An Unlikely Interview with Andrew Kaye

In the spirit of our issue of deliberately terrible fiction, we asked our authors some deliberately terrible questions. Luckily, they were kind enough to play along. Here’s what Andrew Kaye, author of Whinny If You Love Me: A Love Story had to say…

Where do you get your ideas?

The usual places: In the smiles of good friends. The laughter of children. The warm embrace of costumed superheroes. The bathroom.

Have you written anything I’ve heard of?

I’ve lately grown bored with traditional writing, and I’ve branched out into new and exciting techniques. My last project was an epic fantasy novel called The Great Ring of Power: The Adventures of Dick Malicious, Wizard First Class: A Fictional Novel in Three Parts: Episode 1 of 9 of the Malicious Circle Series. The novel was written entirely in condiments on over 200 slices of bread. You probably haven’t heard of it though because the bread went moldy and I had to throw it out, but my cousin took pictures of each slice and I’ll upload them on deviantART once he remembers the code to his cell phone.

Nope, I haven’t heard of that. Have you considered writing more like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling? They seem to be pretty popular and rich, so maybe you should do that.

I have to disagree with you. My young adult fantasy novel Dick Malicious and the Sorcerer’s Stone hasn’t been selling very well. And my horror novel The Squirts, which is about a sentient fire hydrant that starts murdering children in a small suburban town, has performed pretty poorly as well. I think the real money is in imitating Tolkien. It’s worked for a lot of authors so far.

I have a really great idea for a story about a cowboy and an astronaut who are best friends. It’s kind of like Toy Story, except set during the time of The Great Gatsby, only it takes place in the Lost City of Atlantis. Robert Redford would be perfect for the movie version. Why don’t you write it, and we can split the profit 50/50? Maybe 70/30 since I came up with the idea and that’s the hard part. What do you think?

I think if you change Toy Story to The Last Unicorn, The Great Gatsby to The Age of Innocence, and the Lost City of Atlantis to the Cloud City of Bespin, you might have something I could work with. Robert Redford would be perfect for the role of Manny Coreman, the tough-as-nails robotic manticore I’m envisioning.

And on a slightly more serious note (but only slightly), given your story is gracing the fine pixilated pages of an issue of deliberately terrible fiction: Do you have any regrets?

I regret nothing!

Andrew Kaye hails from the suburban wilderness of Northern Virginia with his wife and kids. His (definitely not terrible) fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and Electric Velocipede, among other fine magazines. When not writing, Andrew draws cartoons and edits the humor magazine Defenestration, which are parts one and two of his seventeen-step plan for world domination. Feel free to bother him on Twitter @andrewkaye.