Featured Interview With Lanza Sebastiano
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Certainly. I’m an author/land surveyor based in Sicily, Italy. I take great pleasure in observing, studying everything that draws my attention. And when something does, I have this almost obsessive need to understand how that something works, down to the most minute detail.
I’m a lover of fine arts, meaning anything whose whole value is greater than the sum of its single parts. Hence, fine art can be found nearly everywhere, be it a good dinner, a painting, a movie, music, even football.
I also adore impossible challenges, if nothing else for their paradoxical nature. Nothing is impossible.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I first became interested in storytelling. In fact, my first endeavour of this kind was to be a comic book. It never really went on to be something more than just an idea, but I will work on it in the not too distant future. It’s a promise I made to myself, partly because it is a story worthy of being told.
As for the writing part, well, it all started as a game. I wasn’t even sure I could write a full-length novel when I put hands on That Which Must Happen. Yet, here we are.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I was always fascinated by Luigi Pirandello’s works. He has this way of turning psychological analysis into simple writing and concepts. The crisis of the relative self, his thoughts about humor, the contrast between life and form. These are all subjects worth studying in depth, as they’re all enlightening. The fact that we’re all wearing a mask, a concept upon which he wrote Uno, Nessuno e Centomila, is an actual psychological concept developed by Jung, (the concept is interpreted slightly differently by the two).
Although he’s not an author, Christopher Nolan’s works are a great inspiration as well. Yes, he’s a brilliant storyteller. His manipulation of time and subjectivity/objectivity is so thought-provoking and enjoyable. His films are study-worthy material.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
That Which Must Happen is a novel about fate. Not the same fate we’re all acquainted with, rather, a series of interconnected events all influenced by each other and by our choices. In other words, an active fate.
It’s also Benjamin’s story. Benjamin is a child able to foresee, forestall, and alter these events happening all around him. In other words he’s able to control fate. But does he do that of his own accord? Surely there must be a set of rules for this. What that set of rules is, I’m not going to say.
However, at some point during the novel, his personal attachments are going to get in the way, as the one person he truly cares about is faced with a less than ideal fate. Considering that every event is connected to another and so on, he cannot simply save her. That would make the entire novel rather dull, wouldn’t it?
He was a very interesting character to develop, as I had to think outside the box.
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