CHASE GRIFFIN is an author from Florida whose debut novel, What’s on the Menu?, was published by Long Day Press. You can find his writing in Oyez Review, Fugitives and Futurists, Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Breadcrumbs Magazine, and elsewhere. The Rocco Atleby Foundation, the podcast he produces with his partner, Christina Quay, can be streamed on Spotify and Apple.
My current favorite books are: Collected Fictions by Borges, The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, Valis by Phillip K. Dick, Against the Day by Pynchon, everything by Kafka, Noah Cicero’s Las Vegas Bootlegger (fucked me up in the best way), Brielle Brilliant’s The Spud, Whimsy by Shannon McLeod, everything on Long Day Press, and obscure and forgotten comedy novels from the thirties.
My current favorite authors are: Kevin Sterne and Nathaniel Kennon Perkins. Zach Dodson is a mad genius.
My current favorite films are: The Thing, Ghostbusters, Aliens, and Stalker.
My current favorite television show is: …Christina and I are unable to stop watching Bob’s Burgers. I would ask for help, but we don’t want to stop.
My current favorite song is: …I am having a moment with that Kenny Loggins song from Caddyshack. It plays three times a day at work and it’s breaking my brain. I used to love this song. Now it makes me want to smash my head against the pallet of ice in the back freezer until I piss myself. There needs to be a new set of workers’ rights laws passed, am I right? One of the new laws should prohibit short, repetitive playlists. Humanity has created a lot of fucking music. Throw some jazz in there. Classical. Gimme some Motown. Switch it the fuck up. “And reruns all become our history / A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio / And I won’t tell no one your name / And I won’t tell ’em your name.” Is that in your head now? Good. Welcome to my nightmare. Please, add more songs to your work playlists. The other day I asked a coworker, “Do they ever change this playlist?” And he said, “Man, they have been using this playlist for seventeen years.” Then he went cross-eyed and started convulsing.
My current favorite jogging album is: Some Kind Of Cadwallader by Algernon Cadwallader.
My current state of mind is: perpetually scatterbrained.
My current chemical romance involves: so much coffee every day that I can touch the ethereal plane by 8 a.m.
My current favorite quote is:
“I try to maintain a positive attitude at all times, because clients notice little things like that, and if you’re frowning and crying all the time and saying, ‘Why? Why?’ they get worried.”
“As my exciting story began I was being punched in the stomach.”
Both of these are from John Swartzwelder’s classic, The Time Machine Did It.
My current mode of transportation is: …when our festering turd of a car isn’t in the shop, we get around in our Ford Focus. Otherwise I hoof it.
My current favorite fast food item is: peanut butter. It’s not fast food but it kind of is. I will eat an entire jar in a day.
My current workout routine consists of: …I need to be taken on lots of walks and jogs, like a hyper dog.
My current regrettable decision involves: never finishing this one book about a guy who stands on his roof. He stands on his roof for the entire length of the novel. He daydreams about cutting a Looney Tunes-style hole in the roof and pouring a truckload of dry oatmeal into his house. That was all that was going to happen. The guy climbs up a ladder onto his roof every day and has this daydream. I’m positive it would be a laugh riot. One day I will finish the oatmeal roof book.
My current hopes and dreams are: to create a compendium of collected works (including all of the strange books mentioned within my books and podcasts) that resembles a puzzle box, a massive Rocco Atleby novel that can be disassembled and reconstructed in any way and order readers see fit. I will eventually call for other authors to write their own stories that take place in the Rocco Patasphere.
My current projects/hobbies include: …besides writing and producing the Rocco Atleby Foundation podcast with Christina, we’re co-authoring How to Play a Necromancer’s Theremin, an experimental fantasy/horror/comedy novel. And Theremin’s follow-up, Wanderer’s Task, will be the debut sci-fi pulp novel by Rocco Atleby.
For more information on Chase Griffin‘s debut novel, visit longdaypress.com.
BRIAN ALAN ELLIS runs House of Vlad Press, and is the author of several books, including Sad Laughter (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018). His writing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Fanzine, Monkeybicycle, Electric Literature, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Funhouse, Heavy Feather Review, and Yes Poetry, among other places. He lives in Florida.
neutralspaces.co/brianalanellis
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