Are you searching for Truth?
This is a Story like no other.
Follow the Timeless Mystical Adventure of Six Characters
as they Alchemically Face the Darkest perils of the Human psyche
and Search for the Truth . . .
Interview
FACUNDO RAGANATO
THE AUTHOR - THE CHARACTERS' SHORT LIVING STORY
BOOK AUTHOR
It’s out! It’s out! Grim Vengeance, the FINAL installment of my superhero crime thriller series A Grim Trilogy, has been released!
CREATIVITY WINS
How do you capture the essence of what a writer goes through including the characters’ obstacles and their intricacies?
First of all, one would have to become a writer to know the experience of what a writer goes through at writing, and that is simply being true at writing. The story takes on a journey where The Author shares that experience through the characters’ adventures and its world is unfolded through the narration. The book itself is a frame of mind in which the very essence of the story is going through and beyond the fourth-wall. It took careful dedication and strategy in composition to harmoniously balance The Reader’s experience, The Characters’ journey and The Author’s essence.
If you can only protect five of the six characters, which ones will you choose? Why?
If the Author had to choose, he wouldn’t . . . Either he protects all six of them, or they all die. It is in this truthful neutral objectivity of taking the word for its word, which makes Him eternal, as well as the concept of the togetherness of the six. Furthermore, he wouldn’t protect them, for in his perspective, the characters dying would only mean transformation. What would He protect them from?
However, me, personally, Facundo Raganato; I would change between those answers. If we were asking the Facundo at the age of 16, when I started writing this story, I would choose Violet and Joe as the top two to protect, for instance. Yet, at 22, perhaps Leo and Henry would be more appropriate to prioritize. At this present, perhaps Lisa and Kimberly would be a more appropriate answer. Either way, I would have to leave out the sixth character in the darkness, temporarily, until the natural cycle makes the characters switch position again; this in the answer of the situational question of course.
Nonetheless, we would both agree to say that, regarding the six characters, each one is as equally as important as the other, for they do not compete as to who’s who, and what, and why, but instead, it is a complementary balance of personalities which push and pull each other harmoniously with/without the Reader and/or The Author. Out of the magical impulsive present I would say: Violet, Joe, Henry, Kimberly and Lisa.
I’m interested in how you would answer that question. Which ones will you choose?
Which part of your (10 years of) work on this book do you feel being fascinated by the melancholia, the irrational and the sublimity?
Right now, I am fascinated by this question. Perhaps I am fascinated by the remembrance. If you go to my room when I was 16, and this story was beginning to bloom, you would see a brown wooden desk, and 7 index cards pinned on top, where my characters were first drawn, and my laptop below waiting to be typed; this was supposed to be only a short story, before The Author was born. And I remember . . . I would look at them and ask “What would Kimberly do? What would Leo say?”
Art must be crafted, it is in that process where quality is polished. I am fascinated how many endless nights I typed till my eyes fell or my head stopped. How much I this deep world alive as the characters were living the story, this adventure, this odyssey, this journey for the truth. Art is a reflection of discovery, of harmoniously integrating, exploring, creating, dreaming. I remember how happy I was because I felt how much joy moved me through me because the characters where not only unveiling philosophical answers through questions, but they would also be living the story as I wrote and thought: “This is where Chapter XV would end.” I am fascinated by how many nights I was circling and reflecting the depth of the forbidden, the unthinkable, the impossible, the plot, the Author, the Reader and the Character in this reality, in my reality, and in the future reality of the Reader as they read the story now. I am fascinated by how much I sacrificed into really shaping this world in a multidimensional level, sometimes even without even writing. The times I had to sleep the story off and build bridges which originally felt like gaps, until I found what I sought, spiritually, alchemically, existentially. Who are you? Why are you Here?
Art is pure human expression, and that is the most valuable essence one can create, I am fascinated how much I have grown with this book and how much I have made it grown; these 10 years feel like watching a tree bloom for the eyes to see when it was born out of a simple seed.
The sublime is goes hand in hand with this world; it is in these words where nothing can grasp what this story is about really; it may seem like an irrational line of writing, or falling in love, or surviving, or dying, or seeking, or finding; where it seems like madness, reaching the beyond beyond space and time, the eternal stillness of a moment, the long but relatively short story one experiences as one fluxes through literature, the meanings, the minds. We call crazy what we can’t understand. The melancholia can refer to various and deep emotions that are connected in the story, before, after, in it, through it and beyond it.
Why is it important/recommended for readers to read “The Author” thrice?
The Apprentice shows the apple of knowledge & wisdom to the Master. The story can be read through the Apprentice’s eyes, through the eyes of the Master, or through the eyes of “the apple,” for instance. Yet, this is a format of layers of knowledge & wisdom, or as I like to say, it is an alchemical process. If I say “9,” this number would have no meaning because it does not make a rational sense in regards to the theme, or at least it creates a meaning in the Reader’s mind in relation to their subjective experience with that number. If I say “9,” these letters make that number a question.
But if I say “6 + 3,” then the number “9” would have a meaning as the rational mind connects the dots in a “question/answer” relation, for instance. However, this story’s composition has thin yet strong lines that constructs the world of the story, and they are open enough for the broad minds to enter and mirror themselves in it, letting light in, letting meanings in. As soon as one finishes to read the story, the experience of the journey creates a unique experience for every Reader of seeing the beginning in new eyes, or perhaps, deeper eyes, or perhaps, contradictory or even irrational from its “rationality;” or vice versa.
If I had said “6 + 3” first, and then saying “9,” would you take it as the question or as the answer?
During the writing odyssey, what questions arise that makes you feel the most discomfort? How did you overcome them?
I have to make clear that during this writing odyssey, I was not only myself; I was accustomed to be able to place myself in other “states of beings,” per se, which some of them, as you questioned, caused me discomfort. I had to alchemically face the discomfort of each character, The Author and even the Reader. However, perhaps the most important question that caused me most discomfort is: “What is meaning?” Now, the discomfort is the conflict, it is the risk, the adventure, it is the question that opens up the search for the answer, and I find it interesting when to take this in a larger scale; as a society, as a civilized race, as political minds, as spiritual beings, as biological species, as pure artists, as believers, as creators, as dreamers.
Each one has a discomfort in many questions, it is in that process where we look for answers, usually to find peace. I have found my inner peace through this story. I hope you find it too, or at least, wakes your search to find it in a spiritual level. It is important that we are conscious of the new paths that open, or the answers we find, it is in that search for what we are looking that we find that it was already there; so it is basically a process of discomfort to awakening, where the discomfort is healed, purified, alchemically transformative.
For me, the questions are what causes me comfort, for I see it is a way to expand and/or dig in; to find the Beauty in the unresolved is to harmoniously keep a curious mind in thirst for knowledge and wisdom that keeps searching for the Truth. Loving that Beauty is how I learned to overcome them.
What inspires you to write a book for people who likes making their own decisions? How do you feel being crowned “a well-honed literary mind”?
What inspires me is the thought that I already wrote it, and readers are able to enjoy it, because it was not easy to write and compose in a way that The Reader would understand, implicitly, that they are free to make their own decisions about it. However, I wouldn’t have written it another way. Take the following analogy as a reference, not only as its meaning, but only as one plane of its dimension: God created us with the so called “free will,” it is interesting to think that he made us with the liberty to make our own decisions if we choose to do “evil” or “good” (following this train of thought) and it is up to us to decide what to do with our own conscientious choice, in relation to what we think or believe it is to judge what “good” and “evil” is.
Also, where do the meanings lie? One reader can see one meaning from one chapter, yet another reader would have another . . .
How many professors does it take to discuss among each other to concur a meaning with the depth of the philosophical questions raised? Even with its answers! This is the master question: How can the meaning of its literature be rationalized in order to explain what the Truth is when each one of those professors will find it in the story in their own way?
I’m flattered and honored, with an innocent humbling pride which makes me shine inside to think that even though I journeyed with the characters through the darkness of the underworld, through the intricacies, puzzles, and traps, through closing halls and endless stairs, peril after peril, I feel the sacrifice it was worth it. To plunge deep into the literary world and find the light. Do you think The Characters would think it was worth it?
I guess I just feel very grateful to hear such comment. What other kind of minds exist?
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