Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books? Hello, and welcome to Bookworm, my guess Hello, and welcome to Bookworm from KCRW.

My guest today is a writer that I've wanted to talk to for, oh, more than 20 years,

and somehow he has slipped through the cracks.

Now he has a new novel.

It is Scott Spencer.

The novel is an ocean without a shore.

I personally feel it's the book for the time we're living in. Inadvertently, he's written the book for a person

who is suffering, the solitude of a pandemic. The narrator is a man nicknamed Kip, his real name is Christopher,

and he discovers that he has lived his whole life in quarantine.

Can you tell me about that, Scott?

Yes, and first of all, thanks, Michael. It's great to hear your voice.

Kip is in a kind of self-imposed prison because he is in love with his best friend, but he's

not out to his best friend, and he's not out to anybody.

And he sort of maintains this social distance,

hoping that something will happen that will change everything

and that his dream of this long unrequited love

...