Life & Work with Brent L. Smith of Glendale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brent L. Smith.

Hi Brent L., so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My story? I don’t know. I always had an instinct for writing, but I never took it seriously until college. I was better at writing than anything else. I tend to take the path of least resistance.

At first, it was essays. I thought I was going to be strictly a nonfiction writer. I didn’t think I had the chops for fiction. But then I went to graduate school at the Jack Kerouac School in Colorado, and took some fiction courses. There was this professor and author, Keith Abbott, and it was just from a few of his prompts that made me realize I could do it. I realized it was easier than nonfiction, and that the two really aren’t that different.

I got back to LA and had no idea what to do. I was 26 and got a job as a bartender at Harvard & Stone when it first opened. Back then it was where everyone went, lots of celebrities all the time, all that. I was hired as a freelance screenwriter for Jesse Dylan’s production company, Wondros, when they were trying to branch out into tv/film. I co-wrote a horror script that they tried to get financing for but that fell through (as most projects do). I continued freelance writing in the day, bartending at night.

I wrote for Flaunt Magazine and interviewed a lot of the same famous faces I would see in the bar. It was sometimes a bummer because here I was this prose writer from the Jack Kerouac School and everyone in LA writes for TV. No poets or novelists anywhere. So I found myself writing for music magazines and blogs, covering live shows and reviewing albums and interviewing local rockers. I wasn’t a journalist and had no idea how to write about music. But I found there is no way to write about music, you just have to feel it, and write what you feel. Then I got lucky because in the 2010s there was a huge wave of garage rock that hit LA. The scene sprang out of nowhere. So that’s where I found community, among local rock bands, and all my friends were in all my favorite bands.

After a while, though, I realized online writing was so disposable, and no matter how much blood and sweat you put into essays or profiles, they just get swept into yesterday’s feed, and no one cares except you. I wanted to write something that could stick. I decided to write my first book. I published an occult mystery novella Edendale Society in 2017. Then a book of poems called Nation of Dirty Assholes in 2018. Then COVID hit, killed my bar job, killed the music scene, and all I had was the blank page with nothing to do. So I finished a neo-noir book I had been putting off, Pipe Dreams on Pico, which was published in 2021.

Post-COVID, a lot of NY kids moved to LA, and now we’re enjoying a thriving underground lit scene that I never saw coming. Poetry readings replaced rock shows. Imagine that. Nowadays, I work a day job with good pay and I write at night. I finished an acid western novel, Gambling Hell in No Time, that I’ve been pitching for the last year. But it’s a hard sell, an acid western. I suppose that’s where I am today.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When is it ever a smooth road? I’ve done so much bad writing. Thank god nothing ever got published when I was younger. But nothing ever went to waste. If anything, it was a practice in endurance. It took a long time before I was ever floored by anything I put down. Style is a tricky thing. But you need it. You just have to keep at it. And then you have to know when to put it down and go live some life. But, in the end, never stop writing. It reveals so much about what you never even realized you knew. You know what I mean? Anyway, never stop. A lot of people stop.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Based on feedback, I write highly stylized stories with themes that often revolve around LA, my hometown, where glamour and decay coexist; the morbid fascination of its forgotten past; the psychic collapse therein. A reviewer described Pipe Dreams on Pico as “a novella that feels vintage in a lot of ways: there’s some ‘50s B-movie alien invasion in here, alongside hard-boiled LA noir and Steve McQueen movie, muscle car worship … The style is spare and direct, and borrows a lot from the speed and grit of garage punk.”

My mother is a well-known hypnotherapist who specializes in alien abduction, so my upbringing involved being exposed to esoteric and occult subjects at a very young age. The paranormal was all very normal to me. The paranormal is an undercurrent in most aspects of my life, certainly in my writing.

I’m proud of anything I’ve managed to write. I don’t write anything often, not as often as I’d like, it’s incredibly laborious for me (but still fun), so when I do, I know that it carries weight. I’m particularly proud of this acid western I just finished. It’s my favorite thing I’ve written so far. That’s all you can strive for in writing. Just get better, get weirder, get more and more outside yourself. A few agents really enjoyed it but described it as “experimental,” which isn’t a compliment in the buy-and-sell market of books. I just hope it sees the light of day.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Feel free to reach out @brentellesmith. Also go to Farwestpress.com and buy Pipe Dreams on Pico. Leave a review on Goodreads. Or wherever. Tell your friends. These are the best ways to support any writer. And it means the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brentellesmith.com

Image Credits
Edendale Society cover design by Nikki Pickle
Pipe Dreams on Pico cover design by Olya Dyer
Nation of Dirty Assholes cover design by Jon Foshee