Seattle Author: A Fiend of the Arts

Musician, writer, music writer, and now novelist, Dave O'Leary is certainly an artist when it comes to appealing to the literary and audio senses. "I always wanted to do a book, write and play," he says.

After majoring in English in college, he was in a lot of bands. "Back then I was more of a musician than a writer, because I took a number of years off of writing. I felt that I wasn't ready, I was forcing it," O'Leary said.

He moved to Korea for eight years to teach English, then to Seattle where he's been ever since. "After moving here, I felt like I was ready to write, so I started a blog in summer 2008 as something to get myself to write everyday," Dave says. "I started to get a few readers, and I really respected them."

His readers suggested that he write a book, based on his experiences which he chronicled on his blog, DaveMusic. In the summer of 2009, he began writing Horse Bite, an alter-ego novel that includes some events from Dave's own life. "I began developing more of a story, about my life, my experiences ... the original idea was to springboard from the blog to writing short stories," he said.

Dave reading about the Shit Woman. Photo by Stacy Albright

What came was a novel. One with a very unique voice and story that captures and draws the reader into the life of a musician, programmer, and writer on the verge of 'Forty' and the women (one in particular) that he encounters. Come back for my review of Horse Bite on Thursday.

At the time he was writing Horse Bite, Dave O'Leary was also writing about local musicians and bands for Seattle Subsonic. Someone who knew him had approached him and asked him to write for the blog, "and at first I was hesitant," he says. "I was always the musician, not the critic. So I wrote the music articles as kind of an extension of my personal blog, reviewing the band is as much about me experiencing the band and music as it is about the band themselves. [Bands] tend to like that."

As Dave says it, "I enjoy the music writing ... I've met a lot of great musicians, and built up a little community of sorts around the bands I've written about. They've been as supportive of my book and blog as I have been of their music. [They are] good people. My passion, though, is my personal blog."

He was working full time as a programmer while writing every day for sometimes three to four hours when he got home. "It was very quiet, sometimes lonely, but very tiring. Sitting in front of the computer," he says, mentioning Charles Bukowski, his favorite author.

Favorite Bukowski works of his? Love is a Dog from Hell, You Get So Alone Sometimes that it Just Makes Sense, and The Captain is Out to Lunch. "I do love his poetry, (it was his great strength I think) and some of his prose (especially The Captain is Out to Lunch), I don't love everything thing he wrote," O'Leary said. "He had his successes and his failures, but the motivational thing is that he wrote, all the time. And he wrote, too, about that drive to write."

And poetry is also something Dave has had more than just read, he's had his own moments in the craft:
"Years ago poetry was my preferred form of writing, but it left me at some point. That's how those things go. I even mention it in the book. Sometimes something dies. People stop creating," he said. "But the poem came back when I met the woman Yvonne is based on, and it mixed in with the prose. I even put poems on my blog from time to time and my readers like them. I wanted to work that into the book because I saw no reason why a novel couldn't also have some poetry since I do try to make the prose poetic in a way. So there are a few poems in the book, and it even ends with one."

The poems came back for Dave for those moments in Horse Bite, but not all things have a happy ending. That's part of why Dave's book is so relatable (even to someone like myself, who got married young and has little to no musical talents). "I lost a woman near the end of writing Horse Bite. Yvonne is based on her. She was my inspiration. I had to get past that to finish it. I don't know how I did," he says. We all go through ups and downs, and O'Leary captures that humanity and feeling expertly in his novel.

Lucky for him, "Publishing kind of fell into my lap. After I finished Horse Bite, I started doing more music writing, getting more readers. At a Flight to Mars concert, I met the guy who wrote about the year he spent with Pearl Jam," Dave said (That's Jason Leung, author of This All-Encompassing Trip). "I asked him to read Horse Bite, and he offered to publish it through his publishing company, Infinitum. Then Barnes & Noble placed an order for the book..."

Since Horse Bite's release on Halloween 2011, Dave has been signing and reading for it around Seattle. He's currently working on another book, as well as a screenplay.

He has lots of writing advice for authors, so I'm just going to bullet-point them for you:

• "Have faith that it can happen. Force yourself. Make it happen. One of the best parts is when you get down to that sentence, then you stand up and it's all clear."
• "Write. Believe in what you write, because if you don't believe in your writing, no one else will."
• "Stick to your guns, write about what you want to write about. Don't apologize."
• "You're going to have a lot of long, dark, lonely nights, and you've got to get through that." 
• "Push yourself, try something new."