Eckhard Gerdes Enlightens Us

We've been in touch with Eckhard Gerdes, who published a fiction piece entitled "Cities" in Issue #35 of HFR in the winter of 2004/2005. We asked him for some advice to give to blooming writers, specifically why new writers shouldn't be pessimistic about embarking on the road of writerdom. Here was his answer:

"To quote that great experimental fiction writer Theodore Geisel, “Oh, the thinks you will think!” The process of writing a novel is a fantastic joy! Discovery, Amazement and Surprise intersect Reminiscence, Recollection, and Reflection. You are standing at the crossroads of everything, and right in front of you is the huge gaping abyss of all that is unknown. You are the one who gets to pick what you want to conjure up from the abyss, how you are going to use it, and where you are going to go. What could be more exciting? Write for this excitement, for the joy and love of doing it, not for any result that comes from it."

In the 6 years since we published him, Gerdes has been consistently published in journals and has put out a number of books. He has also continued editing the Journal of Experimental Fiction. In 2009, Wayne State University Ph.D student Gregory Lattanzio devoted a large section of his dissertation, Fictive Systems: Interfaces in the Postmodernist Avant-Garde, to a study of Gerdes' novel, Cistern Tawdry.

To read his most recently published book, The Unwelcome Guest, which also includes a revised edition of a previous book, Nin and Nan, click here.