Can you tell us a little about how you started writing; was it something you have always wanted to do?
I fell into writing quite accidentally. When I was nine, I wrote my first poem, one for my mother in honor of Mother’s Day. She read it and cried. It was called “Mama” and in its silly rhymes I told her how much she meant to me. My father read it next and pretending to be offended, he said, “I know it’s not Father’s Day yet, but would you write me an early poem called “Papa”?
My parents encouraged me right from the start that writing was my gift and the only way to thank God for it was to show I liked the gift by using it.
Two or three years later I started writing short stories. My father was a natural story teller. If he wanted us kids to learn something important, he’d couch it in a kind of make-it-up-as-he-went-along parable. Instead of “Don’t talk back,” he would say, “Once there was this boy, let’s call him Marco, who talked back to his mother so much one day she ran away from home.”
In those early days I also read quite a few comic books. They definitely taught young readers how to write a story!
Please tell us a bit about your latest/upcoming book(s). What inspired it? Is it part of a series?
Flashing My Shorts is the title of my newest book. It’s a collection of 164 short-short stories about life, love, humor, horror, crime, science fiction--name it! I wrote it because it’s the kind of book I myself enjoy reading. In this modern day of rush and run, I am certain others love this kind of book as well. They can read a story or two or three, put the book down, and come back to read some more new stories. Kind of like smorgasbord fare. Tables and tables of one-bite foods to sample. And judging from the many customer reviews at http://www.amazon.com/Flashing-My-Shorts-Salvatore-Buttaci/dp/0984259473 I would say lots of readers are particularly enjoying Flashing My Shorts.
I do intend to write more flash-fiction collections. In fact, I’ve half-written the next one called Flashes of Memory.
Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer?
I am one of the blessed who has had more than a few who influenced me as a writer. First and foremost, my parents. To them I add three English teachers who helped remind me that one needs to learn the craft of writing to be a writer. To do otherwise would be like a pilot taking off from the roof of a building without a plane! He might get lucky and fly, but chances are he won’t make a safe landing. In grade 6 it was Sister Rita Damien who encouraged her students to write and then read their stories in front of the class on rainy lunch hours. My friend George Newman drew pictures to match my stories and while I read them, he’d hold up picture by picture so the class could squint and nod.
In high school it was Sister Marie Augusta whom we called “The Word” for two reasons: “My word!” was her favorite expression, and she loved the words of great literary classics which I pretended to hate so my stickball buddies wouldn’t think badly of me. And lastly there was Dr. David Rogers, my creative-writing professor, who taught me that a writer who does not revise is not a writer at all.
What do you consider to be the key elements of a great story?
A good story is like a well-baked cake: all the ingredients need to be present for it to taste good. I feel the same way about stories. If a writer has a fantastic plot but the characters are weak and indefinable, the plot falls on its face. If the writer does not include foreshadowing early on in the story, often the ending is not acceptable. Readers need to be given some tiny hint of the outcome or, like the ancient Greek playwrights, those writers will be accused of pulling a “deus ex machina,” a contrived resolution nobody saw coming. For a story to be worth reading, it must include the required ingrdients: plot, a character or more, a problem to be resolved, suspense, setting of time and place, point of view, theme, and resolution. A good story also contains a well-balanced mix of narration, dialogue, description, persuasion, and exposition. Of course, all of these requirements become more demanding the shorter the short story.
Could you tell us a little about how you develop your characters?
Because I believe in the need for a strong story opener, a hook to pull in readers right from the getgo, I first come up with a beginning. One sentence. Then I construct a problem from that one opening sentence and I express it as a problem. For example, if the opening sentence I come up with is “The dawn rose without the usual ball of orange sun.” Now I place that sentence into a genre--science fiction-- and express the problem perhaps this way: “Will Gantry Ward break the code of the Sun Thief or will the new Earth perish too?”
It’s at this stage I turn to character building. Gantry Ward. In my head I imagine what this man of the 26th Century looks like. Considering evolution, I see him as close to eight feet tall, broad in the chest and shoulders. Like all Earthlings, he is bald. The language he speaks is a kind of stilted English in a commanding voice. What are his strong points? What is his main weakness? I imagine what he would wear, how he walks, what’s important to him, etc. Then I look to invent the antagonist whom I call “the sun thief.” What is his appearance? What are his strong points? What is his weakness? Is there a love interest here? If so, I invent the woman Gantry loves or the sun thief loves or both love. Okay, maybe it’s not a woman at all. After all, it’s the 26th Century. Maybe one or both are in love with some robotic contraption. I try to see the entire story develop in my mind before I continue past the first sentence. When the story is done, I read it through, read it to my wife for feedback, then it’s back to my computer to tighten the story. I get rid of all unnecessary words, uninteresting or excessive description, change dull unrealistic dialogue. I try to do as much a hatchet job as possible. When I feel it’s my best, I give it a file name, save it in my 2010.STORIES folder, and then look for a market to which I can submit it.
Who has been your favorite character to write?
I have the first draft of a novel I wrote called Carmelu the Sicilian, which I am in the process of editing towards a final draft. I love the guy! He starts off evil as hell and we watch him change through the book--a kind of St. Augustine of Hippo!--until he reaches saintly proportion. What he shows us by way of honor and true respect teaches us that we can all become better persons. We can all learn to see what life should really mean to us.
The most challenging?
The ScienKing, Donnelly Noonan, in my working novel Denver-under-Dome, is my most challenging character because he is so self-absorbed and maniacal, he is able to persuade survivors of post-bellum Denver (on an parallel world) that nothing exists, nothing matters, except science according to what he allows science to be. It’s hard to write about a character who possesses no redeeming qualities, one whose end we anxiously await and perhaps applaud.
Please tell us about the projects you are currently working on
Right now I am working to promote the sale of my new book Flashing My Shorts. I just know if folks ordered and read a copy, they would thank me. It’s worth the read. My publisher Phil Harris at All Things That Matter Press published it because he believed in it as much as I did. And he worked with me so that what’s between the book’s covers pleases both of us. Oh, if all publishers treated their authors like Phil Harris at ATTMP!
I am also editing my novel Carmelu the Sicilian. It is the story of a man who does what no other man has been able to do: end the media’s rampant bias against Italian Americans. And he does it without violence but rather within the law.
When the book is ready, I intend to promote it to those Italian American organizations who have already expressed a desire to publish it or finance its publication. As a member of the Italian American One Voice Coaltion, I have worked hard with people like Dr. Manny Alfano and Unico National President Andre DeMino to oppose TV horror shows like Jersey Shore and The Sopranos. My book will be one more voice in that struggle
To end the media’s ethnic bias against Italian Americans.
what can readers expect to see in the coming months?
If they do a search of “Salvatore Buttaci,” they’ll see many of my published poems and stories. I write daily and I promote my work as much as I can. I am the Editor of The Poem Factory at http://sambpoet.webs.com/ I post my “Poems of the Week” there and forward them to members of the site. I also invite poets to submit to our two annual issues, summer and winter.
Where can readers find out what's new and how can they contact you?
Readers can also check out my site at http://salvatorebuttaci.wordpress.com
or e-mail me at sambpoet@yahoo.com
I also hope readers will order a copy of Flashing My Shorts at the publisher’s site:
Or at
Do you have a strict writing schedule?
I wake up each morning between 8:30 and 9:00. I get to the computer about 10:00 a.m. and after checking e-mails and replying to them, I write for about three or four hours. Later on in the day I will do some more writing for about another two hours. Often, while watching TV, I’ll do a crossword puzzle, then write some more for about an hour.
How do you balance your personal and writing time?
I’ve been retired from teaching since July 2007, which allows me more time than in the old days when I wrote at 5 in the a.m. and again in the evening for a couple of hours.
I keep a notepad in my shirt pocket, so you might say I am always writing!
Everything needs limits, even writing, so I try not to overdo my time away from my wife.
It’s not fair to her to share little time together. I love writing but I love Sharon more.
Who or what has been your biggest support?
Sharon. I thank God He got us both to meet and commit to a lifetime together. Though she herself does not write, she is an avid--no, voracious--reader and a darn good critic. I never write anything without reading it to her. She has been my biggest support and my biggest inspiration. Did I mention I have written over one thousand poems to her during our thirteen years together?
Which author(s) is your favorite?
My favorite poets are Stephen Crane, Edwin Arlington Robinson, John Keats, Leonard Cohen, and Langston Hughes. Cohen is my favorite poet.
My favorite novelists: William Goldman, Ernest Hemingway, Leon Uris, Ray Bradbury, and Frederic Brown. William Goldman is my favorite novelist.
And who has most influenced you work?
The Canadian poet Leonard Cohen. When I sometimes feel empty of words, unable to write, I pick up one of his collections and by the time I’ve read ten or eleven, I am off to writing ten or eleven of my own!
Do you feel your writing is character driven or plot driven? How do you balance these two elements?
Character-driven. I like to get inside my characters, show readers what makes them tick or explode or just sit there in the bus depot waiting for their train to come in. It’s like being a people-maker, bringing characters to life who never lived before except in my head. Plot is important. Without it you have no story, but characters carry the plot and solve the story’s problem.
Hollywood came calling for one of your books and offered you the choice of picking which book they would make into a movie, what one would you choose and who do you see playing your characters?
I should be so lucky! Well, I would pick Carmelu the Sicilian. I don’t know which actors I would want to play Carmelu or any of the other characters, but I do know which actors I would not choose: those Italian American actors who performed in films that denigrated Italian Americans!
Here are two of the 164 elections from Flashing My Shorts.
Book can be ordered from the publisher at the publisher’s site:
Or at Amazon.com:
At the Miramar Café
Till dark I riveted my eyes on Maria and the dream-like flair of her red skirt as she tangoed with Carlos. Accompanying my pounding heart were the whining pangs in my belly from all the crisp-skinned sardines and the fresh oysters I had ingested beyond count.
Miramar Café was a haunt of mine since first I saw Maria and though we so far met, something in me was certain if I could not somehow pry her from the clutches of suave and debonair Carlos very soon, I would go tango-mad, be driven perhaps
Miramar Café was a haunt of mine since first I saw Maria and though we so far met, something in me was certain if I could not somehow pry her from the clutches of suave and debonair Carlos very soon, I would go tango-mad, be driven perhaps
to unleash my alter ego, a not-so-amicable American from Paducah, Kentucky.
I poured the rest of my Malbec, tossing the wine down as if it were Kentucky scotch, and then stood slowly to my wobbly feet.
“Garçon!” I called. My waiter lifted the corner of his thin lip the way folks do when they’re exasperated; I knew he preferred ‘Señor,’ but if I could summon the waiters in Paducah with ‘Garçon,’ sure as hell some faggy oil-haired Buenos Aires pretty boy could skip to the loo and respond to any name I damn well chose.
“Si, Señor, more wine?”
I poured the rest of my Malbec, tossing the wine down as if it were Kentucky scotch, and then stood slowly to my wobbly feet.
“Garçon!” I called. My waiter lifted the corner of his thin lip the way folks do when they’re exasperated; I knew he preferred ‘Señor,’ but if I could summon the waiters in Paducah with ‘Garçon,’ sure as hell some faggy oil-haired Buenos Aires pretty boy could skip to the loo and respond to any name I damn well chose.
“Si, Señor, more wine?”
I nodded, sat down again, gave him back my own sneering lip. When he asked if the clean plate of sardines and oysters needed replenishing, I let my mouth crumble into a drunk man’s frown, my heavy head falling chin to chest for a sleep-hungry moment.
When I looked up, Garçon was swishing towards the bar, Maria and Carlos had vanished, and San Cristóbal was just a barrio of loud diners and foul-mouthed drinkers, so I threw down an undeserved tip of eight pesos and headed out the door pretending Maria was tugging my arm towards the Hotel San Cristobal.
#
When I looked up, Garçon was swishing towards the bar, Maria and Carlos had vanished, and San Cristóbal was just a barrio of loud diners and foul-mouthed drinkers, so I threw down an undeserved tip of eight pesos and headed out the door pretending Maria was tugging my arm towards the Hotel San Cristobal.
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War Hero
“Crazy Joe” Devlin was a war hero, but to neighborhood kids like me, he was free entertainment. If wisdom was mine back then at thirteen years old, I would’ve praised Joe, thanked him for his military sacrifices at Normandy Beach. Certainly I would not have been party to the verbal abuse we heaped on shell-shocked Joe just for laughs.
One late July afternoon Johnny Reichling lit a firecracker and tossed it in the air. Two things simultaneously happened: (1) “Crazy Joe” dove into Mrs. Minogue’s hedges; and (2) my father was walking towards me on his way back from work at the bakery.
“Follow me,” Papa ordered. He yanked my arm. I followed.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, his dark-brown eyes squinting in anger. “That man got hurt bad in Europe, protecting our freedom over here. And you treat him that way? Make a fool of him and of me too?”
Papa grounded me for a week. He made me write an apology letter to give Devlin.
“Back up this letter by respecting Joe from now on,” Papa said. “Your friends. Let them be stupid, but you’re my son.”
When my one-week “house arrest” ended, I sought out Joe Devlin and handed him my letter. Basically, it said I was sorry, that I would never be cruel again.
Joe read the letter. I watched his eyes dart from line to line, his hands tremble. Then Joe said, “Sir, half my men died on the beach. The wounded need a medic quick. I’ll take that gunner out myself.”
He shoved my letter into his shirt pocket and saluted me. He stood at attention, waiting. Hardly breathing or blinking. Finally I saluted back. The war hero nodded.
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