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About the Book
Doctors tell Raj that his son Emret won't survive his illness. As Raj struggles to prepare himself and Emret for the inevitable, he's confronted by Moslin, his son's nurse, who’s been filling Emret’s head with fairytales about heroic quests and powerful disease curing miracles. Emret now thinks that all he has to do is find the mythical Red Tree from the nurse's stories, and he'll live. In an attempt to protect his son from further emotional damage, Raj asks Moslin to stay away from Emret. He returns hours later to find them both missing. Now, he has to dig into the loathed fairytales to figure out where they may have gone. He’d also like to know why he keeps blacking out and having visions of a temple on a mountain with a vat of glowing weapons, a vaporous black creature emerging from a lightning storm, himself in glowing armor leading an army, and the same mythical Red Tree hidden in a dense forest.
Interview with the Author
DDS: Tell
us a little bit about yourself.
I live in South Jordan, Utah with my wife
and three children. I graduated from film/animation school about ten years ago.
Since then I've worked on a few live action films and a few animated films. Currently
I'm the VFX supervisor at small production studio in Utah.
DDS: What
got you into writing?
I think the oldest, most concrete
impression that I have of what I wanted to do with my life came from MTV's
Liquid Television. When they first started, they showed animated shorts that
were mind blowing cool, not like anything you'd see in a normal venue. The one
I remember most was about a street sweeper who so aggressively cleaned his
street that the reveal at the end showed that he'd been sweeping everything
into the sewer. Cars, people, anything that left a mess. After watching these,
a light turned on and I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to write
crazy little stories and then make them into short animations.
Well, I did. I made a six minute short
about a friendly little man that lives in a bitter old man's thumb. That led to
making a slew of live action short films (they're much easier to make.) Which
led to wanting to make feature length live action films. I spent the next 5
years writing script after script after script. Unfortunately, the stories that
I was writing, the stories that got me excited, were still the same kind of
stories from those MTV Liquid Television animations. They were crazy and
bizarre and impossible to make as a first time, low budget feature film.
Well after a few years I finally realized
that all those stories that really didn't work as scripts would make fantastic
Novels.
DDS: Tell
us about your book
Red Leaves and the Living Token was a
story I started writing about ten years ago. I know this may sound dumb and a
lot of people probably say this, but it’s the best way I can describe the
origins of the story. I had this bizarre dream about a little glowing plant in
the forest that had this thicket of underbrush protecting it. There were these
warthog like people guarding it. And then there were these plant like people
who attacked them to try and steal the plant as they all believed it was some
sort of mythical creature.
Eventually that grew into the full story.
The main characters and their plight grew around that core idea of an
otherworldly being that was tangible for them. They worshiped it yet they could
actually go and see it.
DDS: What
was the hardest part about writing the book?
The hardest part of writing the story was
bringing it up to the level of realism and intrigue that I had felt in my
dream. There the story had been so vivid and the purposes of the people and the
relationships all made sense. It took me a long time and a lot of experimenting
to build up the rest of the world so that it all fit together logically.
DDS: What
are your writing pet peeves?
If I don't write consistently, I forget
so much that it takes a great deal of time and effort to soak the story back up
into my mind. I hate that.
DDS: Who
is your favorite Character? (one of your own creation –
published/unpublished)
I'm going to say that I have a favorite
character type rather than a specific character. I've found that I'm drawn to
the characters who know how they should act or what they should do yet they
struggle to actually do it. I relate to that.
DDS: Now
time for some fun facts about you. If you were to be stranded on the famous
‘Deserted Island’, what three things would you want with you?
I think I tend to be a bit pragmatic.
There's a machine that can convert the humidity in the air into drinking water.
I'd want that with some solar panels to power it. Next I'd want a satellite
phone with GPS so I could let people know I was stranded on a deserted island
and then give them the GPS coordinates. I'd probably want a gun or a knife so I
could kill some fish to eat. Oh, and a solar cooker to cook the fish. That's
three, right?
DDS: If
‘End of the World’ was fast approaching and you were held responsible for
choosing the 5 books to be saved… which 5 books would you choose?
I'm a bit religious, so if the end of the
world was coming I'd definitely want things to keep my and everyone else's
spirits up. I'd say the first would be scriptures. Wait... I think that's a
movie. (Book of Eli)
The second book I'd want to save would be
a printed copy of Wikipedia. Does that count? I think the encyclopedia
Britannica went out of print. I could be wrong. Wikipedia would have a good
cross section of human knowledge. Otherwise how would post-apocolyptic
generations know who Justin Beber was.
The third book I'd want to take would be
something very comprehensive about gardening. I imagine we'd all be growing our
own food if society collapsed. My uncle lent me a book that had incredible
detail about every possible facet of plant heal and food production. Like soil
preparation, keeping bugs from killing plants, ect...
The Fourth book, I'd probably want
something on constitutions, liberty and government. We'd need to form some kind
of government with the survivors of the apocalypse. As you can see, I'm ill
prepared for the end of the world. I don't know the exact titles.
The Fifth book would be some Tolstoy.
Because if you only had one book of fiction, you'd want it to be the longest
book possible.
DDS: One
thing readers would be surprised to know about you…
I'm six foot five.
DDS:
Besides writing, what else do you enjoy?
I have three kids. I love that I get to
do stupid kid things again with them. It’s great, you get to make time in your
day just to play.
DDS:
What's the one thing that you want your readers to take away from this book?
Right and wrong is not a one-time event.
People who do good things early in life can still ruin it later in life. People
who do bad thing early in life can still turn around and make different
choices. It sounds obvious to read, but I think in real life we're naturally
quick to judge, and incredibly stubborn to change those judgments. I think that
applies for ourselves as well. It’s hard to change our own self view.
DDS:
Anything else you would like to say to your readers/fans?
Thanks
for reading! I'm working hard to kick out the next book in the Red Leaves
series.
About the Author
Benjamin Burrell graduated from film school a little over a decade ago and has been writing screenplays and shorts ever since. He produced and directed of few of his stories as short films and won a handful of awards in film festivals across the country.
Due to the limited nature of screenplays, both in terms of length and feasibility of production, he decided to develop one his most intricate and expansive stories into the Novel, "Red Leaves and the Living Token." With its successful completion, he plans to bring many more of his stories to the Novel form, starting with two more, at least, in the "Red Leaves" series.
Wow, sounds like a great book. A 6'5" writer? That's awesome. :) Great interview.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel like I'm that tall until I see photos of myself standing next to people. There was an episode of Monk where a suspect was 6'3". Monk says only %.05 of the population are above 6'3". Yeah, that made me feel freakishly tall.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone has any questions for me I'll try and drop in over the next few days and answer them.