Fictionaut Five: Nick Antosca

“The funniest books I’ve ever read are Lolita and American Psycho,” Nick Antosca confesses in an interview with Tao Lin. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Elizabeth Hand describes his second novel Midnight Picnic (Word Riot), a book based on dreams and set in the afterlife, as “a riveting and terrifying 21st Century Book of the Dead that’s one of the most frightening novels I’ve read in years.” Midnight Picnic, just released, is the followup to Antosca’s 2006 novel Fires.

Nick blogs at brothercyst, and you can watch him read at KGB and listen to him talk to Ed Champion on the Bat Segundo Show. His latest story on Fictionaut is “There They Are! Here They Come!”

Here’s the book trailer, and below it, Nick’s answers to the Fictionaut Five.

If you weren’t a writer, how would you spend your time?

If I weren’t a writer, I’d sell drugs of questionable legality (not street drugs, but not FDA-approved drugs; the kind of drugs that are manufactured in one factory in Brazil) over the internet and not pay taxes on my income. Then I’d sit around and make a real effort to master social skills, just master them, so I could anticipate how people would react to almost anything.

Which book do you wish you’d written?

The Known World by Edward P. Jones would be good because it’s an excellent book and it made some money. Hm, um. Towelhead by Alicia Erian. Everything is Illuminated, which a certain subset of indie writers love to whine and cry about and hate for some reason, but which is a very good book and was read by many people. Waterland by Graham Swift, because it’s excellent.

What are the websites you couldn’t live without?

http://themoviebox.net/trailers
http://www.ted.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://htmlgiant.com/
http://jezebel.com/
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/

What are you working on now?

It is bad form and bad luck to talk about projects while the first draft is still incomplete, but I am working on a number of new writing projects, and I’m very excited about them.

Can you recommend a favorite story on Fictionaut?

“Virginity” by Scott Garson is pleasing. Stories titled “Virginity” have a good history. Gombrowicz has one, I think.