This week, I had the chance to sit down and talk with Mr. Boniello about his upcoming story Bookmarck which will be available at the end of November. To read more about the story’s plot or to purchase the book please visit https://olympiapublishers.com/books/bookmarck. Now, let’s get into the interview:
What was your biggest inspiration for writing a book?
I had the story kicking around in my head for maybe fifteen years and during that time more and more of it took shape so that when I finally dedicated myself to seriously writing it, large portions of it practically wrote themselves because they were in my imagination and I knew how these set pieces would play out. That’s the story of how it managed to go from an imagination to a printed page.
How long was the writing process?
It took two years to write, but a large part of that was editing. If I have learned anything about this process it is to do a very heavy edit before you send it off to the publisher because you save yourself an extraordinary amount of time if you send the cleanest copy possible to your publisher.
What were the hardest parts of the writing process for you?
The hardest part of it was getting the locations right and learning how to describe swordplay without ever having fenced before. So I had to intensely learn about this portion of Paris, had to intensely learn about this neighborhood in England, and I had to learn how to fence all from doing research. The research I did was almost exclusively computer research.
What made you choose the genre of the story?
The genre of the story is based on the books implemented in the story. The selection of books was actually driven by cost. I did not want to pay the copyright fee or licensing fee to use an existing novel that has copyright protection, so the three books I’ve used are so classic that the copyright protections have expired and they are free to the public.
What books are incorporated into the story?
The three books are The Three Musketeers, The Adventure of the Reigate Squire from the memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Time Machine.
What was the inspiration for the characters?
The two main characters, the brother and sister, don’t come from anywhere and from everywhere. The idea is to try to make them as relatable as possible so that when you see the characters you are able to invest in them. The young man is in the process of deciding about a college and he is ambivalent about it, the young lady is extraordinarily competitive and is smarter and more athletic than her older brother is. The whole idea here is to get the reader to invest in these characters.
Do you have any tips for young writers?
One piece of advice is that when you have what you consider to be a winner of an idea, take the moment to put it into your phone memory or write it down someplace so you don’t lose it. The other piece of advice would be to write from experience because that is the most authentic writing.
Are there any messages we can take away from your story?
Yes, but I am not going to tell you what it is. The message has to do with how the world at large views the value of libraries, classic literature, the value of science, and the value of scholarship. Ultimately the question is what is a lie and what is not a lie, that is what it comes down to.
