Excited we are to see a new interview with long-time TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Ken Wohlrob up at the Word Riot. We are equally excited about Ken's new joint Songs of Vagabond, Misfits, and Sinners and promise to share our thoughts soon. Really. Now go and enjoy some excerpt.What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?
I often get accused of being heavy-handed in my writing. In my own defense, I chalk that more up to writers (and writing) having become too solipsistic in the past decade. I think we’ve had a complete overload of navel-gazing by writers from my generation. I’d rather tell an interesting story with characters that have actual blood in their veins (rather than being stand-ins for my relatives or ex-girlfriends). A lot of contemporary writers tend to be self-focused. But because readers have become so used to those types of stories, I think sometimes, they are caught off guard by my writing. The stories I tell are very rooted in the real world and those moral gray areas that confront us all. Some readers mistakenly think I have a strong message that I want to convey by writing in that manner. I’m really trying to drag the readers back into the thick of it, making them more actively involved in the story, forcing them to take sides as opposed to just sitting there as an unfeeling bystander. I don’t have an agenda in my stories, I just want you to be actively involved and think about the characters and their eventual outcome.
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