Boredwalk Community: Good Bourbon and a Giant Ice Cube!
1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
I am an author, often an author of fiction. I write for adults and I write YA and it's my actual dream job. I've wanted to be a novelist since I was a kid.
2. What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?
I'm going to be incredibly vain here and say my newest novel, Mixtape for the End of the World. It comes out May 18th from Blue Handle Publishing and is about a high school sophomore navigating life, love, music, and Y2k — the literal end of the world! It's a fun, nostalgic look back at high school at a time when music was a precious commodity and felt like a treasure hunt when discovering new stuff; a time when everyone had a garage and everyone had a garage band. Plus, there are lots of easter eggs from the 90's sprinkled in that I hope will make readers go, "Hey! I remember that!"
3. If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
I'd like to take Paul Rudd's power of being able to look 35 for the rest of my life.
4. You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
That every morning when they put on their shoes, one of the laces breaks and they have to choose to either wear a different pair of shoes or spend five minutes re-lacing it.
5. What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
I have admittedly lived a pretty kick-ass life. I've been surfing in the Pacific, I've seen the Cubs win a World Series, I've had a book debut at #1 on Amazon. I've drank Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. I've got a wife who is much smarter and better looking than me. My bucket list is pretty crossed off.
6. If you drink: what's your go-to drink? If you don't drink: what's your go-to dessert or snack?
Good bourbon with a giant ice cube. Right now my go-to is Longbranch, Matthew McConaughey's collaboration with Wild Turkey. It's Kentucky bourbon through and through, but with notes of mesquite to make you remember you're in Texas.
7. Clear up a misconception (about your job, where you are from, some other topic you know a lot about).
That writers are flighty, head-in-the-clouds daydreamers. This is true but we also pay attention to everything around us, looking for things to put into stories, to build plots off of. And if you piss us off, we'll probably write you into a story just so we can kill you off.
8. Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?
I'm online on all the socials (@writerbrandt) and my website is www.writerbrandt.com. When there's not a pandemic raging through the world, I can often be found at my favorite local coffee joint, Palace Coffee.
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