Today, I have the honor of kicking off the second tour of My Year As a Clown by Robert Steven Williams with an interview and giveaway.  


 About My Year As a Clown:

Publisher: Against the Grain Press  (Dec. 26, 2012)
Category: Contemporary Fiction/Literary Fiction/Humor/Relationships
Tour Date: November 4-19, 2013
Available in: eBook,  325 pages
With MY YEAR AS A CLOWN, Robert Steven Williams introduces us to Chuck Morgan, a new kind of male hero—imperfect and uncertain—fumbling his way forward in the aftermath of the abrupt collapse of his 20-year marriage.
Initially, Chuck worries he’ll never have a relationship again, that he could stand in the lobby of a brothel with a hundred dollar bill plastered to his forehead and still not get laid. But as the emotionally raw, 365-day odyssey unfolds, Chuck gradually relearns to live on his own, navigating the minefield of issues faced by being suddenly single—new routines, awkward dates, and even more awkward sex.
With My Year As a Clown, Robert Steven Williams will attract fans of the new breed of novelists that includes Nick Hornby, Jonathan Tropper, Lolly Winston, and Tom Perrotta, delivering painfully honest glimpses into the modern male psyche while writing about both sexes with equal ease and grace in a way that’s hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.
Robert Steven Williams is the recipient of the Silver Medal for popular fiction in the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards for My Year as a Clown.
Read My Review Here.
Watch the Video:

The Interview:
Welcome to So Many Precious Books, So Little Time Robert! 

TR:  Could you please tell us why you as a musician, decided to write a book?


RSW:  At heart I’m a storyteller and my songs are lyric driven, so the leap to fiction wasn’t that great. Some of my favorite songs contain my favorite stories – I remember the first time I heard Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’ or the Beatle’s ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ These songs are cinematic.

There’s benefit to being a musician when writing fiction. Sentences have a flow, a cadence, there’s also the occasional rhyme – often I find a rhyme that’s fallen at the wrong time (did you hear what I’m talking about?)—listening to how the sentences sound is just as important as what the sentence says.  

There’s also an economy in song – you’ve got less than 100 words to say everything you need, so each word must earn its keep. Even though a novel is closer to 100,000 words, a writer has a responsibility to keep readers reading. Digressions, sloppy sentences, extra words, these must be eliminated. Songwriters have the same issues. They have to cut words out because you can only sing so many words in a stanza. They also have to be clear because the words fly by. That’s a good skill to have when writing fiction too.

TR: Are you still active in the music world and if so, what are you doing currently?


RSW:  I write songs in bursts, but I must admit, lately, they’ve come less often. I do a couple of shows a month – I’m playing original songs and reading from my novel. Because there’s a song in My Year as a Clown, there’s a natural tie-in. People enjoy the texture change in the show and I enjoy the change of pace too.

Next year I intend on recording a new album. Declan O’Rourke, an acclaimed singer/songwriter based in Galway is producing it. He oversaw the track in my novel and he was kind enough to lend me his band to record it.

A producer is very much like an editor and it was great fun working with him.

I have a lot of other creative projects going on including a couple of film documentaries. Sometimes I feel that I’m spread too thin, but I like the change of pace and shift in focus. When I return to the music, it feels fresh.


TR: How do you balance you life between music and writing books?


RSW:  At the moment I float between activities – as I said earlier, I’m making a documentary, and that’s taking up a lot of time. This came about from a promotional event I had for my book at the Westport Historical Society. That’s in Connecticut, where I live. I hosted a literary roundtable and we were celebrating the wonderful artistic heritage of our town.

Many writers have produced incredible work here including F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived here in 1920.

The film is about that summer Scott and Zelda’s were here and how it influenced his writing. It’s been an incredible journey. I’ve made a couple of small films, but nothing of this magnitude. But I’m a storyteller and at the end of the day, it’s all about finding the narrative. It’s been quite the journey learning about Fitzgerald’s life. Last week I was at the Firestone Library at Princeton, where the Fitzgerald archive resides. I spent the day going through his personal correspondence and reviewing manuscripts—what fun!


TR: What book are you currently reading?


RSW:  I’ve just completed a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Cruise of the Rolling Junk. Last night I read his essay: 100 False Starts, written in 1933 about the challenge of completing a story.


TR: If you could meet anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why?


RSW:  I was a big Christopher Hitchens fan and I would have loved to have attended one of his Washington soirees. He and his wife would assemble artists and politicians and they’d drink, smoke and talk politics and culture until the sun came up. A few months back I read his memoir Mortality.


TR: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?


RSW:  I played squash at a pretty high level when I was in my 40’s. I could beat a lot of college players. I trained with the number two player in the world, Brett Martin.


TR: Are there more books to come?  If so, what are you working on now?


RSW:  I’m very close to finishing The Sound of Money, the story of a struggling songwriter that gets mixed up with the mob. I also have several short stories that need homes.


TR: Out of the interviews you have done, is there a question that you wish someone had asked you?  Here’s your chance.


RSW:  People often tell me that My Year as a Clown is very funny and it is, but to be honest, I didn’t set out to do funny and I don’t think of myself as a comedy writer. What I did do is try to write an honest book, and when you write unfiltered truths, often they contain funny bits. People confuse emotional truths with factual truths. Much of what happened in my novel didn’t happen in real life, but much of the emotional impact that Chuck experienced either happened to me or to others.

People also think that my characters are based on specific people and that’s not the case either. Characters are composites, some real, some inspired by fictional characters in books, TV or film. A character’s personality, look and actions also come out of my head! It’s the blending of bits and pieces that makes the world of My Year as a Clown feel real.

I also think the choice of writing in first person, present tense creates that sense of immediacy and this leads people to think Chuck Morgan must be me.

For those interested, the first draft of this novel was written in the third person, but it didn’t have the emotional heft or impact that I was looking for. I wanted the reader to experience what was happening to Chuck as if they were right there with him. There’s nothing like first person to accomplish that.


TR:  Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by for a chat, Robert.  It was a pleasure to have you.


RSW:  Thank you for having me. I greatly appreciate your time and interest.


About Robert Steven Williams:


Robert Steven Williams is an author, singer-songwriter, and musician. His debut novel, My Year as a Clown (Against the Grain Press), was released in January 2013.
As a writer, Williams was a finalist in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and was awarded a Squaw Valley Writers Community Thayer Scholarship. He attended Bread Loaf, Sewanee and the Squaw Valley Writers’ Conferences, and worked closely with the esteemed fiction writer, Barry Hannah. His short fiction has appeared in Carve Magazine, The Orange Coast Review, and the anthology Tall Tales and Short Stories Volume II. Additionally, he was the executive producer of the critically acclaimed BOOM! Studios CBGB Comic series, nominated in 2011 for a Harvey Award for Best Anthology. Robert’s work has also appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine, Billboard, USA Today  and LetterPress, a newsletter for writers. He is also co-author of the best-selling business book, The World’s Largest Market.
As a musician, Williams studied songwriting with Rosanne Cash, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and other top country writers. In 2005, he released the critically acclaimed CD “I Am Not My Job,” featuring Rachel Z (Peter Gabriel, Wayne Shorter) and Sloan Wainwright.
Thanks the author, Robert Steven Williams, I am giving away one copy of My Year As a Clown. This giveaway is for the ebook and ends on November 20, 2013.  Please use Rafflecopter to enter.
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Follow the Tour:
So Many Precious Books Nov 4 Interview & Giveaway
Uttley’s Take Nov 5 Review
Teena in Toronto Nov 6 Review
Bookalicious Travel Addict Nov 6 Guest Post
From Isi Nov 7 Review
Roses & Beps Nov 8 Excerpt
Every Free Chance Nov 12 Review
Every Free Chance Nov 13 Guest Post & Giveaway
Giveaways & Glitter Nov 14 Review
Succotash Reviews Nov 15 Review
Sweeps4Bloggers Nov 18 Review & Giveaway
Paperback Writer Nov 19 Guest Post
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