It was from my grandfather’s library I discovered Truman Capote, James Cain, Flannery O’Conner, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, and poets like Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. I never got to keep the books, so I brought with me their most prized words and let them circle my brain like the stars surely circle the moon, at least in my imagination.
Books-and-Authors.net: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why? Nikki Palomino: I grew up in a small town that later became surrounded by Houston. In the back stood a field belonging to Texaco, two ditches and a gravel road. We’d pick blackberries and dream. I was ADHD so my energy surpassed the constraints of nothingness. The only place I could escape to was my imagination. My parents didn’t have lots of money so books were limited to the library with a small selection. My grandfather was a writer, and when we’d visit Overland, I’d get to sit on a stool in his office and watch him type. Being hyperactive at three, it was hard to keep from moving. When I’d let loose, he’d stare me down through his wire-rim glasses, tap my knobby knee with his strong leg and continue to work. I just remember the sheer joy washing over his face as he placed his words in a logical progression. I knew then I wanted to be a writer. It was from my grandfather’s library I discovered Truman Capote, James Cain, Flannery O’Conner, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, and poets like Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. I never got to keep the books, so I brought with me their most prized words and let them circle my brain like the stars surely circle the moon, at least in my imagination. Early
on, I felt isolated like the cook Truman Capote must have felt stranded
on the shrimp boat in the Gulf. Different, alone, miserable, part of a
frail minority who spilled a mistake with each breath, I was a ghost
haunting my own body. Nikki Palomino: DAZED (The Story of a Grunge Rocker) Silver Publishing is the first in the DAZED M/M Erotica novel series. Eric returns home from the Portland streets to find most things unchanged, but fellow art student sees the pain beneath the artistic brilliance as the men struggle to survive in a world that hates junkies and fags. Having been a part of what I call the underbelly of heaven (bullied, unaccepted, most likely not to succeed, runaway) I naturally gravitated toward the music and art scene. So very early on, I became involved with a junkie musician. Everything was beautiful, the discovering of each other’s bodies, the rush of dope, the falling in love among the rebellion where we existed for one purpose, to overwhelm our brainstems with the flood of endorphins. When he died of an overdose, I didn’t have to look far. By then, I’d become a grunge punk rock musician, having survived the NYC streets, and my guitar player depended on me for that moment when all pleasure condensed. I never judged him, just shared in his drugs and music. We were like dogs, forgotten in the bliss of affection, completely oblivious to the stress of a recent whipping. We toured in a van packed with equipment, the rest of the band and groupies, all nodding from lack of sleep and the spikes from residue leftover from gigs. That we would end, break the bond of each other never occurred to me. When I hit the Strip in L.A., covering music for various rags, I met the third junkie grunge punk rock musician, and he was everything my other two had been and more. He stood at the precipice of success. He seesawed in the playground others prayed for. His veins opened just to know he was alive. He looked frail and sickly in spite of an essence he emitted without pretense. He was attracted to my smile, came over and asked if he could borrow my outfit (a slim-fitting black mini) for an upcoming gig. He somehow knew, I’d smile back without judgment. By this point, I understood what not being able to stop meant, and I immediately recognized what drew me to him, his invincibility and total absence of discomfort, at least after he spiked. They all thought I could fix them. I didn’t realize at the time, they had fixed me.
Nikki Palomino: Eric Peterson is
an accumulation of those three grunge punk rock musicians and their
ferocious panic when they were faced with a heroin dry spell. As far as
who actually spawned the idea for DAZED, it was something Kurt Cobain
(Nirvana) said about his gay friend in high school. Both outcasts, the
two shared interests in the same underground music and both played
guitar. When the friend finally hit on Kurt, Kurt answered, “I’m not gay
but I want to be your friend.” So they bummed together, Kurt not giving
a shit if others thought he too was gay because that gave him someplace
to fit in. When the harassment became too much, mainly a jock knocking
him to the ground then sitting on his head, Kurt cut him off. It was the
junkie’s slant on survival. If you didn’t acknowledge what was
happening, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t say Eric was lightly based on Kurt. I’d
say Eric tastes every sin Kurt committed, and I don’t think I have to
explain the meaning of that.
Nikki Palomino: Gloom, doom, rain,
repression of a failing economy, boredom, unattainable freedom from
despair…When you’re young, you think life isn’t tender, instead raw,
forbidden, and what you want to dream about has concluded in past
generations. All the greats in music take a backseat to what’s relevant
to you. It is be a punk or cut your wrists or do yourself in with the
heaviest shit you can score. Seattle made for the perfect Petri dish. It
was just so hard to feel good, so incredibly hard to feel at all. Grunge
Rock of Seattle was no different from Punk Rock of the NYC streets or
the Haight Asbury hippie movement or the Harlem poverty of Doo-Wops.
There just has to be a first, a music scene lusting after recognition,
clueless to what it could mean. In times of passionate desperation,
making music is the cheapest heartbreak tomorrow holds, and Seattle just
got lucky. Like layers of cold earth, Grunge Rock found its soil at the
top of the heap because the time had come.
Nikki Palomino: If Kurt had been a
woman, he’d been an easy lay. He would have snuck off every chance he
got to see him. He was begging to be touched with success, and he hated
it at the same time. He wanted to be underground. He wanted to stay
dazed. Most groups at the time were spiking. They believed life was
meaningless. To Kurt, it really was. Maybe, that was the irony. He hated
himself for what he wanted so badly. He was the other side of a trick in
every sense of the word. One time he was ranting and carrying on about
how music had lost all its crude passion, no longer worthy to be called
punk, just turned into commercial crap. He couldn’t even listen to
Nevermind because he thought somehow he’d failed at the punk manifesto.
When reminded how he’d never have afforded jamming as much shit into his
veins if left to forty-a-night occasional gigs, he stopped. “You have a
point.” He didn’t say another word that night.
Nikki Palomino: Hollyweird
would probably ruin the casting (I know, I live in L.A.) because to play
Eric Peterson for Kurt to approve, he’d have to be unknown, hungry,
fucked-up, more a shy Dylan in “Don’t Look Back”. Let’s just say,
loneliness with plans.
Nikki Palomino: It’s a
statement of fact a junkie will lose more tears in one afternoon than
are dust motes floating in sunlight. As Eric will tell you. “We all want
the same things. We just get there in different ways.” Paradise. I want
readers to remember Eric every minute they are away.
Nikki Palomino: First reaction is to tell
Eric to die already, just end the fucking misery, and then they fight to
keep him alive. By the end of the novel, readers are scared they might
get their wish. When they lay down the pages, their heart aches,
remembering with realization, Eric has turned them into enablers.
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punk rock musician, racking up the confusion, frustration and passion leading
her to write DAZED (The Story of a Grunge Rocker), the first in a series of
novels about the drug and music culture of the '90s. She learned life, drugs,and
alternative music touring in a van packed with the rest of the band, equipment,
and groupies, playing infamous clubs like CBGB's.