Lamentation features a relationship between two brothers. When most of us try it, we just end up with two dudes talking about cheeseburgers.

The thing is all that “Royale with Cheese” stuff in Pulp Fiction actually advances the plot. Clever bits of dialogue, two characters in a bar or coffee shop getting pithy. My first efforts, like that of a lot of new writers, I think, tended to revolve around scenes. Lynne Barrett taught me causality, which is how you write a novel. Lamentation retained exactly one line from that first attempt (“a talking chicken named Buck Buck”). I didn’t know how to fucking write a novel until I got to FIU and Lynne Barrett got a hold of me. I mean, the two brothers part remained, the setting, but you can’t really say it’s a reworking. Lamentation is, in a very, very loose definition of the word, a reworking of that novel. I got about seven chapters in and abandoned it. When I was at FIU, my first attempt at a thesis novel revolved around two brothers set in New England (where I grew up). How did you come to the decision to return home (I use home loosely here) in your fiction? Lamentation is the first of your books exclusively set in New England. Joe was interviewed by Justin Bendell for Sliver of Stone Magazine. Powerful forces come into play that will stop at nothing until Chris is dead and the secrets he holds are destroyed. As Jay begins to search for him, he is plunged into a cauldron of ugly lies and long-kept secrets that could tear apart his small hometown and threaten the lives of Jay and all those he holds dear. When he receives an urgent call that Chris, his drug-addicted and chronically drunk brother, is being questioned by the sheriff about his missing junkie business partner, Jay feels obliged to come to his rescue.Īfter Jay negotiates his brother’s release from the county jail, Chris disappears into the night.

In a frigid New Hampshire winter, Jay Porter is trying to eke out a living and maintain some semblance of a relationship with his former girlfriend and their two-year-old son. His latest novel, Lamentation, “straightforward and edgy, gnaws with nail-biting tension on every page” (Robert Dugioni). Joe is the acquisitions editor for Gutter Books and managing editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive. He is also the producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland, California, and the author of three books ( Choice Cuts, Junkie Love, Wake the Undertaker, and Lamentation). He is a “rock ‘n’ roll” writer who comes from a cutting-edge background and has successfully transitioned to the mainstream, which allows him to keep afloat in both worlds. Since getting off of the streets, where he spent most of the 1990s, Joe Clifford has made writing his life.

Lamentation by Joe Clifford