Jeff Ayers: September 2010 Archives

Seth Harwood spotlights a character from his other novel, Jack Wakes Up, in his latest, Young Junius.  He talked to ITW about his new novel and how the Internet helped him with his career.

Why write and why teach writing?

Why write? I'd probably stop if I could. But I can't. Fact is, I love it and I think this is the best thing I'm geared to do. Teaching is great because it gets me out and around folks, I love my students, and it pays better than probably any other part-time job I could get. It gives me the ability to structure my own time and the schedule to write.

What sparked the idea for Young Junius?

After writing and podcasting Jack Wakes Up (Three Rivers Press, 2009), a lot of my online fans were calling for more about one of the secondary characters, Junius Ponds. I'd been falling in love madly with The Wire around that time and a lot of my fiction before Jack Wakes Up had been based in Boston and Cambridge (MA). So I got the idea to do an origin story for Junius Ponds, set in Cambridge in the late 80s, around the time I was growing up there and in a period I know well. I guess that part of my life has always interested me, as far as my fiction is concerned.