His latest book is the adult literary fiction, Eternal Graffiti.
You can visit his website at www.petermarlton.com or connect with him on Twitter.
Thanks for stopping by! What attracted you to the literary fiction genre?
I’ve always been drawn to literary fiction, specifically character-driven narratives that explore interior experience as much, or even more, than plot-driven storytelling. Some of the best reading experiences I’ve had have been a combination of the two, and while I didn’t set out to do that with Eternal Graffiti, I think it ended up that way.
Do you write in any other genres?
I’ve written screenplays and a few one-act plays, and these tend to be comedies.
What inspired you to write Eternal Graffiti?
I had a vivid image come to mind of a building on fire on top of a hill in rural Northern California. The building is a barracks, part of a larger prison for teenagers. A 15-year-old inmate watches from the bottom of the hill. It is magnificent, this inferno, biblical in its power and proportion. It lights up the night sky, a high wind creating spectacular configurations of wanton destruction. The kid is living the moment fully, awestruck at the rightness and justice of it. The devastation is long overdue, and any minute it’s going to offer him a rare opportunity to escape.
The book took root in that image/scenario and percolated for years before I discovered what it was.
Can you give us your book blurb so others can find out what your book is about?
Eternal Graffiti is a Bildungsroman, a wild ride spanning ten years in the life of Owen Kilroy—1970-1980. If you were to interweave François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a version of Pygmalion with the genders reversed, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen, the offspring would look something like Eternal Graffiti. “I don’t know if this is confession or a purge, a scream or a lullaby,” begins twenty-seven-year-old Owen’s journal, in which he writes about the remarkable women—friends and lovers who’ve come and gone and who have shaped his life, as well as the many varieties of heartbreak he’s experienced. Owen revisits himself as a 17-year-old guitar player, songwriter, and drug dealer in a small, fictional California desert town. He relives being arrested, violently, by half the town’s police force and sent to juvenile prison. He faces the pain of being disowned by his mother and having his father disappear. And he writes about inadvertently killing his girlfriend by providing her with drugs. After escaping from juvenile prison, ending up broke, desperate, and homeless in Venice Beach, he eventually meets Kiera, a nineteen-year-old Irish student at UCLA. She is the great love of his life, a love that he knows would cripple him if he were to lose her. Now, ten years later, Owen discovers that writing about her and all that came before isn’t enough. If he is to move on, he realizes he must go back to California and face his ghosts head on.
How can readers discover more about you and your work?
The best way is to check out my website. www.petermarlton.com.
Where can readers buy your book?
This link has information on many vendors including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and various indies: https://www.thestoryplant.com/eternal-graffiti
You can pick up a copy of my book at…
Elliott Bay Books in Seattle and through the vendors listed above.
Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to take part in this interview. What’s next for you?
Thank you for asking me. Next on my calendar is a month in Paris devoted to working on my next book.
Watch the Book Trailer:
