Author interview: Itamar S. N
Apr. 4th, 2013 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneSometimes the net enables you to run across people and think, "Oh, I'd like to know more about you." Itamar and his book NIV caught my eye, so in my usual leap in feet first fashion I asked him to do an interview. And, to my delight, he agreed.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always written poems. Since I remember myself I had a note-book and a pen beside my bed. To write a long fiction was a constant heart wish, but I did not feel rich enough from the inside and all my trials were neglected after few pages. In some point I turned to music and only at the age of 27, after a painful experience with my first album contract, I felt old and wise enough to seat and write my first novel from beginning to an end. Actually it was a huge part of my healing process.
What did it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest?
Well it was a long pregnancy (longer than an elephant..) and it was a nerve racking waiting (although pleasurable one) to see it out there. Of course I got sick a day before my book launch in Amsterdam, but the event was exiting and amazing. I thought to myself “there, there, relax your baby is born; now you can be calm”. I didn’t know the work and pressure to see this child flourish and reach the public was just beginning. I’m still attached to NIV today, trying to help promote it, like I was before the publishing, so I believe the book in some ways is still in the nest.
Why this particular setting and era?
NIV is comprised of two settings and eras. The first was easy: the Arts and Gay life in modern Tel-Aviv, not very far at all from my real life… But then I wanted to find a different conflict to my second love story. I’ve already had straight-gay conflict and I wanted a religious one far both by time and place. One night I had a very powerful dream. I woke up and remembered it took place in a place called GABALA, because there actually was a street name sign in the dream. I searched the internet and the only Gabala I found was in Azerbaijan. I started to read and was exposed to the Karabakh regional conflict between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan which both populate the area and the bloody war between neighbors that they had during WWI and the Armenian genocide. I just knew I found the perfect second setting. I sat for two months in the university library and studied WWI and the region of Karabakh and a few months later NIV was born.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
I really don’t know if I am a character or plot driven writer because a good story needs both to have both good rhythm and depths. I know I don’t like boring descriptive pages of scenery and details that make me want to smash the book on the opposite wall. I need rhythm and like every artist, of course, I am addicted to the blues…
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
By definition it would be Niv. In many ways Niv is the man of my dreams. Strong, carrying, ambitious guy that proves love in actions rather than in words. He is the man Anush could have been, an anchor for whoever is beside him.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
The same as I write now. I don’t need my publisher to have the commercial factor in the back of my head while I’m writing. I am most certainly don’t write for the drawer. I want my books to reach as many hearts as possible so I am not ashamed to say I try to find the best way to bring my true self to the vastest public as possible.
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
I am a guy who struggles with books till the bitter end even if I don’t like them, so I don’t have a good answer for that but I can say (without names) that there were few “classics” I thought were crap..
What’s your favourite gay fiction book? And why?One of the books I call “Life changing” books that reached me in the perfect timing and not only touched my soul but influenced it was “The Buddha of Suburbia” by Hanif Kureishi. An amazing book by any category. but what swept me from my feet, as a gay young man, was the ability the hero had to feel comfortable with his sexuality. I love all Kureishi’s books.
What's your next project?
My next project (unless I’ll get crazy and bury it in the middle) takes place in the future Middle-East and deals with gay rights and their vulnerability along with the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian long term relationships.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always written poems. Since I remember myself I had a note-book and a pen beside my bed. To write a long fiction was a constant heart wish, but I did not feel rich enough from the inside and all my trials were neglected after few pages. In some point I turned to music and only at the age of 27, after a painful experience with my first album contract, I felt old and wise enough to seat and write my first novel from beginning to an end. Actually it was a huge part of my healing process.
What did it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest?
Well it was a long pregnancy (longer than an elephant..) and it was a nerve racking waiting (although pleasurable one) to see it out there. Of course I got sick a day before my book launch in Amsterdam, but the event was exiting and amazing. I thought to myself “there, there, relax your baby is born; now you can be calm”. I didn’t know the work and pressure to see this child flourish and reach the public was just beginning. I’m still attached to NIV today, trying to help promote it, like I was before the publishing, so I believe the book in some ways is still in the nest.
Why this particular setting and era?
NIV is comprised of two settings and eras. The first was easy: the Arts and Gay life in modern Tel-Aviv, not very far at all from my real life… But then I wanted to find a different conflict to my second love story. I’ve already had straight-gay conflict and I wanted a religious one far both by time and place. One night I had a very powerful dream. I woke up and remembered it took place in a place called GABALA, because there actually was a street name sign in the dream. I searched the internet and the only Gabala I found was in Azerbaijan. I started to read and was exposed to the Karabakh regional conflict between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan which both populate the area and the bloody war between neighbors that they had during WWI and the Armenian genocide. I just knew I found the perfect second setting. I sat for two months in the university library and studied WWI and the region of Karabakh and a few months later NIV was born.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
I really don’t know if I am a character or plot driven writer because a good story needs both to have both good rhythm and depths. I know I don’t like boring descriptive pages of scenery and details that make me want to smash the book on the opposite wall. I need rhythm and like every artist, of course, I am addicted to the blues…
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
By definition it would be Niv. In many ways Niv is the man of my dreams. Strong, carrying, ambitious guy that proves love in actions rather than in words. He is the man Anush could have been, an anchor for whoever is beside him.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
The same as I write now. I don’t need my publisher to have the commercial factor in the back of my head while I’m writing. I am most certainly don’t write for the drawer. I want my books to reach as many hearts as possible so I am not ashamed to say I try to find the best way to bring my true self to the vastest public as possible.
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
I am a guy who struggles with books till the bitter end even if I don’t like them, so I don’t have a good answer for that but I can say (without names) that there were few “classics” I thought were crap..
What’s your favourite gay fiction book? And why?One of the books I call “Life changing” books that reached me in the perfect timing and not only touched my soul but influenced it was “The Buddha of Suburbia” by Hanif Kureishi. An amazing book by any category. but what swept me from my feet, as a gay young man, was the ability the hero had to feel comfortable with his sexuality. I love all Kureishi’s books.
What's your next project?
My next project (unless I’ll get crazy and bury it in the middle) takes place in the future Middle-East and deals with gay rights and their vulnerability along with the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian long term relationships.
