mooreheart It has taken eight years for Greggory Moore to write his first novel, The Use of Regret, and it might have taken him even longer if he hadn’t hit upon such a cool title.

“That title came to me about five years ago,” says Moore between sips from a warm beverage on a cool night outside The Library coffee house. “Ever since, I’ve been telling myself, ‘I’ve got to hurry and get this book finished before somebody else publishes something called The Use of Regret.’”

But “hurry” can be a funny word when Moore uses it. Not as funny as how he pronounces the last name of the Russian-American novelist who wrote : “Nuh-BOE-kof!” Moore either coughs or sneezes while listing Vladimir Nabokov among his favorite writers. Anyway, the point is Moore could have significantly hurried-up The Use of Regret if he weren’t such a perfectionist.

“I was more-or-less done with it a year ago,” he acknowledges. “But I kept going over it and over it, looking at it again and again, until I was certain that there was not a thing that is random or left to chance. Nothing.”

That’s quite a declaration, but the smile that Moore surrenders as he pauses for another sip—and maybe for effect, too—doesn’t mean he’s backing away from it. See, it’s a knowing smile.

“People who have worked with me will understand,” he says, still smiling because I am one of those people … which reminds me  I haven’t mentioned that Moore is GreaterLongBeach.com’s change-a-word-at-your-own-risk theatre critic.

Now he is a novelist, too, and that provokes questions about genres and inspirations and plots and promotional readings at funky book stores. That’s what it provoked in me, anyway. But Moore sidestepped definitive answers to all but one of them.

theuseofregret “My first reading of The Use of Regret is Saturday night at {open},” he said, referring to the bookstore at 2226 E. 4th Street that owners Se Reed and Shea M. Gauer have turned into the cultural pillar of Retro Row. “A DJ starts playing at 7 o’clock and I’ll probably go on around 8.”

Otherwise, Moore is reluctant to define much about The Use of Regret.

Is it of a genre?

“No,” he says. “Well, at the risk of puffing myself up, it’s super-complex literary fiction, he said with a laugh.” Yes, Moore just said, “he said with a laugh,” by which he seemed to be suggesting that he really was worried about the risk of puffing himself up. But he really did say it with a laugh. And then he adds, “But some people might see the work as experimental.”

What inspired the book?

“Who knows?” Moore replied. “I’ve been writing short fiction nearly all my life. Back in 2002 or 2003, a friend told me that the pieces felt connected. That got me looking at them a different way. But I can’t say whether that’s what got me started.

“You know, it seems I understand less about my creative process now than I used to. The way I come to things, I don’t really know when I am working on something and when I’m not. It really points out how contingent we are as humans—it’s hard to know what’s going to influence you and what’s not.”

Does the guy get the girl in the end?

“The answer is no,” Moore responds, surprisingly adamant. He starts to say something else, but cuts himself off with a look of embarrassment that suggests he nearly gave away the reason to buy the book, which by the way costs $12.