Saturday, February 4, 2023

Interview With Award-Winning Dystopian Sci-Fi Author A.I. Fabler


 

1. What motivated you to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and turning it into this book? Having twice been mugged in Manhattan in the late Seventies, I long carried an image of one of the female drug addicts who had pulled a gun on me, wondering what had brought her to that point. Out of that experience I wrote a screenplay entitled, “Bedeviled: A Song for Leonard Cohen”, which won the Empire Drama Award at the NY Screenwriting Competition and the Cannes Competition in 2017. This novel sprang out of the screenplay.

 

2. What is it about and who is it for? A beautiful young singer-songwriter ends up dead on a Madison Avenue sidewalk, a gun in her hand — just another New York mugging, except she was the mugger. Set in a tense and lawless Seventies New York, the unexplained elements surrounding her death are gradually revealed through the lyrics of the songs she left behind, as her intended victim is forced to defend himself, uncovering evidence of police persecution and religious bigotry, his own life being placed in jeopardy the closer he gets to the truth.  This is a psychological thriller reflecting the mores of the time.

 

3. What takeaways might the reader will be left with after reading it? In addition to creating a tension-laden mystery with many unexpected twists and turns, I was intent on conveying New York City and its noir culture at that time. For those who lived through that period it will be a reminder of the extent to which social attitudes have change. And to those who have a romantic notion of the Seventies, it will be a sobering immersion in reality.

 

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design? The lyrics of the songs written by the victim play a big part in solving the crime. One of those songs, pivotal to the story, is “A Song for Leonard”. The cover art was intended to hint at the hard-nosed crime novels of that period.

 

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers? Get the written work as good as you can possibly make it, and then get a professional editor. Despite all the revisions you make, you’ll be amazed at how much better the final MS will be.

 

6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? Clearly the major publishing houses are trying to achieve dominant positions via acquisitions and mergers, leaving the small and so-called “independent” imprints struggling for shelf position. Celebrity writers are preferred to good writers, and with OpenAI and ChatGPT handing the creative reins over to algorithms, writers will have to look to their personal brands for survival. Around 90% of staffing in publishing is female, and the same is true of readership. Both groups are heavily represented by liberal social studies graduates, and book themes are reflecting that. This is not how to achieve diversity.

 

7. What challenges did you overcome to write this book? Having my manuscript subjected to scrutiny by “sensitivity readers” was a venture into a world of insanity that (if I’d been accepting) would have made “A Song for Leonard” not worth writing. Agents are now terrified. I wasn’t. That’s the beauty of indie publishing. The point of this book is to show the hard-nosed reality of cultural standards of that time.

 

8. How would you describe your writing style? I punch up, not down. My style has been described as multi-layered, but I like to think it is very readable. Give the reader food for thought, but keep it moving along!

 

9. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours? One critic paid me the best compliment I could possibly receive. She said, "Books like this are what good fiction is all about - they take you off somewhere new…"

 

About The Author: A.I. Fabler is the pen name of a New Zealand-born author who has spent a large part of his working life in London, New York and Sydney, initially in journalism and advertising, holding senior international corporate roles before turning to writing full time. His political satire, “Agenda 2060: The Future as It Happens” was published in 2021, described by Kirkus Reviews as ‘A laser-focused, irresistible lampoon of woke culture’. It was the winner of the 2022 Indie Reader Discovery Award for Popular Fiction. His mystery thriller “The Seed of Corruption”, set in Vietnam during the 2004 Sars epidemic, digs deep into Big Pharma and state corruption 15 years before Covid-19, and was published in 2022. He is the recipient of a number of screenwriting awards, including the NY Empire Award for Drama in 2017, and the 2017 Cannes Drama Award. For more information, please see: https://www.aifabler.com.

 

“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.”

--Kate DiCamillo  

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

--Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood  

“A glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”

--Carl Sagan 

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into

another world.”

--Jeanette Winterson 

“Books are the training weights of the mind.”

--Epictetus

 

Need Book Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors promote their story, sell their book, and grow their brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!

 

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on Twitter @theprexpert. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2023. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.3 million pageviews. With 4,400+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and two jobs at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America, and has spoken at ASJA, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. He has been featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald. For more information, please consult: www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum.  

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