Our interview this week is with author David Kupisiewicz who talks about his book: Becoming Johnny Nova (Amazon – $0.99).  David Kupisiewicz’s only slightly heated up account of his late adolescent years on the outskirts of L.A., navigating his taste for danger around beer, bikes, songs-and-bongs and attempted dating, with the encouragement of his mostly reprobate friends, and in the face of the stoic resistance of his archetypically disapproving parents.
     What lifts this book way above being merely a series of insidiously suspenseful tales of teenage rebellion told by a naturally gripping story-teller are the scrupulously recalled living portraits of those he interacted with, from Disappearing John to Reappearing Tony, from full-of-shit Frank to female-buddy Dianne, from rock ‘n’ roll perk Sweet Ass and Treacherous Sister to Drummer Andy, Arnie, Rocky and Jeff.
     If you can put this book down, you have never used a Frisbee as a pinch tray, never street-raced a Kawasaki 750, never sung in a rock ‘n’ roll band, never dived off a neck-breaking cliff just for the rush, and never fought for good against evil in the Battle of Chantry Flats with baseball bats and tire irons.

    Becoming Johnny Nova is available from Amazon or check out the web site Becoming Johnny Nova.

Interview with David Kupisiewicz

So what inspired the story in Becoming Johnny Nova?
David: It wasn’t so much that I was inspired. It’s based on my experiences growing up or coming of age in the suburbs of LA in the mid eighties. It started out as memoirs. I worked in the music business for 12 years and to kill time in the green room we would tell stories of our youths. Turns out that my stories were a little wilder and amusing then most and I would quite often hear “You should write a book.” That planted a seed in my head and since I had always had a passion for writing, years later I decided to go ahead and write it.

So it’s memoirs?
David: Not exactly. I just started to write down some of the stories and after I had written a dozen or so I started to try and get them in order. It had been a long time and I wasn’t so sure of what happened when, so I called a friend of mine to help me straighten things out. I told him what I was doing and he made the observation that although I had led an interesting life, I wasn’t a movie star or a rock star and said in so many delicately chosen words, that no one would want to read my story. So I began to rearrange and re-think my approach to writing out my tale. I put it together using the strategies of fiction and embellished a bit here and there.

So how much of it is true?
David: Well… A lot of it actually, pretty much all of it. Mostly what I did was combined events and put people in places where they actually hadn’t been. For instance, in the chapter Peacocks and Mushrooms, most of the main characters are there together when in fact those particular people might have never assembled at the same time. All the people are real, we did go to all those places and do all those things, I just left out the time between the events. The humdrum things. Just made it fun to read.
What’s been the hardest part about the whole process of writing and publication?
Dave: It would have to be categorizing it. I’ve been using the term novelized memoirs. It’s based very closely on my life but is not strict memoirs in a traditional sense. It’s mostly humor and written the way you would traditionally write a novel. There are sad parts and poignant moments as well, so it’s really hard to say in just a few words ‘what it’s about’.
Do you have any advice for would be authors?
Dave: There are those who want to be writers and those who want to write. If you’re the latter, then just go for it. Write your story. Even if you never get published you will still have accomplished what you set out to do.

How is your book selling?
Dave: Not too bad right now. Actually a little better than I had expected it to at this stage.

Reading the book it seems you’ve put a lot of personal experience into it, did you find it hard to bare your soul like that?
Dave: No. I did do some stupid things in my life and Johnny was not immune to being a jerk himself. With the benefit of hindsight, as anyone would, I would have done things differently, but I’m not embarrassed about what I did. A lot of what I faced growing up in that time and place, are the same things that all of us face. Well not everything. I did have a habit of getting into…  let’s say interesting situations, but I think it’s mostly how I dealt with them that makes my story unique. I’ve never been afraid to try, and so I approached life with a lot of gusto. Never thought, I can’t do that and perhaps I should have thought more often, “I shouldn’t do that”, but that’s just the way it happened.

Do you think your book has a wide appeal then? Is it something that most people can relate to.
Dave: Absolutely. I think that is one consideration that is definitely in my corner. I’m sure that it will be popular in Los Angeles as that’s where the story takes place. People there have had similar experiences and know the places where Johnny and his friends go. It will even have appeal to others outside southern California as, like I’ve said, these are the same things that everyone is faced with growing up. Now outside of the US I’ve found that there is a certain amount of fascination with southern California and what it’s like to live there. That’s part of what made Catcher in the Rye popular and Becoming Johnny Nova is kind of like a west coast version of that. It’s an entirely different place and time, it also takes place over a longer period of time, but my book captures the essence of the time and place in the same way.

What part of writing do you find difficult?
Dave: Hard to say. I really enjoy the whole process, so I don’t find any of it difficult. I guess something that took a lot of effort or at least that I was careful with, was making sure Johnny was likeable. That we were cheering for him. He is irresponsible and can be self-serving on occasion, and in the end he isn’t perfect. He still has a lot of growing to do. I do have more of a story to tell. So if anything was difficult I guess it was that. To keep Johnny lovable. Or at least likeable.

Do you think you achieved that?
Dave: Yes! I wasn’t sure if I had, but one reviewer pointed that out in a fairly short review that “Despite his badness, we want Johnny to succeed.” I was real happy to see that.

You said you have more of the story to tell. I assume that means there are more Johnny books to come?
David: Yes at least two more. The second will begin the day after the first one finishes. At that point Johnny has just moved out of his parents house and into a rented house with two Texans that he had recently met. Where the first story is a coming of age and centered around Johnny figuring out what it takes to be an adult and what kind of an adult he will be, this story will center on learning to live as an adult and starting to take on all the responsibilities that entails. It will span about the same time frame that the first one did, two or three years, and will probably have a few “flashback” scenes as the first one did.

Will we see the same characters?
David: Yes and No. Some of the main characters will still be there and soon disappear, and some will take minor roles. The major Characters we have met as minor ones in the later part of the first story.

So how about the third book? Will it continue the story where the second leaves off?
Dave: To a degree, but the third book has whole new setting. It will again follow my life as it happened. It will take us to Australia and a whole new ‘life’ where Johnny starts to work in the music business as a concert lighting designer.

I’m assuming then that this will be a whole new set of characters.
Dave: That’s right. The first few chapters will have one additional character aside from Johnny who carries over. This one will of course have some unique characters as the setting would suggest. The music business is defiantly full of interesting people anywhere you go.

Will that be the end of Johnny then?
Dave: No the spirit of Johnny will live on forever. [Laughs] Maybe I’ll try my hand at writing a screen play and bring Johnny off the page and onto the big screen.