Five Questions with Author Michael J Seidlinger

Michael J Seidlinger lives about as regimented a creative life as you’ll find — a day job to keep the lights on, strict time blocks for writing, working out, and what he calls “leisurely enjoying art,” and a Sunday ritual of research hours for whatever’s next. It’s the kind of discipline that’s produced a genuinely strange and restless body of work, including Brokeula and Anybody Home?, and it’s carried him into teaching gigs at Portland State University and workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence. He’s also written for Wired, Buzzfeed, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly.

His novel Brokeula is exactly as unhinged as the title promises: a broke, centuries-old vampire named James Sugre, wiped out by bad crypto bets and failed investments, decides his last shot at solvency is turning humans into vampires for a fee — a multi-level marketing scheme for the undead, complete with all the “un-death” pyramid-scheme fallout you’d expect.

Here he is, answering my Five W’s.

Who is an artist you look up to?

This question gets harder to answer the longer I’m writing, working on my craft. It’s an odd thing, like influences and role models et al become even more so the foundation from which an artist continues building. So it took me a minute to go back and see what got me initially into writing. The impulse was a sense of experimentation, especially involving novel structures and conceits, and the exact book that was a eureka moment for me, proving that there’s a whole world out there for innovative narratives, was Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Back then, early 2000s, it had its cult following and was being compared to found footage horror like The Blair Witch Project. In modern day 2026, the book seems to be taking on some stink like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest has invited in the last half-decade or so, but yeah, back then it was merely this odd “best selling” experimental novel that proved anything is possible narratively on the page; all you need to do is work on bridging imagination with craft.

What is your day like?

Though writing is very much a life-long passion—the act and challenge of writing itself really has become something of a meaning in and of itself, kind of like meditation or other spiritually edifying practices—I’m still working nonstop like everybody else, day job to keep the lights on, occasional side-gig, you know the drill. That makes my weekdays pretty typical; even so, I tend to itemize my daily routine, sticking to somewhat strict time slots for tasks. For instance, a typical weekday turns out to be:

7:45AM – back to reality

8AM – out of bed, waking up

8:30-9AM – breakfast/coffee

9:30-noon – day gig. Meetings, emails, Photoshop, Asana

12:45PM-5PM – more day job. It can be a heavy lift, really hectic some days while others are calmer, enough to really fall into the day-job workflow.

5:30PM – work out/walk. Weather permitting, it’s a walk outside; if not, it’s on the treadmill. Workout is a mix of HIIT routines and moderate freeweights.

By 6:30PM – I’m working on craft, be it research, writing the next book; doesn’t matter, I’m in it at 6:30PM.

9:30PM-2AM-leisure. I’ve found it very important to creativity to enjoy other creations, movies, music, videogames, books, museums, etc. I like to make the night a bastion of leisurely enjoying art.

Weekends cut out that day-gig chunk and provide time for non-writing craft projects (currently working on music and also a game project); normally, I move all the evening craft hours into a time slot where I can focus, leaving a chunk for those other projects, or perhaps to “be a person” and go catch a show, a movie, hang with local friends, etc.

Writing it out, it comes off as more regimented than I expected, but yeah, it’s what keeps me going, keeps me focused. A very solitary and structured kind of life. Please don’t judge me.

Where are you headed next?

After this interview? In life? The answer is both: It’s Sunday and I just finished taking care of administrative stuff, emails, etc, so I’m going to spend around 2-3 hours researching the next novel.

Cue Nine Inch Nail’s “Everyday Is Exactly the Same,” but happy, uplifting, rather than downcast, sad. Haha.

When did you start on this path?

Oh man, long time ago. Even in high school I was chasing creativity. Back then I wanted to be a game designer or musician. Failed at both, and eventually found experimental and transgressive literature, which became the gateway to writing as my primary craft. So yeah, started back when I was a kid, came “of-age” to a few creative failures, and adapted to writing fiction. Nowadays, like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been trying to get back to those failed creative pursuits, if only to see if I can get one more chance. Regret’s a motherfucker. I don’t want to live with a hefty dose.

Why do you keep going?

For the creativity. I live a very structured, often solitary life entirely because one of the most spiritually enticing and rewarding acts for me, personally, is to create and to enjoy other artists’ creations. One of the two, alone, is a full time gig. I’m taking on both head-on, and also with a necessary life and role to support it. Strangely, I really never get burned out, not with the creative side. Work and jobs and doing events, promotion, all that industry stuff? Yeah, that’s what saps me. Creativity is what I’m committed to, and in a way, it’s what you could call my calling, and I do what I can to be there, present and productive. Like today, later, after I put in those hours of novel research, and I get a workout and a walk in, cook some food (a key part of the routine, like a palate cleanser), I got a few new records to listen to, including this new one from a Swedish band called Karmanjakah; there’s this new game from Capcom, Pragmata, which I’m only a few hours in and need to make progress; an indie game called The Berlin Apartment, exploring the passage of time in the framework of the various tenants of an apartment, sounds really intriguing; plus there’s that new book, Strange Buildings, by the elusive and anonymous Japanese horror writer, Uketsu, just waiting for me on my coffee table. And that’s just off the top of my head. I got another arcade cabinet arriving this week, over a year wait. It’s a Street Fighter Alpha 2 cab, one of my all-time favorite arcade games. Enjoying and being present in other creations is expensive and enough to take up a person’s free time. I willingly let it.

MICHAEL J SEIDLINGER is the Filipino-American author of Brokeula, Anybody Home? and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence.

Brokeula

A broke vampire’s last ditch effort to escape the blood sucking monster of capitalism through an ill-conceived multi-level marketing scheme.

James Sugre has never been this broke before in his centuries of living. Down and out, he’s had a terrible string of luck investing in companies crippled by fraud and always late to the next crypto-fad. He spends most of his time in his coffin, too broke to go out in public.

As the video game industry reaches record-breaking heights, Sugre tries his luck one more time with his own game studio. When he encounters a game developer and self-professed fan of vampire lore named Lauren, Sugre becomes hopeful that his luck might finally be on the up-and-up.

But the market is rocky, and nothing is as stable as “un-death.” Sugre learns the hard way that a dollar is worth more than a drop of blood. Trading immortality for cash, Sugre and Lauren create a—not entirely legal—business of turning humans into vampires for a fee. The business expands, but Vampire Nation has to protect their own investments, and Sugre learns the hard truth of the system he can’t escape.

Available on Amazon.