Linda Riesenberg Fisler

Ever since I can remember I have been writing. I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, when I started writing with crayons, pencils--anything I could get my hands on at the time. While everyone else was coloring with their crayons, I was writing words. Before I could write, I would make up stories and entertain my friends. It always started with a "Let's say..." followed by some wild tale. I had the best friends, most the time they joined right in and created all these wonderful worlds that we played in for hours!
We would create plays and write spoofs of popular movies. We would act them out in front of a tape recorder, complete with sound effects. It was great fun. One time, we were having a bit of fun with Indiana Jones, reading from the Raiders of the Lost Ark screenplay book I had purchased. One of my friends ran up with her best Sallah imitation: "Indy..Indy--you have a line." I replied--since I was playing Indy--"Not until I crack the gun and shoot the whip!" Dead silence as we all tried to hold back our laughter. Of course we couldn't! Those were such great times.

Blind Influence started back in 1979, that is why the book is set in 1979. I had just graduated High School (well-guess you know my age now!) and started working at a consumer products company. I was testing toilet paper in the physical test lab. As hilarious as that probably sounds it was sucking the life right out of me. Roll out the tp to test on various pieces of equipment, record the numbers generated and then start over. The creativity was being sucked right out of me! Of course, when in a meeting we were asked to be creative and come up with other products or improvements, everyone would say "You're creative--come up with something." Sorry, I was not creative in that way! I, like everyone else, could not wait until Friday. I would head home and my writing would start. It poured out of me and that's when I started Blind Influence. The weekend would be spent writing and researching. I would probably only sleep a few hours each day. I was really into politics at that time and I was reading the Jason Bourne books. I was so frustrated with Robert Ludlum and how the Jackal kept escaping that I literally threw the book against the wall and challenged myself to write an espionage/suspense novel. After 29 years of work and becoming a fine art artist (a side track I enjoy today), I pulled the seven inch stack of handwritten scenes together, turning it into Blind Influence.