WONDERLANCE: Michael, it’s a great pleasure to interview you, thank you very much for your time. You’ve been consistently, and deservedly, referenced as one of the greatest male authors of sensitive, deep and even romantic fictional narrative of nowadays, but fiction was not your first literary genre, isn’t that right? Would you kindly share with our readers about your origins, literary and otherwise if you wish?

MICHAEL BARON: I've been interested in writing my entire life, but I didn't set out to make a career of it. I started in retail (not a happy experience) and then taught high school English (a somewhat happier experience). My first book deal came about because I knew someone who knew someone who needed help on a nonfiction project. Thankfully, I've been able to make a living at it ever since. Everything up to When You Went Away was nonfiction, though. Inside, however, I was feeling a strong inclination to start writing fiction.

WONDERLANCE: At what point you thought you'd be kind of more ‘truthful’ to yourself if you switched to fiction and how did you arrive at that conclusion? Was ‘When you went away’ that engendered that moment or was that moment of realisation that engendered this great novel?

MICHAEL BARON: I've cared about every nonfiction project I've ever done, but I started to realize that there were things I wanted to write about that I couldn't address in nonfiction form, things like relationships, parenting, and family. I'm not an authority on any of those things, though I think about them constantly, so no one would be interested in a nonfiction book from me on these topics. Therefore, I turned to fiction. What I found with fiction was that I could present the material in ways that were very often more truthful than I could with nonfiction. What I mean by that is that I could create situations that allowed me to explore something I felt deep in my heart. Nonfiction involves a great deal of external substantiation (scholarly references, expert opinions, etc.). With fiction, I could write about what I feel inside.

WONDERLANCE: You always mention that you feel more comfortable around women than around men because of women’s capacity to express their true feelings and motivations, their capacity to go deeper and draw the connexions in human relationships, something that has always fascinated you. In your opinion, is fatherhood when men finally reach that same capacity? Either from ‘When you went away’ or from your latest novel ‘Spinning’, would you be able to choose a passage or sentence that clearly shows these before and after in a man’s thought/feeling process?

MICHAEL BARON: 'Spinning' is in many ways precisely about that process, because the protagonist Dylan comes upon fatherhood suddenly when the woman he loves dies and there's no one to care for her three-year-old daughter. There's a moment in 'Spinning' where Dylan loses track of his charge for a few minutes. When finds her, the scene goes like this:

“I’d miss you if I lost you. You do know that, don’t you?”
Still biting her lip, she nodded.
I reached for her and hugged her. She started crying into my bathrobe. My pulse was still pounding.
I felt like I should check my wallet to see if my name had changed, along with everything else.'

WONDERLANCE: For a writer, there’s nothing worse than a mental block, but you seem to possess a gift for letting your own mind flow and especially for entering what would be other people’s minds even if they pose extra challenges like those affected by disease, like Alzheimer. In ‘The Journey Home’ you delve into this disease through the character of Antoinette…Michael, how did you do your research for this character? Your portrayal of the disease’s mechanisms from the patient’s perspective is amazing…

MICHAEL BARON: I'm afraid I didn't have to do much research on that at all, as my mother succumbed to Alzheimer's. As I sat with her during our visits, talking intermittently, it was easy for me to imagine what might be going on in her head.

WONDERLANCE: So sorry to hear that was the case. It is a terrible disease...
In ‘Crossing the Bridge’ you once again cover the tragedy of loss with exquisite veracity, including those invariable feelings and thoughts of guilt, regret and even resentment that may surface in those that stay alive. You paint with your words all the shades of grey that exist in the human psyche as the complex beings that we are. But is there a feeling or passion you’ve always felt inclined to delve into but have been afraid of not fully comprehending it  to be able to portray it with conviction?

MICHAEL BARON: Interestingly, the emotion I have the most trouble writing about with any accuracy is indifference. My characters always seem to care, even when I don't want them to do so. 

WONDERLANCE: Your latest novel ,‘Spinning’, has also received raving reviews. The protagonist, Dylan, which you mentioned earlier, is a bachelor of our modern days, the typical cliché, portrayed in many films and TV series, of a male figure that works hard and plays harder, avoiding commitment and responsibilities like the plague. In your opinion, is this really a cliché or is it becoming the most common denominator not just in TV and film but in real life male characters? 

MICHAEL BARON: I've seen a great deal of that attitude in men around me over the years. In some ways, I think men are even more inclined toward that attitude during their single years now because they take the prospect of being a husband and father more seriously than previous generations. However, I've noticed among people in their late teens and early twenties an increasing desire to find meaning in what they're doing in both their work and private lives. I think that's a very positive trend.

WONDERLANCE: At what part in ‘Spinning’ would you say that men will laugh harder and what side of Dylan’s personality do you think the female readers will have more trouble to be compassionate about?

MICHAEL BARON: My guess is that men will find Dylan's befuddlement over Spring's bathtime/bedtime ritual very funny. He's trying so hard to stay above it all in a situation that demands otherwise. I would imagine that most women are going to have little compassion for how casually Dylan deals with his relationships with women at the beginning of the novel, even though his hookups see it as a sport as well. 

WONDERLANCE: Only your sense of humour can compare to your wonderful capacity for human analysis and depiction of self-discovery, Michael. A stand-up comedian you admire would be? And your ‘life teacher’ has always been…?

MICHAEL BARON: I love Lewis Black. He just does a pitch perfect job of exposing our foibles. I'm not sure I have a "life teacher." Bruce Springsteen, maybe. Jon Stewart. My kids teach me a ridiculous amount about life.

WONDERLANCE: Any plans for a next project or does Michael Baron know how to spin just the right amount of plates at one time?

MICHAEL BARON: "Spinning" describes this perfectly. Right now, it's a race between two novels toward a fall publication. I'll need to commit to one over the other soon, as I have about two months to get it into production. Both are relationship stories. One is a very intense love story that has elements of time travel in it. The other has a half dozen viewpoint characters and is the beginning of a continuing family saga. 

WONDERLANCE: Looking forward to their publication!