The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek explores the unique, lesser-known area of entertainment history and how it impacted performing arts and societal changes. Why was this an important book for you to write?

It was important for me to write this book because there was remarkably little written on the subject previously. There are plenty of books on sideshow that elaborate on various acts, but the geek act is always just sort of glossed over in the history books. I am not only fascinated by the geek act on a personal level, but given how it is essentially a dead act with such a deep history, I felt it would be valuable to release a detailed work on the subject.

How much research did you undertake for this book, and how much time did it take to put it all together?

I did a tremendous amount of research for the book. I visited libraries, corresponded with academic institutions, read through hundreds of newspaper achieves, and ended up interviewing nearly a dozen people for the project that had expertise on the subject of geek (including three people that actually performed as geeks decades prior). This is not to mention the numerous books, cabinet cards, and old sideshow pitchbooks that I procured for the project. My Works Cited section alone is 32 pages long. It took five years of research and writing to put everything together.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

I wanted to help granulate the definition of the the sideshow geek because any source you find is going to have a different definition. For one of the chapters, I interviewed numerous thought leaders in sideshow and consulted numerous historical sources to help answer the question “What is a sideshow geek?” as I searched for commonalities among the various perspectives. I also wanted to explore the very evolution of the word linguistically and how much the meaning of the word “geek” has shifted away from sideshow in recent generations to mean something completely different by todays standards.

Naturally, with a book like this that deals with a controversial historical subject, it is important to take the good with the bad. My perspective was to report the history of the geek act in a relatively impartial way without taking a strong moral stance and let the reader draw their own conclusions. History isn’t always black and white, so it’s important to be aware of nuance when you are examining something historically that took place in a different time period and wasn’t restricted to a singular occurrence.

Will there be a follow-up book to The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek? If so, what topics can readers expect in the next book?

Absolutely. I’m working on the follow-up now. It will be very similar to The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek in the sense that it will also be a sideshow book that deals with the history of another gruesome sideshow act. However, this time I am wrapping the general history around a personal quest of myself trying to solve a real-life showbusiness mystery regarding one of the most extreme practitioners of this particular type of act. Essentially, I’m going to discuss the history of the genre he performed in while trying to figure out his true identity. Will I succeed? Find out all about it in my next book!

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