This would be my second interview with an author! Carlo Gabbi wrote
An Amazing Story and you can read my review of his book in my other blog.
And here's the interview!
What books do you like to read and why? Carlo: Books are written with the intention of sending messages, and in this way a book becomes a powerful tool transmitting the writer's experiences to the audience of the readers.
I like to read intelligent books which sends positive messages capable of widening up my capacities of understanding. As a reader, I’m looking through the pages of the book in my hands to find the answers conveyed by that particular author and then I analyse all of them.
Who are your favorite authors and why?This is not a simple question. In life we move over different stages. From childhood into a young adulthood, from the young adult we become a man or a woman, and from here into a mature person. Therefore our needs with likes and dislikes are adjusting consequently with maturity.
This is a reason why we abandon authors we loved in a previous stage in life to search for new authors who are more suitable to our new age group and capable of returning to us those answers we need in our new particular life period.
We have to keep in mind that there always are strong writers that we have never heard or read of, so we cannot stick to a particular writer in our preferences. We have to enlarge continually the number of new writers we read, even if we may like one writer better than others.
The writer that has impressed me over the past years, and who is very talented, is Wilbur Smith, a South African author. He seems to know all about his beloved country since the primordial days of the Pharaohs. Masterly and seductively he presents the best books on the market.
Who are your target readers?I try to write for a vast audience divided into different age groups. I believe that the majority of writers are using this way because it makes us proud to communicated with the largest possible audience.
With the “An Amazing Story” I used Dolores to convey a special message to the young group of women’s readers. I tell them to be stronger and don’t lose faith in life if they are struck by adversity, and as Dolores, be capable to create a better tomorrow and therefore learn to act wisely to make it happen.
At the same time, in this book, I send a message to all mankind to be aware of the risk we are incurring of destroying life in our planet and I encourage people to become environmentally responsible and contributing, as much as possible, to preserve what nature and God has patiently created for us.
If you could meet any author, who will it be? Again it would be Wilbur Smith. I admire him for his deep knowledge of things, for his extraordinary way to convey facts to the readers and for the complete satisfaction left in me, when I reach the last page of any of his novels.
If you could meet any famous person, who would it be? This is another difficult question. There are so many famous people around us. People who excel in sport, entertainment, science, literature etc.
My preferred person most likely will be someone who has dedicated completely his life and intelligence into a humanitarian purpose and who does his work disinterestedly only in the name of love of mankind.
What do you like to do, besides reading? I like traveling, meeting people and visiting archeological sites. All this helps me to expand my knowledge of understanding who we are and why.
What was your ambition when you were a small kid?That was so long ago and it’s hard to remember. Believe me, since those remote days life has changed so much. It was war time when I was young and life in Europe was an inferno. Miseries were around us. People had been left in rugs and destitute by the bombardments destroying life and entire cities.
Was I dreaming in those days to be a man a fight for my Country as many other teenagers did at that time? Possibly yes; being a hero was part of my dreams. But I was too young for that. So I did the best I could for my age and even if I was only a young teenager I came to develop the sense of responsibility created by the hardship around. I saw that my duty was to be the responsible man in the house and therefore protect in the best way I could my mother and our scarce resources.
Any more books that you plan to write? At the moment I am re-editing some of my best short stories to be collected into a book which will be available by the end of this year.
In the same time I have started penciling a new book. This is the life story of loves and passions of my grandmother. The story starts at the beginning of 1900 and would take the reader across the Balkans and Italy from the “Grand Époque” of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and across the horrors that followed with the Two World Wars.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Only a few are lucky enough to be born story tellers, for the others to become one is a long strenuous work.
In narrating your stories, be concise and use the simplest word, so anybody can understand and follow the plots you are writing.
Never be completely satisfied of what you have written. It always exists a better way to narrate your story. In this process you will have the chance to continually improve yourself.
~~~End of interview~~~I'd like to thank Carlo Gabbi for taking the time to answer my questions! =D And my dear readers, I hope you enjoyed the interview too!
nice on TV and there’s not much else to do, she agreed to play. Hmm, I wonder if I can convince her to play another game tomorrow???
