Fight for Your Long Day is the tale of Cyrus Duffleman's excruciatingly long day traipsing from school to school in Philadelphia, doing his best to teach multicultural throngs of students, ranging from the psychotic to the merely unmotivated.

Alex is not Cyrus, of course, and in the following interview Alex clarified that and a lot more about his creative writing process.

THE Q & A

Susan: Your publisher Atticus Books, who provided me with an e-galley, seems a smart and quirky press, a good place to land after spending six years editing and improving your novel. But what about that cartoony cover? Yours is a comic novel, but it has gravitas too.

Alex: That cover was not my idea, but I was given the opportunity to develop some of the frames. The only frame that I'm apprehensive about is the largest one-the one that depicts Duffleman at a desk grading papers (or writing) because it seems dangerous to depict such passivity on the cover of any commercial product, and also, because Cyrus doesn't grade any papers or write any fiction during his long day. So perhaps the cover is a bit misleading? I thought an image of the crowd, perhaps Duffleman squeezed onto public transportation and looking neurotic, anxious, and out of place, would have worked better.

For the cover as a whole, many people love it, but others see it the way you do. And of course, we all know not to judge books by their covers.

Susan: My husband, an adjunct for a long time, also had a disruptive psychotic student in a class (like your Cyrus did). And when he was no longer offered creative writing classes and only got to teach paper-grading-intensive composition, there was no joy left in the job. Did all that grading make you crazy too? Was your novel writing a valuable escape?

Alex: The experience of losing favored classes or never being offered them is one of the most demoralizing aspects of working at the lower levels of academia. And yes, the grading can make adjuncts crazy, but it's also possible that it will be the class time, the hierarchal pay scale and lack of health benefits, or interaction with a few choice students or colleagues, that could drive a good adjunct nuts. And there is also at least the possibility of a little personal responsibility in this world, and it's always important to remember what selfish, miserable creatures we all are, and that it's a rather brutal world out there. This is all I have to help me get through each day!

Academia is just one of many careers that can leave people disillusioned, bitter, or even worse off, and possibly this is because, at least within English Departments, and perhaps most of the liberal arts, we meet countless writers who have very few readers and even fewer fans (if any at all). To be read and to be understood and recognized-these are things we all crave--and so I'm very grateful to people such as yourself who say they laughed aloud or loved the book.

I think writing the first draft was a very cathartic experience, and once I got on a roll, it came out fast, and yet, as with anything, the hard work required to edit and polish it could hardly be called an "escape." The French publisher Eric Vieljeux, of 13enote, described the book as a pièce de résistance. Somehow, the French have always been able to help American writers feel more heroic than they actually are.

Susan: How different is the final book from the previous few drafts? You did such a masterful job of creating scenes, so that even if nothing major happened (well, an assassination IS pretty major), the narrative had a good sense of movement and even suspense. I knew our guy wasn't going to get laid, but couldn't keep from turning the pages to see how.

Alex: I'm glad you appreciated the suspense, and what a friend of mine has called the "energy" of the sentences and of the book in general. I think some of the "add ins"--paragraphs or sections I added after the first draft--slow the book down a bit, but I just couldn't resist including them. I've noticed that there are some sentences in the printed book that are exactly the same as what I wrote in the original notebooks, but there was a lot of painstaking editing, too. It can take incredible concentration to revise for even the slightest changes.

Susan: Fight for Your Long Day is quite funny. Did you jot down any of those conversations from real life?

Alex: Thanks for finding the humor! I'm not always that funny in person, and quite frankly, between teaching, parenting, reading, and writing, I can come across as more exhausted than anything else. I didn't jot down any of those conversations right when they happened, but many of them are inspired by real talk or discussion I witnessed or was part of. Not one of them is a verbatim conversation from real life, and in that way, the book is decidedly fictional.

Susan: Though hardly a revolutionary, Cyrus seemed representative of a whole class of people that will be familiar to many readers (tired overworked progressives?). He has no arrogance. He is not entirely appealing, yet somehow lovable. How is he NOT you?

Alex: I'd say Duffy is more of an anxious, neurotic urban liberal than a progressive although progressive makes him sound better, and he certainly is tired and overworked. Alas, he does have some arrogance, too, or moments where he allows himself to be seduced by the possibility that he is an intellectual, a professor, someone students should listen to, or even a good person. I suppose we could forgive him because, after all, he is all of these only on a part-time basis.

I don't know how we can say any fictional character is not a part of the author (or vice versa) and yet, I think it would be extremely difficult for anyone to see themselves exactly as they "are," and that in fact, there might not be any such essential being. We develop, we change, we age, we are perceived by different people in different ways, etc. I think there is something incredibly human about Duffleman, and almost all of us have Duffleman moments, but don't actually have the extreme day or extreme emotions all within one day.

Actually, now that I think of it, I can see a bit of myself in many of the book's minor characters, too. Aren't we all, always at once, Republicans, Communists, homeless, and trying to help others while getting our point across? (Let me check again with my handlers on that.)

Susan: Isn't it weird that health insurance should be such a primary concern when thinking about employment? When doing something meaningful with one's life ought to rank a bit higher?

Alex: Yes, that's absolutely right. We read about insurance nightmares all over the country, and I keep telling myself and hoping that what actually passed as "Obamacare" will help many more millions of us, and yet, the healthcare legislation is so entangled with privatized insurance and medicine, the same folks providing some of us with huge monthly invoices, that it is hard to know what the results will be.

I also hope that the idea of a meaningful life is seen in the novel, too. It is very much with purpose that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is Duffleman's first lesson of the day although approaching life's meaning by drawing a triangle on a blackboard is also meant to be amusing. Cyrus Duffleman, like so many of us, is very much searching for meaningful exchange and existence. And he'd like a chance to laugh and rest peacefully as well.

Susan: What are you working on now?