AD: That brings me to another question… What made you decide to put those quotes at the beginning of every chapter, anyway?

JS: Well that was really something weird, the way that sort of came about. It’s a kinda funny story — funny peculiar though, not so much funny ha ha... 

     When I did it, I didn’t have the slightest idea why I felt so compelled to do that shit. It was almost like an addictive vibe spurring me on in the beginning, I guess. You know how you can start a book off with a basic quote the way I did with that famous quote from Kerouac… and then it just felt so good and appropriate looking at it there that, like a good addict, I just started craving for more! Like they say, ‘one’s too many and a thousand’s not enough.’ (Laughs)… 

     So then I came up with the idea of just putting a relevant little literary quote at the beginning of every chapter like that, something pertinent to the overall theme or vibe of the chapter, just like I felt the Kerouac quote was largely pertinent to the whole book itself, at least to its central characters and the whole dynamic going on between them. Cigano’s almost obsessive fascination with Narcisa and his unbreakable attraction to her just seemed to me kinda reminiscent of that same sort of interdependency between Kerouac and his Dean Moriarty character in On The Road. 

       But it was all completely unconscious to me at that point — so much so, in fact that when I gave the original manuscript of the first edition to a professional book editor to look at before I started in on this huge rewrite of Narcisa, the one I’m peddling to big publishers now, one of the first things she said was how much it reminded her of that On The Road feeling.

      Now I haven’t read On The Road in over 30 years… but there it was. Synchronicity. I’ve come to really believe that that sort of synchronicity is like the shadow of the Eternal Muse standing over us, all these little signs and stuff…

     But on a more prosaic, rational level, I guess it just goes to show ya that all those books you read 30 years ago, they’re all still in there, in the computer and it all just comes out in the wash somehow eventually… but I digress…. well not really, I guess, because this is kinda about that computer, but even on a much deeper level, like a weird sorta DNA computer that seems to operate and drive us along deep below the level of our own conscious awareness…

AD: It seems like you quote Nietzsche alot. Is he your favorite author to quote from?

JS: Not at all… I just happened to stumble across a book of Nietzsche at the exact time I was going through the whole process of writing and editing Narcisa, and then the Narcisa character just spontaneously became like this idiot savant spouting out Nietzsche all the time in the middle of all her crazy, psychedelic crackhead rants…

Nietzsche does happen to be a very quotable thinker, of course, but, like most things about the whole journey of writing Narcisa, it was never anything like a premeditated thought. It just sorta fell into place and there it was… It’s all grist for the mill for a writer, ya know, and I really do believe that truer words were never spoken pertaining to the creative process one goes into while constructing a work of fiction… so Nietzsche just wound up getting thrown into the soup…  And then when I decided to put quotes at the beginning of each chapter heading, it just seemed appropriate to use a bunch by Nietzsche…

to be continued

AD: One alcoholic helping another, right?

JS: Absolutely. That shit is like some crazy healing magic… At some point when this guy was lamenting to me about how hard it all is, being in recovery and living with someone who’s suffering the torments of the damned from the very same stuff you’re recovering from and not being able to help them because they’re just not ready to throw in the towel or whatever, and how terribly frustrating that is, I was just tempted to tell him to read Narcisa… I dunno, I just got the feeling that it would help him and comfort him somehow, at least on the level of letting him know that he’s really not alone in this kind of shit. We all go there… it’s life, it’s the human condition. And while we were talking there, I just felt this incredible bond with this guy… and I guess that bond I felt was the thing you just called the universally relatable dynamic…

    This is basically about humanity and its struggles, about human relations and the power of love and our human interdependency and interaction to heal and reveal our own deepest secrets to us, all our fears, traumas, hopes and dreams and all sorts of essencially human things that these two characters are dealing with in this book, about the way we all ultimately act as therapists and healers for each other in the course of our relationships with one another, even our most fucked up relationships — especially our most fucked up relationships, cuz nothing happens without a reason…

      So in that sense it’s sort of about the laws of attraction and the transcendent nature of the human spirit in interaction with other spirits and how we all need each other in order to see ourselves… At least that was always my basic intent while writing it and contemplating what made these two characters tick….

       And it really is my sincere hope that Narcisa will speak to people and serve them on that kind of a deep gut level and let them see themselves, even through the crooked looking glass of a teenage crack whore and her codependent gypsy partner in crime… cuz it’s not so much about them, per se as it is about the essencially human dynamic that emerges through their twisted, fucked up relationship. 

     At the end of the day, Cigano and Narcisa are you and me and the guys down the street. On some levels, even if somebody never smoked crack or fell in love with psychotic crack whores in Rio de Janeiro or whatver, on that deeper human level, everybody’s been there… so I just hope that some of the universal truths expressed in the book’s handling of these characters and all their crazy ups and downs can ultimately transcend their particular stories and whatever particular characterization or label or make or model and be able to just sorta reach into people’s hearts on a deeper level and help them take that fearless, unflinching look into their own soul’s heart of darkness, just like they did for me while I was writing about all this shit. 

    That is the power of myth, I believe. All roads lead us inward and all roads eventually lead to our enlightenment. I really do believe that… And I hope to have been able to express the essence of that concept a little through my telling of this particular little fairy tale or horror story or whatever…

AD: How is the dynamic between Cigano and Narcisa universally relatable?

JS: At the risk of being accused of false modesty here, one of the few human character defects I’ve actually rarely fallen pray to so far (Laughs)… I should mention that there really are no new stories under the sun, just endless variations on recurring ancient themes… It all boils down to the good old ‘boy meets girl’ kinda stuff… and then all shit breaks loose, bla bla bla… It’s not an original concept when it comes to our mythos as a race… Because the basic themes of Narcisa are universal issues — even if the surface story is all this sex, drugs, rock n roll, violence, betrayal, anguish, etc… cuz there’s all sorts of levels of subtext there and on a deeper level, who the fuck can’t relate to these characters’ insecurities and fears and hopes and dreams and nightmares… their feelings? They are human feelings, the kind of strengths and weaknesses and all the little comedies and tragedies we all experience in our feeling world every day, the kinda shit that propels the whole fucking human experience as we all live it in our daily lives, whether we’re living extreme realities like these two particular characters, or just coming and going from the fucking office every day or whatever…

It’s really weird, but just last night I got a phone call from another recovering alcoholic who was going through a really hard time in his relationship. He called me up in the middle of the night and said he really needed to talk to me, so I got on the bike and rode over to the beach and we met up. Without going into details here, basically he told me he was living through some really extreme, gut-wrenching stuff, the kind of stuff I’ve been through a lot of myself and come out the other end of… and when I started talking to him and sharing my own experiences with him, suddenly I felt like I was talking to myself a coupla years ago, like right before I wrote this book and discovered all these things about relationship and about myself and how I tick through that whole soul-searching process… it was weird, cuz it just dawned on me that this is exactly how it works.

AD: What were your reservations, if any, when writing Narcisa? Was there anything holding you back?

JS: No, nothing. Absolutely nothing… It’s almost the opposite in fact. It’s as if I was being compelled to write this thing so strongly that once it started rolliing, there was no holding it back, there was just never any question about any choice or premeditated thought process or plan or plot or whatever. It’s really almost as if this book just kinda wrote itself. On some level I never really saw myself being involved in it other than the instrument by which it chose to manifest itself into the world. I know that may sound sort of new-agey or whatever, but that’s exactly how it went down, right from the start. A very painful process for me, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Gut wrenchingly painful… but ultimately effortless too, completely without any personal forethought or afterthought or any of that kinda thing. It was just… compelling and obsessive and compulsive and spontaneous and essential from start to finish. Like channeling something  a lot bigger and more important than my own little ideas and experiences and all that kinda stuff. A very very powerful process… I highly recommend it! (Laughs)…

AD: How did you wind up meeting this girl in Tijuana?

JS: Ahh, you hadda ask that, hein? Yeh, well that’s some more of that crazy synchronicity shit I was just talking about, all these mystical events, seemingly unrelated coincidences that eventually weave together into some kinda higher destiny.

    So how did I wind up meeting the original Narcisa in Tijuana?  At the time I met her I’d been staying up in L.A. writing this screenplay for Johnny Depp, which never got off the ground. That’s another story. One that may never get told, but anyway, Johnny was off living in Europe or somewhere far away, making movies and being a big shot movie star and I was holed up all alone at his big empty Hollywood mansion, a really spooky place, totally haunted and creepy, and there I was staying there all alone and going totally stir-crazy writing this really depressing screenplay and slowly going insane, like blow-your-brains-out-in-Hollywood-crazy, ya know… 

    So one night I just couldn’t fucking take it there anymore and I just got on my motorcycle and hauled ass the fuck outa there as fast as I could like the devil was chasing me, and a few hours later I was there in Mexico, back on familiar turf, walking around the dirty old red-light slums of Tijuana and feeling alot more at home, I must say…  And that’s where I ran into this little lost junkie surfer girl. She was out there turning tricks, and she just stood out like a beautiful white fairy or something standing out there in the middle of all these short, stubby little Mexican street whores, ya know? Well we went off and had a short-time shag in some roach motel there and we kinda hit it off and became fast friends so I just kinda hung out there in TJ with her and, you know, just kinda got lost in her world. I was a coupla years sober at the time.

     She was about the most tore-up dope fiend I’d ever met. This chick had like tracks on her tracks, real Frankenstein scars all running up her neck and down to her feet and she was staying in some dump with all these strung out fucked up killers and ex-cons and dope fiends and it was just this really surreal, nasty scene there. But she was really smart and sweet and charismatic and I just kinda saw something in her that was so…. alive. Like somebody who just really needed to be saved from herself…

     I started telling her about my recovery from heroin addiction and she really related to me and I guess she saw me as some sort of a friend and I guess my own victory over addiction gave her some sort of hope to cling to…. and after a few weeks hanging out together, one night I cracked out a book about recovery and started reading it to her and she just broke down and started crying and asked me to help her get clean. Long story short, I threw her on the back of my bike and rode across the border with her and locked her up in a room and fed her methadone I got from a guy I knew who had all that kinda stuff and as soon as she was well enough to stand up, I started taking her to meetings and just threw her into the mix and she ended up getting clean and staying clean and she’s still clean today. One of my fondest accomplishments. She still sends me emails from time to time. She’s married and working in a career and living a kick ass life as far as I can tell. She’s still kinda freaked out about the name of the book, but she’ll get over it.(Laughs)... Anyway, that’s one part of where the name Narcisa comes from, aside from it just being such a perfect name to personify the overall character of a drug addict…

AD: What was your inspiration behind the Narcisa part of the title then?

 JS: What was my inspiration behind it? Well obviously that’s the name of the book’s main protagonist, of course. And there’s all these different levels of sub-text behind a name like Narcisa, isn’t there? Because it’s just such a perfect name when you’re talking about the psychic curses of addiction, right? In the first edition of the book, I actually pulled the dictionary definition for the word ”narcissism” and put it right on the first page… Where it says “Egoism: a doctrine that individual self-interest is the valid end of all actions.” That pretty much sums it all up in a nutshell, the ego factors in alcoholism and drug addiction. Root causes… 

     On the most basic level though, it’s just so appropriate to the basic personality of the book’s main character, Narcisa. This character isn’t based so much on any real people as much as being like a sort of composite character, a living, breathing, walking, talking metaphor for the damaged, overinflated human ego that leads us all into the jaws of addiction and ultimate self-destruction. Narcisa just personafies the root causes of things like addiction… Narcisa personifies the dark side of the human condition. Narcisa personifies egoism, also known as narcissism: “Excessive concern for oneself, with or without exaggerated feelings of self-importance….” 

     On another less metaphoric level though, I actually used to really know a real girl named Narcissa, but with two s’s… The book really has nothing to do with her, per se… but still that name was always in the back of my mind to describe a certain character that I guess was always lingering around back there nagging me to bring her to life someday… It seemed like an important omen or something when the name sort of dawned on me for this character that was emerging, because the real Narcissa, even though she was definitely not any sort of practical inspiration for the character in the book, was still a sort of very important person in my life on another level. Especially because she was a drug addict. Somebody who really had a profound effect on my own early recovery…

    This Narcissa was a really beautiful little blond-haired, white-skinned sorta blue-eyed teenage surfer girl who’d caught the wrong wave and somehow ended up living on the streets of Tijuana, Mexico. When I met her she was just crawling the gutters of this third-world hell hole all strung out on heroin and turning cheap tricks for dope down on Calle Coajilla in TJ — one of the meanest low-down and dirty ho-strolls in the western hemisphere. A real colorful place, lemme tell ya.