{"id":14221,"date":"2025-05-19T10:21:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T14:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/?page_id=14221"},"modified":"2025-05-19T12:19:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T16:19:29","slug":"mike-heppner","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/mike-heppner\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Heppner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo credit: Geoff Nathan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I was born in Rhode Island, grew up in Michigan, and I\u2019ve been living, teaching, and writing in the Boston area for over twenty years. When the weather allows (usually 7-8 months out of the year), I can usually be found reading and writing on my front porch. I live on a busy street but across from a wooded area and a pond. It\u2019s both scenic and not at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also live just down the road from a zoo. I enjoy the novelty of this. It\u2019s fun living down the road from things, not just other people\u2019s houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote most of my first novel, The Egg Code <\/em>(Knopf, 2002), while in grad school at Columbia. It\u2019s a \u201cgrad school\u201d kind of book. It\u2019s sort of a large cast, po-mo comedy about how the Internet can be used to spread misinformation. When I started writing it in the mid-90s, most people were still using dial-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I wrote my second novel, Pike\u2019s Folly<\/em> (Knopf, 2006), I was living back in Rhode Island for a brief period. The book is about a wealthy guy who buys a piece of undeveloped property in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for the purpose of paving it over as a stunt. Lots of nudity\u2014transgressive nudity, you might say. Have I piqued your interest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of my third novel, We Came All This Way<\/em> (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), takes place on an abandoned oil rig in the North Atlantic. There\u2019s an oil rig on the cover. Literal, that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve also published a novella (Nada<\/em>, Kindle Singles, 2013) and two collections of stories and essays (The Man Talking Project<\/em>, Another Sky Press, 2012; This Can Be Easy or Hard<\/em>, Thought Catalog Books, 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote all of my new novel, Your Thoughts Are Important to Us <\/em>(forthcoming, Regal House Publishing) in longhand, which was a first for me. I don\u2019t normally like writing in longhand, but it felt right this time. I think I wanted to give myself a sense of risk: if I lost the notebook, the novel would be gone forever. (Unlike on a computer, where you can easily back it up.) I don\u2019t quite know why I wanted that feeling. But I think it\u2019s important not to value things too much. I think a writer should be able to say, \u201cWell, if I lost it, that would be too bad. But then I\u2019d just start over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not being facetious. It\u2019s impossible to be creative if you over-value what you\u2019re doing. You have to be reckless and free, not clingy toward your own work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Mike Heppner’s Your Thoughts Are Important to Us<\/em> in the summer of 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was born in Rhode Island, grew up in Michigan, and I\u2019ve been living, teaching, and writing in the Boston area for over twenty years. When the weather allows (usually 7-8 months out of the year), I can usually be found reading and writing on my front porch. I live on a busy street but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-14221","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9DpGh-3Hn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9442,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/robyn-dabney\/","url_meta":{"origin":14221,"position":0},"title":"Robyn Dabney","author":"Jaynie","date":"May 9, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Robyn Dabney is a fiction writer and freelance copyeditor with a copyediting certification from the University of California San Diego. 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