What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
Like most people, I live to be happy, and one of the things that makes me happy is being creative. Whether it's through a blog, story, podcast, video, or whatever, each day presents an opportunity for me to create something. Life is like a board game, and board games are the most fun when it's your turn and you're winning. So each day I wake up, it feels like it's my turn, I get to roll the dice and move my token a step ahead.
What's the story behind your latest book?
My latest book just came out in October 2013 and it's called Prodigy. It's set a hundred years in the future and focuses on a genius girl named Alex.
It came about in two ways:
First, I wanted to write a novel that was drastically different than my first book. Before sitting down to write it, I had already decided to pursue a career in writing. I had written one novel called The Art of the Hustle, which is a rags-to-riches tale based on my life. I figured if I wanted to pursue a career in writing and take myself seriously as a writer, I should be able to write about stuff I know nothing about. So I deliberately handicapped myself as a challenge just to see if I could do it. I made the protagonist female, gave her a form of autism called synesthesia, and set it 100 years in the future. The book was much more challenging to write, but I pulled it off. So far the reviews are even better than my first book.
The second story behind this book is that at the time, I just bought an iPhone and was so impressed with it. I loved the idea that you could carry around so much information in your pocket. I then asked myself, if this phone exists now, what will they have a 100 years from now? I came to the inevitable conclusion that information would be downloaded directly into a person's brain. And if that's true, I then asked what would that do to society? So that's the setting of Prodigy — brilliant people in a hyper-advanced society.
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