The Wanton Life of My Friend Dave was the winner in the Romance category of the 2015 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Tristan Wood.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The book title is The Wanton Life of My Friend Dave and it was first published in March 2014.
What’s the book’s first line?
“The thing about families is that you rarely get to choose them since you tend to be born into one and be a part of it.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
The book sums up to this question: what if instead of the half of your heart you were looking for you found the piece of your soul you didn’t know you were missing?
Dave is fourteen when his uncle teaches him how to pick up girls. Several women later, more than a few broken hearts in between, some drugs and alcohol added to the mixture, and a lack of sense of belonging to spice up the picture, and Dave becomes a depressive romantic womanizer.
Then he meets Izzy. She’s a skeptical clairvoyant, a woman lost in her world of secrets, unspeakable ghosts, and intuitive knowledge.
The first time Dave and Izzy meet, they have a spread of tarot cards between them. If anyone said that everything changed in their lives from that moment on, they would be lying, because it takes Dave and Izzy six months and the other side of the world for that to happen.
So when chance brings them together after their odd first encounter, they form a bound that goes beyond normal friendship and stops at almost nothing. Izzy holds Dave’s deepest fears close to her heart and keeps his dirtiest secrets locked away in her soul. When they realize it, Dave’s wanton life has already permeated all bits of Izzy’s existence. He needs her sometimes more than the air he breathes, so love is not an option, is it?
This is not merely about a man and a woman being just friends or more than that.
This is about Dave’s wanton life, told by Izzy, who lived it through him.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
The book was actually inspired by a deep friendship between a man and a woman whose personalities run close to the ones of the main characters in my story. So there’s actually a real Dave and Izzy out there in the real world.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
The most distinctive thing about Dave is that he is a romantic womanizer. He is a contradiction and, as all of us, the result of an education he could not run from and of the choices that life put in his path. He was carved to represent not a stereotype, but the singularities and dilemmas that make each and everyone of us unique.
Dave was inspired in a real man, so he doesn’t just reminds me of someone; to me Dave is someone…but that’s all I’ll say about it.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
I would say that the main reason, now that I’ve had feedback from readers, is that it’s a different book and it’s not the typical romance, though it focuses on a timeless theme (the thin lines between love and friendship between men and women). The book was written to be a light and fun read, but at the same time it was intended to arouse strong feelings in the readers and make them recall their own love experiences and choices and make them question how those influenced their lives.
Also, every man and woman out there who had or has a deep friendship would likely identity with Dave and Izzy and that is a very good reason to read The Wanton Life of My Friend Dave.