Q&A with author, UNC English professor Daniel Wallace

UNC English professor and author of “Big Fish” Daniel Wallace just published his newest novel, “The Kings and Queens of Roam,” which follows the story of two sisters who live in a mythical town and who are polar opposites of each other.

Staff writer Kathryn Muller spoke with Wallace about the inspiration for his book and his writing process.

DAILY TAR HEEL: Where did your inspiration for “The Kings and Queens of Roam” come from?

DANIEL WALLACE: I don’t really believe in inspiration. When this book started, I wrote a kind of free writing exercise that I do all the time — where I start writing and see what comes out — and the very first paragraph of the book happened, and I liked it. But I didn’t know what came after it.

Stories, at their bottom, are just a series of logical events and consequences based on actions, no matter what the novel is. And so studying that paragraph, I started to see what the effects and consequences of it were. It broke open after about a year and I was able to see what happened next.

DTH: What do you find most attractive about the short chapter style?

DW: Personally as a reader, I always have liked the ability to rest. And what those shorter pieces do is force you to stop and think about it. I really prefer that as a reader and so, of course, I would try to create that similarly in my own book.

DTH: What stood out to you as the most difficult part of the writing process for “The Kings and Queens of Roam?”

DW: This novel is much more complex than my other books. This has two storylines that are alternating, but each has to have relevance to the other — they can’t just be two different stories.

Then, having all that together, I had to write an ending to the book that brought it all together, and it took me a really long time to figure out what that ending was.

DTH: Why are eyes and eyesight recurring themes in your work?

DW: When I was in sixth grade, I had a friend who had a glass eye. We were in the same class together, and he would raise his hand almost every day and he would say, “Mrs. Flowers, may I go wash my eye?”

This filmy gunk grew in the corners, so she would say, “Of course you can go wash your eye,” and then he would ask for me to come with him. So I would go to the bathroom with him and watch him take out his eye and run it under the tap and then dry it off with a paper towel and put it back in his eye. I didn’t do anything for him; he just didn’t want to do it all by himself.

And that was buried for a long time, and then once I remembered what had happened it became kind of a big part of my life.

DTH: Are you working on any other projects at the moment?

DW: I’ve been doing some screenplays. One of them is looking for a director and the other one is being cast now. The name of the movie is “My Father’s Leg,” but it’s based on a short film I wrote called “Two-Legged Rat Bastards.”

And I’ve got another novel that I’m working on and I hope to finish this summer ­— it’s a funny novel about a sad man.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com