Please tell us a little about yourself and your work.
Never to Forget is based on my mother’s life story, and so it can be said I was born into the storyline. But it was my sister’s devotion to caring for my mother, whose life was draining away because of Alzheimer’s, that inspired me to fill in the drama within the outline of my mother’s life that my sister recorded.
How did you research Never to Forget?
I would say the research began late at night when I was 7. Having recently arrived in the U.S., my siblings and I slept in the same room with my mother. We enjoyed listening to stories of her adventurous life in Costa Rica. As the book was written after my mother’s death, there was much intimate information I was never privy to. I incorporated what I knew of my parents’ emotions and passions to create intimate scenes that I only witnessed the consequences of. I did traditional research using books and visual resources on the Costa Rican civil war of 1948 and on other historical events that took place during those years.
Any advice for others starting the process of independent publishing?
Writing has been an inexplicable passion for me since the fifth grade. I thought one day I would extend a short story into a novel. When I managed that feat in the middle of my medical career, I felt the need to share it with anyone who would listen. But I’ve learned that’s not so easy. To be a writer one must, as the cliché cautions, begin by writing for yourself. But when love of your art requires you share it with the public, my advice is to take marketing classes. I say this because marketing your book will be vital to making self-publishing a viable career.
What are you working on now?
I have enjoyed traveling around the world. On a trip to Turkey once, I wrote on a postcard a fictional scene I imagined while shopping for a rug at the bazaar near the Blue Mosque. After reading what I’d written on the card, I was inspired to make this scene the basis of an adventure novel. It is a recounting of the Old Testament integrated with Greek mythology but also historical fiction in the style of Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose.What can readers expect that might be different from your previous body of work?
As in my previous novels, here the female protagonist is someone whose feminine strength directs the course of the adventure, while her male companion resolves the story’s emotional conflict. But unlike my previous works, this novel promotes an alternative view of certain accepted historical facts.
Portions of this Q&A were edited for clarity.
