Ryan O'Reilly, author of the novel Snapshot, has the courtesy to stop by and do an interview with myself for y'all! His book earned a generous 9/10 from myself, and I'm giving away three copies of Snapshot - be sure to enter by the end of today if you want to win!
Snapshot was based loosely off of your own experience. What’s your favorite part about the road?
For me the most amazing part about the road is the feeling of freedom I experience, and also the sense of attachment to something greater than myself. When I’ve left a journey I’ve always been aware of the progression that the traveler goes through, which in some ways mirrors some of the things that we all go through in life; you take your first step out the front door, and you feel like your still basically at home. Then you take another, then another and finally you are in an unrecognizable place with unrecognizable people. When you first realize that you are away from everything that’s familiar it’s a bit unnerving. The traveler invariably feels a sense of isolation. But that soon passes and soon the world just explodes open in front of you, and you begin to feel at home in the unknown, at home in the world, at home with the journey.
The other good part about the road is that there is potentially a gas station Slushy around every corner.
Slushies, yum. ^^ If you could paint the White House a different color, what color would you paint it?
I think purple. You don’t see a lot of purple buildings around, and I think maybe we should embrace the architectural significance of the color purple. Of course, if I had enough power that I could decide what color the white house was going to be then I might just throw a big mural of myself on the roof, just to be funny.
I think I'll stick with the classic colors - lime green with purple polka dots. What do you think could be done about the boringness of some corporate jobs? In other words, how would you liven it up?
Unfortunately I’m not 100 percent sure that there is a way to spice up the corporate world. I suppose if there where then I might still be there. I found life outside of corporate America, and I think the key to being content in life lies somewhere in that notion. As we grow up and get older there’s this very subliminal push for us to think of our jobs as the primary motive behind success, and the reality is that this just isn’t true. A corporate job may give you money to live, but what is true success if you don’t take a couple of extra days of vacation, leave early on a Friday or call in sick on the first warm day of spring. It’s about passion outside of work, and using that to live with work, not about working ourselves to death at the risk of sacrificing happiness or sanity.
I think Ellen's got it right - coffee break should be more like spring break; that would certainly liven things up! (I'd link the video clip if I could find it, but I can't.) The picture on the cover of Snapshot is gorgeous. Did you have a hand in picking it?
I did have a hand in it, but not in the artistic sense. I was talking with the graphic designer at my publisher and I told him I was thinking that the cover should be a picture of the road with a sunset in the background with some cool light and shading. A couple of days later he emailed me a drawing with a note, which read; “I think this is what you are looking for.” It turns out that that was what I was looking for, and that first drawing ended up as the cover of the book.
I'm glad it did, it looks fantastic. Now, I don’t know much about motorcycles, but I was glancing at some of the old Harley’s and they’re really kind of neat. What’s your favorite ‘year’ of Harley?
My favorite year(s) are the old shovelheads from the 70s. The motorcycle I took on the trip that inspired the book was fairly new, but I had test ridden an old shovelhead once, the kind you kick-start, and I loved it! It was all black, and had that big headlight and classic lines that those old bikes from the 40s and 50s had. It was a very romantic looking machine, and that’s the bike I imagined my main character riding in the novel.
I didn't know machines could be romantic! How many friends did you make on the road?
Everyone I met on the road was a friend. Well almost actually. I would categorize the people I met on the road into two groups: The people who got it and the people who didn’t, or the people who were free and the people who looked at freedom as this menacing thing that was not to be trusted. Once I met this older man, I had set up camp near his house, and he invited me into his home with his family and we swapped stories about the world until midnight. He got it.
Another time I had been speeding, just a little, and was briefly detained by a police officer in Wyoming. He shook me down for about twenty minutes; searched my backpack, checked all license and VIN number, then told me that “I should probably keep on moving.” I think he meant that I should get out of town. He didn’t get it.
It'd either be really cool or really creepy to be invited into your house by an older man - but on the other hand, I'm fifteen. Let’s say cars and motorcycles suddenly vanished from existence. How would you travel – by plane, by horse, by foot, or by elephant?
I would love to travel by foot. The naturalist John Muir once said that it’s hard to resist the urge to “throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.” That’s what I would love to do. I think I was born in the wrong time.
I still think the horse, and than the elephant, are the best ways to ride. [The ‘Make Your Own Question’ question.] My question is “What are the top 10 most righteous things in the world?”
1. easy cheese
2. the iPod I so agree!
3. baby carrots
4. hats that I can wear well
5. Hamlet
6. comfortable socks
7. camp fires
8. my girlfriend in ski clothes
9. 2005 Archery Summit Pinot Noir Cuvee
10.anything by the Beatles
Thanks for granting me (and everybody who reads this) the interview, Ryan! Remember, you still have until the end of today to enter the contest to win a copy of his book.
Happy reading!
~Nicole