by bill biss rage recommends
When I began The Scheme of Things and read about the character’s childhood years—I felt I was reading about my Siamese twin—in relationship to Henry’s discovery of being gay and Henry’s family life. Wow. All of that; the growing up and looking at the cata-
I have always admired Tim Parks’ writing on all things pop culture. His work for The Rage Monthly manages to add just the
right amount of sass, humor and knowledge to the “la la” land of Hollywood. Discovering he was releasing his first novel in mid- July of “faction” as he calls it… (The names have been changed
to protect the not-so-innocent) I was ready to read. The Scheme of Things is, in my estimation, The Wonder Years meets Boogie Nights. Tim Parks embodies himself in his character of “Henry.” His early years of being a gay child and a hardened look at Henry’s life as a teenage runaway in L.A. at 16. Enthralling,
hilarious and suspenseful, Parks hits it out of the park with his first fictional work.
You have a beautiful sense of words, dialogue and imagery. What part of the “faction” as you call it, is found within you for your first work of fiction? I would say about 80 percent of it is based
on actual things that happened to me during my coming out experience. Obviously, I got to ramp some things up for fiction, which was kind of nice. I really had to look inside myself and figure out what it all meant at that time and at that place in coming out to my family. The one thing that kind of differs in the book is that there is just one brother and I have four older brothers. I only ended up telling one of them at the age of eighteen. You did not get involved as a runaway in real life? I did. I would tell people my coming out story which was running away to L.A. when I was 16 and staying with a guy who was thirty years older than me and saying I was 18. Of course, using a different name and I had a little bit of a high-flying adventure when I was younger.
logs to see guys in their underwear, a little fleeting glance of something. It was very secretive when I was younger. I had to keep a secret. We had to get our kicks where we could. I’m not going to say how easy it is for kids today to come out but I mean, there’s more avenues for them. I completely felt isolated and alone. I didn’t know what to look for unless it was something I’d seen on TV or the movies. There are moments of suspense and bad situations in the novel, where you lighten the tension with a thought or expression that made me laugh out loud. Thank you. That’s the thing. The book is kind of homage
to soap operas of the 1980s, which just have those great cliffhanger moments. In particular, I always remember the Dynasty one… the “Moldavian Massacre.” In that, oh my god, anyone of them could be killed. I wanted to have that sense that there is an urgency but there is lightness to it. It’s to good effect too as the book could have been written much darker consider- ing what the character of Henry goes through. Exactly. I didn’t want it to go too dark.
That’s not who I am as a person. I wanted to have those lighter moments but not make it a full-on comedy. Henry’s world is escape: Pop culture, anything-pop culture, movies, TV and music. Yet, I didn’t want that to be the sole focus of the
story as I think that would have overshadowed the character. But when things start getting frantic, that’s like his solace. It is one of those books where you didn’t want it to end. You made me invested in what was going to happen next. Thank you.
For more information about Tim Parks and The Scheme of Things, go to
timparksauthor.com or
pagepublishing.com.
JULY 2016 | RAGE monthly 33
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