Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles Author Will Clarke: Did Dallas, Does Austin Again

You employ the supernatural to great effect in your work. Outside of fiction, what's your personal stance on ghosts and clairvoyance?
I think there are a lot of things going on in the world that we don't see or we choose not to see. I believe in ghosts and precognition and all sorts of hocus pocus. After all, magic is just science that we don't understand yet.

After losing your "book tour virginity" with Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, what do you think about touring the second time around? What's different? What's the same? Oh, and what do you listen to while on tour?
Touring is a lot like selling Amway. You pressure your family and friends to show up to your events with a series of pitiful emails and phone calls, and they end coming out of love, and then they end up buying way too much stuff from you.

It's different this time around in that I don't ramble so much. I used to just drink too much coffee and ramble. Now I kind of have a patter and it's hopefully more entertaining than just the random, disconnected stories that I am apt to spew forth with when I am nervous.

I am currently in love with Cat Power's "The Greatest." I find it to be a very aptly titled album. Neko Case's "The Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" kicks my ass and breaks my heart as well. I just bought the new Golden Smog album, "Another Fine Day," and it's on heavy rotation along with Belle and Sebastian's "The Act of the Apostle." Oh, and I can't stop listening to The Starlight Mints, both albums, "Drowaton" and "Built on Squares." And I love to drive on the highway to Tim Easton's "Ammunition".

The Worthy seems to draw on your intimate knowledge of the LSU social scene, you did in fact go there, how much of what went into the book did you take from your personal experience? please don't say Tabasco enema!
The book is like a dream to me. It's based on my experiences with hazing and Greek life, but mashed up in a way that makes it completely made up and profoundly true all at the same time. My own Greek experience went like this: I pledged twice. The first time I pledged at Louisiana Tech and I was taken out into the woods in the middle of the night with a burlap sack over my head to be taught a lesson about being cocky. I quit the next day. The fraternity told everyone that they black balled me, and I was an outcast for the rest of my freshman year. The next year, I transfered to LSU and it was like I had my own little fratboy Stockholm Syndrome going on. I pledged again. But that time, I learned to keep my mouth shut and I escaped most of the hazing fairly unscathed. Then after I got initiated, I quit the fraternity a year later and became a writer.

You've had an interesting run in the publishing biz: how did you make the leap from self-published author, MiddleFingerPress, to publishing with Simon and Schuster?
It's a long, long story. But basically, the turning point was when Michael London (Sideways, House of Sand & Fog) set my self-published book up at Paramount, and when that happened, I got an offer from Simon & Schuster.

The movie execs seem to be sweatin' you these days. Care to comment on what's going down in L.A. or at least the contents of the free lunches?
I just set THE WORTHY up at Columbia Pictures with Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher (Memoirs of a Geisha, Girl, Interrupted). I am currently working on adapting a classic sci-fi novel into a screenplay. As far as lunches go, I am not high enough on the food chain for people to have lunch with. I have meetings though and they always offer me a bottle of water. Some days I drink almost 12 bottles of water if I am lucky.

Here's the obligatory author interview rigamarole stuff: what are you reading these days that you either like or dislike? Which authors (past, present, or long dead) really speak to you?
Most recently, I have really loved Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Murad Kalam's Night Journey and Sarah Pritchard's Crackpots. The books that totally blew my doors off when I was a kid were Confederacy of Dunces and Slaughter House Five. Those two books made me become a writer.

Are you excited to be back in Austin? Your last event at BookPeople was tons of fun, what with the finger puppets and your pleasant demeanor. This town really seems to jibe with you...
I love Austin. I hear its siren song calling me every time I visit. So yes, I am very excited to be back again. It's a great town with a great vibe.

*Photo ganked from author's MySpace page*