Author Interview – Henry Mosquera

3:00 AM | Labels: Authors

What is your favorite quote, by whom, and why? “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” – Calvin Coolidge

It’s the philosophy I live by.

How did you develop your plot and characters? The plot developed as an amalgam between three disparate ideas I had for different projects. One was for a graphic novel dealing with American intervention policies in Latin America for which I had done a great amount of research. The other was a scriptwriting exercise I did back in college were we had to write a whole scene without dialog, just pure action. I did this thing about a man escaping an assassin on a train, using only his wits and the things around him. I really loved that concept and I wanted to use it for something else at some point. Last, but not least, I had an idea for a novel about a guy who unwittingly finds himself back in the country of his birth. After so many years living abroad, the character is a stranger in his own land and has to find out what is he doing there. When I got serious about writing a thriller, these three stories converged in my head at one point as a single plot and I got to work.

Eric Caine developed as one part me, one part my ideal tough guy protagonist and one part a child of his generation. He’s a post-Cold War, post-9/11, information technology Gen-Xer. Unlike most thriller protagonists, Eric had a fully developed life before serving in the military. It’s an important experience in his life, but not the only defining factor of his being. He’s just a regular guy who made certain decisions that shaped his life a certain way, but readers can still strongly identify with him. The rest of the characters grew as archetypes representing different aspects of the book’s main theme, the roles that corporations, governments, agencies, etc. play in the geopolitical game. They also represent extensions of Eric himself, kind of parallel universes if he had made different choices in his life.

Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? I always created my own stories and my own characters when I was kid. I never really played with such-and-such superhero, but made up my own. I always considered myself a storyteller, so writing was a natural extension of that.

What inspired you to write your first book? It’s a long story, but basically I wanted to write a political thriller based in Venezuela with a Venezuelan protagonist, that could be projected to an international audience.

Who or what influenced your writing over the years? Arturo Pérez-Reverte, hands down; his mixture of history and fiction, detailed research and jaded anti-heroes inspire me. Frederick Forsyth for similar reasons. John le Carré, for his morally ambiguous characters and stark representations of the intelligence world. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, for the quirkiness and humanity of his characters.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? There are many. “Sleeper’s Run” is a very layered work. On the surface, it reads like an edge-of-your-seat thriller full of action, intrigue and exotic locales, but each person takes away something different from it. It depends on the reader’s background, education, interest, awareness, etc. This wasn’t a book designed to spoon-feed concepts, but stimulate thoughts. Each reader takes out what they bring to it. If I have to pick a main message it would be to question everything and think for yourself.

Did writing this book teach you anything and what was it? So many things, but I’ll give you a few highlights: It taught me about how the publishing world works and what becoming a traditionally published author really means. I really had no clue about the publishing world until I ventured into it. It also helped me discover the Indie Writer’s Movement. A very important lesson I learned is that just because something is real or even plausible, it doesn’t mean that your readers will believe it. Just because I did my homework, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else did as well. Or maybe it’s just a case of author’s distrust because I’m an indie writer, I don’t know.