Tom Hoefner is a writer, director, and teacher (not necessarily in that order) who lives in Brooklyn with his wife Jaime, his daughters Gabby and Audrey, and their cat Zelda. In his spare time he stages college and high school musicals, plays too much Nintendo, and roots for the Mets.
Read his interview below.
How long have you been writing? That depends on your definition of “writing". I’ve been writing to entertain others since junior high, I’ve been writing full-length plays and screenplays since college, and I started writing fiction about eight years ago. I’m 38 now, so… I’ve been writing for twenty-five years? Give or take? Man, I’m old. What is your most recent literary/artistic project? The full first volume of my serialized adventure comedy book series THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF RACE & COOKIE McCLOUD is available on Amazon (alongside my YA Rom-Com JUST DEBBIE) and I’m working on Vol. 2, Book 1 right now - CLOCKPUNKED. I’m also rewriting RAP’T, a work-in-progress stage play, and I have a blog for which I compose short essays centered around my love of Japanese video game giant Nintendo, aptly named NINTENDO & ME. Who’s your favorite author and why? My favorite author doesn’t exist. But if he or she did, they would be a composite of J.K. Rowling’s heart, Douglas Adams’ brain, George R.R. Martin’s raw talent, Nail Gaiman’s work ethic, Brian Michael Bendis’ sense of humor, and David Ives’ wordplay. What inspires you to write? J.K. Rowling’s heart, Douglas Adams’ brain, George R.R. Martin’s raw talent, Nail Gaiman’s work ethic, Brian Michael Bendis’ sense of humor, and David Ives’ wordplay. That wasn’t just a copy-and-paste cop-out answer, it was a CLEVER copy-and-paste cop-out answer. I swear it was. (It also happens to be true.) What advice can you give to other authors or writers? Three things. First, write primarily for yourself. You don’t know if anyone else is ever going to see it. Second: allow yourself to write crap. Writing crap is better than writing nothing. If you dig around in it, you may find a diamond. This metaphor is gross. Three: if you’re bored while writing it, your audience will be bored while reading it. Find another way. I lied; here’s the fourth thing: always strive for perfection, but accept that you will never, ever reach it.
Where can readers go to find out more information about your work?
I’mma start with my Amazon page (http://amazon.com/author/tomhoefner) cuz that’s where people can buy stuff from me.
Then there’s my Good Reads page (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14048553.Tom_Hoefner) which is kept as up-to-date as anything on all of my work. You can also check out my aforementioned blog page, ME AND NINTEND(https://meandnintendo.wordpress.com/) which is a great read if you really like Nintendo, and there’s definitely at least five or six of us left who do. Finally, here’s a link to sign up for my mailing list (http://eepurl.com/bnOGyj); any new book or play news will be publicized through here. I don’t do much on Twitter and Facebook anymore, even though one of the main characters of JUST DEBBIE is obsessed with them. They’ve become incoherent cesspools, particularly in this past American election cycle. That’s pretty harsh, but I’ll stand by it. Besides, they’re too general. GoodReads is a much better platform on which to target people who still read books.