Boston Teran | Exclusive Interview: TWO BOYS AT BREAKWATER

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Boston. Please tell us about yourself and a little about your new book, TWO BOYS AT BREAKWATER.  

A writer should never tell you a little about their own book. It might tend to sound too much like a waiter reading off to you the night's specials.

Set against the backdrop of New York in the 1950s and 60s, TWO BOYS AT BREAKWATER is about two young men growing up and learning about who they truly are, and the love they find in each other. Where did the idea for this novel originate?  

I collect incidents.

I listen and I watch.

And what I sense will take me somewhere else

I write down.

I sat at my desk for a generation

And watching the Bronx rain one night I recalled

A moment in a drinking dive not unlike

The one Gary Snyder wrote about in

I Went into the Maverick Bar

That too was on a rainy night

Coming down hard on a tin roof.

Above the room 

Where a pool table reigned supreme.

And where two rough type western drunks

Shot eight ball and the breeze.

"This is gonna come across as strange,” one said. “But I feel like we’re outlaws in some old Western who realize their days are numbered.”

"Ride the High Country," said the other. “Remember that movie?"

"One of my mother's favorites. She had a thing for Randolph Scott."

"And what about Joel McCrea? Tough."

 "She made me watch it twice with her. She wept at the end. A fuckin' Western."

"Greatest last scene in movies ever. Joel McCrea there dying. Gut shot. Scott beside him, 'Good bye friend' says McCrea. And Scott stands and says 'I'll see ya' later.' And walks off. 'I'll see ya' later.’ Too much.”

"And McCrea is there and dies alone."

"Someday they'll make a movie like that, and both guys will be gay."

"Not in our fuckin' lifetime."

3. Organized crime is a popular thriller topic—did you have any reservations about it as a big part of your novel? Did you find out anything particularly surprising through your research? 

The Bronx of that era was America in all its faulted beauty. And those two boys, on the journey to become men, were born of that faulted beauty. And so their life story, love story, human story, was necessary to be played out against that faulted beauty, in order for them to become part of the world, and not just a world unto themselves.

It has taken longer for GOD IS A BULLET to be made into a motion picture than it took to fight The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Civil War, World War I, and World War II. With enough time left over to earn a college degree.

As for insights - Remember that all motion pictures based on a book are, in effect, "Cover"  versions of the material. Sometimes the author gets lucky. The film turns out like Aretha Franklin's cover of Respect, Joe Cocker's rendition of With A Little Help From My Friends, Amy Winehouse doing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Other times your book turns into Three Drunks At A Karaoke Bar. 

 What advice do you have for the aspiring authors out there? 

The getting there is costly - the suffering is free of charge.