1. What’s your favorite song to dance to?
Though I don’t really dance, I find I am most motivated when listening to the music of C+C Music Factory.
2. Describe your personal hell.
Forever reliving the moment I walk into my kitchen and see the new roommate and he’s wearing Aladdin pants and those weird shoes with the toes and he’s making his own candy and everything is smoky because he’s just lit sage and I consider calling the cops.
3. What’s something that always makes you laugh?
Anytime Conan O’Brien pulls the Walker, Texas Ranger lever. Google it.
4. You’re sucked into a bad movie and you have to choose a point in history to live out the rest of your years. What time do you choose and why?
If I had to be sucked into a movie I’d want it to either be A) Repo Man, specifically the scene where Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton sit in a car and they talk about a lot of bullshit while snorting coke, B) Encino Man, but instead of being “rescued” by Pauly Shore and Sean Astin, I am left frozen inside a block of ice for 90 minutes, or C) a potential remake of Scrooged where David Johansen reprises his role as the cabdriver and, before being visited by the ghosts of all the dead members of the New York Dolls, he runs me over with his cab.
5. What’s a gif that you can relate to?
6. You’re hit by lightning. What happens?
I watch a 90-minute documentary on YouTube about the making of the movie Caddyshack and then fall asleep for several hours.
7. It’s snowing outside, how do you feel?
Same way I always feel—like a big, smoldering pile of E.T. Atari video game cartridges that were dug out of a mysterious landfill and then set on fire.
8. What’s a cat picture you can get behind?
9. Where did you write most of your book? Why?
In bed, surrounded by garbage, drinking Rolling Rock tallboys, and listening to Oasis at 6 am while my cat gave me pitiful looks from across the room. “P, A, R, T, Why? Because I gotta!”—The Mask (1994)
10. What are your struggles and strengths as a writer?
I struggle with anxiety and depression, which is also my strength as a writer. *winks*
11. Tell us a little about your writing process. What works, what doesn’t, what doesn’t but you still try anyway?
Writing every day is cool, but have you tried taking 24 caffeinated and junk food-fueled hours out of every month—after getting fucked up, making bad decisions and thus setting fire to your already scorched life the previous 29-30 days—to write? Oh boy, what a ride!
BRIAN ALAN ELLIS runs House of Vlad Productions, and is the author of three novellas, three short-story collections, a previous book of humorous non-fiction, and Something to Do with Self-Hate, a novel. His writing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Electric Literature, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Funhouse, Talking Book, and Queen Mob’s Tea House, among other places. He lives in Florida, and tweets sad and clever things at both @brianalanellis and @HouseofVlad.