Second Pocket First received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Gregory Grosvenor.
What is the name of the book and when will it be published?
Second Pocket First. The novel will be published by Black Rose Writing on February 27, 2025.
What’s the book’s first line?
Issey was a lousy thief, but a good son.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch.”
A slow-witted burglar hoping to rebuild his confidence travels to Vermont during the holiday season. It’s a romp of a novel about taking and giving. And giving some more.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
In 2008, during the holidays, I was in Vermont and got caught in a snowstorm, which meant I’d be driving slower than usual and worse than usual. On Vermont Public Radio was a reading of O. Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi,” which swept me up immediately. Twenty minutes had passed, and I hardly thought about the snowstorm because by that point I had wedged the car into a snowbank.
Anyway, after the story was over, I thought, what if instead of Della giving, she takes something from Jim? And in that taking, she gives him something back, something central to his humanity? That central riff became the start of Second Pocket First.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Second Pocket First is breezy and charming, and a pleasant diversion from everything that’s awful. Not to diminish the novel’s structure or heart, but the reader can roll their eyes at it. Unless you’re some kind of jerk, you don’t get to roll your eyes at The Brothers Karamazov or Magic Mountain.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Issey’s ambitions are at odds with his skills. As a criminal, he’s good at lockpicking but that’s about it. He has poor instincts. Socially, things like relationships, events, boundaries, and basic communication give him challenges. And yet… he’s optimistic that things will work out. And when they do, that’s when things go wrong.
Issey is a cross-section of all my favorite people. Freddie Mercury, Nate Bargatze, Will Arnett, Martin Short, Alyssa Edwards. For casting, Ryan Gosling would be a fit, if Ryan Gosling had problems with his weight.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
This is the third novel I’ve written, and the first that is ready for an audience. My first completed manuscript was called The White Suit, and it was a plotless thing set in a spa town in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution. Yikes. My second novel was for my MFA in 2005. It was called A Collection of Famous Last Letters. It was highly experimental, purposely confusing, and really pleased that no one liked it. Yikes again – this time with footnotes.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
Currently, I teach writing courses in Boston at Fisher College and Bunker Hill Community College. I also teach online courses for Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. I’m a real hit with my students!
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
Three to four hours on a good day. On teaching days, that’s tough. As long as it’s something, like thirty minutes or few lines in a notebook or ideas on my phone, then the fire stays going.
Two or three times a year, I travel to Hadley, Massachusetts, for writing sessions. Those are ten-hour days and straight up madness. After a week, Hadley is happy to get rid of me.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
Growing up, there was no greater accomplishment than writing a novel with a distinct voice and style, getting it published, and having people read it and talk about it. I love the feeling of living in a book, whether that’s in the writing or reading. When Raúl Lázaro, the cover artist for Second Pocket First, showed me his design, I was back to being in my twenties and wanting to live inside a book.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Of course it changes every ten years. In my twenties, it would have been Kafka because I was a nightmare. In my thirties, I fell heels over breakfast for three French writers: Marcel Aymé, Boris Vian, and Raymond Queneau. Their voices changed everything. They wrote novels that could be serious and ridiculous. Currently, in my late forties – my early late forties – it’s a tie between Rachel Ingalls who is having a much-deserved revival with the blinding Mrs. Caliban, and Jean-Patrick Manchette who is also having his own resurgence with NYRB’s excellent campaign of re-releases. His sentences are so violent.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
Not so much a book, but a time period. I lived for those Vintage International designs in the late ‘90s. Those spines and covers for Martin Amis and Jeannette Winterson and Will Self were the absolute business. Any of those and I’d be set!
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
Trust your taste. Fortunately, my taste happens to be very bad, and it’s what I aspire to, darling!