Story Secrets: ADIOS, NIRVANA by Conrad Wesselhoeft + givewaway!

It seems like I've been talking about this book all summer, but ADIOS, NIRVANA by my friend and fellow Seattleite Conrad Wesselhoeft is now here!

I didn't even know Conrad until recently, but I'd heard such good things about his writing from our mutual friend Molly Blaisdell, who said we should be friends. We read each other's books, and so we are! We even just did a panel together at Third Place Books in Seattle.

ADIOS, NIRVANA is powerful, poetic, funny, and...savory. As in, you want to savor the flavor of it as you read, and taste each and every nuance. And one of you will get to win a copy (details below).

Welcome, Conrad!

*****

ADIOS, NIRVANA is about a teenaged poet-musician who survives the first anniversary of his twin brother’s death with the help of a dying blind man, the best group of “Thicks” a guy could ask for, a demanding school principal who wants him to play the “pussiest song in the world” at graduation, and one very special guitar.


Holly Cupala: Tell us about the origins of ADIOS!

Conrad Wesselhoeft: I stumbled upon this quote in a newspaper column: “In darkness, it slowly came to me that what happens to a man isn’t nearly as important as how he meets it.” The author of the quote was Victor Riesel, a labor journalist who was blinded when a mobster flung sulphuric acid in his face.” I jotted Riesel’s words in my journal, then added, spur of the moment: “Story about a young man who becomes a stenographer/writer of a blind man’s life, and in so doing exorcises his own demons.”

In 2007, my agent, Erin Murphy, asked to see some of my ideas for future projects. I sent her a long list. The idea for Adios was buried near the bottom, barely an afterthought, yet it was this idea that spoke loudest...

Find out more about ADIOS, NIRVANA and enter to win a advance copy here...

~Holly Cupala