Daniel A. Blum grew up in New York, attended Brandeis University and currently lives outside of Boston with his family. His first novel Lisa33 was published by Viking in 2003. He has been featured in Poets and Writers magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and most recently, interviewed in Psychology Today.
Daniel writes a humor blog, The Rotting Post, that has developed a loyal following.
His latest release is the literary novel, The Feet Say Run.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
About the Book:
Title: THE FEET SAY RUN
Author: Daniel A. Blum
Publisher: Gabriel’s Horn Press
Pages: 349
Genre: Literary Fiction
At the age of eighty-five, Hans Jaeger finds himself a castaway among a group of survivors on a deserted island. What is my particular crime? he asks. Why have I been chosen for this fate? And so he begins his extraordinary chronicle.
It would be an understatement to say he has lived a full life. He has grown up in Nazi Germany and falls in love with Jewish girl. He fights for the Germans on two continents, watches the Reich collapse spectacularly into occupation and starvation, and marries his former governess. After the war he goes on wildflower expeditions in the Alps, finds solace among prostitutes while his wife lay in a coma, and marries a Brazilian chambermaid in order to receive a kidney from her.
By turns sardonic and tragic and surreal, Hans’s story is the story of all of the insanity, irony and horror of the modern world itself.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Would you call yourself a born writer?
I was certainly a born daydreamer, and I suppose that translated into wanting to write stories. But there is also a craft and that took some time to acquire. My early writing efforts have thankfully been lost to the ravages of time.
My first passably decent piece of prose was actually letter I wrote to in college to a girl who I was interested in. It was a long, rambling, comic description of a train ride I was on, and it was something of an “aha” moment about how to inject life and wit into descriptions of the everyday world around you. Thinking back, it is not really surprising that my best early bit of prose was born of an effort to impress a girl.
What was your inspiration for The Feet Say Run?
My previous novel, Lisa33 was an avante-garde sex comedy set on the internet. I had received a large advance for it, but in the end the publishing experience was quite disastrous. I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. A harrowing war story set in Nazi Germany was surely about as far from an internet sex farce as one could get.
Of course, there is more to it than that. I had grown increasingly interested in the idea of literary fiction that also made for a gripping page-turner. And I was drawn to the idea of telling a big, epic tale of human comedy and tragedy, of cruelty and compassion and blindess and brilliance, through a single, long life. Gradually, from these disparate threads and ideas, the book began to take shape. I honestly never had a moment where I decided, “I am going to write another novel.” I just began poking around. And then I was in too deep, immersed, and – to borrow a war metaphor – there was no retreating. The only way out was forward.
What themes do you like to explore in your writing?
I like going for the big ones: love and hate, cruelty and compassion, sex and sorrow and death.
Many readers, survivors of Literature 10, seemed conditioned to ask, “what is does your book mean”? . Yet few novelists go around planting hidden meanings, symbols, like so many Easter Eggs, waiting to be discovered. (Perhaps some modern poets make a habit of this, but if you ask me, it’s a pretty annoying habit.) In my own experience, what a good novelist wants to say, in almost every case, is pretty much right there in the story itself: What it feels like to be alive, to have this odd thing we call consciouness, to have this or that extraordinary experience, to be alive in this time in history and in this particular place.
In The Feet Say Run the plot is intricate and involved, but what it says is not: That humans are capable of extraordinary cruelty and kindness, stupidity and brilliance; that life is chaotic and complex; that this sturdy-seeming thing we call civilization is in truth desperately fragile.
How long did it take you to complete the novel?
I worked on it on and off for six years. I was working for most of that time, and dropped it for months at a time. But it was still a pretty ambitious project.
Are you disciplined? Describe a typical writing day.
I am driven, but not terribly disciplined, and have no particular pattern. I have no particular pattern. I am neither nocturnal nor diurnal. I’m an omnivorous reader and a restless scavenger as a writer. Whatever I am doing, in the back of my mind I am thinking about how I need to get back to my book.
What did you find most challenging about writing this book?
It is narrated by a German who grew up in the Nazi era. As a Jewish writer from Long Island, this took a lot of research as well as a leap of faith. That I made my narrator an essentially sympathetic character also greatly worried me. Would I be attacked as apologist for Naziism? But so far I have now found readers and reviewers who have had trouble with this.
What do you love most about being an author?
I truly love the writing process. It is the best puzzle, the most intriguing brain-teaser, the most intricate and joyous daydream, all rolled into one. Of course, getting feedback and feeling that I’ve entertained and communicated is gratifying as well.
Did you go with a traditional publisher, small press, or did you self publish? What was the process like and are you happy with your decision?
My first novel was with a traditional publisher, Viking, and The Feet Say Run is with a small press, Gabriel’s Horn. My Viking experience was very mixed – mainly because my hopes had been raised to high. Gabriel’s Horn has been all positive. They found me after I’d posted a couple of poems on a public website, we started a correspondence and they asked what else I wrote. So they really found me, rather than the other way around. In a way I feel I have had the extremely rare experience of having been “discovered,” forgotten, and then once again “discovered” – with no awareness that I was already a published writer.
Where can we find you on the web?
I have a humor blog, “The Rotting Post”. It has nothing to do with my serious writing, but there is a tab on with some more about my books, and an email address. And of course, The Feet Say Run is out there on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc.
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