Stephen Prouse: Monkey with a Hand Grenade

Stephen Prouse loves stories. Writing. Reading. Watching. He believes they are our doorway to understanding what it is to be human. A self-professed social hedonist and leftist atheist writer, he lives in the Bible Belt and makes pastries (in addition to stories). 

Tell us a bit about your latest work. 

Handlebars is my first novel. The concept was born during the Clinton/Trump presidential campaign. I was listening to the Flobots song of the same name and couldn’t fathom either of those two ever riding a bicycle. I sat down to write it last year and what came out was incredibly fun.

Handlebars is the faux memoir of Quinn Constance, a man who came of age in rural American poverty and abuse and found himself at the center of global power in his adult years. His childhood friend, Louis Bryant, becomes a focal point of Quinn’s jealousy and feelings of inadequacy, and he remains that way as they both find their own success. Quinn’s pursuit of power to overcome his childhood powerlessness morphs him into something dark, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance as the human race enters a new evolutionary stage. 

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I was the quiet kid. I stayed in my head. In one way or another, I have always been writing. My earliest stories followed an alien being stranded on earth facing another of his kind in epic battles of superpowers and magic. I told these as comic strips. Since I couldn’t draw very well, the aliens were stars… with capes. Once I entered my pre-teen years, I focused on superhero comic books. 

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