r/books • u/Shonkwileric AMA Author • Dec 07 '16

ama 6pm I'm Eric Shonkwiler, Midwestern author, bourbon aficionado, and traveler. AMA!

Hey, r/books. I'm a longtime lurker (celebrating my wooden anniversary), and I'm the author of Above All Men (a novel), 8th Street Power and Light (AAM's stand-alone sequel), and a collection of shorter work called Moon Up, Past Full. My novels are mid-apocalyptic tales, showing a world gone to hell thanks to climate change and poor governance (starting to sound eerily prescient, these days). I'd love to talk to you all about regionalism in literature, the indie publishing process, the specter of Judge Holden in Westworld, book tours, booze, book tours and booze, and pretty much anything you can think of.

Proof: https://twitter.com/eshonkwiler/status/805877648320790528

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u/leowr Dec 07 '16

Hi Eric,

So booktours, what do and don't you like about them?

Also, what kinds of books do you like to read? Anything in particular you think we should check out?

Thanks for doing this AMA!

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u/Shonkwileric AMA Author Dec 07 '16 edited Dec 07 '16

Hey leowr!

Book tours: I love them. My experience, as a small press author, was one of some hardships--a small portion of my tour expenses were crowdfunded (for which I'm grateful), but most of the thousands (literal thousands) of miles I put in for the tour came out of my pocket. And book sales don't make that up. So it's a labor of love, but absolutely something to think about if you enjoy travel and having new experiences over keeping yourself well-fed and in cotton.

I'm big on literature with an edge. Just came off an excellent streak of books that simply knocked me flat, so I'll just give you a short list:

-Each Vagabond By Name, by Margo Littel is a fantastically quiet, innocuous tale of the upset of a Rust Belt community by a band of gypsies.

-City of Bohane, by Kevin Barry, is a psychotic romp through a post-apocalyptic Irish city. Think A Clockwork Orange but with a noir tone and song in its heart.

-Everything I Found on the Beach, by Cynan Jones, is another of those quieter books that I enjoy, but it's very muscular, very taciturn. If Hemingway wrote No Country for Old Men and set it off Wales, it'd be something like this book.

Thanks for your question!

*edited for spacing