Q&A: Local Author Len Kruger on Asking Good Bad Questions

Len Kruger is the winner of this year’s Washington Writers’ Publishing House fiction award for his novel BAD QUESTIONS. This hilarious and heart-rending debut follows a character named Billy reexamining his childhood in Rockville and Silver Spring. In the wake of his father’s death, the guilt-ridden twelve-year-old gets caught up in a scheme of superstition and hexes, trying to square his family’s Judaism with his father’s belief in spirits, all while trying to understand what happened. It’s a fast-moving portrait of life in the 1970s, before Google could answer all life’s questions, and a reminder that some questions can never be answered.

Founded in 1975, the Washington Writers’ Publishing House is a non-profit, cooperative literary organization that sponsors three annual manuscript competitions — one each in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction — for writers living in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The winning books are published by the press. They also launched an online literary journal, WWPH Writes, in 2021.

On a rainy afternoon, Kruger and 730DC spoke at a cafe (okay, it was Starbucks) near his home on Connecticut Avenue, where he lives with his wife, Cynthia, and a dog named Howie. With a too-small table wobbling between us (should’ve gone to Tatte), we spoke about autofiction, superstitions, inspiration, and the local writing community.

First of all, congratulations on winning the WWPH fiction award. Did you know, when you were writing it, that it was award-winning material? What was this story’s journey from conception to publication with WWPH?

I actually started writing this novel more than ten years ago. I was in a couple of writing groups, so I would bring in a chapter every few months that grew into the initial novel. The novel right now is told in the voice of this twelve-year-old boy. Initially, the novel alternated between him as a twelve-year-old and him as an adult. It was a lot longer and would go back and forth. I sent it out to a few agents and didn’t get anywhere with it, so I put it aside.

But when I saw the solicitation for the Washington Writers Publishing House contest, I revisited the whole thing and decided the adult parts weren’t really working. My character as a kid is very neurotic, constantly questioning himself and everything around him, which I thought was endearing as a kid, but as an adult, it came off as a little bit annoying. What if I just stripped those parts out and just kept the narrator as a twelve-year-old in his voice? It seemed to work pretty well.

So I spent a lot of time revising and filling in plot holes, then submitted it. My thinking was if I could be a finalist, then I could put that in the letter to agents that I would then submit it to, so that would be helpful. I wasn’t counting on it actually winning. Although I did have fantasies like every writer does. And then feeling embarrassed about those fantasies.

How much of this book is autobiographical, and how many people did you hex as a child?

I hexed nobody as a child. Looking back, maybe I wish I had. But I would say it’s semi-autobiographical. A lot of the major plot points are totally fictional. The father committing suicide, fortunately, never happened. But we did move from Silver Spring to Rockville when I was in seventh grade. And some of Billy’s conversations with his father were kind of based on the kinds of conversations I had with my father. He liked to joke around a lot! But on the other hand, the father in Bad Questions believes in superstition and his fate being controlled by a spiritual force. My dad in real life was a scientist and would be the last person in the world to believe in that stuff. He subscribed to this magazine called the Skeptical Inquirer which ran articles debunking pseudoscience and the paranormal. So he was completely opposite from that kind of point of view about the world being controlled or controllable by some parapsychological force.

How much of the story would you say was inspired by the setting, like the 7-Eleven that plays such an important role? Did you go there as a kid?

The 7-Eleven was in downtown Rockville, and I used to go there just to buy candy and ice cream. Nothing dramatic ever happened there at all.

Except that they stopped selling Good & Fruities.

Yes, they did, and that was my (and Billy’s) favorite candy. I think they discontinued Good & Fruities. I don’t understand that at all, because they were way better than Good & Plenties. That’s one part of the story that’s totally autobiographical, where my character Billy is like, I don’t understand why people like licorice. It’s bitter. There’s just no comparison.

Did you ever go back there just to revisit the 7-Eleven?

It’s not there anymore. That whole area in downtown Rockville was totally redeveloped. They have this town square and it’s pretty neat. It’s completely transformed. The houses out there are the same, but the whole commercial downtown area is completely different.

Does the book take place in the seventies because that’s when you were growing up? Or do you feel like there’s something particular that drew you to that time period?

That’s when I was growing up. The book has lots of cultural references to things that a twelve-year-old boy would be interested in during the late sixties and early seventies. Things like Mad magazine, plus lots of TV shows like Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, and Match Game. And Billy is, as I was, a big Washington Senators fan, which is the baseball team that was moved to Texas in 1971. It was a heartbreaking moment for me as a kid, even though the Senators were really bad. The Orioles, just 40 miles away, were the best team in baseball. So there was this feeling of tremendous inadequacy and a kind of hatred of the other team that was so much more successful. That comes out in the book. And that was totally me at the time.

And there was a lot less internet back then to answer Billy’s many “bad questions.”

There was no internet.

Does the story necessitate the lack of internet?

Billy is constantly trying to figure out how things work, why things happen, whether what he can do can influence the course of events that happen to him and other people. I think if there was internet he would be Googling stuff all the time and maybe having different strategies about how to do things. The internet might have changed his approach.

Does modern technology help stem belief in superstition?

No, I think technology might spread it even more, because people who believe are all connected through Facebook or Twitter and reinforce each other’s beliefs.

Let’s talk about the “magic” in this story. Or lack thereof. There are superstitions, hexes, and a lot of Jewish culture and education in the background. The father in this story also talks about the spiritual plane, which may or may not be connected with his Judaism. So how do all these different parts fit together?

Billy is raised in a fairly observant Jewish family. He goes to Hebrew school, so he’s surrounded by it. But one of the features of Judaism, and also of science, is asking lots of questions. In Judaism, you have the four questions of the Passover Seder, you have the story of the four sons. Billy considers himself the Wicked Son because he thinks he’s responsible for his father’s death. But his father, by believing in these superstitions, stops asking questions. It’s like people who are in a cult, they’ve got everything explained for them, and so they don’t really need to question anything. Or don’t want to question anything.

My favorite passage is this one:

Why did you do it? I would say to him, his spirit floating in front of me, fuzzy, like bad TV reception. Why did you do it? Define “why,” he would say. Define “you,” define “do,” define “it.”

My question is: Define “why.”

That’s the main question of the book. Why did his dad do it? It’s one of those questions that can never be answered. There are some questions that you can never really know the answer to. You can just make guesses. Even I don’t know the answer. If I did, it would probably be a different kind of book.

Back to process. How did you select which of your real memories bring in? Did you make conscious choices?

Some people outline novels completely and know exactly what’s going to happen chapter by chapter. I didn’t know where the whole thing was going until I reached the end. I’d reach a chapter and draw on a memory that I had of myself at that age. It’s funny the things you remember and the things you forget. And after many years, the hurt from those things dissipates. But as a writer, you can use it.

Do you subscribe to any spiritual ideas of writing fiction, or theories of the creative muse?

No, I really don’t. I just sit in front of my computer and I’m usually fortunate that stuff just pops into my head. I have very little writer’s block. The challenge is sitting down and starting to work. That’s always the challenge. I can always find a million other things that I could procrastinate with, but once I’m actually doing it, things are going to come.

Where does your inspiration come from?

It just comes. If you’re writing you just get to think, all of a sudden, oh wow, what if this happens? That’s the great thing about writing fiction: you’re not bound by what really happened. So you can take something that might have happened to you and then ask, what if it went in a completely different direction? And then just try it out and see where it goes. So I can’t really say where it comes from. Things just pop into my head. Maybe there is some muse out there putting them in.

If there is, don’t question it!

Absolutely.

How has it been working with the Washington Writers’ Publishing House?

Working with them has been absolutely fantastic. They’re great. Basically, they’re made up of writers who’ve won the WWPH awards in the past. They’ve been around for 50 years. They started out just with poetry, and then they went into fiction. And last year, for the first time, they started a creative nonfiction competition. They gave me substantive feedback, like encouraging me to write a preface and an epilogue, which I did. I think it was the right decision. Almost all their recommendations I agreed with.

What other aspects of the DC literary scene do you think more people should know about?

The Inner Loop is a great organization that’s generous in giving chances to a lot of writers out there to share their work. The Bethesda Writer’s Center is cool, I’ve taken a gazillion courses there and recently published an article about Bad Questions in their magazine. And I’m in three writing different writing groups. I’m also in Shut Up & Write through Meetup.com — they have virtual meetings all throughout the week, where you get on, talk about what you’re going to do for the next one or two hours, and then shut up and write. I run one of those on Wednesday mornings at 10:00am. All are welcome!

What’s your favorite bad question?

Why is this happening to me?

BAD QUESTIONS will be published on October 3. There will be launch events and readings open to the public:

• Saturday, October 14 at 3 pm — Politics & Prose -5015 Connecticut Avenue NW — Washington DC 20008. Details here.
• Sunday, October 22 at 3 pm (wine and cheese reception to follow) — Writer’s Center– 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815. Details here.
• Sunday, November 19 at 5:30pm — Reston’s Used Book Shop — 1623 Washington Plaza North, Reston, VA 20190

The Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2024 book competition is open until November 1.

Len Kruger lives in Washington, D.C., and is a graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Maryland. His short fiction has appeared in Zoetrope-All Story, The Barcelona Review, Gargoyle, Potomac Review, Splonk, and the anthology This is What America Looks Like. He was the fiction winner of the 2021 writing contest sponsored by the Inner Loop and District Fray Magazine. In addition to writing fiction, Len is a storyteller and has performed on stage at many Washington, D.C. area storytelling venues, including Story District, The Moth DC, The Story Collider, and Better Said Than Done.

Denise S. Robbins is an author and teacher from Wisconsin living in Washington DC. Her writing has appeared in Barcelona Review, Gulf Coast Journal, Chicago Review of Books, The Creative independent, and more. She teaches a workshop about climate change fiction and has a novel and story collection in the works. Learn more at www.denisesrobbins.com and sign up for her bizarre newsletter about life here.