Five Questions: Al Riske

I’ve known Al Riske for a number of years. He’s a good friend, and one of the people who inspired me to start writing fiction (thank you, Al!). We share an interest in writing and literature, and also have similar tastes in music – we’re both huge fans of Van Morrison and Bruce Sprinsteen.

A few years ago, Al had his first short story published, “What She Said.” I think he wrote the first draft of that story over 30 years ago. Since then, he has had a slew of stories published, won an award, and his short story collection, Precarious, is making its way to bookstores now. So I thought I’d add Al to my Five Questions series.

Q. There are 15 stories included in Precarious. Some of them were written over 30 years ago, but your first published story didn’t appear until 2007. Why do you think it took so long to break through, and how did it feel when “What She Said” was accepted by Beloit?

A. It took a long time because I wasn’t ready. I thought I was ready, but I can see now, looking back on earlier drafts, that I wasn’t. I wasn’t, and the stories weren’t. If they had been published earlier (and I did come close with an editor from Penguin back in 2002), I wouldn’t have been nearly as proud of them as I am now. Now, I wouldn’t change a thing — though I reserve the right to change my mind on that.

Having that first story published was huge for me. It gave me some much needed validation. All the rejection notes say how subjective the process is, and you think, yeah, yeah, the editors are just trying to let me down easy. But it is subjective. Really subjective. One of my stories was rejected 27 times before it was finally published — and, from what I understand, that’s not unusual.

I didn’t know that, though, so I tended to give up after just a few tries. In the case of “What She Said,” I tried half a dozen places and they all said no, so I figured, what’s the use? Eight years later I decided I really liked the story and tried again. The very next place I sent it, the Beloit Fiction Journal, published it

Q.   Almost every story in Precarious deals with relationships, men and women trying to find love. More often than not, the characters get tantalizingly close to finding love, but in the end it eludes them. Am I reading that correctly, and if so, what attracts you to that theme?

A. If that’s true — and I think you may be on to something — it’s probably because I was often unlucky in love. So much can go wrong, you know? Most of the time we don’t even know what it is we really want. Or we know but we can’t say. We can’t say because saying it out loud would spoil it somehow. We want the other person to figure it out, to just know what we need from them, but too few of us know how to read minds.

Q.  Has your approach to writing changed since you wrote the first of these stories?

A. Yes and no. I didn’t know what I was doing 30-odd years ago when I wrote the earliest of these stories. I still don’t. Not really. As I write, I’m just trying to figure out how I feel about things — and a lot of what comes out surprises me. It’s like, Where did that come from?

From a more technical standpoint, I do seem to have fallen into a pattern where I tend to put down the dialogue first and then add layers of action and description. Which is weird because my very first stories had zero dialogue. Now it’s my favorite thing to do. I think I was so worried about not being able to do dialogue that I scared myself into getting pretty good at it.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I’m working on a short novel with a long title — The Boy Who Broke Sabrina’s Window. It begins with a 17-year-old boy breaking the window of a woman nearly twice his age — an accident that marks the beginning of an instant, inexplicable bond between them. It’s set in one of my favorite places — Taos, New Mexico — and explores some of the same themes as my short stories. Joshua and Sabrina share confidences, intercede in each other’s love lives, go on a date that scandalizes the town, and confront questions of fidelity, desire, and the nature of love.

Q. What is the best advice on writing that you’ve ever gotten?

A. That’s an easy one: “Diversify your emotional investments.” Which comes from our mutual friend Greg Bardsley. It’s a very memorable way of saying, Don’t put all your hopes into any one project. Just keep writing and putting things out there. Thanks, Greg. I need that.