Interview: Ana Isabel O Talks New Book
By: Don Grigware Jun. 21, 2019
Brilliant scientist and author Ana Isabel O is in the process of creating a novel, not a children's story like her other writing endeavors, but ... her own take on a collective enforced disappearance, crime against humanity and the family and social implications in a Narcostate of a third world country. In our conversation she talks in great detail about how deeply the issue affects her life and her purpose in writing the story.
Intermittently events in my life propel me to write this forthcoming book, now I've reached the point of no return. It was a purging for a fractured heart. I had no intention of writing down from my secret garden, but when I learned about hidden facts inside a war waged by powers of all kind and discovered a tangled web of corruption, cruelties, injustices that were dumped on a case, I felt I just had to write about it. As cliché as it can sound, there are places where reality goes beyond fiction, therefore all the story is fictionalized. That wasn't easy; it takes time as well as an emotional toll. There were times I tried to deny my need to write, that's why it took more than two years to write, but writing really is part of who I am as a person, as a woman.
You are right it was inspired by a true crime event, the terrible and evil influence of a corrupt and highly promiscuous woman, her deeds into a family, the fatal end of a man in a small backwards town in a third world narco-country. It's an extreme case, unique because intricated political elements, weird at its best, were exposing the utter abuse of authority, corruption, retaliations, betrayals; outraged reaction was inevitable.
Thereupon I got a sinuous wave of ache that tested all of my ideas pretty sorely. I had to finally expand the whole stockpile, which includes plethora, absurdity and unfathomable bliss. I felt released from having to worry about that. I take that power to be a step of legitimate grace in my life, for which I am immensely thankful.
What are the characters like in the book? Are many of them villains?
Characters are many honest hypocrites, cynicals called heroes who are pathological cases no better than the villains they fight; idiosyncrasy stands apart here. These characters are what they think they are because they choose to be right and wrong at the first place; reality is that villains are on all sides; they are immoral, horrible, twisted creatures. It's a hiatus from the deconstructionist assumptions that some promoted. In the book few characters could match man's mastery of Humanity. Despicable personages. By accepting that much, I'm far happier with life.
What do you want readers to take away after reading it? How do you feel they will react?
I like to put a torch where there is obscurity, its an area I enjoy writing because it brings about open interpretation. When I write something I'm giving some of that pleasure to my readers. Good fiction uproar the soul, which is to say evokes an emotional response. A reader may be galvanized to laughter or tears, this is what I want readers to experience, a feeling that reverberates even after you put the book down. One can get lost in the story and enter in another world. It could be delirious, like being lost in an intriguing play. By presenting your own version of the unthinkable a writer can create a whole world of emotions for the reader.
Why is this new story so important to you as a writer?
Its pursuit to pulling together real facts, bizarre characters, chaos, temporal and historical events occurred in a really strange place of this world... evil can be inspiring. The book is composed in journal entries. Fictive pieces based in reality which in turn are based in horror. Notes, photos from the characters. Epitaphs sent to me on the tapestry of another's dialect. I did not choose to devote a book to a crime reality. The reality of the crime chose me.
A few years ago when I started gathering up the work around me, I discovered that I had a gift of ominous mini chapters I would use in the book. Because the subject is complex and rather interesting all kinds of people approached me about writing a book with them. This pulp work has less to do with inspiration and more to do with wanting to uncover things, made with real facts to new readers. It had to do with wanting truths to be seen as useful. When I was a kid I rejected certain environments, their idiosyncrasy from real life and also daily digest, but overall bumpy reality and life-threatening events. I remember thinking about all those elements as a Humanistic experience based very much in the factual arriving from ends wanting to be considered. That being said, there is a hard work in every chapter. Section titles emphasize attention and make them catchy. In this coming book there are new voices that rarely get the chance to see their names fictionalized; thinkers who aren't what they pretend to be, somewhere wanting to appear useful in the service of their community to a world that could withdraw their pathetic/liar voices just clicking fingers.
The truth depicted in the story is that what some people find deadly, could be fully interesting as breathing. The inarticulators would have us believe that an awful crime should be kept out of our daily conversations and saved for the hypocritical parties. But words belong where truth exists. The story wants to live where incorruptibility and endurance have been prioritized. Truth is the first prose of a boundless and unchained soul. Like a strong human depiction defying taboos and prejudices.
When do you expect to finish the work?
This year. Surely there will be another coming up because some parts are still happening. In the place where the book and history are depicted, justice is a game of lies; filthy perpetrators try to stop the light that comes out from the truth which proves the crime wasn't perfect. I'm actually very excited, because in the second part I couldn't see at first what was going to happen next. Its not in my nature to wait for the next day to come so I now turn the pages. I had to write them. Once I sit at my desk, I naturally know what's going to happen next. If I don't, or if I don't want to write something, I don't write. I can start and I can stop and I can continue the next day, as I choose. You know, if the character or protagonist is happy, there's no story at all.
What else exciting is going on in your life right now?
Currently, I write with a nickname mystery assays. My children books are up and rolling, its always good to trip among the Magical Forest (laughing) , got two more coming out this 2019 as well as music on my label. An album for my book "How Roibeard helps Sorley" composed by Sam Morrison. Also publishing a compendium of some poetry in French language. Gathering recordings and highlights of an Avant garder. I spend time with my beehives but when I'm not around is like losing a part of observation. Then when I got back there's no move to be made, because I don't know everything I need to just yet. Overall I'm giving plenty of room to my household. The last six years we have travelled a good deal, you know business. Every year we would spend weeks at a time in distant surroundings, to my end its inspiring but also demanding....really (chuckling softly)...Mind, that's also fuel to all kinds of exciting magic!
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