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First Book Interview with Keith Montesano

Keith Montesano is the author of the newly released and stunningly black and bracing Ghost Lights, his debut from Dream Horse Press. At his First Book Interviews blog, he conducts a series of interviews with writers upon the publication of their first book, detailing the experience and the feeling of the completion of a first work, and I asked him to do the same with his own questions.

How often had you sent out Ghost Lights before it was selected for publication by Dream Horse Press?

I sent the book out 60 times before I received an email from J.P. Dancing Bear telling me that I was a finalist for the Orphic Prize and that the press was able to publish the finalists that year.

Was the title always Ghost Lights? Did it go through any other changes?

A good chunk of the book was my MFA thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University, when it was called About Ravishment. I remember sitting with some friends at a bar near VCU, and when I told them the title of the manuscript I was sending out, which they knew was the title of my thesis, I got some weird looks. I was asked if other titles were kicking around, and I told them I’d been thinking about Ghost Lights. Then I got the looks that said, “I think you found your title.”

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September 2nd, 2010 / 11:49 am