The Interview with John Vercher

Author of Devil is Fine

Hi everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Sitting in Silence interview. Talking to writers is always refreshing for me because writers are willing share their honest thoughts and opinions. It’s a fine way to grow one’s spirit. Today’s conversation is with my good friend, the brilliant author and educator, John Vercher.

John’s latest book is Devil is Fine, an Indie Next pick. He also wrote two earlier critically acclaimed novels, Three-Fifths and After the Lights Go Out. John’s writing is always full of nuance and heart, which is not surprising because he’s one of the genuinely nicest people you’d ever be lucky to meet.

I’ll be travelling to a half dozen book festivals in the coming months, including the Brooklyn Book Festival and the Mississippi Book Festival. I hope to see you there.

Thanks to premium subscribers. A record number of new subscribers signed up so far this year. I appreciate your support and hope this means I’m doing something right with all these posts, interviews, and podcasts. Say hi when you have a chance either in the comments or on the Substack app.

Finally, thanks again to all who purchased a copy of my new novel, The American Daughters. I’ve enjoyed encountering readers in the world!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-american-daughters-maurice-carlos-ruffin/20147950?ean=9780593729397

Now, for today’s interview.

Maurice: What are your earliest memories of reading or writing stories?

John: The Scholastic Book fair, when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. Man, when that truck pulled up out in front of the school and they rolled in those folding metal bookshelves…I can still feel the tingling in my chest. Weeks before, I’d filled out those newspaper material order forms and couldn’t wait to take my pile of books home. The Bunnicula series, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and its spin-offs, Choose Your Own Adventure, How to Eat Fried Worms—the list goes on and on—those were the books that sparked my love of reading.

Though I loved books, movies, television—any form of storytelling, really, I didn’t start writing seriously until I was an undergrad. I majored in English Writing after some early success in my composition and creative writing courses.

Maurice: Man, we had similar experiences! The $10 my parents gave me to spend at the book fair in my elementary school library was the highlight of each year for me. I always got the Guinness Book of World Records, Garfield anthologies, and tons of novels. What was it that made you turn to writing your own literature?

John: Yes! I had to have the Guinness Book of World Records every year for some damn reason. Couldn’t tell you what it was then, can’t tell you now. And I had EVERY ONE of those Garfield collections. I think this is a good time to tell your readers about Garfield Minus Garfield. If you know you know—if you don’t, find out.

But you had a question—there wasn’t one thing that turned me toward writing my own literature. Though I loved reading, I never saw writing novel as a potential profession. I had an excellent poetry professor as an undergrad as well as some terrific fiction faculty, but I never conceived I could write a book. Strangely, because of Project Greenlight (the Matt Damon/Ben Affleck project), I thought I’d have a better shot at getting a screenplay produced. The first one I wrote did actually get a read from a few production companies, but I was young and didn’t have the life experience to make the story what it needed to be, so it didn’t go anywhere. I ended up in a physical therapy career for more than a decade, never writing another thing, but never letting go of the story.

Then—and I wish I could say it was some high literary book that brought me back to writing—came The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That book captured my imagination in a way one hadn’t in a long time and awakened that storytelling desire in me with a vengeance. I was already increasingly unhappy with my healthcare work, and my wife knew I needed something else. She encouraged me to return to my writing, to find a program where I could get back what I had lost. I found a low-residency program, turned my old script into a novel, and the rest, as they say…

Maurice: I think the circuitous route is most common, actually. It seems most authors have to rattle around for a few years before they find their number. You've written three critically acclaimed novels--Three-Fifths, After the Lights Go Out, and the newly published Devil is Fine. Talk about how you see that fallow period of ten years. What did that time give you in terms of life experience and gumption?

John: I think the gumption was always there, but I’d buried it under the “responsible” professional job. However, I definitely needed the life experience that wasn’t there when I was in my early twenties, at least not to a level where I could write from an authentic space.

Too, I believe my time in healthcare (preceded by several years in the restaurant industry as a server) helped me understand people in ways I couldn’t when I was a young writer. Being in the service industry, you see how people are very different but also demonstrate recognizable patterns. You learn dialects and pacing and rhythm. You see what makes people happy and/or angry. As a clinician, you see folks at their most vulnerable. When people are in pain, they are often incapable of bullshit. There are rarely any masks. You see them at the worst, and, when they’re better, you can seem that their best. Experiencing and absorbing that range of human emotion couldn’t help but find its way onto the page in my writing.

Maurice: That makes sense. I've had the pleasure of hearing you read from most of your books at this point, so I can say that your work exudes tenderness on the page and when read aloud. Your newest brilliant book Devil is Fine has some of the most emotional moments I've seen between a father and son. I think of that quote from Hemingway, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." To me, a lot of modern writers shun emotion and shy away from vulnerability. How do you get to that place of emotional credibility on the page? Do you have to meditate? Light candles? Play guitar?

John: Wow, I’m going to bask in the beauty of that question for just a second…thank you for that kindness.

I agree with you regarding the shunning of emotions. There have been several books I’ve come away from not feeling anything and, for me, that’s the whole point of writing. That is to say—I’m a pretty passionate person, very much a heart-on-my-sleeve type. No meditation, candles, or guitar needed to get me to a place of high emotion. To write any other way would feel foreign to me, particularly because I’m a fierce advocate of the notion that you should write the book you want to read. The ones I want to read, the ones I’ve gone back to time and time again, are the ones that leave me feeling wrung out (and that can be a good thing) by the time I’ve finished.

Maurice: Devil is Fine is a work of art. You're balancing many plates in the air. There's family turmoil. Deaths. Mental health issues. Historic injustices. And hope for the future. All of it told with nuance and care. From a craft standpoint, how do you decide what to highlight and what to play down?

John: Whew, you’re gonna give a brother a big head if you’re not careful. Thank you again for those kind words.

I’m not sure how much of a conscious decision it is to highlight certain elements while playing down others. I’m often putting my characters through multiple scenarios, dealing with various issues, because—well, that’s life, isn’t it? I can’t remember the last time when I was dealing with only one thing, good or bad, at any given moment. Something is always demanding our time and attention. We’re always shifting in multiple roles, pulled in multiple directions. Even though I was writing through the lens of surrealism, I wanted that much to feel real. In terms of the planning of which situations got more attention on the page, it came down to feel. I’m not an outliner or planner in any sense of either word. I often start with a scene and let the characters within that scene work it out on the page. That said, I do think I have some innate sense of when I might be putting too much on their shoulders, even in the realm of absurdity or satire. It’s only when that internal alarm goes off do I make a conscience effort to pare something back.

Maurice: At the heart of this book, are father and son relationships. We meet your narrator and his son as well as the narrator and his father. There are so many interesting mother daughter relationships in fiction but not as many father son relationships. When you write a story like this what are you working to bring forward about communication between men? Are you pushing against the stereotypes about males lacking emotional intelligence?

John: I’m not sure I go into the story with that intent. There’s a quote from an essay by James Baldwin that I love: “The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.”

I’d like to think that’s what I’m doing in Devil Is Fine, or in anything else I write. I’m interrogating, not answering. Writing toward the questions, not offering solutions. Am I pushing against stereotypes of male communication and emotional intelligence in the process? I guess so. Am I proposing that I somehow have the answers regarding those assumptions? Absolutely not. 

Maurice: I think you're something an inspiration for the readers because you had a very different life before. You worked in restaurants and also for a long time as a physical therapist.  What was that journey like for you? Was it really hard? And how does it feel to be a veteran writer with three acclaimed novels out?

John: I appreciate you for that. I hope so.

Was the journey hard. “Hard” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, especially these days. I’d have a difficult time saying it was hard knowing that even before finding my true passion after working in an industry that wasn’t it, I’m still incredibly privileged to have been on and be on the journey I’m on. So hard? No. Did I/do I have my challenges personally and professionally? For certain. But every one of them is/was a step to what brought me here. I’ve got far too much gratitude to be doing what I’m doing and for the people who helped me get here (present company included) for me to say it was hard.

As to how does it feel—you tell me! Corny and cliché as it sounds, this all still feels very surreal. I wasn’t sure my first book would ever leave my hard drive. To be here just after the release of my third book, talking to an author/authors who I looked up to and now call friend(s)…man, it’s hard to wrap my head around. But I’m trying.

Maurice: I hear that. I tell writers that I work with that your life changes a bunch after you start publishing books. What brings you joy?

John: It really does. I honestly still can’t believe I get to do this.

What brings me joy? Let me count the ways. My wife and sons bring me daily joy. We’re on a constant mission to make each other laugh every day, and invariably at least one of us succeeds.

 Creating, whether it’s writing, cooking, music, drawing (I used to want to be a comic book artist), what have you.

 Spending time talking books and writing with other writers like the Randolph MFA community, which leads into my other great joy—teaching.

 And talking to you!

Maurice: Always good being in community with you!