*Photograph of Tomas Moniz by Ella Moniz*

Author Tomas Moniz writes about friendship, sex, transitional periods of life, and relationships of all kinds – and he does so with nuance, heart, and intimacy. Anyone who loves being immersed in stories about the intricacies of relationships, the complexities of parenthood and family, or exploring the facets of your identity will love reading Moniz’s work.

His first novel, Big Familia, follows single father Juan Gutiérrez as he grieves the death of two people in his life – his incarcerated father and a regular at the bar he frequents – as well as the unexpected pregnancy of his teenage daughter, Stella. Big Familia was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel 2020 Award, for the LAMBDA 2020 award for Bisexual Fiction, and for the Foreword Review Indies Award. Moniz’s most recent novel, All Friends Are Necessary, published this year, follows Efren “Chino” Flores as he moves back to the Bay Area and must reassess his life after his marriage ended following a tragic loss. Back in the Bay, Chino connects with old friends, explores the world of dating again, and looks for his new purpose in life. Moniz is also the author of the children’s book, Collaboration/Colaboración and edited the anthologies, Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood and Rad Families: A Celebration. He is a teacher at Berkeley City College and Antioch University.

It was at Antioch, during my MFA program, where I met Tomas. Not only did we meet, but he served as my mentor for two semesters, reading my work and giving feedback. During our time together, Tomas was essential in helping me get my novel off the ground and figure out where exactly it was going. At each of our meetings, Tomas showed up excited to talk about my novel-in-progress and discuss its possibilities. That is to say, he is an enthusiastic and caring reader – and those qualities also show up, with a force, in his writing.

Below is our conversation about his novels, life experiences, and his writing practices:

*All Friends Are Necessary* in Sunny’s Bookshop

Nikki: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

Tomas: I don’t know if I ever specifically knew. I was eccentric in terms of my friend group – we were involved in fashion and music and theater. I came from a small high school [where] there was not a lot of literature at all. I think I'd read maybe three books, I wrote maybe one paper and I think my best friend’s mom really wrote it for me. But I met this teacher who was really inspiring and I think I fell in love with the attitude of an English major. I always wanted to wear sweaters and vests and stuff like that – think of the worst stereotypes of an English grad student, that’s what I wanted to be. Then, of course, I had a child really young and it wasn’t until I had to think about practical elements that I was pushed to write. I needed help trying to be a better parent [because] the way I was parented, as much as I love my mom and dad, it was not the way I was thinking about raising my own family or child. So, in the community I was now a part of, which was at [the University of California] Santa Barbara, I started finding zines. So I found Hip Mama, which was kind of the first kind of radical parenting zine and then I was just like, oh I could do something like this. But it was geared toward mothers and, obviously, mothers are incredibly important. I don't mean to take away from the feminist intensity of how women have been forced into mothering for so long. But I [wanted] something to think about how men parent. From there, I started writing about my own process of parenting and I did a lot of cultural criticism. I thought I was a poet for a minute but I found my voice in creative nonfiction. Once that latched onto me when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, I think I just followed that.

Nikki: You mentioned being a young dad. How has that informed your creative writing?

Tomas: I wouldn’t be the person I am today without parenting and what it taught me. It walked me through a lot of failure. I also met so many amazing people who were also struggling – and I say “struggling” in that kind of beautiful way of [figuring out] how to do this better, how to learn from mistakes. [I became] self reflective about my choices and that helped me when I started paying attention to the writing practice. Also, starting with nonfiction helped me learn how to write about truth and other people in a really important way. There’s an art to writing about the people you know, especially writing about your kids, family, partners, or lovers. I made mistakes [with what I wrote,] which I talk about with my son a lot. He’s my oldest child, so he was the one I learned to write about. There are things I wrote about in my experience in parenting him that, ten years later, I would never have shared. I learned that I should have asked him if he wanted that out in the world. So that struggle with how to tell a story really helped shape me when I turned my attention toward fiction. I was like, how am I going to tell a story that feels real, that feels connected to the real choices people make? I appreciate having dealt with the real ramifications of learning how to do that prior to starting fiction.

Nikki: How did your first novel, Big Familia, come about?

Tomas: To be honest with you, that’s not even the first novel I wrote. I had been writing for a long time prior to breaking into the mainstream. In some ways, it’s a little scary because sometimes I feel like I’ve written the same story in different iterations over and over again. So Big Familia was just the iteration that got picked up by a small press. I wrote a novella earlier that I think is really great. I did a lot of zines, I did a lot of weird things, like I wrote a chapter a month for a year, which is one of my favorite projects [I’ve done]. I’d write one chapter and send it out and get people to give me feedback, then I’d write the next chapter and send it out. It became a little novella that I still have and that I love. I’ve done a lot of short fiction pieces and I will say [I think] why I probably wouldn’t pick them up now is because I had to learn how to not be so didactic. Early on I was like I want to write about revolution, I want to write about radical politics. I read them now and I’m like, oh that’s a bit heavy handed or [that should be] more nuanced. I think that’s the growth of my writing. I’ve come to see how to not be so forceful in my writing, to just trust the story. With Big Familia, I had the voice and the character, Juan, and I knew I was struggling with empty nest and how people transition into different moments of their lives. So those were the guiding feelings I had and I let Juan lead me through that.

Nikki: How did All Friends Are Necessary get started?

Tomas: Well I did Big Familia and then I wrote another novel that I really liked. It’s from the first person point of view as a woman and, it was funny, my editor looked at it and he was like, ‘You can’t do that.’ I wrote it in 2017, that’s when I was deep in the mindset of that story and I loved it. I loved her voice and I loved what I was doing narratively. I still think it’s one of my best pieces of writing. But [my editor] was like, ‘The time we’re in right now, you have to earn that.’ So we put that aside. But after Big Familia, I decided to write that partially as a challenge to myself to get out of that first person, male, mid-40s POV. I was like, I’m a writer, I can do different things. So then, I wrote a third person, more formal novel about an old man and I loved that one. We sent it out to try and sell and I got a lot of nice rejections and then we were going to go on round two, to [send out to] smaller presses. But then I was asked if I had anything else and I was like, ‘I’ve got this mess of a story,’ then I realized it might be connected to [another story] – because I actually wrote All Friends in two moments of my life, so part one and part three were two different stories initially. Then I realized, oh this is the same voice. So I was like, ‘I’ve got this and it has a lot of sex in it.’ And it sold like that. I also don’t think it’s too far to say that [All Friends] is more familiar to Big Familia. I think when Big Familia did really well in the small press world, people wanted Big Familia part two. And as much as they’re different stories, they’re in the same world and I think that publishing sometimes dictates what they want from you. So, that’s the next challenge: what is book three? I think I’m going back to my old man story, so we’ll see.

Nikki: Maybe now that you've done Big Familia part two, you can branch off with book three.

Tomas: Well I was planning on doing this literary erotic thriller, which I was really excited about but my editor was like, ‘Sounds good, but keep working.’ So he wants something completed whereas I was trying to sell him on the first 60 pages, which I think are great. We’ll see.

Nikki: You brought up the sex scenes in All Friends. What’s your process for writing those intimate scenes?

Tomas: For me those scenes of intimacy, especially bodily intimacy, are moments where the characters can really do surprising things. I know from my own reading, I love those moments where I'm kind of shocked or moved, or I feel vulnerable or connected. My first process is just to write the scene, I’m just gonna write it, I want fun, I want playful And I’m very aware of those stereotypical sex scenes, so I’m like, okay how can I do it differently? So I just let myself write it. Then I reread and I start asking myself if it feels trite or obvious. Then I try and do the opposite. I also reach into character. I ask myself – and it doesn’t always come up in the book – but what kind of sex would they like? What are their values? Are they someone who [can] talk about sex or are they someone who has a lot of shame? Once I get that sense of who they are, I can lean into what it would be like to have them make out in a bathroom or put them in a place that’s really uncomfortable, like turn on the lights if they like it dark. So I try to find those places and I like to think that I can tell that it's good when I feel something, either kind of embarrassed or a little bit shameful or even a little bit like, ooh that’s kind of juicy and hot. If I feel nothing and it’s just a scene, then I know it’s not as good as it could be.

Nikki: That sounds like an effective process.

Tomas: Yeah. Also, I love bodies, we all do, I'm sure. I try to also pay attention to other body parts other than the stereotypical, like, oh I’m gonna touch his butt. More like, what if someone wants to kiss the back of the knee? How would they react to that? That would be a good scene. So I try to involve other things that aren’t normally involved in sex. Like the scene in All Friends with the spaghetti. I loved writing that scene – it’s hot [even though] they don't even touch each other. Or the parking garage scene – like how are people hooking up in Covid? Because you know they are, so what are they doing to stay safe? That’s what I try to play into.

Nikki: What is your everyday writing schedule like?

Tomas: Routine is really important to me, I really do love it, but I also tend not to have a routine that lasts consistently for a long time. What I try to do is recognize that the writing happens in phases, so when I'm in that wonderful moment where you're just typing, just creating new text, I can write anywhere anytime because I'm just having fun. When I’m revising and rereading, I definitely need more of an office setting – I tend to not have music on because I want to listen to the sound of the language. So right now, for example, I’m rereading the old man story and I’ll have a pen in my hand to mark [moments] to develop more, just reading for the sound of it. Then, I generally spend an hour in a coffee shop two or three days a week and just write, let myself write that new erotic thriller. I never really work more than two to three hours a day even when I’m in the middle of the best creative moments of my life, it's usually two to three hours and then I stop.

Nikki: Yeah, you don’t want to overwork it.

Tomas: Yeah, I feel like it's just a good spot for me creatively. I get a lot done so it must be working somehow.

Nikki: Both Big Familia and All Friends Are Necessary are written in first person – what draws you to that point of view? Did you consider third person?

Tomas: When I think of my writing, I feel like I've done a lot of other POVs, but what’s published was only the first person ones. In between Big Familia and All Friends was that first person female perspective and then a third person novel, so I was excited to get back to that first person. But All Friends was written in two different chunks – that first chunk was first person present tense and then the third [part] was first person past tense and I tried to change it but then I was like, no I can't do that, it’s just a different voice at a different time. At the beginning of section three, I initially had a four page reason as to why I was switching tenses, but we whittled that down and now it's basically one sentence. And one person at a book event said how awesome it was that that happened and I was like, there you go, thank you!

Nikki: Yeah, I definitely found that interesting as well. I wanted to ask about present tense because I feel like it’s a little less common. I’m curious what you like about present tense and how you make the decision to use it.

Tomas: Well, just like sex scenes, I love the intimacy of present tense, how it’s happening in this moment. I feel like as I'm writing, I'm discovering the emotional impact of things that are happening to the character in that moment – as a writer and as a reader, I think we all are. The challenge is that it can be too close sometimes and I think, how do you flash back to get backstory? And I don't think you can flash forward in present tense POV? It doesn’t sound like you can but, hell, people do weird things, I did weird things in the middle section. So that's what I love, I love that we’re literally along for the ride because it's happening now.

Nikki: I love that.

Tomas: Because when I think about past tense, there’s a certain distance and safety because it's happened, it's over. We may not know what's coming up but I think the stakes are flatter.

Nikki: A stylistic question – why no quotation marks?

Tomas: I’m lazy! I think it literally starts for me [with making it easier]. But I also came across writers who did it and I liked the way it looked. I also liked that it mirrored the intimacy of the first person present tense stuff that I was writing. And I like the challenge of having to make it clear to your reader because it can be really easy to lose your reader without the markers, so I like that. Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby is one of the first books I remember where she doesn't use quotation marks and I was like, whoa can I do that? If she can do it, I can do it.

Nikki: Along with Toni Morrison, what other writers are you most inspired by?

Tomas: Well Toni Morrison is certainly one, Song of Solomon, in particular. That one I had on my desk as I wrote All Things Are Necessary. I just remember reading that for the first time and being blown away by the story of male friendship. Obviously, male friendship is the subject of many books, but, for some reason, that one really struck me. Then Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. I reread that about four years ago and I realized, maybe everything I've ever written has just been plagiarizing her. Also, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. And Giovanni’s Room [by James Baldwin]. And I love [Ursula K.] LeGuin. Those are the ones that I think about as my canonical texts. Those are the ones I go back to.

Nikki: Those are all great choices. What contemporary books have you read lately that you've loved?

Tomas: You know what, sometimes I think I’m a hater because I find problems with a lot of [contemporary] books. I read two books that I was really excited about – one of them, I don’t think it lived up to the hype in the way that I was expecting it to. I also realize that that might be a fault of the publishing industry, where they choose one or two books and run with it, like, ‘This is the book of the year.’ Like, god, if that happened to me, everyone would hate me, they'd be like, ‘This is clearly not the book of the year.’ A book I’m enjoying right now, I’m halfway through, is Headshot [by Rita Bullwinkel], which is really great. I’m also reading this great book, Suicide Blonde by Darcy Steinke [published in 1992]. It’s weird, it’s like early 90s San Francisco and it feels a lot to me like what I write. It's one of those things where you think you've done something, then you realize it's been done before. I discovered it because of Maggie Nelson and her new book of essays [titled Like Love]. She does a review of this writer and how perverse she is and also how she was like a “bad boy” writer at the time. But Nelson talked about how incredible this book is, so I found it and I'm like, oh shit this book is incredible. It's also really weird. I’m halfway through it and I can't tell if it’s literary smut or if it's literature with capital L. But to go back to the reading question, I tend to read a lot of the first 50 pages of a book and sometimes I realize it's a book I'm not ready for yet or it's not ready for me yet and I put it aside. But I also want to be careful with that kind of cavalier attitude because I know if someone read my book, in the first 50 pages they wouldn’t even get to how it evolves. I recognize there's a limitation to that approach.

Nikki: Back to your own writing, I love that both of your novels have such a fun cast of characters. What's your process for creating characters? And, specifically, finding characters who will work well together and within the plot?

Tomas: Well that’s the hard part, the plot. For me, I love overhearing dialogue in the way friends speak to each other or even when there’s a good interaction between a customer and a worker, like they’re joking and laughing. I love how that happens so casually and so intimately. Once I get the voice I'm working from, like Juan or Chino, I put them in situations where they have to talk to people. That’s where I start thinking about their relationships. I do struggle sometimes because I’d put everyone in the scene and have this spinning dialogue but then I’ll realize maybe all the characters don’t need to be there, maybe it’s easier to follow if it’s two or three, not six. In a first draft, I’ll throw all the characters together in a room, but I’ll cut during the revision process. Or, I’ll realize that a character doesn’t have enough development, so maybe they need a scene. That happened with Suzi [in All Friends] and I still feel like, ultimately, Suzi needed more space in the book. But the Suzi scene in the park where they run into each other and play with the ferns, that was added in late.

Nikki: It's always interesting to hear about scenes that are added in later, especially when they seem so essential.

Tomas: Oh, I know. Literally, I can go through the book and be like, this whole chapter was added two weeks before the final was turned in, versus this chapter was written seven years ago. Like [some scenes] I remember writing pre pandemic. To get back to the writing process of [All Friends], it felt very non-traditional. With Big Familia, I knew my starting point and I wrote until I saw an ending point and I wrote all in one direction. [All Friends] was very much like a circular mess – it was very un-chronological.

Nikki: I feel like that makes it so special now that it’s a finished project and contains all of those different processes.

Tomas: Yeah. I was worried it was [too] messy. Then, I was at a reading and I was signing a book and [the reader] was like, ‘I think the mess is what made me love it.’ And I was like, there you go!

Nikki: I love that. Are there any themes or ideas that you haven't yet explored in any of your writing that you’re thinking about and want to explore soon?

Tomas: That’s a good one. I have been obsessed with [what’s in] my new one, that I think is going to come out next, the old man story. It’s really tender because I wanted to think about legacy and how we age. I wanted to think about surviving, you know, we’re going through all this shit right now. So what does it mean to age and take that wisdom? Like how do we survive and how do we end? What do we do, what do we leave behind? That's the theme, which I really love, but it’s definitely not sexy – there’s no sex scenes in that one. Which is part of why [All Friends] has so many [sex scenes] because I was writing [the old man story] before that and I didn’t get to write those at all.

Nikki: There was a contrast.

Tomas: Yeah exactly. I was like, this one is gonna have a lot of sex because the last one had none. One thing I always encourage writers to do is have multiple projects at the same time. I know some writers who work on one project and it sells and then they are like, what am I doing with my life now? But you can have a project that's in composition, one that's in editing, one that's in the back of your mind, it’s a good space to be in. So, [the old man story] is what I’m thinking about editing, the one I'm in the middle of composing is the literary erotic thriller. And I’ve been obsessed with a character [I’m working on], a young man of color who becomes involved with the Proud Boys. I don’t understand how that happens, I can’t see why someone would do that. It’s forcing me to really think about it. It's easy to make fun and critique toxic masculinity, but if I have to step back and think about why a character would be enthralled with it or inspired by it – what does that mean? I'm in an uncomfortable but interesting space with that character.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.