Today I'm the Author of the Day at Many
Books. See the in-depth interview: Gen LaGreca - To Savor Freedom
Below are excerpts. For the full-length interview, please go to
Many Books, Gen LaGreca - To Savor Freedom
Gen LaGreca is the award-winning author of several Amazon
bestsellers that were all written in different genres - or so it seems. Her
first book might be a contemporary medical thriller, the second a murder
mystery set in the Old South and the third a sci-fi thriller, but they all
share similar themes such as freedom, individuality and being ahead of your
time. As our author of the day, LaGreca talks about what she calls the
"Gen-genre", reveals her writing habits and chats about why she likes
to let her books stew a bit before publishing.
Please give us a short introduction to what Fugitive from
Asteron is about
The story begins on Planet Asteron, which is a grim world
of tyranny controlled by a despot named Feran. The Asteronian people are on the
verge of starvation, and the only thing in abundance is misery.
One young man named Arial is a pilot on Asteron. He
struggles to have a real life for himself in an environment completely hostile
to that. In a place where the life of the individual is suppressed and where
everything he does is controlled by a ruler, Arial tries to pursue his own
interests and take his own direction. He loves flying, and although people’s
work is assigned to them by the leaders and Arial’s assignment did not involve
flying, he managed to skewer the records so that he became a pilot in the
military. He yearns to travel to other worlds and is fascinated by the stars he
sees in the Asteronian sky, wondering if a better world exists out there. He’s
curious about everything, but there’s little opportunity to learn the answers.
On Asteron, mates are assigned to people. Romance and
love have been taken out of sex, and there is no intimate family life to speak
of, just communal life. In that setting Arial falls in love with someone of his
choice, the beautiful Reevah, who’s a rebel like himself, with a proud attitude
and a defiance and scorn for their rulers. He secretly meets her in the dead of
night, and their encounters are the high point of his life.
So, in this bleak world, Arial has two things that he
cares about: flying and Reevah. Then he loses them both. One day Reevah
disappears. She no longer meets him in their secret place, and he doesn’t know
what happened to her. (He finds out in a shocking scene.) Then as a military
pilot, he’s ordered to drop bombs on a village that’s in revolt. He can’t do
it. When he fails in his assigned mission, he’s stripped of his pilot’s job,
beaten, and thrown in jail for sedition. He’s sentence to an unbearable future.
That’s when he decides to escape from Asteron—or to die trying. He knows that
Feran is about to embark on a secret mission of great importance, so Arial
devises a scheme to escape from his cell, steal Feran’s spacecraft, and take
off. Against all odds, he succeeds.
There’s a mysterious cargo onboard the spaceship that
Arial has stolen. It’s a seemingly impenetrable metal box like nothing he’s
seen before, which Feran was taking with him on his mission.
The spaceship takes Arial on Feran’s pre-programmed
course to a world completely unknown to him, an opposite world of peace and
freedom—the future Planet Earth. There, humans like him live, and shockingly,
are in control of their own lives and have freedoms unimaginable to him. Even
more shocking, the people he meets speak his language, which he calls
Asteronian but they call English. (The astonishing relationship between Earth
and Asteron is revealed as the story unfolds.)
As the wounds from Arial’s past start to heal and he
establishes a new life, he realizes that Feran is in hot pursuit of him and the
mysterious cargo—and closer than he thinks.
Arial’s life is about to change forever—and with it, the
fate of two planets.
Tell us about Arial. Who is he and what makes him so
special?
He’s a 21-year-old, handsome, daring pilot, and very
brave in general. He’s a rebel. He can never conform to a life of drudgery on
Asteron. He can’t buckle down and obey. He gets in a lot of trouble. But he
never gives up on the idea that there’s something better out there, and he
wants to find it. He fights and risks his life for the things and the people he
loves. He’s a great hero for teens and young adults, which makes the novel a
good crossover for that audience.
When Arial arrives on Planet Earth, he’s an abused,
angry, emotionally scarred young man. He meets a young woman who sees a deeper
potential in him and helps him. We’re with him as he discovers his newfound
freedom. He learns about many things that we’ve known all of our lives and take
for granted, but that he’s experiencing for the first time as an adult. For
example, he ate tasteless dried protein cakes in his starving homeland, but now
he gets to try food unimaginable to him, like cheesecake, which he consumes
with great enjoyment. He gets a job doing what he loves as a pilot, and
amazingly he can choose his own work from innumerable other opportunities. He
earns money for the first time, and buys things he wants with it. He discovers
that he can date anyone he wants to and no one can stop him. But just as he’s
learning what it means to be happy, he realizes that Feran and his spies are on
Earth, in hot pursuit of him for the mysterious cargo. Arial, his new
girlfriend, and his oasis on Earth are in danger. He needs to summon all his
skills and courage to outwit his pursuers and uncover the mystery of the cargo
and Feran’s mission to Earth.
Does the book contain an underlying message? What do you hope your readers will take away from Fugitive From Asteron?
The broad message of all of my novels is that good people, who have courage and passion, and who want to live to the fullest, can fight for their world and win. I want to entertain people and leave them with hope. Although grim things happen and there are villains in my novels to be sure, my focus is on the good, on the great potential of people in the exciting adventure of life. I want to inspire and lift people up.
More specifically, the important theme in Fugitive From Asteron is the need for freedom of the individual. When we control our own lives, we can set our own values and goals, and work to achieve them. That leads to a fulfilling, happy life. When we don’t control our lives and others dictate to us what we must be and do, then we’re subjugated. We’re defined by something outside of ourselves. Freedom makes happiness possible. We have to be masters of our own lives in order to define and attain our own happiness. We see this message vividly in the adventures of Arial on the 2 planets.
On Asteron, Arial loses all his values and wants to escape, or else to die. On Earth, he’s free to choose what his life will be like. He can take a job and pick a woman of his choosing. He can have his own apartment and not have to live communally. He can come and go as he pleases, and he doesn’t have to account to guards and always fear their punishment. He finds he can experience something new to him: pleasure. The message is: We should never take freedom for granted. We should savor it, as Arial does.
You’ve written 3 novels, all in very different settings
and genres. Tell us about them and why you chose to write such diverse stories.
Perhaps it’s unusual among contemporary authors, but I
love to write in different genres. My first published novel, Noble Vision, is a
contemporary medical thriller set in New York City. My second novel, A Dream of
Daring, is a murder mystery set in the Old South. And now my third novel,
Fugitive From Asteron, is a sci-fi adventure, set on two planets in the future.
I find that these different contexts and settings are a fascinating canvas on
which to paint my stories.
Noble Vision is the story of a young neurosurgeon with a
new cure for nerve injury and an injured ballerina who needs the treatment as
her only hope, but the doctor’s efforts to help her are thwarted by
bureaucratic red tape. When I did my research, I got to be in the OR and see
surgery performed, to interview neurosurgeons and work out the plot, to read
books and journal articles on neurosurgery, to learn about the political
controversies that doctors and patients can face, and to learn about the life
and career of a ballerina. It was all fascinating.
My second novel, A Dream of Daring, takes place in
Louisiana in 1859. It exposed me to a completely different world from anything
I had known. The story is about a young inventor who develops the precursor of
the tractor and foresees the new age of mechanized farming that will replace
slavery. This puts him in intense conflict with the planters of his town, who
want to keep their world of slave farming intact. Tensions mount, and his
invention is stolen and someone dear to him is murdered. In my research for
that novel, I got to tour and stay at historical Louisiana plantations, go to
many museums and historical collections, learn about cotton farming, the
history of the internal combustion engine, and many other things. In a special
archives collection, I held in my white-gloved hands the plantation journals
from cotton planters who actually lived in the 1850s in Louisiana. It was
exciting to journey back in time a century-and-a-half through their handwritten
accounts.
Then for Fugitive From Asteron, I got to use my
imagination and create my own world, or 2 worlds to be exact. The main
character is a pilot, and there are daredevil flying scenes in this novel, so I
got to study aerobatics and fighter planes. I also got to learn about space
travel and about certain scientific issues involved in creating the “mysterious
cargo” in the novel. All of that fascinated me.
Although my 3 novels might seem very different because of
their diverse settings, I think that on a deeper level they’re all similar. I
call it the Gen-genre. First, all 3 novels are thematically related; they all
involve characters who think outside the box, are struggling to achieve their
freedom and individuality, and they’re ahead of their times and the societies
they’re living in. Second, all 3 novels involve a scientific invention or
discovery of some kind. I have an undergraduate degree in chemistry and worked
early in my career as a pharmaceutical chemist, so the breakthrough medical
discovery in Noble Vision, the prototype tractor in A Dream of Daring, and the
mysterious cargo in Fugitive From Asteron (which involves a surprising
scientific discovery) all appeal to me. Third, all 3 novels have strong
romance—love triangles and conflicts that are interwoven in the plots. Those
similarities in my approach explain why novels set in the past, present, and
future feel as if they came from the same heart and soul.
Is there something that compels you to write? And do you
find that writing helps you achieve a clarity about yourself or ideas you've
been struggling with?
Yes! I love fiction’s power to dramatize ideas and to
clarify important issues. This has been true throughout history, starting with
ancient mythology and continuing to modern times. For example, in the 1850s, it
was a novel— Uncle Tom’s Cabin—that galvanized people against
slavery. During the American Revolution, when our troops were suffering great
hardships at Valley Forge, George Washington turned to fiction. He had the
highly influential play of his time, “Cato, A Tragedy,”—about a Roman hero of
republicanism who opposed the growing tyranny of Julius Caesar—performed for
his troops to motivate them to fight on. People turn to fiction for
inspiration, for a refueling of their spirit. That’s why good novels are
treasures.
I also love the emotional impact that fiction has, how it
puts us right there in the action in an unforgettable way. For example, how do
we remember Sherman’s march on Atlanta during the Civil War?—through a textbook
account, or through the dramatic scene in Gone With the Wind, with
Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in a teetering wagon pulled by a half-dead
horse, desperately trying to escape Atlanta in the middle of Sherman’s siege,
with the entire city wildly ablaze and in utter chaos?
Once I discovered fiction-writing, I knew there was
nothing else I wanted to do more than to write novels. The work is what I call
a sweet torture.
Do you aim for a set amount of words/pages per day?
No, I don’t block out the work that way. The research and
the outline come first. So, for months I don’t do any writing. Then once I have
a really good chapter-by-chapter outline, I start writing. When the story is
well thought out in advance, it saves me from having to rewrite. I’m a strong
plot writer, so I subscribe to what people say about the theater: If you see a
gun on the fireplace mantel in Act One, you can be sure that gun is going to go
off in Act Three. I write like that. I like to drop clues early in the story,
which you can be sure will all play a part later, hopefully in unexpected and
surprising ways.
When I start writing, scenes will deviate somewhat from
my outline, but I’ll definitely know the ending, key characters, and the
essential progression of events at the outset. Yes, I do set deadlines, but the
writing always takes longer than I expect.
What has your journey as an author been like? Was there
ever a defining moment when you suddenly realized "now I am an
author"?
Yes, there was! I worked for a while as a management
consultant. One of the things I did for clients was to write and produce videos
for staff training. I found that these videos were becoming more and more
imaginative and plot-oriented. Finally, one of my clients, the publisher of a
magazine for the foodservice industry, said to me, “Gen, I can’t have romance
in this video about restaurant sanitation!” That was when I thought to myself,
“Hey, I ought to try writing a novel.” And so I did.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on my fourth novel, which is called Just the
Truth. It’s a contemporary political thriller about the world of journalism.
The story explores the question: Is truth still the ruling principle in today’s
world of journalism and politics, and what are the forces working against it?
In this story, a young female journalist will be the leading character.
For the full-length interview, please go to
Many Books, Gen LaGreca - To Savor Freedom
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