❤Author Interview: Literary Fiction/Humor/Satire Author Ross Dreiblatt

Ross Dreiblatt is an author who was born and grew up in New York. His father was a truck driver and his mom was a retail manager. He attended Hofstra University and moved to Los Angeles where he attended Cal State Northridge. While in Los Angeles, he studied under John Rechy’s master writing workshop at UCLA.

He has worked in the corporate offices of major retailers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Florida toiling on spreadsheets by day, and the imaginary lives of celebrity monsters by night.

He loves to travel and will get on a plane going anywhere, as long as it eventually lands safely. Despite the dour photo, he is kind of a happy guy.

He currently lives in South Florida.

His latest book is the literary fiction / humor / satire novel, I AM NOT BRAD PITT AND OTHER STORIES.

You can visit his website at www.RossDreiblatt.com or connect with him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Thanks for stopping by!  What attracted you to the Humor genre?

Who doesn’t appreciate a fun book?  I love to read a book that can make me smile.  I guess it’s just my odd perspective on things. In real life, I’ve always used humor when I’m making a point or facing any kind of adverse situation.  

But the book isn’t just humor it’s also a thriller, a mystery, science fiction and probably crosses a few other categories.  When my agent was sending it out to publishers, we had lots of positive feedback, but they found it hard to categorize.

Do you write in any other genres?

Honestly, I don’t ever start writing a book with the idea that it will be funny.  I’m attracted to thrillers or science fiction, all types of genres, but through my odd perspective,  stories always evolve into humor.  Or what I hope is humor.

What inspired you to write I am not Brad Pitt and Other Stories?

When I wrote the first draft of the title story, I actually chose another celebrity.  This particular celebrity had just had a national “moment” on a famous talk show.  He was jumping up and down on Oprah’s sofa declaring his love for his now-ex-wife.

This made me think about how hard celebrities work to project an image of who they want us to think they are.  Even in this day and age, they spend tons of money and time to make sure that we think of them as happy relatable people.  Hence, when you’re talking to your co-workers or friends about a certain celebrity they will talk as if they know them, i.e., “Oh that Tom Hanks is such a nice guy!” 

But we really don’t know them, do we?  They are not like us.  They live a life of privilege that we can only imagine.  So, I thought about exploring that distance between what we know about them and who they really are.  In a way it’s like a modern mythology, an explanation of the Gods behavior.

Can you give us your book blurb so others can find out what your book is about?

“I Am Not Brad Pitt” opens in a prison cell in which Mr. Pitt’s clone-like doppelganger, Tobey Crawford, remorsefully recounts the sequence of unlikely events that resulted in his wrongful conviction for murder.

The second story, “Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself,” considers the possibility that Keith Richards (along with, for good measure, Dolly Parton) is, indeed, a vampire. Nobel-Prize laureate Bob Dylan, the story’s vampire-killer, is equipped with more than just a harmonica and tambourine.

The final work in the collection, “Keeping Compliant With The Kardashians,” examines whether Kardashian family members are, in fact, aliens from another galaxy and what precisely is their interest on Earth.

Each of the stories are told with engaging humor, and each pokes fun more at American culture than they do, generally, of the celebrities themselves.

How can readers discover more about you and your work? 

You can visit me at Ross Dreiblatt

You can also check me out on Facebook:  I Am Not Brad Pitt and Other Stories | Facebook

Where can readers buy your book? 

I Am Not Brad Pitt on Amazon

Instagram : Ross Dreiblatt (@rossdreiblatt) • Instagram photos and videos

Twitter: @Iamnotbradpitt1

Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to take part in this interview. What’s next for you?

Lesser Prairie Chickens! 

It’s titled “The Ninth Annual Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival” and, yes, it’s an actual thing.

Being a writer is being able to hone your skills as a storyteller.  The structure of a well told story is something I have always been fascinated by, so my next manuscript is a sort of a tightrope walk with structure. 

On the one hand it’s a story about Andrea, a professional birdwatcher who’s tracking as many different species of birds in a year as she can.  Her year culminates at the chicken festival in a search for a very rare breed of Lesser Prairie Chicken and she’s forced to confront all of her shortcomings.

But in between each chapter there is an “after hours” a space where the characters from the book meet while the author is asleep and discuss the story.  Eventually the characters start to rebel against the author and try to sabotage the story and then the two stories start to bleed into each other. 

I predict this book will also not be able to find a category.