Featured Interview With S.A. Sebastian
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
A little about myself. I've written my entire life but it took me a long time to realize I really and truly wanted to be a writer. Having spent part of my childhood on a tiny Caribbean island, every single thing I read highlighted how much bigger the world was compared to the small and sleepy former fishing village I was growing up in. Moving to Brooklyn as a kid then provided me with all aspects of the vibrancy I'd always imagined and then some. The color, the characters the confidence, the fears, the aspirations. Since then I've done some ho hum things like working in the U.S. House of Representatives and being a Washington, D.C. lobbyist, but all of it was and continues to be driven by the curiosity that began a long time ago, about how much grander the world around me really can be.
I've now moved to Los Angeles to pursue the next chapter in that journey.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I think I realized I loved books more than some others from the time my aunts forced a cousin and I to read books after dinner as kids. I loved it and my cousin absolutely and totally hated it. I mean they couldn't even punish her into doing it, she just wasn't having it. From that moment I realized that not everyone was itching to find out what happened in the next page of our book as much as I was, and what reading did to my imagination was something I never wanted to let go of.
I began writing short stories soon after when I moved from the tiny island of Dominica to the middle of Brooklyn, New York at 12 years old. It was a way of dealing with the enormous shifts and I used writing to express the impact it had on my imagination and my understanding of the world around me.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I'm a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert's work, I've always appreciated Ta Nehisi Coates, and as a kid I loved John Steinbeck's descriptions of difficult, life altering environments. My favorite genre is probably comedy/romantic comedy, as how people envision and enliven relationships when they tell a story is something I always find interesting.
I also keep telling my friends I'm well aware that the world is difficult, I like my entertainment lighthearted.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Sombristic at it's core is a story about romantic games and how we often try to use our minds to satisfy our hearts. The romantic journey of Caroline and her friends is meant to be as relatable as your favorite group of friends hanging out on a Friday night over drinks, or as amusing as the clever dialogue and interactions of your favorite sitcom characters over the course of their sharpest season. But it's also meant to tell the story of romantic drama a bit differently. By leaning on the structure of a play to drive the story through the characters dialogue, Sombristic infuses the rhythmic energy of a telenovella or a soap opera to make every scene as dramatic and critical as the one that precedes it and the one that follows.
All the while through the laughter and empathizing, the reader should inquisitively wonder what they and their friends would do if ever confronted with a similar situation, albeit one with several unpredictable, dramatic twists.
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