Gordon's latest novel is Mystery Girl.From the author's 2013 Q & A with Claire Luchette for Bustle:
BUSTLE: Let’s talk about your love of mysteries. Where does your interest in the genre come from?Visit David Gordon's blog.
DAVID GORDON: Well, it goes way back. Edgar Allan Poe was the first serious writer I ever read. But I never really wrote mysteries — I wrote a lot of poetry — until I was urged by my agent and my thesis advisor, who said I really should write something with a story. And I am a kind of post-everything writer, so I thought about what types of stories I relate to. I really love genre narratives that fit form. It’s almost poetic form. It’s limitless: I just did what I wanted to do with it.
The way you wove the story [of Mystery Girl] was really impressive.
Thank you. That was really hard. And I didn’t necessarily set out to write a mystery. I originally wrote a version of this novel as a five-page short story before I wrote The Serialist. And then after writing The Serialist I really became obsessed with the idea of plot, and I made it a goal to be able to write something shapely and complicated.
The way you describe your struggle with narrative and plot reminds me of the protagonist of Mystery Girl, Sam, who struggles as an experimental novelist.
Well, for some degree I always start with myself, because where else am I going to start? And I think I’m also lazy. I tend to think of...[read on]
Gordon's first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award.
The Page 69 Test: The Serialist.
Writers Read: David Gordon.
The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl.
--Marshal Zeringue