Author Danial Polansky’s novella The Builders is now available from Tor.com Publishing and we are very excited to have this Brooklyn local here on The Back of the Box to answer our burning questions!A missing eye.
A broken wing.A stolen country.The last job didn’t end well.Years go by, and scars fade, but memories only fester. For the animals of the Captain’s company, survival has meant keeping a low profile, building a new life, and trying to forget the war they lost. But now the Captain’s whiskers are twitching at the idea of evening the score.Check out an excerpt here.Available for purchase.[caption id="attachment_190" align="alignleft" width="200"]
Danny Polanski[/caption]Can you describe your most recent project in one sentence?The Builders is a nihilistic western novella in which anthropomorphic animals slaughter one another to grim and comic effect.Where are you a local?Central Brooklyn. Typing this out from Soda bar on Vanderbilt over a 4$ Flying Dog Blood Orange, woot woot.If you could live in one fictional world, which would it be?The His Dark Materials world seemed pretty nice – the one where Layla is from, not the rest of them.Who would be the 5 people (alive, dead, or fictional) at your dream dinner party?Socrates, J Dilla, Rebecca West, Julius Caesar, Christ.Who is the author or book you will always recommend?Just one? Raymond Chandler.Favorite quote or line?This changes daily. Right now I like ‘Why is it that, in general, war is evil yet this war alone is somehow good?’ – Zinaida GippiusWho is your favorite writer outside your genre?This could go on forever. Let’s say James Joyce.First Love: Book edition. What was it and when? (i.e. what book made you love reading?)The very first? Pawn of Prophecy, age 6. Which is for my money about the only appropriate age to read the Belgariad, but still.You now have a time machine – to where and when do you go?Eastern Europe in 1900, before everything went to hell.If you could have one magic spell up your sleeve, what would it be?Teleportation, final stop.Where is your happy place?At the moment, Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.Last thing you read that made you think, “Well damn, that was cool…”Oddly, I just read Double Indemnity for the first time, which was pretty damn fabulous.If your soul was manifested outside of your body in the form of an animal (like in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series), what would it be?See, the thing is, everyone says like, tigers or wolves, some sort of impressive carnivore, but statistically speaking you only have one predator for every hundred prey right? Anyway I’m going to say jack rabbit, because I’m virile and I like to roam.
