Interview with Brian Bennudriti, author of 'Tearing Down the Statues'
We're pleased to welcome Brian Bennudriti, author of Tearing Down the Statues at The Writer's Life! Brian is on a month long virtual book tour with us and would love it if you could leave a comment for him!
Brian Bennudriti has degrees in
Physics and Business. He’s taken a nuclear reactor critical, piloted a
destroyer, slept in the Omani desert, negotiated multi-million dollar
acquisitions, run two companies, provided strategic and management consulting
across the United
States and
traveled around the world in every hemisphere. He’s a plankowner on the
aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman and has made a lifetime study of religious
beliefs and mythology. Brian lives in Kansas City with his wife, two children, two dogs and a lizard. His
first book, Tearing
Down The Statues, was published in 2015.
For
More Information
- Visit Brian Bennudriti’s website.
- Connect with Brian on Facebook and Twitter.
- Find out more about Brian at Goodreads.
About the Book:
Misling is a Recorder, having
perfect memory and expected to help build a seamless record of history. That’s
what the Salt Mystic taught us two thousand years ago when she came stumbling
from
As it has for three generations,
the horrible Talgo family is the spark of this swelling world war; and their
wily generals and scheming counselors clash their fleets in battles of
shrieking steel-entrained tornados, cannonballs of lightning, and tanks the
size of cities. But it’s the joker’s secret that is the most powerful weapon of
all…a trigger set by the Salt Mystic herself in myth, to save the world from
itself.
For More Information
- Tearing Down the Statues is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book has been published, we’d
love to find out more about the process.
Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning? Where did you come up with the idea to write
your book?
I was serving as assistant
navigator on a destroyer after the first gulf war; and my friends and I had
made our way to a beautiful rock gorge in the Omani desert to blow off some
steam. It was really beautiful with this opening in the rock - you could jump
down into rushing whitewater, but surrounded by scrub brush and barren sand. A
bit homesick till then, I’d been watching loads of John Wayne westerns like, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, True Grit and War Wagon. I was keeping up with Buffy The Vampire Slayer through VHS tapes my wife was sending
along, and was reading through the first three Dune books. I blame all of that. This picture opened up in my head
unwelcomed and without any help from me, condensing down from all those
influences I suppose. What I saw was a worn out old soldier in a dirty and torn
uniform burst through saloon doors, with everyone inside terrified of him
though he was unarmed. Things didn’t really take shape till much later; but it
started me asking what led him to that point, what he wanted from them, and
above it all, why were they so afraid? Answers to those questions are what led
me ultimately to Tearing Down The Statues.
Q: How hard was it to write a
book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make
the journey easier for other writers?
Great question. It was
ridiculously hard…the kind of hard to give creepy clowns nightmares. I rewrite
as I go; and I have a peeve about crappy dialogue – which means the same
chapter gets luxury spa treatment over and again. I also pick up far too easily
little quirks of authors I’m reading, like they say tofu does of anything lying
around it, which means it only gets trickier to sound like the same guy writing
it the longer it takes to do so. Beyond those things, I dreamily ignored the
warning cries of people like Stephen King and others who’ve written about the
craft of writing that you’re not to plot the book up front, that you let the
characters just do what they do and ride it out. Sheesh, what a bad idea to
ignore them!
The idea for me at least then, is
I’m better off spending quality time on the character sketches and not the
plot. When I feel like I know what they’d say, I’m ready to drop them screaming
into the mess I’ve laid for them. I’m saying listen to what they’d do; and
allow them to do those things. It’s none of your business if they have
different ideas than you – stop being such a control freak anyway. Then if
you’re like me with the tofu thing, picking up the moods and narrative
structures of whatever you’re reading, use that to your advantage and purposely
read things reflecting the moods and feel of whatever you’re writing. If I need
to be funny, I’ll pay somebody like P.G. Wodehouse or Nick Hornby a visit, just
to stir some of those ingredients into the stew. Make your subconscious work
for you.
Q: Who is your publisher and how
did you find them or did you self-publish?
I submitted to a couple of
traditional publishing houses that specialize in science fiction, as well as a
handful of agents. I have a number of nice compliments to show for it…very nice
people, at least the folks from whom I heard back. The conventional wisdom is
to stay at the gun and just keep firing, tweaking the blurbs and pitches and
query letters to adjust your aim till someone finally brings you in. It’s an
incredible gamble and a frustrating, draining experience with very little
promise on the other side apart from more gambling. I decided to start
Grailrunner Publishing as a small private outlet for my own works as well as
maybe a select group of fellow authors interested in leveraging first-world
wonders like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, Print On Demand sites, collaborative
audiobook services like ACX, and social media promoters to self-publish. The
pressure is on; but it’s enriching to learn so much about the industry and how
to connect with people who love what you love.
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
Almost everything surprised me
once the book went live. The electric shocker for me was how high a percentage
of Amazon reviews are bought and paid for – that’s a new concept for me. I
thought they were all legit and used them religiously to pick my reading stack.
Anyway, I’m glad Amazon has been working on this to clean it up.
More importantly, I’ve been so
cheered by how welcoming and encouraging some science fiction fans are. If
you’re down about anything and have the remotest interest in speculating on
mind-warping ideas and technology or twisting concepts around to inject
concentrated awe into somebody’s head, there are still people out there for
you. Some of them read voraciously, some barely break away from Fallout4 long
enough to answer a Tweet or whatever; but it’s a great audience full of
fascinating folks. And some trolls; but we won’t talk about those guys.
Q: What other books (if any) are
you working on and when will they be published?
I’m working now on my second
novel, a horror book titled, The Line Of
Them. We’re aiming for late summer; and it’s going to melt your face! It’s
set in a traffic jam in sizzling summer heat, which along with what’s happening
really cranks up the boiler. It’s a really fun one! I’m frustrated with modern
horror right now – we’re a little lazy with vampires, zombies and just
pillaging folklore. Wouldn’t it be incredible if someone put together a
challenging, innovative compilation of breakthrough horror the way Harlan
Ellison spearheaded with his, Dangerous
Visions? Anyway, I’ve placed the mark for myself to avoid leaning on what’s
been done before.
Q: What’s your favorite place to
hang out online?
I do the Twitter and Facebook
thing: @grailrunner and under my name. News on published or upcoming works goes
up on www.grailrunner.com. My email
address is press@grailrunner.com. I just heard there will be no new Doctor Who
episodes until Christmas, so anyone who can talk me off the ledge, please
contact me.
Q: What’s your nightly ritual
before retiring for the night?
I like to have a savory idea or
image in my head before I go dark to see how shiny it is, turn it this way and
that while I’m slipping off. Sometimes, it’s mythology or folklore or something
visual like Italo Calvino’s Invisible
Cities. Sometimes it’s philosophy or religion like Clement’s, Stromata or Heraclitus. Sometimes it’s a
fart joke off the internet.
Q: Finally, what message (if any)
are you trying to get across with your book?
The core of the book orbits
around an idea. An ancient mystic placed tripwires in the stories we tell in
order to save us from ourselves; and this is what happens when they’re
triggered. I’ve studied physics, religions and mythology for many years and have
traveled extensively. I study and influence people for a living as a
consultant. One thing I believe we’re missing entirely is the fact that we
crave spiritual connections the same as we hunger for food, water or sex, yet
it’s aggressively sold to us these connections are naïve and unnecessary. When
you see terrible things on the news, pay attention to the people in the
background avoiding the camera but slugging bottled water or bags of sand or
carrying someone out of the smoke – tragedies bring out the best in our
character. If we fail even one generation to pass down a common morality…if we
let even one generation grow up with absentee or distracted parenting and no framework
for integrity and selflessness, we’re all on our own when bad things happen.
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
Probably more than a lot of the folks you may be
reading, I’m especially interested in hearing from you whether you loved the
book or hated it. Tell me why.
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