Featured Interview With Ryan Krol
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’ve had quite an adventurous life. As writer, I've worked in film and sports. I was raised in Orange County, California. I’ve been an explorer my whole life, so I spent a lot of time in the mountains, the desert, other states, and had my honeymoon in Italy. So I have a lot of inspiration. My wife and I have a beagle named Sophie.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As a child, I was more into the movies, hence my filmmaking experience. My fascination with books didn’t appear until I was a teenager. Although, I read my first full-length book on my own (outside of class) when I was eight years old.
That book, by the way, was the novelization of Spaceballs by R.L. Stine.
At sixteen, I read 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. It was then that books finally sparked my interest.
Regardless of all of that, I started writing at about the age of six. In the third grade, we were required to write a story every Friday. Since The Real Ghostbusters was my favorite cartoon at the time, I made my own Ghostbusters series, and read it to the class every week.
That’s what shaped my interest as a storyteller.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Michael Crichton tends to be my main inspiration for the kind of story I want read and write. I have a list, but Crichton hovers over the rest by a long shot. I like to read science fiction, adventure, suspense, thriller, and horror.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My debut novel, Syndrome, is a science fiction set in the remote desert of Nevada in 1957. A secret research facility is located in the mountains near a small town. Only, it’s not government, it’s privately owned by a philanthropist, Tom Sullivan, who is seeking to advance space exploration himself.
A meteor falls near the town, but is not actually space rock. It’s a piece of metal space debris. One problem, however: there are no satellites yet. Three twelve year old boys see the meteor fall and check it out. They discover an organism, which attacks one of them. Then, they are chased out by scientists, who bring the materials back to the facility, only to have things go terribly wrong.
The accident prompts Sullivan to hire Dr. Sean Warner and his team of myth-chasing scientists to hide the accident from the government. Warner and his colleagues are trying to restore their reputations as scientists.
They’re looking for the ultimate discovery, but they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.
Syndrome was inspired by stories I was told by family and friends who live in the same area in which the story takes place. People actually see weird lights and such in the Nevada Desert. After hearing all of this, I immediately started an outline.
It took me a few months to develop the story, and then a year to write the manuscript. I self-published Syndrome on Kindle Direct Publishing on January 14, 2020.
Now, I’m working on my next book while promoting this one.
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