BIFF MITCHELL

BIFF MITCHELL

Humorist, satirist, and blazingly talented Biff Mitchell is on a roll. His novel, The War Bug hits stores in paperback within the next couple of weeks. A couple of his short stories from his collection, Surfing in Catal Hyuk are appearing in the current issue of Projected Letters: "The Nickel" and "Fishing the Moody River". And he's hard at work on his fourth novel, Murder By Burger.

Set in a technological future, The War Bug is a fast and frantic race as a programmer, Abner Hayes, is forced to team up with the most lethal computer virus ever created, known as The War Bug, to extricate his wife and daughter from the virtual landscape to save their lives before their entire world comes crashing down. Sound a little bit crazy? It is. Sound exciting? It definitely is. Sound a bit confusing? It's not.

Heavily influenced and inspired by the IT industry in which he works, Biff, whose other novels include the superb Heavy Load, and my personal favorite, the uproarious and ingenious Team Player, crafts a stunningly vivid – and completely understandable – adventure through this dazzling landscape.

You can also get a taste of Biff's work at a very low cost. He's got a couple of novellas published as dollar downloads: Smoke Break and The Baton. Though different in tone and subject from his novels, they both carry the inimitable Biff Bang.

On his website, he offers a free download about ebook marketing for writers. And he was this year's "Read an Ebook" spokesman.

Often strange, always entertaining, and 100% talented, meet Biff Mitchell.


1) Who are some of your favorite writers, and do you think they've influenced you?

My favorite writers are Tom Robbins, Christoper Moore, Crystal Hayter, Richard Brautigan, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Kinky Friedman and Susan DiPlacido. No shit. These writers are all on a different plain of existence than the rest of the world. I've read Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar" at least a dozen times. I read Moore's "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" before I start writing any of my own novels. I can't read Hayter's "What's a Girl Gotta Do?" enough, even though my daughter says the cover is lewd and suggestive, but I tell her, "That's a very good description of life, sweetheart."


2) What do you think is your greatest strength or asset in your writing? Your biggest weakness or flaw?

My greatest asset is my ability to drink vast quanties of beer and wine while I write without passing out. There are reviewers who point to piddling things like characterization and descriptive language, but they obviously have not had enough beer and wine while they were writing their reviews or they would realize that true art comes only when the artist has destroyed hers or his abiltiy to deny the truth through inebriation.

My biggest flaw is my inability to estimate how much beer and wine it takes to write a novel.


3) Many times I can see a writer working very hard at stylish prose or to crack a joke. However, your stuff reads so smooth and easy, and yet it's also quite polished. Your "funny" also seems to come organically and seemingly effortlessly. Does the prose come naturally, or do you work at it? How about the "funny" – does that seem to just work its way in, or do work at it?

I don't know what you're talking about. There is no humor in my writing. I'm a serious writer tackling serious themes like the inability of writers to estimate the required quantities of beer and wine it takes to create art. I have an honours degree in English Literature, but I've learned over the years that my degree counts for shit when it comes to writing anything other than an essay on somebody else's writing while I quote extensively from a bunch of asshole academics. Beer, wine and your life experience. Rely on these and your voice and talent will surface without you ever having to have a single rational thought.


4) You're in the IT industry and this has obviously given you plenty of fodder for your stories. Do most of your stories start off with seeds of reality before blossoming into their full-blown unique strangeness?

I get all my inspiration from Diana, the goddess of the moon. She speaks to my only when I've had the appropriate quantities of beer and wine.

5) You write some very weird things, Biff Mitchell. And by that, I mean, there's just some weird stuff going on in your books that you have written. I never have trouble "accepting" what's going on though, because it all seems to develop in such a full-blown reality that you create. So here's the questions. What is the weirdest thing you wrote that you're most proud of? And – does all this weirdness just sort of occur to you, or do you have to put your imagination into overdrive to come up with scenarios and then make them "fit" and seem so believable and as natural progressions of the plot?

I have two favorite scenes...the description of the Great Nano Canyon in The War Bug and the description of how the Leaning Tower of Pisa came to be in Team Player. Neither of these are weird. They are factual descriptions of things that are historically accurate even though one of them takes place in the future and the other describes the actions of a dead person.

My imagination had nothing to do with either scene since I was merely quoting historical fact in the future and in another dimension.

6) Stock question: Dinner with anyone, dead or alive. Who is it?

I would love to have dinner with all three women under the fountain along the Green by the St. John River. Then I could interview them before I write the story in which they drive me crazy by.....well, that story is yet to be written. In the real world, I will someday have dinner with Susan DiPlacido, probably on at Ceasar's Palace.

7) What do you look forward to most in the summer?

Swimming outdoors. Swimming outdoors. And swimming outdoors.

8) One CD, one book, one DVD and a desert island. What book, CD, and DVD do you take?

Easy question: Morrison Hotel, In Watermelon Sugar, Apocalypse Now (the first one...the extended one sucks and should never have been released).

9) You can't have both: Would you rather have respect from your peers and critical acclaim (but not be making cash from writing), or would you rather be a bestselling author with the fat coin?

I'd rather have the kind of fame that leads to a situation in which I walk into a room and a dozen unimaginably beautiful women say, "Hey! There's Biff Mitchell. Let's all fuck his brains out."

I mean, c'mon, look at the alternative: I walk into a room and a bunch of aging, irrelevant literary critics say, "Um, yes. That would be Biff Mitchell, the writer. Let's pick his brain apart."

If you were me, which would you choose?