Tony did an interview!

The title is 100% true.  I did an interview.  Brooklyn Daily reporter Chuck O'Donnel was kind enough to ask me a few questions about the Orbit: Mikhail Prokhorov comic I wrote for Bluewater.  You can read the results here.  For the record, it's absolutely my first interview, although I've been on the other end before when I wrote for the Academic Advocate at Lisbon High School, as well as an unpublished one for the Merciad at Mercyhurst College (I was ultimately unpublished in my tenure at that student paper, so I gave up quickly, although I was regularly featured in the Soap Box opinion section of the Maine Campus while attending the University of Maine, so don't feel too bad).

What I appreciated from O'Donnel was that he was very forthright about the whole process, including the deadline he was under and the selection of questions that showed he knew exactly what he wanted (which plays out well in the subsequent piece) out of them.  It was also pretty cool to see my name written in around the quotes.  I'm someone who's flirted with using a pen name in the past ("Laplume" translates to feather or pen in French, so it would be pretty ironic), so seeing my name not just listed in a comic book's credits but in the press is surreal, a test of all the old ideas of whether I was comfortable with a fairly uncommon name.  The French don't get a lot of publicity in the States.  My family has its roots from French-speaking Canada dating back a century in the country.  At the time of my grandfather's ultimate rooting in Woonsocket, RI, he only grew comfortable when like every other immigrant he settled in with others like him.  As my mother tells it he tried to move here several times but it never felt right.  Growing up French was something that was a frequent element of my childhood, but I never learned to speak it.  In school (high school and college), I attended classes meant to teach me the language, but I'm not sure teachers in these classrooms understand how to do such a thing.  I left with a better appreciation of the film Au Revoir, Les Enfants, which was screened at both levels, but that was pretty much it (it's a great film!).  Other than that, there was also the local writer Denis Ledoux who made a link to this part of my life that had nothing to do with my family.

Anyway, needless quasi-cultural musing aside, I was interviewed!