Elephants in Our Bedroom is, quite simply, one of the best books I've read. It is a very strong contender for my book of the year (watch out Kimball, Smailes and Tillyer!). You can read what I had to say about it here.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I am to have its author, Michael Czyzniejewski, here on the blog for an interview. And what an interview it turned out to be...



Welcome to the blog, Michael. It is one heck of a pleasure and an honour to have someone whose writing I admire so much here.

Thanks, Nik. I’m glad and honored myself—especially to talk to someone who spells “honored” with a “u.”



First of all, could you tell us a little about your short story collection, Elephants in Our Bedroom?

It’s a book I’d worked on for a long time. Those stories mean a lot to me, as they’re me finding my voice, finding myself as an artist. To see someone grab onto that, acknowledge it, and most of all, read it, verifies what I’ve been doing.



But in more simple terms, it’s a book of 24 short stories, most of them about how people can’t seem to figure out how to relate to each other anymore, with a lot of absurd concepts and images thrown in.



The stories in Elephants in Our Bedroom put me in mind, in themes and quality, of the work of Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret – who are probably my two favourite writers – and that’s got a lot to do with the unlikely and fantastic situations your characters find themselves in. Where do these situations come from? Is there a process or do they just happen?

I purposely try to come up with something that I think is clever, funny, challenging, impossible, uncomfortable, and bizarre all at the same time. I spend a lot of time thinking about things. Once I have something, though, I can run with it. It’s like moving the furniture around in your living room. Only certain things work, and once you find it, you just sit back and appreciate the news angles that you can look at things.

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I somehow doubt that this woman was in the top 100 when it came to short listing for the 'Mother of the Year Awards'?

http://donnasdailydeliberation.blogspot.com/2009/11/mother-of-year.html

I am tapping my fingers and waiting to hear if I have been sucessful is securing a place in the 2010 London Marathon. If I have then I will be running for Children with Leukemia....fingers crossed.

Oooh, winter is coming and the world, as I knew it, is gone; hundreds of pounds of already-used heat sailed from my kingdom - time to face the mountain and its weather. The best tool I have is this bed, this ship, these quilts and blankets, this laptop and super-furry slippers. I can feel the chill lying on my shoulders, sliding down my arms but I've yet to feel the kiss of ice on my nose - when it reaches the cheekbones I'll turn that dial, hear the explosion of the lovely gas jets - BOOOF!

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