Comedy, Crime and Rock & Roll Meet on the Jersey Shore in Michael Kardos' 'Fun City Heist'

Pushcart Prize-winning author Michael Kardos visits Writer’s Voices to discuss his fourth novel, the comedic caper Fun City Heist. Set on the Jersey Shore, the book tells the story of Mo Melnick, a former drummer for the band Sunshine Apocalypse who now spends his days renting out beach umbrellas. One day, he’s approached by Johnny Clay, an ex-bandmate who wants to reunite the band to play one last performance at Fun City on the Fourth of July. As the story goes, “…they learn… that the gig is more than just a gig. They’re going to try to rob the venue during their set, so that becomes like the perfect alibi… that’s how the thing unfolds.” While Kardos and his protagonist share some similarities – both were rock band drummers and lived on the Jersey Shore – the rest of the story is completely fictional. “I’d been coming off some writing that involved a lot of research and I really wanted to write something that wouldn’t be as steeped in research, that at least involved the kind of fabric and details that I knew about so I could spend more time really getting invested in the story…”

With respect to his writing process, Kardos strives to work on some portion of his manuscript daily. He finds that if he misses too many days, the day that he does return to his writing is a frustrating one. “I try to get to it as much as I can… if I’m in the early phase of it… I might not even go to the computer. It might be more like writing on paper or something like that, and then once I’m pretty far along it’s much easier to sit there for a pretty good amount of time and write pages…” When it comes to advice for aspiring writers, Kardos jokingly responded, “Marry another writer because it’s like cheating! You have someone you can read your stuff and you can talk about in the car… No, the best advice… take a book you really love, get a bunch of yellow stickies, and stick them in there with every time there’s something that has to do with structure or something that you thought was kind of cool, and just try to analyze it.”