Featured Interview With MJ Politis, Ph.D., D.V.M., H.B.A.R.P. (human being, aspiring Renaissance person)
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, grew up in the metro area of NYC till age of 32. Grew some more in Western Canada (Saskatchewan) where I got my own research lab, site unseen. After exhausting all positive opportunities in Saskatchewan for 17 years (with a one year stint in Vancouver), was called out to Interior British Columbia (Kamloops, a highly under-estimated town with regard to grit, warmth and talent) to direct a movie, which led to making 25 more productions. Started to be owned by horses in 1983, which continues to this day.
The elements present in works bearing my name as a credit (or individual responsible for their being put to paper) that define them can be best described as humanistic comedy, drama and satire with a unique cerebral edge. Along with being thought provoking, they speak to common experience of struggling people trying to make the world a better, more enlightened and Alive, big A, place. Premises are often unconventional utilizing unpredictable and intricate plotlines to tell stories about complex characters with many internal contradictions. A large portion of the works utilize historical settings which relate situations that we encounter today, as well as being authentic to descriptions of life which we don’t experience in the 21st century. A common but not always present theme in the books and films is…’revolutionary’. Rugged individualists trying to do and implement the right things in a dead, dying or corrupt world. Central characters in stories penned struggle with intensity to make the world a better place, often against ‘too cool to sweat’ and ‘cool to be cruel’ antagonists.
Due to his previous career as a highly prolific senior level research neuroscientist, lecturer and veterinary clinician, many of the story themes are biomedical or deal with issues regarding how science serves, and (when done irresponsibly) doesn’t serve us in the tradition of fellow docs who became writers such as Anton Chekov and Michael Crichton. Stories about Revolutions are heavily represented because of his dedication to initiating and maintaining positive social change that is healthy as well as sustainable. Tales about the Wild West, the Wild East (Russia) and Greece represent a substantial portion of his writing due to his ancestry as well as having lived the first portion of his 73 year old life in the Big (Crab) Apple as a masochistic workahollic and the second half in rural Western Canada owned by horses, who he continues to work for, and with.
Author, 76 novels/novellas. Dir/Writer 25 plus films. Samples, links, award/festival/distribution history on www.longriderpress.net MJ Politis, Ph.D., D.V.M., H.B.A.R.P. (human being aspiring Renaissance person) mjpolitis@yahoo.com
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was fascinated by books, mostly historical ones about people and peoples who made revolutionary changes in the world, from the age of 8, and would voluntarily write book reports on them. I then moved on to reading science texts in areas of physics, medicine and biology, so I could be one of those people. After establishing myself at the big 30 as a biomedical researcher with publications in top of the line journals, merged into finding cures for the pathologies in the present human soul as a writer of fact-based fiction.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Chekov and Nikos Kazantzakis.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
An intense, independent Native woman scientifically brilliant and tied to her cultural roots with an abusive past fresh out of vet school is trapped into working for old Sawbones pathologically-paternalistic redneck animal doc in a backwater Western Canadian town filled with colorfully-dysfunctional rugged individualists who refuse to be homogenized into the 21st century. Alliances/bondships are challenged by manipulative young Eastern Blueblood Corporate vet who wants to settle family scores with the Sawbones Redneck animal doc and make the old man’s sometimes willing First Nations ‘protégée’ his personal squaw, and the town his prize ‘colony’.
Produced as a feature length film. A book about what the veterinary world is, and should be. An All Creatures Great and Small, with contemporary edge, multicultural theme and Western Canadian setting.
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