Tom Strelich - Lyrical, Satirical, and Genre-Defying Novel

Strelich was born into a family of professional wrestlers and raised in Bakersfield, California, and his writing career began on a dare from a theatre director. His plays include BAFO (Best and Final Offer) which was commissioned by and had its world premiere at South Coast Repertory and its New York premiere at the American Place Theatre (APT); Dog Logic, which also had its world premiere at South Coast Repertory and went on to win a Kennedy Center Fund For New American Plays award for its New York premiere at the APT; and Neon Psalms, which won the Dramatists Guild/CBS New Play Award for its world premiere at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and its New York premiere at the APT. Honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant for playwrights and commissions from South Coast Repertory and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Strelich has one screen credit, Out There (Showtime) and his novel, Dog Logic was published in October 2017 and has since won several awards. As our Author of the Day, he tells us all about this novel. Please give us a short introduction to what Dog Logic is about It’s about a guy, Hertell Daggett, who discovers a time capsule in his backyard. However, his backyard happens to be a failing pet cemetery on the outskirts of Bakersfield, and the time capsule happens to be full of people who’ve been living in a massive underground complex beneath his pet cemetery since 1963 due to some bad information that got about the end of the world. He brings the Kennedy-era, mid-century civilization into our glorious, mystifying, and often dismaying modern world. It’s a lyrical, satirical, genre-defying romp. What inspired you to write about a duck-and-cover civilization that gets to discover the modern world? I’d read a story about a stone-age tribe discovered somewhere in the Amazon, back in the ‘60s I think, and their introduction to the modern world and civilization. So I basically transposed that story to the 60’s (our equivalent to the Stone Age) to explore, contrast and otherwise satirize the current cultural/social/political landscape. Why did you pick 1963 - now as the time period for this alternate society to develop and eventually emerge? It was the year Kennedy was assassinated, which was the triggering event for the duck-and-cover civilization to duck-and -cover and hide beneath the earth to preserve the civilization as it was at that time under the assumption that WWIII was about to begin, It was also a cultural pivot point in the US: the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s rights movements, flower power, the counter-culture, etc. all followed in the mid and late 60s and all the way up to the present day. Hertell’s discovery of what were the cultural equivalent of prehistoric ants preserved in amber allowed the story to play with what would happen if a culture from the mid-century USA was dropped into the present. You based Dog Logic on a play. Tell us more about this. The play had the same setting and main characters as the novel and had successful productions in New York and LA. But sometimes as a writer, you create a character that’s so interesting, that you want to take them on a new adventure. And I had a character like that with Hertell Daggett, the lead character in Dog Logic, the play. I wanted to take him on a new adventure, a more epic adventure than I ever could in a play given the practical and production limitations you have in live theatre. So I combined elements of the play, the setting, and characters, with a whole new story, the discovery of a duck-and-cover civilization, and went epic from there. Please give us three good-to-know facts about you. Bagpiper, pilot, and failed botanist What was your greatest challenge when working on Dog Logic? The same challenge every writer faces, time to write. There’s never enough of it. Why did you title this book "Dog Logic”? It’s in the book but here’s a hint… First of all the book is not about dogs. Second of all, dogs have no appreciation of death, the way we do. Readers have compared your characters to that of Thomas McGuane and your plot to that of Edgar Allan Poe. Which authors inspire you? Nobody you’d expect… Cervantes (Don Quixote), Jaroslav Hasek (a really funny satirical Czech writer, the Good Soldier Svejk), Voltaire (Zadig, Candide), Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). I’ve never read any Tom McGuane and I hope I'm flattered by the comparison. How did you conceive of the unique way the story is told? It comes from my background as a playwright, where the emphasis is on dialog and language, and then my experience as a screenwriter where the emphasis is on creating visuals in the reader’s mind. Is there something that compels you to write? And do you find that writing helps you achieve clarity about yourself or ideas you've been struggling with? Not compelled really, it’s just fun to do and really gratifying. I’m not wrestling any internal demons, just enjoying exploring the human experience and reflecting on it. Did you plan out this story before you started writing, or did most of it just "happen" along the way? No real planning or outlining. It was really fun because I never knew what was going to happen. It kind of revealed itself to me, (and surprised me on many occasions) as I was writing it. What are you working on right now? I just finished the sequel to Dog Logic. It’s called Water Memory and it picks up 10 years after the end of Dog Logic. It’s coming out in November, and it’s even more satirically epic than Dog Logic. Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you? Just drop me a line at www.tomstrelich.com