Author Interview: Zachary Ryan

Neighborhood bartender and longtime writer, Zachary Ryan is finally putting himself out there to entertain others. While he’s received more drunken toasts from patrons saluting their favorite drink-slinger (too many to count) than literary accolades (zero), he’s happy to have made it even this far, and sincerely appreciates every reader’s time. Follow his fledgling Instagram at: @the_red_novelist

Zachary's short story, "One Jarful of a Wanted Man," was a runner-up in the MoonLit Getaway Grand Opening Contest.

INTERVIEW

MG: What got you into writing?

ZR: Technically, I guess when I could spell my first word. I was four years old when I drew my first story. I tried to mimic the comic books I saw my father reading, and doodled about ten pages of a crossover Spider-Man/Joker knockoff where most of the characters were multi-colored blobs. I then handed it to my mother and told her what to write inside the dialogue-bubbles. It was a poorly constructed plot without the gravity of cause and effect—and many, many purposeless cameos—but she wrote my dialogue verbatim until the final page, where the Joker scared Spider-Man to near death. I personally handled that scene’s dialogue, which was determined by my knowledge of how to spell Boo.

Over the years, my storytelling improved while my drawings did not. I found I could chicken-scratch a letter easier than a muscle. It was a quick turn after that to writing stories instead of drawing them.

MG: Tell us more about One Jarful of a Wanted Man—what inspired it? What makes it unique?

ZR: No grand inspiration for this piece aside from a walk around the neighborhood. I saw the contest, needed an idea, and was determined to have one within the hour. The story thrusts the reader into a bizarre setting with little to no concrete exposition, only the confusion of our protagonist. My hope was that small details would intuitively piece the puzzle together within the reader’s imagination. Much of the narrative heft comes from a single image (glue, glue, glue), and it was my intention that, “like a bright metal on a sullen ground,” this climatic image would stand out more against the story’s other shadow-like qualities.

And since I’ve been asked this question several times: the pumpkin-haired man is part charlatan, part daemon, but more charlatan than daemon. It’s likely he’ll be seen again.

MG: Are you currently working on anything else?

ZR: Yes! I’m working on a new novel, Three Rounds on the Carousel, a sprawling narrative which takes place in a large corporate restaurant, moving in real-time through a busy Saturday night shift. Oh, and did I mention a body is found in the deep freeze shortly after the shift begins? Our team of servers and kitchen workers must solve this mystery before closing time, in this locked-restaurant who-dun-it.

Much of my gypsy life has been spent touring the US while working in restaurants, from mom and pops to corporate empires. I’ve collected enough interesting characters and bizarre scenarios through the years to write a grand restaurant novel, and the above premise is the vehicle to do just that. Finally!

MG: What’s your favorite piece you've ever made? Why is it your favorite?

ZR: I have a novel I worked on for many years, titled, Nazrucu. It is unpublished. It has been rejected by close to one-hundred agents. It has been well 

received. It has been referred to as “unmarketable.” I take that as a point of pride.

Oh, I recall when, culturally, being unmarketable could be a good thing. Pabst for instance became the hipster beer simply because it had no advertising campaign. And only a few years ago it was considered “selling out” to see an artist-celebrity in a commercial. Now social media lights up with affection when they see their favorite otherwise-aloof artist, or influencer, or whatever-it-be pop up in a surprise Doritos ad.

Strangeness in art will always be unmarketable. But it’s how new tastes and trends form. I believe there’s room for more weirdness out there. For the unconventional, for the uncompromised, for the vision fulfilled. Nazrucu is my favorite because it’s just that, it is the wild fantasia I set out to create, an adventure full of merry madness.

MG: Are there any writers that inspire the way you make your pieces?

ZR: Yes. Absolutely. Like a hallucination. You see, in high school I sometimes made extra money by writing friends’ English papers. Regardless of the teacher, it was an easy A after A after A. Until Mrs. Limperson. Then they came back with Cs and Ds. Though I personally didn’t have her as a teacher, I still felt I was failing her class, and could hear her stern voice through the red marks on the page. Her condescension was intimidating to me, the wannabe, because I knew she was a published writer, a poet that my dense-self couldn’t possibly understand, having printed one of those poetry books that specialize in juxtaposing the sublime with the mundane, though I can’t call the exact name, something profoundly real like Secular Donuts.

Mrs. Limperson’s corrections did not end in high school though. To this day, her round figure appears to me when I’m an impostor in my own dreams. She stands at my bedside with her murderous pen. It drips sparkling red in the moonlight. D-work at best! she shouts. Then I awake with the urgency of a missed assignment, and the edits ready to go, as if she’s left corrections in the margins. She’s a harsh muse. When it’s all said and done, I hardly know who should get credit as author, Zachary Ryan, or Mrs. Limperson.

MG: Do you have any social media you'd like to share?

ZR: Yes! After many years off the social grid, I have surrendered to the pressure. Join me on TikTok @therednovelist and Instagram @the_red_novelist. Let me help you find that classic you told yourself you were going to read this year. Plenty other accounts give fine recommendations, but you see the same suggestions again and again. I’d like to open the field a bit. Current recommendation comes from the Harlem Renaissance, titled The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman. If that name looks familiar, it was used as the title of a relatively recent Kendrick Lamar song. It’s also very likely that, based on his lyrics, Tupac (a documented bibliophile) was aware of the work.

I just started these handles though, so bear with me. I’m a longtime lurker and a never-ever poster. Maybe I’ll pivot to @the_unmarketable_author at some point. Who knows. It’s a total wing job right now. At least I’ve been told I have a soothing voice.

MG: Do you have any advice for other writers?

ZR: I’m hardly published, so rather than give advice, I’ll end with a call-to-arms. We are entering a minor art apocalypse. Generative AI will refine itself into a commodity machine, and it likely won’t take long. It will consume and reproduce the most popular formulas and tropes, and replace most artists who work with such tools. If we don’t defend literature, it is destined for the assembly line. I implore everyone to write in a way which cannot be commodified. Write unmarketably. Write experimentally. Challenge yourself. Be both sincere and insincere. Play games. Show heart. You’re not refining plastic: allow the puzzle pieces to take their own unique shape on the page. Write with conviction, invention, and vitality. Breathe life and personality into your work. Most importantly, don’t allow yourself to get swallowed up.