Author Interviews

Author's Interview

Let's start with you telling us a little bit about yourself, Mick.
Born in West Germany 1949 but came to America in 1952. Struggled through the Lower East Side, fighting and being taunted but mostly running away from everyone I wandered into. Dropped out of high school and worked in all sorts of dumb jobs but finally got my life together where I entered Columbia University and five years later graduated. Didn’t do much with my degree, had a few necktie jobs but the need to write had grown too intense until I finally quit the straight necktie world and did what I wanted to do, that is be a writer.

Of course, it was hard to do; I had saved some money to get me by but after a few months the money started dwindling and I was forced to take dumb jobs again, below my Columbia education but work that at least gave me the peace and unconcern, allowing me to get back to my writing. Was a house cleaner, bookstore clerk, circus roadie and rock show somewhat-electrician, just meaningless jobs which allowed me to pay the rent and put food on my table and get on with my real work, which was to be a writer.

What would people be most surprised to learn about you?
That I do all my typing with my left index finger, the right side of my body is sort of paralyzed. In 1998 I had a stroke with knocked me out and put me in a coma for three weeks, when I woke up I’d didn’t know anything and had to relearn everything from scratch you might say, kaka and pee all over me. But I learned all the baby notions about myself, and relearned how to walk (somewhat) and talk, and eventually relearned how to type again but with one finger, since being a writer is what I had been doing before in my life. I had a few publications and had completed a novel, which took over twenty years in seeing it published, Holy Communion, which went on the win the Lambda Award Bisexual Fiction 2009. http://www.holycommunionanovel.com/. After that I won the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction 2012, The Facialist (see below), plus I have another under consideration for 2014, Sissy Godiva, the winner is to be announced later next year, wish me luck. So you see my stroke proved very beneficial to me.

When did you start writing, is it something you've always been interested in, or did it develop later in life?
Writing has always been a part of me but with Vienna Dolorosa I believe I found my voice http://viennadolorosa.com/ it took me three years to write, and by then I was mentally and physically exhausted. Anyway, I always kept a notebook in my pocket as I wandered the streets and jotted everything I saw in my daily observation. These notebooks were set aside as another was picked up and I quickly forgot it, the notebook or pages weren’t so important to me the process of writing was, I was learning to do it and always have it at hand.

Has it been everything you thought it would be or not?
Of course but I also think it has been a neurosis, a kind of sickness, a drive, an obsession that I can’t stop in doing it. I’ve been doing it all my life and don’t see myself as doing anything else. Maybe collect stamps or take up knitting? I don’t think so.

How did it feel when you realized that your very first book was going to be published?
It wasn’t so much that first book that amazed me but my first story to see in print. When I got word that my story, The Dildo, was to see print in Avalon Rising, a small publication in Ohio, I was ecstatic and practically speechless, so flabbergasted was I. Those few weeks after that I literally was walking on air and I knew I could face anything, I now was a writer and someone was agreeing with me! That small zine went out of print many years ago but the story has been republished in my book 100 Whores, a collection of stories and tales of straights, gays and lesbians all of them after one thing, to get laid. http://100whores.com/

What's your favourite part of writing a book?
The part where you finally know what will happen next, sort of about the first 100 pages when the entire story is still up in the air, when it becomes clear to me.  That takes me about 100 pages before I feel that the story is mine and I come upon it so out of nowhere, like it just was waiting for me. Of course now comes the writing and rewriting, scraping and doing again on and on. That I really love, the rewriting.

Do you get time to read for pleasure? If so, which books do you enjoy?
Oh yes, I pretty much enjoy reading anything. My last book read was American Hipster by Hilary Holladay, about the early sleazy characters who hung out in old Times Square in the 1940s and 50s, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs with one character, Herbert Huncke, ‘who inspired the Beat Movement’ and opened up the world of the experimental 1960s. You can read my review in http://mydem.blogspot.com/ along with others.

Are there any other genres you'd be interested in writing?
I don’t think so, what I’m writing now I pretty much want to be there, the 1960-70s, and explore as much of that period as I can.

Please tell us a little about your most recent release.
Sissy Godiva is a full length novel about a boy in the 1960s finding himself fascinated by another boy who he knows is a transvestite, Sissy Godiva. The book isn’t so much about her but him as he finally accepts what he is, a gay young man. It was submitted to Lambda a few weeks ago; here’s hoping it is a good one!

What can we look forward to in the future from you?
I really don’t know, the stories I write may seem to be straightforward but they usually take me in directions I had no clue I was after. Writing a new book is all in the word new, and all I can do is follow. I never though I’d do it but in my last, A Ukrainian Melody, Sort Of…, I went back to my childhood where I explore the people of my Lower East Side neighbourhood, especially one lovely sexy young lady, or is she really that young? Read it and find out. It will be published in the future.

Anything you want to say to your readers?
All I can say is, “Thank you very much for reading my books!” The knowledge of you doing that is like my first acceptance letter taking on my story The Dildo, nowadays I’m not as giddy as I once was but for a moment that thrill comes over me to where I can breathe out, “Ahhh…”

Mycola Dementiuk's recent releases:
https://sizzlereditions.com/times-square-queer-paperback-collection-with-bonus-material-by-mykola-dementiuk/
http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=981
http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=589

 
Excerpt from Sissy Godiva:
 
The Lower East Side was crawling with drunks and party people going after whatever they could get on Friday nights. No bar turned a drinker away—they might check some kid’s phony ID—but after glancing at it they’d let you in, as long as you had some kind of ID.

So one Friday I stood outside the Giddy Up! on Avenue A. I stood looking at the women, transvestites really, some dressed like hookers, others like elegant movie stars, as they went inside. As usual, my dick was stiff and eager for satisfaction. I stood in a nearby doorway and the six-foot bouncer kept looking my way, finally dismissing me as unimportant. I was glad I he’d dismissed me. I was always trying to be invisible.

I finally saw beautiful Sissy Godiva coming down the street. My penis had been aching for her the past few days and I instantly grew harder. It was like an ocean wave pushing aside the inconsequential things in my life and leaving nothing but her. At first I thought she was wearing pants, but then I saw she was wearing dark pantyhose that barely covered her skimpy panties. She wore a small bra, like a girl’s training bra, on her flat chest. My mouth fell open and I started drooling. Sissy melted, oozed, gelled down the street. I stood up from my slouch, certain that she’d recognize me, but she just looked at me and kept walking. Christ! Suddenly she turned back.

“Oh, my God, it’s Vinnie!” she shrieked, rushing at me, then grabbing my face and kissing me. “He saved my life, carried me down four flights of stairs in a burning building and saved my life! Oh, my God, I love him so much!” She planted wet kisses on my face, and I did what came naturally: I kissed her back. We finally broke from each other, exhausted, but she kept saying “he saved my life” to everyone who passed by. “Carried me out of a burning building, risked his own life to save mine.” Some people looked, some nodded and smiled, others just glared and went their way.

I grinned and felt myself blush. “It wasn’t really burning, just smoky. A little fire, nothing big,” I said, shrugging off her praises.

She shook her head, dismissing my words. “So bad that I passed out, me and my girlfriend Tonya, but you carried me in your arms,” she blushed, “and we were both naked like little babies. Imagine that, my naked hero!” And she smothered me with kisses. It was great to be the center of attention for once! Though I suspected that she’d had more than a few drinks before she got here. And I knew she was into drugs, too, but I didn’t care.

She pulled me over to the door, winking at the big bouncer. “This is my savior,” she whispered, holding my hand. “He carried me out of a burning building, my hero,” she fluttered her eyelashes so passionately that I felt I really was her savior and that she was in love with me.

“Did he, now?” the bouncer asked, looking me over but lowering the guard rope and winking at Sissy. “My treat, baby,” he said, then leered at me. “Can you carry me out of a burning building, too?” I felt myself blush as I followed Sissy inside, the bouncer laughing behind us.

Country-western music blasted from the jukebox as we walked past men talking and eyeing me. A group of schoolgirls was at the other end of the bar; Sissy pulled me over to them. I lowered my head as I followed, suddenly realizing that they weren’t schoolgirls but guys pretending to be little girls in hopes of getting a big man for some action: the usual Friday night scene.

“Meet Vinnie, my hero,” Sissy gushed, and told the story again. You’ll do that when you’re drunk, you’ll gab and gab all night, telling the same story that no one’s interested in. “He saved me from a burning building and I’ll always be grateful to him.” She pecked my cheek as the schoolgirls sneered and went back to their talking and drinking. Two or three came over, though, looking as exciting as real women with real tits, and gossiped around us.

“Oh, my God,” Sissy squealed, “I love this song!” She shutmm her eyes as she started swaying to Gershwin’s Summertime, sung by Janice Joplin. It couldn’t be a favorite in the Giddy Up! bar, but I felt the song’s erotic mood as Sissy sang and swayed against me. It focused my attention on sex, made me want to fuck her, and fuck her right there!

Sissy rubbed against my crotch and I shut my eyes and swayed with her, our two hard dicks straining to reach each other. Sweat poured between our bodies. I ejaculated, and I’m sure she did, too, spilling onto ourselves, cuming in our clothes and with each other.

When the music stopped and a steel guitar started up, we were braced against each other, lost in our closeness, our bodies pressed together and our arms around each other, feeling that nothing would ever tear us apart.

“Let’s got out of here,” Sissy shouted, finishing her rumand Coke. “I wanna be alone with you.”

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