This is a reciprocal interview with author Christopher Michael Thompson, whose Smashwords title Breakfast Anytime can be found here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44331
1. Christopher, thank you for joining us.Tell us about your Smashwords title, Breakfast Anytime.
When I was a kid, one of my fondest memories was always going out for breakfast when visiting my grandparents. They (and I, imitating them), would always order the same dish - chipped beef and gravy on toast. My grandmother was the first to cross over and her loss affected me greatly. Grandpa carried on in her stead though, taking the grand-kids out for that Sunday breakfast when we came to visit. When he passed, so did the breakfasts.
One day, taking my own kids for a treat, we stopped in at this little out-of-the-way diner and sat at a table. Typical diner visit except I swore that I saw my grandparents in glimpses and half-sights within the diner - that old feeling of strangers looking familiar. Trying to shake it off, I busied myself with the menu, anxious not to cry in front of the kids, but two things on the menu made that impossible. Chipped beef and gravy on toast and the words "Breakfast Anytime". As odd as it may sound, those two words brought a joke by the comedian Steven Wright to mind where he quipped "The menu said 'Breakfast Anytime', so I ordered french toast during the Renaissance." I didn't laugh, but rather looked at the people around me and, just as in the poem, asked the waitress for chipped beef on toast with my grandparents. The poem was born on the back of a kid's menu while we waited for our food, our poor waitress Lois unknowingly drawn into the story as if she had always belonged there.
When it came time for my poetry to be compiled into a book, I looked at all of the poems and Breakfast Anytime had always struck a chord with people, it - above all others - cited as their favorite and so, in both honor of the poem's popularity and my grandparents' memory, "Breakfast Anytime" became the lead and titular poem of the pack.
The other poems have done the same for people, some finding joy in the humorous poems, others the voice that they lacked during heartbreak. Just like the title reads with subtitle appended, my dream is for this book to be one to go to at any time day or night for both fond memories and for catharsis.
I want my readers to be able to enjoy "Breakfast Anytime."
2. Which poem contained in the book is your personal favorite?
Well, obviously, Breakfast Anytime is right up there, but I would have to say that "Pinocchio Triumphant" would have to be my favorite. It was written in the voice of a character that I have been developing and writing for for nearly 25 years. The intenet was still young when I wrote this and I was using the anonymity of IRC chat to develop Aerin's 'voice', character-wise by pretending to be a more human version of her.
I have always been sensitive to women, but grew even more so as I looked out at the internet through the eyes of one. As a man, I could hold serious and meaningful conversations at the drop of a hat in IRC, but as a woman it was like diving into a pool of sharks after being severely lacerated first.. Often, the chat programs would crash from the "a/s/l" and "wanna cyber?" private messages and as my ire grew, so too did 'hers' and I watched my fingers fly as "Pinocchio Triumphant spilled out of absolutely nowhere, Aerin screaming for decency among the indecent.
Times, I am glad to say, seem to have changed since then, but the poem has grown beyond just a rant about online chat but to a whole new level, a friend of mine - tired of being treated like an object - getting the stanza bout ripping at her doll's features permanently fused to her skin in a tattoo as a personal mantra not to allow anyone to tear her down.
It was Aerin's first poem of many and, as such, holds a special place in my heart.
3. In your experience, what is the greatest difference in writing poetry and fiction? Which do you prefer writing, and why?
The greatest difference, for me, has been the moment of inspiration, really. Sometimes, when I am feeling something, I will feel a call to put it into verse instead of prose. Or vice-versa. Some of my poems have even been born WITHIN a narrative, the character themselves waxing poetic like the characters from Grease talking normally and then bursting into song. That really makes it tough for me to distinguish which is easier as it is the emotion - and not my mind - which shapes my words.
It may sound pretentious, and pardon me if it does, but I see my writing as an artist sees a culture or painting. The art lets the artist know when it is finished, not the other way around.
As for my personal preference, I like the narrative writing as it allows me to write longer stories. A poem, unless it is an epic like some of the great classics, goes on for only a page or two before it is "finished".
4. The poem 'Amazement', contained in your book, particularly touched me. Can you let us in on what inspired that poem?
I took a job at a school district in Arizona where one of my co-workers was pregnant and having a harder time than most as early tests had shown a birth defect in the baby. He had what they nicknamed a "frog's heart", two chambers instead of four, and his birth itself was a delicate matter and very trying for the parents because they got to see him for only a few minutes before he was rushed from the delivery room to an operating room to have a shunt installed. Things were very touch and go for a while after that with more operations and waiting to pass an 'all clear' point where his survival odds looked stronger.
I wrote this poem shortly after his birth as she blogged the news on her Carepages site. even without hearing her voice, you could read the worry in her words and my simple "My thoughts are with you. Hope things turn out well." note became "Amazement", the original note being deleted with just the poem remaining. I didn't do it for fame, to show off, and certainly not for any other selfish reason, but to give the baby an uplifting voice during troubling times.
I have kept tabs on him even after moving away, and I am happy to say that he is still alive and well, a little physically scarred from repeated surguries, but as normal and active a child as any mother could hope for.
I am glad that it touched you as well.
5. Where can readers find your work, and you, online?
My work, for the moment, is only on Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chaophim), but I am taking it to CreateSpace to have print-on-demand capabilities. I can be found on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Christopher.Thompson72), my blog (http://chaophim.blogspot.com/), and a couple of Play-by-Post role playing games where I participate in collaborative storytelling. Come November 1st and April 1st, I will definitely found on the NaNoWrimo and Script Frenzy sites respectively. I have links AND countdown clocks to those events on my blog at the bottom.
Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me and I hope that I have answered the questions to your satisfaction.
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