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Riccardo Ruggiu 

Interview With Author Riccardo Ruggiu

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I wrote ten books, and in addition to the passion for writing books, music has a great impact in my spare time; I’m a very good musician (piano, synth and guitar), DJ and deep connoisseur of home and professional audio equipment.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is: Windows 11: Practical guide to the latest Microsoft operating system.
I wrote it to tell the brand new operating system to my readers, discovering all the news about it.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I usually write my books late at night, because it helps me keeping concentrate.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway.

What are you working on now?
I’m translating the 3rd chapter of my command-prompt book, from the Italian version.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I use LinkedIn.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Sure, keep going writing your books to improve your experience day by day.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Always keep moving.

What are you reading now?
The old man and the sea (Hemingway)

What’s next for you as a writer?
Develop new computer book projects.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
One survival book, one spiritual book and one cooking book.

Author Websites and Profiles

Riccardo Ruggiu Amazon Profile

 

Jennifer Fraser 

Interview With Author Jennifer Fraser

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I love reading. After I finished my Masters in Comparative Literature, it occurred to me that if I did a PhD, I could basically stay in the library, read all day and not have to work. I wrote my dissertation on what made someone transform from a reader of culture to a writer of culture and that turned into my first book. I used literary giants to explore the phenomenon. The book got picked up by University Press of Florida in 2002 and “Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce” hit the shelves causing great excitement among professors and grad students.

I was lecturing at University of Toronto at this time and we had two boys – an eight year old and a three year old. My husband took a political position on the other side of Canada and we moved. I was unable to get a position in a university and began teaching in a private school. I continued researching and writing and in 2011 my next book was published by University of Toronto “Be A Good Soldier: Children’s Grief in English Modern Novels.” Being a mother and a teacher of teenagers had made me far more aware of the impact adults had on children as they raised them and educated them.

While I love literary studies and deep dives into research, I’m also drawn to great stories and page-turners so for fun I wrote a couple of thrillers. One was a wine thriller called “Crush” and the other was a historical thriller about Queen Elizabeth II visiting Canada in the 1950s and being the focus of a terrorist plot.

I did an about turn for my fifth book as I was pulled into an abuse crisis at the private school where I was teaching. I wrote all about it in “Teaching Bullies” where I put the story into the arena with other abuse stories in the media, law, psychology, education, and neuroscience. It was the brain science that really caught my imagination. Too impatient for the long drawn out publishing process, I published this urgent book under our own imprint Motion Press (2015).

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book came out in April 2022 and it was inspired by resigning in protest at one private school covering up abuse only to be hired at another one where abuse was being covered up. I realized that our society has normalized child abuse and we had to stop it. My book uses neuroscience, neurobiology, medicine, psychology research in order to change the conversation on bullying and abuse. My goal with “The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health” is to empower readers to know what’s going on in their brain, how at risk it is from all forms of bullying and abuse, and how to repair it. The brain is remarkably adept at repair when you know the evidence-based practices to do.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
When I write, I become so engrossed that I tune the world right out. I learned the hard way that I should not be writing and taking care of my kids at the same time. My eight year old was at the skateboard park and I was sitting on a bench at the side working on “Be A Good Soldier.” I called him over to go home and when he got in our van, he said “wow that was quite a fight.” And I’m like “what fight?” And he says “Between those two teenagers. Good thing the police came.” POLICE? I missed the whole thing. Didn’t even know it was happening. I did not get the parenting prize that afternoon.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have an eclectic, diverse love of books. I can read medieval Italian poetry like the “Divine Comedy” and be mesmerized or read Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and cry throughout it while at the same time being awed by the writerly craft. I am definitely influenced by modernist novelists such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, and company. I like their exploration into how to express the inexpressible.

What are you working on now?
I have just finished a new book called “Cloud of False Echoes: A Memoir about Why the Truth Matters.” I am writing poems as I find it therapeutic. I am planning in my head and sort of messily on paper three new books that unpack neuroscience in ways that can enhance our lives.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
In all honesty, I am not good at promoting my books. I have my own website www.bulliedbrain.com and I actively put my interviews and my blogs and my articles on it, but beyond that I am not much of a marketer. I’d rather write another book. I think it might have to do with being an introvert.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Choose the book style you want to write and then analyze it. How is it structured? How does the timeline work? What is the language and style like? How would you characterize it? Who are the speakers of the book? How are you going to represent them and what they say and do? I think writing can be very overwhelming at the beginning but there are ways to break apart a book in order to examine its mechanisms and then recreate them in your own way.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Go faster.” This is what the “Father of Neuroplasticity” Dr. Michael Merzenich always says to me. What I love about it is that we share an urgency about getting information about the brain into the hands of people who need it. There’s no time to waste when kids are suffering so much, when teen mental health is so at risk, when parents, teachers, coaches, frontline workers know next to nothing about brain development.

What are you reading now?
A friend of mine just gave me Brene Brown’s “Atlas of the Heart” which I am keen to read. I have been reading Amy Cuddy’s “Presence.” I am a fan of both of their work.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I am trying to be disciplined and promote my new book, but really I want to work on my next book projects. My greatest joy is writing and sharing ideas with other readers, writers, thinkers and advocates.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I’d have to bring along Marc Lewis “Biology of Desire,” Lisa Feldman Barrett’s “How Emotions are Made,” Larry Anderson’s “The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramon Y Cajal”, and I guess the Old and New Testament (which I’ve always meant to read and feel guilty about not having done so). And if I could add a fifth, I think a collection of Shakespeare’s plays would be nice.

Author Websites and Profiles

Jennifer Fraser Website

Jennifer Fraser Amazon Profile

Jennifer Fraser’s Social Media Links

Goodreads Profile

Facebook Profile

Twitter Account