Interview with Gregory Allen, author of "Well With My Soul"
Tracee Gleichner
November 02, 2011
About Gregory G. Allen
Gregory G. Allen moved from Texas to New York in the late 80s and has been in the entertainment business for over twenty years as an actor, director, producer, songwriter, playwright and author. He´s had over ten shows that he has written produced on stage, been the recipient of musical grants from BMI, ASCAP and the Watershed Foundation, and has had short stories and poetry published in Off The Rocks, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, The Oddville Press, Perpetual Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Word Catalyst Magazine, and Rancor´d Type.
He is a member of ASCAP, The Dramatist Guild, and the Theatre Communications Group. He now lives in the suburbs of New Jersey and for the past five years he´s managed an arts center on a college campus. Proud Pants: An Unconventional Memoir was published this summer and is available as a digital download on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This is his first novel.
For more information on Gregory, visit his website at www.ggallen.net or http://www.facebook.com/author.gregory.g.allen.
Do you have a personal blog and/or website?
I do…I actually have both. www.ggallen.net and www. http://gregory-g-allen.blogspot.com/ How much time do you invest in keeping it active? I spent daily time on my blog and when something major happens (or an event or book signing is added), I update my website. How beneficial do you feel they are to keeping the author in the public eye? I think these go hand-in-hand with other social media. I am very busy on my author facebook page http://www.facebook.com/author.gregory.g.allen and twitter as well.
When you are writing, do you base your characters on real people?
If your book was being made into a movie who would you see cast? My characters are sometimes a combination of multiple people. I also love to travel and when I see someone on a trip that hits me in a powerful way (either emotionally or because of certain quirks), they may make their way into my characters. I try not to cast characters from Hollywood actors because I think it throws off a reader. I´m one of those that loves to read the book before the movie is made so that Hollywood doesn´t put the face in my head – I´d rather make up one instead.
Setting is such an important part of a book. What made you decide to choose the setting of your book?
I knew I wanted Well With My Soul to be a New York story. The city is a character itself that pulls Jacob in as he becomes engulfed in the party life. However, I wanted to offset that with having his brother Noah and mother in Tennessee, always pulling at Jacob with the history of where he came from.
Being a writer can be a lonely profession. How do you keep from giving up? Who do you get your support from?
I have a great group of friends and family that are so supportive. But I also have to say the community I have discovered on twitter of so many other indie authors has truly opened a new world to me of support.
Do you belong to any writing organizations? How have they helped you with the writing or publishing process?
I have been a member of musical theater writing groups in the past when I was mostly writing for the stage, but none recently.
World-building requires the author to do a lot of planning and inventing. Can you tell us a little about your world and your process for creating it?
I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and loosely based the church in the book on that world – though I do not give it a denomination in the book. I was also in the entertainment business for years and have done numerous auditions (and a few New York parties) so I would draw on those experiences to create the world in the book. My goal (though it is fiction) was to make it as real as possible. To give readers a sense of history from the 70s-90s in New York. When I first moved to the city, I lived on the Upper West Side, so it felt right to set my story in that neighborhood. Then I could walk through it (in my mind) and relay that experience to the reader. Hopefully they´ll get a great sense of the city while reading WELL WITH MY SOUL.
About Well With My Soul
Well with My Soul introduces two brothers who, although close in childhood, have drifted away from each other and closed the door to engagement and emotional connection. The older brother, Jacob, flees his small Tennessee hometown to seek a new life in New York, where he imagines he will overcome his self-hatred and growing sexuality as a homosexual. The younger brother, Noah, stays behind and feels trapped by his role as caretaker for his aging mother. As they grow apart, both brothers go through a series of traumatic events that irrevocably alter their lives: while Noah, shackled by familial duties, finds courage in the sorrow of the past, Jacob´s frenzied search for freedom leads him into a labyrinth of fear and doubt which alienates him from his true identity and wreaks havoc in the lives of those closest to him. Covering the wild times of the 1970s and the restraint of the Reagan years and told through the perspective of both brothers, Well with My Soul is about the families we inherit and the families we build. It is an unflinching exploration of the way that we deal with what most unsettles us, at times using it for the highest form of inspiration, and at other times letting it confine us in previously unimaginable ways.
Gregory G. Allen moved from Texas to New York in the late 80s and has been in the entertainment business for over twenty years as an actor, director, producer, songwriter, playwright and author. He´s had over ten shows that he has written produced on stage, been the recipient of musical grants from BMI, ASCAP and the Watershed Foundation, and has had short stories and poetry published in Off The Rocks, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, The Oddville Press, Perpetual Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Word Catalyst Magazine, and Rancor´d Type.
He is a member of ASCAP, The Dramatist Guild, and the Theatre Communications Group. He now lives in the suburbs of New Jersey and for the past five years he´s managed an arts center on a college campus. Proud Pants: An Unconventional Memoir was published this summer and is available as a digital download on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This is his first novel.
For more information on Gregory, visit his website at www.ggallen.net or http://www.facebook.com/author.gregory.g.allen.
Do you have a personal blog and/or website?
I do…I actually have both. www.ggallen.net and www. http://gregory-g-allen.blogspot.com/ How much time do you invest in keeping it active? I spent daily time on my blog and when something major happens (or an event or book signing is added), I update my website. How beneficial do you feel they are to keeping the author in the public eye? I think these go hand-in-hand with other social media. I am very busy on my author facebook page http://www.facebook.com/author.gregory.g.allen and twitter as well.
When you are writing, do you base your characters on real people?
If your book was being made into a movie who would you see cast? My characters are sometimes a combination of multiple people. I also love to travel and when I see someone on a trip that hits me in a powerful way (either emotionally or because of certain quirks), they may make their way into my characters. I try not to cast characters from Hollywood actors because I think it throws off a reader. I´m one of those that loves to read the book before the movie is made so that Hollywood doesn´t put the face in my head – I´d rather make up one instead.
Setting is such an important part of a book. What made you decide to choose the setting of your book?
I knew I wanted Well With My Soul to be a New York story. The city is a character itself that pulls Jacob in as he becomes engulfed in the party life. However, I wanted to offset that with having his brother Noah and mother in Tennessee, always pulling at Jacob with the history of where he came from.
Being a writer can be a lonely profession. How do you keep from giving up? Who do you get your support from?
I have a great group of friends and family that are so supportive. But I also have to say the community I have discovered on twitter of so many other indie authors has truly opened a new world to me of support.
Do you belong to any writing organizations? How have they helped you with the writing or publishing process?
I have been a member of musical theater writing groups in the past when I was mostly writing for the stage, but none recently.
World-building requires the author to do a lot of planning and inventing. Can you tell us a little about your world and your process for creating it?
I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and loosely based the church in the book on that world – though I do not give it a denomination in the book. I was also in the entertainment business for years and have done numerous auditions (and a few New York parties) so I would draw on those experiences to create the world in the book. My goal (though it is fiction) was to make it as real as possible. To give readers a sense of history from the 70s-90s in New York. When I first moved to the city, I lived on the Upper West Side, so it felt right to set my story in that neighborhood. Then I could walk through it (in my mind) and relay that experience to the reader. Hopefully they´ll get a great sense of the city while reading WELL WITH MY SOUL.
About Well With My Soul
Well with My Soul introduces two brothers who, although close in childhood, have drifted away from each other and closed the door to engagement and emotional connection. The older brother, Jacob, flees his small Tennessee hometown to seek a new life in New York, where he imagines he will overcome his self-hatred and growing sexuality as a homosexual. The younger brother, Noah, stays behind and feels trapped by his role as caretaker for his aging mother. As they grow apart, both brothers go through a series of traumatic events that irrevocably alter their lives: while Noah, shackled by familial duties, finds courage in the sorrow of the past, Jacob´s frenzied search for freedom leads him into a labyrinth of fear and doubt which alienates him from his true identity and wreaks havoc in the lives of those closest to him. Covering the wild times of the 1970s and the restraint of the Reagan years and told through the perspective of both brothers, Well with My Soul is about the families we inherit and the families we build. It is an unflinching exploration of the way that we deal with what most unsettles us, at times using it for the highest form of inspiration, and at other times letting it confine us in previously unimaginable ways.
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