"Dazed The Story of a Grunge Rocker" is the first of a trilogy of novels about the 90's, drugs, desperation and the havoc it causes both physically and mentally. It is set in the Pacific Northwest (Portland, and the wet soggy tiny towns specific to the area) and takes you on a journey with Eric a talented, intelligent junkie. Like most junkies he suffers from severe denial and the people around him are tormented by his self destructive life which is wasting away his talents in music, art and writing. He goes from a street hard runaway to a leader of a grunge band; it seems to do little to quell his tortured soul (which he claims not to have.) His problems with love, drugs, physical pain and teenage angst are written with authenticity, insight and understanding. It reads like you are peeking into someone's diary while they are in the other room. You can feel his pain, you are pissed at his total lack of perception of what is going on around him, and you want to slap him in the face...hard. You also want to see him overcome all of these things to become the person he was so obviously meant to be. People in the orbit of his dying star try very hard to save him but does he want to save himself? You will have to read it to find out. I highly recommend doing so, and I don't recommend anything highly much anymore except a good night's sleep and a few restaurants I like around Austin. Amazed by this novel that feels as if the blood from a syringe was used to write it I interviewed the author Nikki Palomino. There are passages or excerpts if you prefer throughout the interview (all excerpts from the book are bold italics) so that I might entice you to want to read more and find out just exactly what the hell is going on. Information on the book and it's author are available at
http://www.nikkipalomino.com/index.html.





Hi it's great to speak to a fellow Texan!

You're in Texas I'm from Houston that's where my family is.

Yep, I'm down here in Austin.

You sounded like you had that accent.

The "drawl" I have it a bit, it's worse when I have a few cocktails. I was reading a bit about the book coming out "Dazed: Story of a Grunge Rocker" it's a little autobiographical?

Well it's a fictionalization based on some people I have known in my life, including Kurt Cobain. It's about these people I knew and one I was in a band with. The story of these people and their addiction's to heroin and the wanting to stop, not wanting to stop and not being able to stop. Runaways I knew in Los Angeles whose stories I would listen to and they stayed with me over time. My involvement is being there and seeing and being a witness to these goings on.


There has always been this kind of "glamor" attached to the junkie lifestyle by people who haven't been there first hand. I've unfortunately been there and seen people overdose, in the hospital with tubes coming out of every orifice, seen the looks on parents faces when doctors try to explain to them what happened. Watched friends trying to live while so tethered to this drug it's a hard life for the people who are addicted but also those around them. In the end it's a disease and it eats people alive.

I know genetics plays into and addictive personality it but I just can never say never because you just never know what is going to happen in life. People never know what's going to happen to them I don't believe someone sets out to be a junkie because just having seen what it does it's just so hard. I think I never fell into it because I needed my brain for writing and if not for that I could have fallen into that. I just don't know.

So how did you start writing and when did it lead to getting published?

I've always done as far back as I can think when I was little I would tell stories when the truth was just too boring. As a child I was asked by the lady across the street what I did over the weekend so I said "we went to Disneyland and on the way back the plane crashed I ended up on I10 at a truck stop and a trucker picked me up bought me a grilled cheese sandwich and a soda and brought me back and the family had all passed away." I got in so much trouble, my parents were used to it but I didn't know that is what it was me telling a story. My grandfather on my father's side was writer and we would go visit every year. He had an office where he would type and I would just sit there and watch him type. He also had a library so by the age of six years I was reading things like "To Kill A Mockingbird." I was always a little hyperactive so when I would get antsy he would just lean over and tap me with his shoe and I would go back to watching him. I think it was during this time I decided this is what I want to do. I have been writing since I can't remember and was published very early on. Doing different things like articles and poetry I would work at local papers and magazines and I have always loved writing about music. I have had several short stories published also.

I really enjoy short form it's so nice to be able to sit down, write something, and have a finished product there instead of having something that needs more work.

With short stories you can see a completion; the thing about a novel is you need discipline. I have sent off many and not all made it into print but I always got good advice even in rejection. I had a mentor who was a writer and always gave me advice and direction. The thing about writing is that it's not something I just do; it's something I have to do. It's an ever changing medium, sometimes you have agents, sometimes you don't and sometimes you hit and sometimes you don't. It's a lot like Roulette in that respect.

So the best thing is just to stick to it and do it regardless?

I just kept writing and sending it out, in 2003 I was named Top Genre Writer by Writers Digest for a short story I wrote about a pregnant woman who keeps children in the basement and they keep disappearing and in the end she goes into the living room takes the pillow out and is talking to her husband so you find out all of these children only existed in her head. I thought that this was a big changing point in my career but it really didn't change anything.

Well with the Academy Awards coming up there is the similar thing of people who will win Best Actor or Actress that just go don't continue on in that high level of stardom. Not saying that you have not continued on but awards aren't always the catapult into a continuing level of recognition.

It is definitely work, and people think that they'll write a book and it'll work out but it's years of finding out what does work and what doesn't work that makes for a successful writer.


Do you have a personal editor or reader who reads all your manuscripts?

Not anymore, I have alpha or beta readers who will read to just let me know if there is something I'm missing but I have learned over time to be able to know what I'm doing right or wrong.

Do you think that doing interviews for magazines helped in your fiction writing as far as having a voice for characters?

No I think that interviewing is either something you can or can't do well. It can give you a phrase or a word that just sticks. As far as being in situations like being in a band and on the road, broken down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere experiences build character and you use that to build upon in your stories. There has to be some general basic understanding of what you are writing about in fiction or it just doesn't work.

It's always fascinated me that writers like Ray Bradbury or even L Ron Hubbard made a living back in the day by sitting and writing daily for pulp magazines and just forcing themselves to do the eight hour days behind a typewriter. They couldn't wait for the experiences to come to them they had to make the experience in their head. I don't know if that kind of writing exists anymore. Even writers like Shirley Jackson were published often in magazines like the New Yorker or even Playboy.

Everything as far as writing has changed since then. I do believe that forcing yourself to sit and write is a good thing. If you don't work at it you will lose it, I've never had writers block but I have had lazy periods like most people have. That is the work part it can't be for fame or financial gain it has to be worked for and there has to be that working ethic to it and the satisfaction comes from the finished product, it's an accomplishment. I just happen to have that ethic.

So many writers didn't get that accomplishment or recognition until they were much older.

Well you know when you're younger you want to have fun and there is that necessity to experience things in order to tell a truthful and believable account of it.

There is also the basic tall tale or "lying" aspect of a story that the better liar you are the better stories you'll tell.

That is true, I had a Grandmother on my mother's side if she would have passed the third grade she would have been a writer. She had the greatest stories she would tell that would fuel the imagination I had. I understood that my Grandfather the writer was one part of it and that the imagination was the other part. It's all part of the process that goes into the work, the discipline of the writer and letting your mind come up with the ideas that go together to make a story.


Let me ask you this, women writers of past generations such as Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor or Sylvia Plath were not considered as talented as their male counterparts like William Faulkner to name one. Each of them so talented and so overlooked for so long, but the fact was they were women. Do you think that the scales are a little more even now or do women still have to try harder?

I believe that it depends a lot on the genre you are writing in. I think it relies on the woman to put herself out there and decide what is important and make it happen. I know that women have families and are put upon to be certain things by society still, I think women have to work harder in that aspect to get it all done and be able to compete.

Women writers can be a Shirley Jackson who had children and lived in a small minded town which became the subject of many of her stories, and there is the Joyce Carol Oates female writers who are so prolific that it's almost like their books are their children.

Society and nature have placed women in roles that placed family care and responsibility on them while the men where the providers. Now it's still similar but more is expected of women to not only take care of the family needs but to also work as well. It's a case of having to work harder and take on more responsibility. Life is not easy and you have to put in a lot of effort and find your niche and really take the time to write if that is what you want to do.

Are you the type of writer to avoid television and reading while you are writing?

I don't watch television at all. When the last one I had broke I just never got another one. I read, the days of absorbing other peoples writing is done when you are young. That is when you are supposed to do that while develop your style or copy a style until you build your own voice. So now I can read anything and it doesn't necessarily influence the style I'm writing in. I do know what's going to happen in the "Dazed" trilogy but as far as it's going to get there I haven't mapped it out. I don't go off the path like I might have as a younger writer.

So once that characters voice is in your head it's not something you can lose?

I don't know if I have any set way of doing it but I do it longhand sometimes other times straight into the computer. Once it's there though I don't lose it. Not everything you write is going to be perfect but it prepares you for the next thing. Not all characters or stories are going to make it to completion but its all part of the process.

What about the new plague of text writing, it seems like whole words and grammar are just not important anymore.

I'm sure there are people out there who are so good at it that there will be something written entirely in that form. That being said if you want to write you have to know the basics and you have to read and absorb what's around you. If you are always texting you're not noticing the things around you and I don't think you would be able to tell a story in a compelling way.

What about trying other writing mediums such as essays, articles, reviews etc...?

Well I don't think that's for everyone but I do think that curiosity about the different types of writing one can do is great. Never stop questioning what you can do or learning more about anything you are interested in. The more you know, the more you know that you don't know.


How did you start doing the Radio show?

I was approached by a station in Australia to do a show just interviewing authors; I just thought it would be so boring. I know musicians, artists and lots of other people who would be great interviews. So I did that for a while then I hooked up with Ginger and started writing for Punk Globe and we started doing more interviews with people she was able to bring in. The station in Australia just was not a good match so Ginger hooked me up with Lisa who does http://whatever68radio.com out of San Diego and that was perfect. We had marketing people who ended up not being right so I have learned all about social media and self promotion which was necessary anyway. I learned no matter where you are on the totem pole you end up doing a lot of the work yourself. We are in that social networking age so it has to be done.

With the age of the book in the traditional form sort of dying out and a lot of what people take to be the truth being learned from social media do you think the writer is necessary?

More than ever, we tell the stories, we write the news and history still needs to be recorded even if it is a bit skewed. If the writer disappears history will fall away and it's so important to know the story of the world every part of it even the history of the pole dancer needs to be told. You can't learn if you don't read and if there is no one to write it no one will learn it. It's there to teach as well as entertain.

Okay to close if you had not been a writer what do you think you would have done.

I think I would have just continued to tell stories.

"Dazed The Story of a Grunge Rocker" is published by NEW HAVEN PUBLISHING LTD UK

All excerpts (in italics) are used courtesy of Nikki Palomino and New Haven Publishing

All Photos used courtesy of Nikki Palomino

She is available on Facebook and Twitter under her name Nikki Palomino there is also a Facebook page for "Dazed"