Author Spotlight: Danny Cherry Jr.
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Who is Danny Cherry?
Danny Cherry Jr. clambers through the everyday working world like everyone else—but in windows, cracks, and crevices of free time, he thrives as an acclaimed and accomplished wordsmith. From political and personal essays, to novels and short stories, Cherry has been published in Buzzfeed News, Politico, The Daily Beast, Apex Magazine, Fiyah Lit Mag, and more.
Danny Cherry’s first novel will be released in January of 2024: $ The Pike Boys$ , published by Big Easy Press, is a 1920s crime drama set in New Orleans—merge Boardwalk Empire and Peaky Blinders with a backdrop of prohibition-era New Orleans.
We got to chat with Danny this week and wanted to get you in on the conversation.
What is The Pike Boys about?
The Pike Boys is a book about men grappling with the consequences of the pain they’ve caused. It’s my attempt to take the energy of a crime thriller and merge it with an emotionally and mentally challenging narrative that interrogates what a life of shootouts, drugs, and drinking does to someone.
Who's your biggest supporter?
My wife. Easily.
What's an element that you like to incorporate into your writing sessions?
Hmmmm… the one constant with my writing routine is caffeine of some form: coffee, Celsius energy drink, green tea matcha. I use it to help get my inspiration flowing, and let my fingers fly across the keyboard.
As far as strategy, I try to allow myself to get messy with my drafts. I write whatever comes to my mind no matter if it’s in chronological order, or if it’s in a different POV one paragraph, and different another. I treat most of my first drafts like trying to get to a destination without a road map. I’ll start with one opening, then follow that all the way through—pretty much stream of consciousness—until I hit a point that I can’t get past…then I go back to the top, and start all over in a different direction. (e.g., change POV, plot, angle, etc.) I repeat this until I have a better shape of the story, then I take the best elements of each draft and reshape it from there.
I know you probably shouldn’t edit while writing—or constantly restart drafts—before you finish the first one, but why would someone continue to push through a writing block, knowing that they’re going in the wrong direction? I believe in being wrong fast, instead of trying to force something that I instinctively know is wrong.
Danny's dog, Teddy
What's your writing space look like?
To be honest, I don’t truly have a writing space. I write wherever I find time doing so. Sometimes I write on my phone, other times I write while I have downtime at work. As soon as I see that I have free time, even if it’s for five minutes, I’ll take my phone out and write like that. You’d be shocked at how quickly writing five minutes at a time adds up.
NovelPad lets you write on any device or operating system, online or off, so you can squeeze in more of those five minutes.
What's the best or worst reaction you remember receiving about your writing?
The best reaction for me was how my short story, Brief Life Story of Lila, made multiple readers cry. It was wild having people tell me that. That told me that my skill was in hitting people in their emotions, and crafting complex and nuanced characters. So, I’ve leaned into that.
As far as the worst reaction? I had some dude (beta reader) pick one of my stories apart so badly. Like, thousands of words of feedback of him telling me why my story was nonsense. I haven’t tried to publish that story because of it.
If you could go back five years in time and give yourself a crucial bit of writing advice, what would you say?
Be wrong fast—write, and write as quickly as possible so that you can find out what doesn’t work.
Who is The Pike Boys for? Who did you imagine reading it while you wrote?
Honestly… I imagined myself. Well, someone with my reading taste, I guess. Those who love novels that deal with moral ambiguity and characters that are neither good nor bad, but whatever they need to be in that moment.
I write for people who like their "commercial" fiction to have a tinge of literary quality. I imagine readers who enjoy shows like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Peaky Blinders, and Boardwalk Empire would like this book. I feel as though the publishing industry has a huge void when it comes to novels that are like those shows, so I wanted to write for people who want more of that in their novels.
Do you infuse a lot of your own personality and experiences into your characters? If so, has writing forced you to confront anything inside of yourself?
Yes, to both. I question my own morality a lot and force my characters to do the same. I like to throw them into situations where they must deal with the consequences of their actions and make decisions on how to best navigate them.
Like in The Pike Boys, I open the book with a heist. I didn’t want the heist to be the focus of the book, but the source of the conflict and tension. I also have this theory that we all have this part of us that we’re hiding, and that’s how I wrote the characters of The Pike Boys. Now take the two themes I like to play with, and you get Jesse Pike’s storyline in the novel: Jesse is a strategic thinker and very good at doing bad things…but he hates that about himself. He seems to be a criminal mastermind to some, but at his core, he hates that he’s good at it… So I threw him into shitty situations where he had two options:
1. Do the moral thing and deal with the consequences, or
2. Do the immoral thing, and get off scot-free
What obstacles did you encounter during the process of creating this book? How did you overcome it?
Honestly… my obstacles were undergrad and grad school. I fell into a rough headspace after college was over, because I realized all of the schooling I went through didn’t get me much. So it was hard to write with all of that weighing on me. I overcame it by giving myself grace and putting the book away for a while, focusing on my day-to-day life.
We can learn a lot from Danny—write when you can, be wrong fast, and don’t be afraid to give yourself a little grace and a big break when you need it. He can also teach us $ how to research for historical fiction$ .
Follow him on $ Twitter$ or subscribe to his $ newsletter$ to keep up to date with Danny and his future projects.
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