Q & A with Summer Festival Speaker Joe Ide and San Diego Writers Festival

SDWF: What inspired you to write the book, Hi Five, with one of the main characters, Christiana, having multiple personalities? 

JI: I happened to watch Three Faces of Eve and Sybil in the same couple of weeks.  Jerry Seinfeld said, “A comedian is always thinking comedy,” always on the lookout for something funny or could skew funny.  Writers are the same way. They’re constantly sifting through everything that happens to them for something they can use. It’s like panning for gold. You work a ton of dirt until you find that single gold nugget. I watched those two movies and thought, Sybil would make a helluvah client.  

SDWF: What books are on your nightstand or stacked next to your bed? 

JI: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.  Rules of Civility, Amor Towles.   

SDWF: Which writers have influenced you most?   

JI: Elmore Leonard and Walter Mosley. They both wrote the kinds of books I wanted to write. Mosely gave me permission to write IQ. I thought if he could find an audience, maybe I could too.  

SDWF: If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?  

JI: Don’t make plans and you won’t be disappointed.  

SDWF: How has storytelling changed your life? 

JI: Storytelling gave me a life. Up to that point, I’d worked a series of jobs I had no interest in. Always restless, always unhappy. Finding writing was like being dead and discovering you had a pulse.     

SDWF: Is there a line from one of your books you’d be willing to share? (perhaps opening sentence(s) or something that gives the flavor of the piece?) 

JI: “I’ll have to interview all of them,” (the personalities) Isaiah said. “And if they show up and if they saw something and if they tell the truth, it may or may not add up to something.” 

SDWF: Thanks, Joe! 

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