Scott Gordon
Author Interview - Scott Gordon
Author of Head Fake
Mikey makes everything a joke, even the clinical depression he’s struggled with for years. After a run of failed jobs, he becomes the unlikely basketball coach at a high school for high-risk offenders who are experiencing mental illness. The position becomes suddenly available after the team tried to strangle their last coach.
Every instinct tells Mikey to get as far away from this school as possible. Coaching these kids, who have been arrested for who-knows-what, would be difficult for a normie. For Mikey, it could cause another breakdown and force him right back to living on the street. But he knows that if he has any chance to make his twenty-sixth birthday, he needs to keep this job, even if the school board wants him fired, and the students would rather fight each other than play ball.
This poignant, hilarious, and sometimes uncomfortable novel proves that even the most damaged of us can emerge victorious.
Author Interview - Scott Gordon
Author I draw inspiration from:
So many! Zadie Smith. Donna Tartt. Chris Bachelder. Jhumpa Lahiri. Mathew Quick. Ross Raisin. Tobias Wolff. Buzz Bissinger. I recently read About a Boy by Nick Hornby, which I immediately reread, not something I usually do. I’m definitely inspired by Nick’s writing.
Nick explores large themes like isolation, connection, depression, and suicidal ideation with humor, often making you think, feel, and laugh simultaneously, which, if not careful, may cause drowsiness and lead to a general feeling of compassion.
Nick is one of those writers everybody likes. Highbrows, lowbrows, men, women, children, dogs, cats, everybody. His characters are relatable, distinct, and laugh-out-loud funny, his prose simple yet insightful. All qualities that I strive for in my writing.
Author Interview - Scott Gordon | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
Really anywhere without distraction, where I can lose myself and be transported to another world, another life.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Om from Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. Om is a Discworld God who accidentally manifests as a tortoise. Being a God, Om might have some interesting anecdotes on the nature of existence to pass the time. And being small, Om wouldn’t take up much elevator real estate.
Author Interview - Scott Gordon | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
In my twenties I read Ask the Dust by John Fante and thought, wait a second, I could do that. It’s a gritty story about a young man who moves to LA to become a writer. Fante can break your heart and make you laugh within the same sentence.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Paperback.
I have recently begun listening to audiobooks. I enjoy them but miss being able to reread and marvel at well-written passages.
The last book I read:
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. I met Jamaica when I was in my early twenties working as a doorman at the Royalton Hotel in NYC. While carrying her bags, we spoke about writing. She was the first writer I had met, and she spoke to me, a neophyte, as if my thoughts on writing were important. I don’t recall what thoughts I shared with her. I shudder at the thought. She was very gracious.
I knew she was a staff writer for The New Yorker. I hadn’t yet read Annie John, her only novel at the time. As soon as I got off work, I ran out and bought the book and devoured it in one sitting. It blew me away, inspiring me to write my own coming-of-age novel, which I still have in a cabinet in the back of my garage under some boxes of CD’s.
Recently, I wrote a pilot for a TV show, 5150, about a psychiatric hospital in South Central LA. I decided the main character would be obsessed with Jamaica’s writing. To brush up on Jamaica, I reread Annie John and again fell in love with this rich coming-of-age story of a girl growing up in Antigua.
Author Interview - Scott Gordon | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
I smear the ink when I write, so definitely a computer. If I wrote on paper, I would constantly lose the paper and be forced to ask my wife if she had seen it, which might get old for her after a year or so of revisions.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Bertie Wooster from the comedic P.G. Wodehouse novels. Bertie was the first character who made me cackle. I was a thirteen-year-old kid from New Jersey who only read what was forced upon him. Books like 1984, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird. Serious books.
One day after school at my neighbor’s, I discovered a thin paperback propped open by a pack of Marlboro Reds. I picked up the book and read “I’m not much of a ladies’ man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something.”
It’s a true testament to Wodehouse that a boy so far removed from the world of butlers and London gentlemen’s clubs would consume so many of his novels. Whenever I am down, I still reach for Bertie Wooster, where I can read such masterful lines as, “It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”
Author Interview - Scott Gordon | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
I have written and directed TV and films. I would do anything in the story-telling business. I would put on puppet shows if that were my only outlet.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
The roaring twenties. I think we should all dress like The Peaky Blinders or F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Next on the list is Ireland.
My signature drink:
Guinness on tap at my local Irish pub. Hmmm…I’m sensing a theme.
Favorite artist:
Bob Dylan. I used to study his lyrics as a way of becoming a better writer.
Number one on my bucket list:
Live in Italy. My wife and I talk endlessly about moving to Florence where we would spend our days walking the streets talking about history, architecture, and Gucci bags.
Anything else you'd like to add:
Thank you for reading this far!
Find more from the author:
https://scottgordonbooks.com/
https://www.instagram.com/scottgordonbooks/
https://www.facebook.com/ScottGordonBooks
About Scott Gordon:
Author Interview - Scott Gordon
Scott Gordon’s fiction has appeared in the Green Hills Literary Lantern (GHLL), Modern Times Magazine, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Satirist, and Mobius Magazine. In addition to writing fiction, he has written and directed films and television series, including A History of Black Achievement in America, Great American Authors, and more. Scott spent years working as a Youth Advocate for juvenile offenders with mental illness. Head Fake is inspired by the strength and courage of the kids he worked with. Originally from New Jersey, Scott lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Samantha, and their two rescue pups, Mel Brooks and Khaleesi Bee.
