Indie Spotlight: Jack Houghteling

 Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today, Jack Houghteling, author of the forthcoming cover Sunnyside, which releases later this month, discusses the book's cover and how the main character Montague came to be. 

I was at my Mom’s apartment last October - looking out on a northward view of the Hudson up toward the chasmic Tappan Zee - when I came across a picture of my great aunt and late grandma on a brumal Sunday in Sunnyside, Queens.

They smile on the concrete as a boy - a mature twelve or a prepubertal sixteen - peers on the aluminum. Or perhaps, like them, he poses.

I just liked the picture. I shared it to my social. I asked my Mom: What year? What street? What development (which RE company followed which Subway line)?

At the time I was two-and-a-half years into a project about a boy-become-man from the area - I’d first conceptualized a name, Montague Yazzo, in my early twenties. He’d once been a touted and celebrated local football player; a Jesus Shuttlesworth of Westchester County. But this was not a few-worded, many-strided athlete that ultimately succeeded. Why the fuck would I want to tell that story? The streamers and credit card are for that.

No. This was a former player that spoke in arias, spoke too much. He mined past movements. He mourned his lost uncle. He chirped his younger brother.

But above all, he thought about his Mom. He thought about Joanie-Hutch. How she’s left me with all this soul-toting and - contrary to the sportsperson’s climb - nonconclusion. With all these words.

This was it: a story about the conurbation’s cement, asphalt, brick, metal (Why does it get so cold and so hot? Why can I feel it on my breath and body?); about the ball in the sky; about lying in bed, post-breakdown, dreaming back upon nerved movements; about younger men and their older women guardians. Still they stood as we veered and tired.

 

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Jack Houghteling grew up in Hastings on Hudson, NY and published his debut novel Goodman in 2022, which was longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Sunnyside is his second novel.