Today I’m happy to host Andrew H. Kuharevicz, author, poet, editor, blogger, and book-buyer and manager for the indie bookstores The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague, Michigan, and The Book Nook Too in downtown Muskegon. Andrew is also the editor-in-chief of West Vine Press. He is the author of many volumes of poetry and prose, including most recently Okay Birds Quiet Please, a book of poems; Pickpocket of Reality, his fourth poetry and prose collection; and the novel, The Future Book of War, the final volume of the Adventures of a Dying Young Man series.
Recently I posed some questions to Andrew. Here’s what he told me.
DL: Could you tell us a little about yourself?
AHK:A little about myself? What … self? Ok, where to start. Right off the bat a very loaded question but here I go:
I’m an American citizen, a human and all around pretty normal sorta guy who lives in a sleepy sorta town in Michigan named Montague. I run a bookstore called, The Book Nook & Java Shop. In my opinion, one of the best indie bookshops in the world. I’m biased but yeah, we’re on the smaller side but we do move a lot of books. There’s a full bar and a stage, which in non-pandemic years features author readings and music three or five days a week. Basically, my life feels like a dream. I mean I get to sell books for a living, something numerous people said wasn’t possible in the modern United States economy.
Today, I live a much different life than I did when I was younger. Instead of a wandering writer where I prepared for chaos each day I woke up, I now live a somewhat reasonable stable existence, I’m a father to two great kids, Sawyer (2) and Lucy (6 weeks), so they keep my wife and me pretty darn busy. Often it feels like real life is the novel, and that somehow, I just ended up here.
Prior to the Book Nook, I worked in a crazy pharmacy for a couple years in Downtown Muskegon, but before that I traveled the country as an idealistic young writer for about ten years. That happened after I moved to Ann Arbor and was fired from a job at a wine store. Back then I wanted to write and not sell wine, drink wine, not sell wine. I wasn’t ready to settle down yet so getting the boot I got on the road. I graduated from Western Michigan University, majoring in Sociology and Criminal Justice, with a minor in philosophy. Furthering my education, because I didn’t want to get stuck in my hometown, I started grad school studying Philosophy of the Mind. I dropped out, though, by the second semester because get this, I just wanted to write.
I grew up in Roosevelt Park in Muskegon, going to Catholic School from grades 1-12. Other than my parents, my grandmother was the most important person in my life. She was one of the only people who would sit and listen to me read my material. But writing isn’t something I developed when I was young. My first love was baseball, and during the summer I’d ride my bike every day with the other kids in the neighborhood to the little league field and we’d play until sunset. I continued playing baseball in high school and my first year of college.
During my last semester in university, The Stranger by Albert Camus was assigned by a criminology professor. I stayed up all night devouring the book, and when I got to the end, I decided that I was going to be a writer. After that I lived in many states, and worked many strange jobs. As they say, it’s a long and winding road, but I’ll stop there.
DL: Tell us about your latest books and works in progress.
AHK: Most recently, the end of 2019, I published a big novel that I worked on for about six years, The Future Book of War. It’s a stand-alone novel that takes place in the world of the main protagonist named Henry Oldfield. You can call it a series because he is featured in more than one book I’ve written, but you don’t have to read any others to enjoy the others. Each of the five novels that make up The Adventures of a Dying Young Man Saga is a complete story with a beginning and an end. But if you want to know more, you can read another one, which layers the story with a fuller picture. The overall story is about a boy born dumb who wanders the last years of what we know as the United States before it becomes something different and new. The Future Book of War is a book I’m very proud of and was influenced by Kurt Vonnegut and also, e.e. Cummings’s The Enormous Room.
Other than my novel-length books, I also work on poetry, mostly spontaneous and in the vein of the Beat Generation. My most recent book-bound publication was a book titled Pickpocket of Reality, words about Manhattan, where I go just about every year for the Book Expo. Inside of Pickpocket of Reality you’ll read words about cats and there’s also poems about water, writing, and running a bookshop during the technological age. Basically, just life ya dig.
Also, my best-selling collection is a book that I got to read in the Village in Manhattan at this Lit-Pub named The KGB. It was the highlight of my writing career reading with other poets and friends at a place that is rich with so much history of great writers. The book I was reading from is called Okay Birds Quiet Please, and is more of the same. Just a book about writing, the love of life and the world at large, as well as the society we live in. It’s full of contradictions, just as we as a people are. It’s about silence and the moment before you start the tap… tap … tap, which is what I call typing on a typewriter.
Lastly, and briefly, I’ll be having a new book coming out in the next couple months. It’s a mix of creative nonfiction, poetry and journalism, typed up on a typewriter and titled, In Madness We Spring: Novel Words During A Pandemic. It tells the story of the first days of the Covid-19 outbreak up until the Michigan Stay at Home Order ended. It’s from the perspective of a small business owner and the pandemic, really uncharted and crazy times; In Madness We Spring will be out the end of September/Early October, published by West Vine Press, an indie from Michigan, for which I also act as an editor.
DL: Why do you write? What do you hope to accomplish with your writing?
AHK: The question why I write is a good question. Also, a question I’ve forgotten about as my writing life has aged. So, I’ve written or edited in ninety-five percent of the days that make up the last ten years or so of my life. Hemingway said (and I paraphrase) that a writer is only a writer if they write, also, that when you are a writer you should restrain from talking so much. So maybe that’s why I write. To communicate with both myself and my expanded human family.
Writing is of course artistic, but art is still created for some kind of cause. A reason, if you will, and as you get older you often forget about the why; simply, art becomes part of you, a routine, something you do, like breathing, there’s always a reason but when it becomes habit, the reason disappears. Like brushing your teeth. Not sure if that’s a good answer, but I write to see what’s going on. I write to dig into my mind. I write to have fun. I write to talk and I write to predict the future. Ha.
Honestly, I write because I love to write, and as far as what I want to accomplish with my writing, well, back when I was just starting out I did it because I wanted to be the best writer to ever live. How outrageous is that? I was young and words were magic back then. I wanted to write the Great American Novel, living a life like Hunter S. Thompson and Henry Miller had done. Of course, that was naïve, but I had one hell of a time believing that was possible. But these days I just want to release books and try and get better with every new project I start. Being a specific type of writer, a so-called big-time successful author, isn’t Important to me, I just want to write and the only way to accomplish that is by, well, writing.
DL: Please talk about your writing process. Where do your ideas come from? What is your favorite part of the process? Least favorite?
AHK: I have two ways I write. One for long-form (fiction, novel, short stories, and creative nonfiction) and another process for poetry.
For long-form writing projects, first, I mentally prepare for the writing process weeks and sometimes months before I even start the first draft. In the morning on some random day, I come up with a story in my head, I think it over, and play it out in my mind. I let it simmer if you will. Then when I’m ready to write, I pick a typewriter, each new book I write needs a new typewriter, one just right, fitting of the vibe if that’s possible, one to match the feeling of the story I’m going to tell.
Then, I place the typewriter somewhere in an isolated room, with no internet, no distractions, nature can be there but that’s it. Next, I place a blank piece of paper in, and just start typing. No breaks, little care for spelling and punctuation; I type for one straight hour every day until the story is done. I end each session during the first draft when I know what will happen next, so tomorrow I can pick up where I last ended and have no road blocks following the story.
It takes a good year for the first draft. Often more than one, and when I’m done there’s a stack of paper that I take and copy-write/edit into the second draft into the computer. After that’s done I edit it again multiple times and pick out a good font and change the size of the paper. Writing a long-form book is like sculpting, or building a good house, it takes time.
When I was in college, my friend who taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, said he liked my writing, but I needed to learn to edit more. So, I took that to heart and now my favorite part of the writing process is editing, I don’t know why, most writers say they dislike that aspect but to me that’s when what you’ve written really becomes something real, a world in-itself, self-sustaining with ozone and all.
As far as my poetry, I use whatever I have. I sketch ideas and pseudo-haikus down in notepads, type some disorganized poetics on a typewriter, write on my hand if I have an aha moment.
Writing poetry is like journalism to me, most of the truest pieces I’ve written have happened during the waiting moments of life, such as in airports, on flights, waiting for the bus, or just sitting by Lake Michigan for fifteen minutes during the middle of the afternoon. I can write a poem anywhere, it’s much freer than the long-form writing process.
DL: Could you reflect a bit on what writing or being a writer has meant for you and your life?
AHK: The label of being a writer means nothing to me. I write because I like to do it. I have things to say, stories to tell, so I say and write them. But if I try to give you a better answer…
Writing has made me who I am, opened my mind, refined my critical thinking skills, opened up the world, like a Copernican Revolution, and it’s humbled me, connected me to other writers and poets all around the world. Writing has created a path for me, and writing, it’s how I ended up here, today, now.
DL: What are links to your books, website, and blog so readers can learn more about you and your work?
AHK: Below are links to my blog, and my publisher, West Vine Press; a Facebook page of the creative process of my current project; and direct links where you can purchase some books if you’d like to.
Andrew H. Kuharevicz blog: adventuresinamericanwriting.com
The Future Book of War: https://www.buybooknookbooks.com/product/the-future-book-of-war-by-andrew-h-k-/4662?cs=true
Pickpocket of Reality: https://www.buybooknookbooks.com/product/pickpocket-of-reality-by-andrew-k-/4794?cs=true
Okay Birds Quiet Please: https://www.buybooknookbooks.com/product/okay-birds-quiet-please-by-andrew-k/4795?cs=true
More can be found here . . . go to Buy Books Here and scroll to bottom of page: westvinepress.com
The Novel streaming first draft From Author Andrew H. K.: https://www.facebook.com/thenovelahk/
Donald Levin's Blog 