Meet GenXCore

We had the good fortune of connecting with GenXCore and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi GenXCore, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I am a third generation SoCal native, raised primarily in Huntington Beach, and have lived in the Hollywood area (mostly) since my early 20s. My formative years were the late 70s, early 80s. I was raised by a single mother, and we were very poor (rolls and rolls of blue food stamps in our home). But my recollections of that space in time are rich, both in memory and color; there was a freedom to roam, to see what you could find. I think California has always been like that; it seeps into the bones, becomes part of the DNA.

It has most certainly informed my novel, “California Roadkill.”

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Writing a novel is a marathon and I have always been a natural born sprinter. Every fiber of my being is geared toward the now. In order to finish “California Roadkill,” I had to build a set of skills that were unnatural to me: patience and perseverance, foresight and planning writing schedules around a full-time job and being a single father in L.A. Trust me, there were a lot of reasons to quit.

But having made the changes necessary to finish the marathon, I learned that I am capable of more than the story I’ve told myself about myself. It took me twelve (12) years to write the novel. Twelve. And the irony is that people read the work in a few days, many saying they literally can’t put it down. I guess the old sprinter aesthetic found its way into the storytelling. I find this endlessly comedic; it helps me not to take myself too seriously.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I like day trips, what I like to call an ‘LA day.’ Preferably it’s late October, cool in the morning, warm(ish) in the afternoon. We start downtown in the arts district with some overly expensive lattes then go work off the caffeine at The Broad. From there we drive west on Beverly, through the sun and smog and strip malls, for a late lunch at El Coyote. After that, we take Sunset Blvd. to PCH, north past Zuma and hike the sand dunes. There we take in the views, talk about it for a while, and go to Neptune’s Net for a fish and chips dinner at sunset.

The drive home through the sparkled lights of Santa Monica and Venice is quiet.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Mom. There may have been some bumps in the road, but she hung tough when seemingly everyone else said, ‘Nah, I’m out.’ This is truth.

Yet I recognize that it takes a village, and nothing exists in a vacuum. There have been many helpful and inspirational people along the way; my publisher, Dan Yaryan, at Mystic Boxing Commission, and Ron Yungul (writer, filmmaker) come to mind. But earlier, when I was on the ropes and it would have been easier to quit, there were some key people who are no longer here whose kind words kept me going. In no particular order: Hubert Selby, Jr. (author), Michael Dewey (musician), Jack Christenson (Vietnam Veteran), Gary Gilson (father, humanitarian, animal rights activist).

Also, there is one pivotal organization that supported me (literally): The Community of Writers. They provided me with a full Dixon Long Scholarship to come attend workshops with a host of very established writers. Here was a moment when I had nothing, and someone said, in essence, “You belong.” I’ll never forget that feeling.

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