AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: GEDIMINAS SIMONUTIS
Tell us how your writing journey started.
Well, maybe it sounds pretty funny but one day when I was 25 years one beautiful morning I woke up and I told to my self, I want to be a writer because I have what to say to the people around the world. In the next couple of days I started to write with enthusiasm short stories about everything just for practice. It was a nice and beautiful beginning. Later I felt really tired and exhausted from writing. But in a writers world, fighting with your self is a normal way of life.
So far, what are the major lessons you have learned in your writing experience?
After many years in writing I can easily say that it is better to concentrate on one story and don't go jumping through the chapters or characters. For yourself, the best way to finish a book faster as you want is force yourself to concentrate exactly on that spot where you are now. No point in when you are writing chapter number three you start to think how you will finish chapter 17. If you do this. You can mess up a lot and in the end of your working deadline you can have nothing.
In times when the going gets tough with your writing career, what usually keeps you going?
Many times I felt that I am really exhausted. I the beginning of my writing in these hard moment I always thought like, 'This is it. I can't write and so on'. But now to keep me going, when I feel stuck, I start watching YouTube videos about mysteries and anomalies or just strange stories that happened somewhere in our beautiful planet. And that works very well. It also helps to go walking no matter what the weather is outside.
Escape from the Dark is certainly an engaging read, what inspired the story?
Escape from the Dark story was born in my head one day when I asked myself,
'Where are we going?' I mean, about our humanity. Economists every day on TV are talking about how inflation rate is growing and growing. Looks like inflation can grow to the moon and further.
Police officers talking about how with new CCTV surveillance cameras they can stop crimes. But looks like crime rate is just growing around the world every year.
Politicians with them long tongues promising us paradise daily in each country.
Again and again. As young boy I heard same stories from these liars. No changes. Just everything getting worse. I don't want to talk about scientists. Looks like these guys are kneeling by the feet of the super rich, doing exactly what they tell them. So, where we are going? Looks like we going step by step to another ice age. Because after a nuke war should be a new ice age.
Escape from the Dark is a story based on the day's injustice where you can find that on each corner.
The character, Jake Winfield caught our attention, is there any public figure he reminds you of or who inspired your creation of the character?
Jake Winfield is a tough guy. I'm thinking the main hero in the story must be a real alfa male. Why I created this two legged beast? Because I really liked to watch movies from 80's and 90's where heroes were cold blooded dudes. When people see this guys deep inside, they feel safe. In that time, action movie heroes were dominating and powerful. Looks like action movie heroes from 2000's have weak characters and forgot to go to the gym.
The story is set in 2040, but don't you think such dystopian realities are already playing out in smaller scales today?
More or less yes. Especially despotism. It happened when politicians felt they can take everything under control and they start to force people to do exactly what they want.
For example, when a person gets sick and goes to the hospital, they get pills for their current illness. Most times these pills might be helpful or that illness but damaging to other organs or has some other kind of adverse effect. Eventually, they get worse than they were before the treatment and lose so much like their jobs or even worse. But no one is talking about about alternative medicine. Around the globe are many kind of alternate medicine that works well and don't harm patients. Plus it is cheaper if you compare that with modern medicine. But because alternative medicine is not so profitable for big pharma and the investors, in many countries alternative medicine is banned. We can talk all night and day about 21st century despots who wear expensive suits making daily damage to all human kind.
How do you think AI would contribute to the world of Escape from the Dark? Would it be on the side of the people or on the side of Harry Spitzenbauer?
AI always works on the side of who is programming them and writing the protocols. AI don't have any feelings. So, for AI it is really a matter with which side to runs it because in AI, the world exist only in numbers.
Would there be a sequel to Escape from the Dark?
Escape from the Dark is a saga. But how many books can it be in the end I can't tell you.
For me, I really like this story and I want to see how far I can go with Hary Spitzenbauer and Jake Winfield.
What are your plans for the next five years with regards to your writing?
Definitely I want to continue my writings and I hope in the next five years I will realize at least two more books and readers can judge and critique.
Įdomu!