Author: M.A. Street

ISBN: 0-59538584-2

Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher and Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest,  M.A. Street, author of Hands: a novel.

Good day Mike and thanks for participating in our interview.

Norm: 

Please tell our readers a little bit about your personal and professional background.

Mike:

 I’ve been writing for quite a while. I’ve always had to work during that time, of course, had a family, that sort of thing, so there have been times when I’ve been more productive as a writer than others. I wrote sketch comedy in the 70’s--had a cable TV show called Radio Free Kentucky that was broadcast throughout the Ohio valley when I was in college.   I wrote film and record reviews in Florida.  I had a play produced--that was nice, to see my work actually performed--wrote a couple of screenplays, wrote a couple of novels.   I’ve been lucky enough to have had three agents over the last 20 years but no big cigar.  My story is probably similar to a lot of writers—coming close to the next level several times, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. The most difficult thing for me is that I’ve never had a prolonged period of time when I could just concentrate on writing.

Norm: 

Do you believe that people have magical powers such as the power to heal precognition, telepathy and telekinesis?  How would you respond to potential readers who might be skeptical about the subject matter of the book—namely, healing powers?

Mike:   

To the extent as the character in the book?  No.  I wanted to create an entertaining story.  Lately there has been a resurgence in the popularity of entertainment dealing with people who have supernatural abilities, and I think HANDS fits in there very nicely.  If you want to talk in terms of metaphors, then it would be the premise that if there is anything in any of us beyond the commonplace it would naturally be diluted by all the clutter we carry around and any purity we might hope to find would have to be sought out and nurtured.

I really don’t know why anyone would be skeptical about the book.  It’s a story.  Just like any other story. The only aspect of my personal beliefs about psychic phenomena in the story is that should a person truly have such a potent gift, it would scare them to death, and I don’t think they would want anyone else to know about it.  They couldn’t withstand the light of day.

Norm: 

How did you get the inspiration for this book?  What kind of research did you do to write Hands?

Mike: 

The inspiration came a long, long time ago.  Back in the late 70’s—early 80’s miniseries were a mainstay of television.  Franco Zeffirelli did a very romantic version of the Jesus story and it made me start thinking about what would really happen to anyone who discovered he had a true, supernatural gift, and had no clue as to what he was supposed to do with it.

I wanted to write it in first person as if I was actually living inside this guy’s head and that was a tremendous challenge—to make it believable and accessible to anyone.  That took an enormous amount of time and quite a few notebooks.

The only true research I had to do was that the story was set in California, and I’ve never lived in California, and that he was to be an artist.  I thought the transition from having a gift with his hands he didn’t understand or really want, to a gift with his hands that satisfied him was a nice device.  Unfortunately, I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out that process.

Norm: 

What has your experience been like with self-publishing?  Do you recommend it over traditional publishers?

Mike:

 I don’t think anyone actually wants to self-publish.  Traditional publishing gives you credibility whether deservedly or not.  You want your work to be managed and distributed by someone who has those resources.  Traditional publishing can mean that people walk into a bookstore and see a stack of books on a table and think hey, this must be pretty good if there’s a big stack of these here.  At least my book is cheap.

Being self-published means that some people who could help an author won’t even look in that direction.  It’s harder to get reviewers to take a look at it.  It’s harder to get distributors to take a look at it.  There’s a stigma that if a book is self-published then there’s something wrong with it.  I’ve had three reviews—I just can’t afford to send it to everyone—and there’s a common thread through all of them—that the book is better than they expected and better than a lot of stuff they’ve read from major houses.  That’s very flattering but it’s also very frustrating.

If I had the opportunity to say something to every reader in the world it would be something like the original version of this story was a screenplay.  I got an agent with it. He sent it around and a producer optioned it. The option expired without a sale and that was the end of that.   Later, I rewrote it as a novel and got another agent with it.  He sent it around and a major publisher took an interest to the point where we were asked to suspend submissions until they made a decision on it.  After two months they unceremoniously passed and that was the end of that.

I self-published it because I honestly believe that readers would enjoy this book and wouldn’t feel that they had wasted their money.  It’s really that simple.

Norm: 

As a follow up, what has been your overall experience as a published author?

Mike: 

Great!  I’m proud of the finished product.  The people who have read it and communicated their responses to me have enjoyed it.  As I said, I’ve gotten three very nice reviews so far. 

Norm: 

What challenges or obstacles did you encounter while writing your book?  How did you overcome these challenges?

Mike:

The major issue is always time when I could truly focus on what I was trying to do.  The real world is always calling.  There were times when I didn’t have two consecutive days to work on it.  There were a lot of starts and stops.

Norm:

When writing your book, did you ever have it in the back of your mind that you could turn it into a movie or television project?

Mike:

As I mentioned before, the original version was a screenplay.  I want to write well.  But my focus has always been to create an entertaining, enjoyable story.  If you examine the story from A to Z  I believe it plays,  and would evoke the kind of response in people that would make it commercially successful, which in my case would mean that it’s uplifting—that the world really is a good place and good things do happen.

Norm: 

What would you say is David’s biggest strength?  His greatest weakness?

Mike:

Good question.  You caught me on that one.  I guess his biggest strength is his resiliency.  His life is complicated.  He has faced some very real tragedies.  He carries this thing around with him that he can’t seem to come to terms with.  He’s melancholy, even brooding at times.  But he’s not suicidal.  He’s not one of these wide-eyed people who goes nuts and ends up drooling in a corner somewhere.

His greatest weakness is a kind of—I don’t know—a negative fatalism.  He focuses on his failures.  I guess it’s okay to tell everyone that a major part of the story is that his gift isn’t flawless and that he can’t control it.  Many times it works gloriously.  Sometimes he fails, and is haunted by those failures because the consequences are so dire.  Let me see if I can translate this.  Suppose someone had 20-20 vision or perfect hearing, except that every so often they would be struck blind or deaf, out of the blue and for no apparent reason.  And they never knew when it was going to happen.  One moment, fine, the next, chaos.  What kind of fear would that instill?  Now take that to the level of someone with such a unique, extraordinary gift.

Norm:

Does Hands have a broader mission than simply entertaining or storytelling?  Can you talk more about that mission and what you hope readers will take away in terms of their relationship to the Earth?

Mike:

Well, yeah, I guess.  I mean that’s the ego of every would-be writer.  To hide these little things inside a story that has meaning.  In my case it would be for those readers who believe in the more spiritual aspects of life--if someone believes in having a relationship with the divine in whatever form that takes. 

We all possess a--veil of humanity, a filter of sorts--and no perfect thing passes through that filter and ends up in the same condition.  The relationship only improves when we make an effort to clean up the human sewage, and that takes desire, commitment and a whole lot of practice—a lot of two steps forward, one step back.

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered and what is next for M A Street?

Mike:

It’s awkward to say, but yeah, I need help.  I need enough people to say what the heck and buy the book, and if they like it, help spread the word.  I have a very limited marketing budget.  All I can do is say please trust me, buy this book.  I honestly don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.  I wish there was some other way. 

I spend time trying to spread the word in whatever way I can.  I’m also working on a new book.  It’s a slow, sporadic process, but that’s the way it is.  I have a good life.  I am content.

Thanks once again and good luck with Hands: a novel 

The above interview was contributed by:  NORM GOLDMAN:  Retired Title Attorney: Editor & Publisher of Bookpleasures. Here are  Norm Goldman's Reviews       

To read Norm's Review of Hands: a novel CLICK HERE