SmokeLong Quarterly

Where did the character Dmitri come from?

Dmitri (and the narrator in the first section) is based on a frightening man who wanted a tennis court I was using. He was a great big man, with a thick but well trimmed beard, and a tight t-shirt that showed his enormous barrel chest. He came up to me and said, with a thick Russian accent, “How long are you play?” I was pretty sure he was in the Russian Mafia. So I stopped playing.

Who is the narrator in each section?

1) The frightening Russian mobster, tennis player, short story advice giver, read with a Russian accent.
2) A plumber, read with an Irish accent.
3) A detective, read with a film noir accent, whatever that means.

Was the organization (3 self-referencing sections) part of the plan, or did it come naturally with the telling of the story?

It just happened naturally. I wanted these siblings to transcend time and place, so I set them settings in 3 places, and at least 2 times (the first section doesn’t really have a time).

There is a lot going on here. Can you point out something we might have missed, a secret in the storytelling?

Dmitri’s sister Svetlana is named for Svetlana Kuznetsova, who is a Russian tennis player, to continue the theme.

What other projects are you working on right now?

Just trying to finish my damn novella.