May 7th questions

My first question is; "Why did you pick Paros? Perhaps more significantly, why did you choose an island as the setting?" or, I would ask, "Why does everyone "seem to wash up on Paros"? What are the motivations of people for going there? Are people going there because they are drawn there by something, or (my opinion) because they are running away from something? If so, what are they fleeing?"

For those who have yet to read the book the first two stories take place in Paros. For people who have only seen the trailer. The first two slides in the trailer are of Paros. Paros is part of the Cyclade island chain along with Ios, Mykonos, and Santorini. The four Greek stories were written at a much earlier date than a lot of the rest of this. I already had much of the body of the work done before I started crafting the beginning. The work is all basically flash fiction which is under 1000 words. I figured this would give the story a much sunnier or more optimistic start than the rest of the piece. I had been also listening to a documentary of Springsteen making darkness on the edge of town and how, just like a car, he'd swap off pieces so I said why can't I do that.

I was in Paros and Santorini probably two years before the story took place. I was amazed by the hustle and bustle of activity of the European youth. It's a vacation spot in Europe, probably like Spain is. For an American, it might be like Florida at spring break or the California beaches. You wind up doing the same islands so you criss-cross and wind up seeing the same Europeans doing the same things you are doing. The only difference is they had so much more vacation than we had, as I worked like hell to get a month over there. It was no big deal for them. I saw it as a very free, cross-pollination of people from all different cultures who were roughly the same age. The closest I've ever found of that was in the US national parks where you start seeing the same people over and over.

I feel in some ways they are going toward something because they are attracted to something it's probably cross-pollination of the like-minded and yet, at the time, I was just coming off my first serious relationship so I can't say that some of that didn't sink into the story too. It just seemed like a much better world than where I was coming from. Thanks. I appreciate the question.