Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television, and urban life for Salon, Print, Nylon, the San Francisco Chronicle, Plenty and others. Her fiction has been published by Pindeldyboz, Nerve, Spork, and Bullfight Review. Her debut collection of stories, INSTANT LOVE, will be published by Crown/Shaye Areheart Books in June 2006. A novel, THE KEPT MAN, will be published by Riverhead Books in 2007. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Cara Seitchek: Which character appeared first in your writing? And what prompted you to keep writing about her?

Jami Attenberg: It was actually a male character that appeared first, the unnamed narrator of "He Gives Pause." I had a dream that I was sitting in a bar with a really nice man who paused a lot between thoughts. The dream went on forever, and it was as if he were in slow motion. I woke up wanting to talk to him more Ð I couldn't keep dreaming forever Ð so I wrote a story so I could meet him.

CS: Was your intent to write a story cycle? Or did this start as a series of unconnected short stories?

JA: I knew I wanted to write a story collection of some sort. To be blunt, I was advised by a friend to make them connected because it would be easier to sell them. I threw away probably four or five stories when I was writing it - an extra sister here, an old boyfriend there - until I got it down to the core characters.

CS: Did your blog influence your writing - perhaps by giving you ideas or giving you a forum to try out ideas?

JA: I did originally write on the blog about how I was thinking about writing about the topic, and I mused on it a few times before I got into it. And in general writing a blog gets you into the habit of writing every day, and discipline is crucial if you want to complete a book. But actually it was creating a zine series of the same name that really moved everything forward for me.

CS: Did you write these stories with the theme of falling in and out of love in mind, or did that theme evolve and emerge as you wrote?

JA: I absolutely knew I wanted to write about it. I knew that before I knew anything else, that each story would contain a moment of instant love, and that it would be an exploration of what that meant. I'm fascinated with the way love works, not just in my life, but in the lives of everyone around me. How do you know when it's real? And is being in love for a week or a day or a minute any less important than being in love for a year or a lifetime? I don't know if I've successfully answered those questions in the book, but I tried. And the characters just formed around it, the kind of people who think about those things, and who have a complicated relationship with love.

CS: The artwork on the chapter pages is charming. How did the idea for the sketches come about?

JA: I've worked with artists of all kinds for years as a writer and producer and have a particular fondness for illustration, graphic novels, and comics. The zine series had illustrations from several friends, and it seemed a natural evolution that it should extend to the book. Both my editor, Sally Kim, and I agreed that we liked the idea of a more traditional book design as well. We were lucky to get the wonderful Emily Flake, who has her own book and comic strip series called Lulu Eightball, to do it on short notice. The book wouldn't be the same without it Ð it really adds another narrative voice I think.

CS: Each chapter is constructed from smaller scenes, and yet, in the last story, each scene is numbered - why the change in format for the final story?

JA: That's a good question. I think it has something to do with wanting all the parts to add up to a whole, and that somehow by numbering it I was showing an order and a structure, at last, for this character who has generally led a chaotic, wandering life. The ten stories lead to the eleventh story, which captures all the ideas of the previous ones in one story.

CS: The stories are presented in chronological order - Is this how you wrote them or did you write them in some other order?

JA: I know that I wrote "He Gives Pause" first, and then I wrote a bunch of other stories that I threw away, and then once I hit "Dinner in Westchester," everything started to form around that. I wrote them all out of order, actually. Characters kept poking their heads in and whichever spoke the loudest I would listen to and give them a place in the book. Holly, who appears the most in the book, was always the loudest, and I created her family around her.

CS: As a journalist, you are trained in writing non-fiction. What is different about writing fiction?

JA: For journalism, you have an obligation to your editor and the person or place you are writing about. For fiction, I can free myself of all boundaries and just tell a good story. I start with a theme and everything forms around it.

CS: What are you working on now?

JA: I just sold a novel that's set in the area of New York where I live. I'm starting a second novel now, but am just getting to know the characters. I'll be spending my summer at a residency in Nebraska where I'll be able to write this one.

Cara Seitchek reviews Instant Love.