About the Author

On Me

Penning this while I’m listening to Elliott Smith. Like the sounds of Joy Division, he always puts me in the mood to write. And tomorrow that will change. It always does. Another band, another song to get me through a day. Could be the Afghan Whigs or Beach Slang. Could be The Misfits, The National or the timeless Velvet Underground. Yeah, I’m not really too different from anyone else. Whatever soundtrack we have cued up into our minds, I understand, we’re all the same – struggling to get from this day to the next. Sometimes we just can’t wait for that sun to arrive. Other times, we wish it would just stay where it set until we figured out what in the hell everything that came before meant. You know, those pages of white in the books that we all write, just how sad that they are still an addition to our time of existence.

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All right, on with this. Virginia Austin is a pseudonym. It is formed by combining the middle names of my parents. My father, William Austin Duffy, died when I was nine. He drove my mother’s car into our garage and didn’t remember to turn off the ignition, or open the door. I suppose he just got a little forgetful. We all become a little forgetful now and then, don’t we now?  I’m not sure. Anyway, I was told at the time it was a heart attack. My mother, Helen Virginia Brzezinski, died when I was in my twenties. For her, it was a better fate, but not that unusual for this family of three. She went in for heart surgery with a 99% survival rate and ended up being part of the select one percent. It’s odd, you don’t realize it until it arrives, but one can become an orphan at any age. Anyway, I started writing sometime after that. Really didn’t have that much of a choice. It was either put down everything that I had in my head or drink myself into oblivion. For my first book, Fated, I realized that I could do both.

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At the time of my mother’s death, I was working in the nuclear industry. Still do, in fact. Damn, I don’t know what’s harder to explain to people I meet, that I help to design and modify these plants or that I write under a woman’s name. I’m sure most walk away thinking that hell, if you’re going to lie, why not go for it all. I do find it strange though that I ended up as a writer. I really didn’t read much until I hit twenty. But at twenty, in between LaPlace transforms and electromagnetic theory, I began to read the likes of Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Pynchon, Carlos Castaneda and John Kennedy Toole. Try making that switch on a daily basis. It can wreak serious havoc.

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Oh, and yes, I have been published. Invariably, upon someone asking me what I do for a living, and upon me telling them that I write, they then ask if I’ve been published. I suppose most find it a prerequisite as to my credibility to deface a few pages. Hell, I don’t ask them if they’re CEO of their fucking bullshit company when they tell me what in the hell they do. Lately, I’ve just been telling new acquaintances that what I do is treat people the way I would want to be treated. In the end, that is really what matters.

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These stories I know are tragic. And I guess to some extent the details of the author. But we all have our own stories of sadness and loss. I always knew that I wasn’t in some exclusive club and rarely do I let the past bleed through. And I certainly don’t live like that. You couldn’t and still expect to breathe.

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Before I depart, read “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys” or “The Confederacy of Dunces,” rent a movie of some fucking significance, listen to “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” and spend your money on quality alcohol. All make for a great evening and even a better morning. It’s two a.m. and I’m out of here. I’m so tired of everything. This whole writing gig is just turning into me playing in an empty bar and wondering why the fuck I even bothered to get the hell up on stage.

Virginia Austin