I had planned to write a new blog post once a month but life got in the way. So it is the next year and we are well into it. I won't mention the political situation but we are all trying to make sense of it and live our lives with the best possible experiences we can. The list for guest authors on this blog is very full so I need to keep posting once a month. Thank you to any readers who have come here expecting new posts. This one is going to make up for it.
My guest author today is both a poet and a comedian. He is one of those people with whom you can spend hours talking about almost anything. I hope you enjoy meeting him. Here is the interview and please check out all of his amazing books.
Welcome Fibby Bob Kinney or as you are now calling yourself Fibzay.
Where were you born and where do you live now?
I was born in a little town in Pennsylvania on a farm and we didn’t have any hot water. We lived just with all the vegetables and animals and chickens. We had dogs and pigs. We didn’t have any plumbing in the house. It was a very rural background where I grew up, Practically in the dark ages and that’s then. Now I live in Florida in a nice house with my wife of 51 years. So it’s been quite a journey from the beginning to where I live right now. So that’s kind of my beginning and where I live now.
I think it's amazing that you were able to change your life so completely.
Do you have an occupation besides writing? Do you have any hobbies?
Yes, I do have a hobby. I am an avid player of video games. I’m one of the oldest players on Destiny video game, which I’ve been playing for ten years, and I’ve got many write ups. If you go to Google and look at the 81 year-old gamer write up on Reddit.
My friends, please go and read this amazing post including the story he wrote about the game here:
Who or what influenced you to stop doing stand-up and writing comedy to writing poetry?
I continued doing comedy actually until 2011.I lasted that long, but it came to a point. I didn’t go on the road anymore. I just didn’t wanna put in the late hours. I was ready to retire and just write poetry and since 2011 I’ve written twenty-five books. So I live happily here in Florida and play with my flowers in the garden. I have written 500 poems to them and I take my walk during the day and just relax play video games, watch television and write poetry and stories books and stuff.
I'll bet you have exceptionally beautiful flowers from all that poetry.
I am fascinated by your history of being in the Village in the 60’s. Did you ever meet any famous comedians like Lenny Bruce or meet Bob Dylan?
Yes, I did know a lot of celebrities. Let’s see when I go back to my early days I knew Milton Berle. I was at the Friars club. I met Henny Youngman, and when I met him I was wearing a checkered jacket. The first thing he said was it’s a great jacket. Did the whole team get one? So that was my first meeting with Henny Youngman. When I was in college back in the old days, I had a rare interview with Thomas Edison’s son Theodore Edison, who lived in Edison Edison, New Jersey. And the first thing I asked him, “So your father invented electricity.” He said, “Yeah?” Who else did I know? JD Salinger very rare I got his autograph and I got nice stories about JD. When I was at The Comedy Store I knew Richard Pryor, and I knew Robin Williams very well. I knew Jerry Seinfeld when he first started and Larry David and Paul Reiser. So I knew like a lot of celebrities before they were celebrities and a lot of them came out of my interviews when I was the emcee at The Comic Strip in New York from 1976 to 1979. Gilbert Godfrey I never thought he would make it but look what happened to him and Larry David of course, became one of the most influential Producers in Hollywood so that’s just a little bit of what I did and who I knew and it does go on like I said I was a comic’s comic, so I knew a lot of of the guys even though I didn’t get to be famous just like Georgie Star, who was Lenny Bruce’s best buddy I knew him good. He was a great comic, but he never got famous because he was hit and miss. Sometimes he would be great other times, when it really counted on the additions he would not do well. Kind of like what I did. I’d be great at times, but when it came to the auditions for the big time with Johnny Carson and those I just kind of I don’t know what happened but it just didn’t work out for me anyway. So that’s just a little bit.
Wow, what a history to have met all of these people before they became famous.
You were a host of two TV shows, one in Los Angeles and one in New York. Did anything unusual ever happen on these shows?
I did my shows in California with school children and they were local TV shows. They went well. I got very good reports on them and then in New York. I did shows with comics, and I brought them on and I was a professor punster in a mythical college, where the comics would come on and they would talk about their jokes and it was good. It was just a lot of fun shows and nothing came out of them. No big people were on there. It was local shows. They were well received.
Please describe a typical day of writing for our readers.
The way that I write is I write from inspiration. I will get an idea and will sit down and the words will flow so I usually can write a poem probably in about somewhere between ten and twenty minutes At night I’ll get up if I get an idea and write it down then. And my short story is the same thing. I’ll take a couple days to do those, but I’ll just come from inner ideas or things that I see and get an idea about it and then I write it down and make a story out of it so it’s pretty much inspirational.
What made you decide to put out a book of poetry and then go on to write so many more including coloring books?
I had a lot of poems that I wrote and I kept publishing them. I published coloring books because I wanted to color my illustrations myself. I like to color so what I did is, I did all the illustrations from statues pictures of statues sketches of sketchers and then I put them in my two books my two coloring books so I’ve got a lot of pictures under the color and I had a real good time doing it and I’m sure the people bought the books. I got a few people who I saw who said, yeah we loved it and we love the coloring so they’re out there and both of those are coffee table they’re like 8 1/2 x 12 they’re really nice both of them.
When people read your poetry, what do you want them to find in it?
When people read my poetry, especially my fairytales it’s so nice to know that the kids are getting beautiful pictures and a very positive moral for children. So I have spoken to families they said the kids loved it and the morals are very positive and I wrote this so that they’re looking at old fairy tales with a more modern view. Thank you.
What would you say are the themes of your poems?
I try to do a lot of poems about words about the value of words. I do a lot of poems about nature and flowers and poems about fairytales so the point is to show how important it is that we make our world as positive as we can so that’s why I don’t have any negative poems. All of my poems are positive.
That is a wonderful way to look at the world. I can't say that about my own work. It always goes with the emotion I am feeling. I do try to end with a positive note, though.
Are you working on a new book to be published? Please tell our readers about it.
I in the process of working on one of them is going to be a sci-fi book of all things. My first attempt is going to be called "The Coffee Zombies" where you know people would drink too much coffee and become zombies. It's a good thing. horror but nobody gets killed. Nobody gets you know there’s no zombie they just become addicted to coffee and then everybody drinks all the coffee in the world and you can’t find coffee anymore. It’s kind of liket he second biggest drink in the world. The first drink is water. So I’m saying that people can’t find anymore coffee. That's the basis of that, and then I got a new fairytale book coming out as well. So those books are in the works right now.
How can we find your work?
All of my books are on Amazon.com and then Kindle. All you have to do is put my name in the search box just put in Fibby Bob Kinney, and they will all pop up. They can also go to Google and put my name on Google and my bio and my books will pop up there. So those are the easiest way to find my work
Finally, this is the question I always ask all my guests. Are you a plotter or a pantser? In other words, do you outline or do you just write?
Finally, about plot or do I outline or do I just write. Actually I do both. I mostly just write but once in a while, I will sit down if I have something important that I really know that has to be correct I will be a plotter, and then I will write it. So it depends on the moment depends on the subject about it, but I think both are equal. But I’m primarily it comes from my mind. Thank you so much and I hope that answers your questions. Thank you,
Now, my friends Fibzay has given me some of his work to display on the blog. I hope you enjoy reading his poetry and his stories.
He has co-authored with Susan Joyner Stumpf as well as many other poets. This is no ordinary poet.When you speak with him, he only wants to keep telling you stories. I am honored to have had you, Fibby Bob Kinney as a guest on this blog.
