessays when the inspiration strikes. Just writing more in general and probably drinking more.

MR: Cool. Just one last question. What’s your favourite story in Gumdrop Mountain?

JS: Hmm good question. Probably Red on Red or Little White Mug I guess.

MR: Jordan, thanks for taking the time this today.

JS: Mike, it’s been my pleasure. I love you.