Daft Mejora’s Infinite Madness follows an alien disguised as a 14-year-old boy tasked with the mission of decoding the human brain. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Honestly, this began as a desire for me to express a more satirical side of myself than my previous writing that can, in some ways, be seen as the original way I wrote when I was in middle school and high school. I’ve always had what might be considered a rather absurd bent to my humor, probably from surviving the absurdities of life as a person my age in the era we live in currently, and the original Daft Mejora featured an alpaca instead of the wise owl plus the Daft One and his trusty steed arriving on an ice flow with a mission related to the US nuclear codes; mind you, this original draft was written after a late night out in Brussels, Belgium in 2019, long before talk of things like “nuclear secrets” and “boxes of documents.” However, when COVID hit, Mejora morphed into a press secretary in a shorter form related to, I believe, my own survival and processing of the absolutely otherwordly COVID-19 briefings I was watching whilst living abroad in Madrid. The final version of the story, written in Madrid in 2021, basically amalgamated these previous versions with the idea of a “stranger coming to town” because I myself, at that time, felt like that stranger, having lived in a different society for a decent length of time and witnessing the cacophony of the internet discourse and going, “seriously?” Personally, I survived a traumatic brain injury when I was 10 months old thanks to Dr. Luis Schut, truly one of the greatest physicians to ever walk the planet, in my totally unbiased opinion, and the major surgery required at that time, so the fact multiple readers have remarked on Mejora as being an exploration of the brain in some form, including through a potentially psychedelic lens, is honestly a happy accident that intrigues me to no end, as well. The Daft One’s mission was, and is, to examine and elucidate the absurdity of our time, and I suppose we’re all absurd, in some way!

Daft One’s experience on Earth is entertaining in every way. What was your favorite scene in this story?

Oh, dear sweet donger pongus … the “Washington sequence” involving the Washington monument, the reflecting pool, and the speech by Senator Baetz in the book’s second section was literally, directly inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which hangs in the Prado in Madrid. If you haven’t seen that painting and want to view truly great art, that would be my suggestion; I have both a laminated souvenir shop version of it and a notebook with it as the cover, but the original is without comparison. Basically, I took the general chaos and the statement on the human condition I witnessed in that painting and refracted it through our modern lens, so the fact that it’s a complete, nearly cartoonish clusterf**k of desire and rage and passion and status sounds pretty classic, at least to me. Every time I read it, it still feels fresh. I won’t spoil the ending, either, but the way in which the final courthouse sequence might be prone to leaving some, ahem, blue in the face with laughter, as well.

What is one thing you hope readers bring away from your satirical take on American society? 

That none of us are alone in this daily madness, and sometimes, art is the only way to process reality in an inherently personal way. I truly think this book started as my way of processing the hardships of the past few years and trying to examine them in as close to an “objective” way as possible, with the limitations and connotations of that word being what they are (is pure objectivity really a thing?). Listen, even as a satirist, at this point, I empathize heavily with those who employ humor in their art, since reality as of late has a way of being more violent and absurd than anyone could ever dream, but if there’s a point to be taken away from it, it’s people like Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, R. Crumb, and comedians across different backgrounds in different mediums, as well, who do that most essential work of examining the deep sadness to be found inside that which can evoke laughter. That’s the wisdom and the truth inside all great comedy. 

Can fans look forward to more books from you soon? What are you currently working on? 

Heh. Alright. So, at the end of the first Infinite Madness, the last line is that there’s a second one of these coming in 2022 … well, it indeed arrived and was written in 2022, as intended, and is currently preparing for its impending release upon both my publisher’s eyes and the eyes of the public. NOTE: it is not COVID-19 related; it is, in the words of a person who has spent way more time in Madrid than I have and whom I greatly respect, “donger pony metaverse.” In addition to that exploration of our encroaching reliance on the technological realm in our daily life past even the exploration of the first Mejora, I also have a psychological thriller on the way, with that being a nice break from the all-encompassing donger pongality of Mejora, but given Mejora’s tremendous reception, there may be a chance we see the Daft One again first depending on editorial review and release timelines. Overall, I’m tremendously excited for 2024 and 2025, since Mejora’s made a magic uniquely its own beyond me and is easily the favorite thing I’ve ever written; let’s see what happens!

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