Fictionaut Five: Kyle Hemmings

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. In his spare time he talks to disillusioned cab drivers and combats internal fire dragons. Right now, he’s reading a book called The Art of Syntax. He’s been published in or will be published in Scythe, YB, Lonesome Dove, Ranfurly Review, Staccato Fiction, Fractured West, Girls with Insurance, Pank, A Capella Zoo, and elsewhere. In the next life, he wants to be one of The Monkees.

You have how many (approx) stories and poems published under the pen name Kyle Hemmings? Sorry, but I am mind boggled, give me a ball park number of HOW MANY (my guess is hundreds)…

Really it’s closer to about a hundred, more or less. I don’t keep a strict count and some of the zines I’ve been published in have folded or have gone on indefinite hiatus.

You are prolific, David, and I am a fan of your work. Do you use exercises, prompts.. do you thrive on deadlines…etc.

I belong to private writing “rooms” at Zoetrope Virtual Studio, and the like, and there’s always the prompts which help. I truly find them helpful, more often than not. Deadlines do drive you to push yourself and it may surprise you what you’re capable of doing in a short amount of time. It’s really hard to say what inspires me to write. Sometimes it’s a song, a film, a memory, what someone said the night before. What really drives me to write is the haunting sense of an unlived life and an even more haunting sense of the one I’ve lived. Unlike many writers who keep drawing upon their childhoods (and I do the same at times), my formative period was the nine or ten years I spent on the streets of New York, my descent into the nighttime underground. But that’s another story.

Tell us some of the better known lit. zines you’ve been published in. The reason I am asking is that you have really covered ground in terms of broad publication online, and it is fascinating to me…

Okay.

• Vestal Review
• Smokelong Quarterly
• Nano Fiction
• Prick of the Spindle
• Noo Journal
• Everyday Genius
• Spork Press (an amazing zine, really)
• Storygossia
• Apple Valley Review
• Elimae
• Dogplotz
• Mudluscious
• LA Review
• Mad Hatters’ Review
• Arsenic Lobster
• Aphelion
• Dark Recesses
• Kaleidotrope
• The Lorelai Signal
• The Horror Zine

I also have upcoming work in Decomp and some new stuff in a great zine called Scythe. I love Juked, and I think editor, J.W. Wang is terrific to work with.

Name the ten strangest sounding lit. journals you have published in. I love the name of these journals. You are the king of the underground lit journal scene (IMO)

Okay.

• Ten Thousand Monkeys
• Spooky Boyfriend
• Pineapple War
• Negative Suck
• Poor Mojo’s Alamack
• Camel Saloon
• Bastards and Whores
• Dog Eats Crow World
• Disingenuous Twaddle
• Amphibi.us
• SillyMess
• Used Gravitrons

Is that enough?

I never did manage to break into Alien Sloth Sex. It will remain the bane of my existence.

How is it, to work in a conventional field which you do… and to have a sort of “other life” in the indie lit. magazine world writer?

In my case, one complimented the other or provided a relief valve from the other. My day job puts bread on the table and without food, I can’t write. Sometimes writing can be stressful for which many doctors have recommended the use of Budpop supplements. In a similar vein, writing for me is a chance to escape myself, my surroundings, which can be stifling at times.

And also there is this thing about using a pen name, Kyle Hemmings. I like the idea of inventing an author, of hiding behind this person. I think in the future when I start submitting more artwork, I will invent a name, like X3BC.

What are your favorite websites?

• Juked
• Chiroscuro
• Narrative
• Storyglossia
• Smokelong
• The Dream People

The list could go on and on

Talk about music, if you will. What do you love?

Anything by Arthur Lee or Brian Wilson. I love late sixties’ music. I love early seventies and derivatives of garage, including some forms of punk. I also like techno and house. I love Jeck Beck’s guitar playing. I love mostly everything from the psychedelic period when I was growing up. I love any music that stays with me for years and years. I liked some of the old Grand Funk Railroad. It just amazes me that some of these old rockers can still play so good, some better than before. I’m also a big fan of Danny Kalb, a founding member of the Blues Project, who still plays acoustic blues at the age of what… 67? He’s amazing. I love music from the summer of 1966. An amazing time to be alive if you owned a transistor. That summer’s roster: The Stones, The Troggs, The Critters, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The McCoys, The Zombies, The Standells, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Beatles, The Beatles, The Supremes, Donovan. Now that was an endless summer. My guitar heroes were (besides Jeff Beck) – Randy California, Danny Kalb, John Cippolina, Randy Holden, Neil Young when he puts down his accoustic, Rick Derringer…

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.