You couldn’t get enough of him is Issue 50. So let’s get to know him a little better.
Brian Hobbs
Our featured writer for the month of January…
Location?
Florida, where I have avoided the pain of snow for some time now…
How long have you been writing?
Since I was a wee one. I started writing on a Rite Aid pad about dragons and quests and kept going…
What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment as a writer?
I would have to say getting published for the first time in Glass: A Journal of Poetry this year. I have always written “on the side” and never thought I could get published. Now that I have gotten in a few literary magazines and felt part of a writing community, I am honored whenever someone reads my schtuff!
What are you currently working on?
A longer short story called “Hard Touch.” It concerns the theme of touch from an emotional, psychological, and finally physical standpoint. Ultimately, it is about friendships and love, but also how touch helps navigate relationships from the tender caress to the hard slap.
Why do you write?
I thought at first because I had ideas. I have always come up with plots for drawings I did as a child. Now, I think because I feel these characters have voices and things to say and I get to be a conduit for them. I get excited wondering what they might say or do and I feel sometimes like I am just taking dictation.
Tell us about your work published in Crack the Spine.
“My Pal” was lucky enough to get into issue fifty of Crack the Spine. It concerns the friendship of a boy and a very unusual character.
What inspired this work?
To be honest, probably a love for Ray Bradbury and for the unusual and interesting ways flash fiction’s constraints can be ultimately liberating. I love Surrealism and Magical Realism as capital “T” concepts and I love to have them inform the quality of my work.
Favorite Book?
So many, so many! Put me on the spot….one is probably “The Toy Collector” by James Gunn. I love the wrecked romance and nostalgia that so many people find in the collecting of their childhood artifacts. You never get the aura back, but the quest is something that has stayed with me and I have personally participated in. I have a short story named “Nostaglianauts” that is homage to Mr. Gunn.
Favorite Author?
Again, tough one with so many. However, since Crack the Spine drew me in with its challenge of flash fiction, I am going to say Richard Brautigan. His brief and beautiful descriptions, his quirky characters and a sense of immense poetic sadness fill his work. To me, his work is a clown with the sad hat. The clown may be funny, but the hat always sits sad on his head. (Did that make any sense?)
If you could have dinner with one fictional character, who would it be?
Easy one. Madam Bovary. I can’t resist the internal flaws of characters and how they self-destruct. As long as they face it with stoicism and I could admire this while we eat delicate French desserts!
What is your favorite word?
Dunderbate. It is something you say to some upstart before drawing your pistol in a duel of honor.
What else do you have to say for yourself?
Just that I feel lucky and blessed to get a chance to share my writing. I know it is a hard business with tons of talent out there. It is easy to give in to defeat because victory sometimes is unimaginable. I appreciate all my friends, fellow writers, and magazine editors now and in the future that give me a chance! Finally, thanks to my wife and daughter that keep me going to follow this singular, special dream of mine.