How would you classify your latest work, what inspired its inception?

Please type all responses in Blue. Answer as a band or spokesman for the band.

My newest fictional title is alternative fiction, looking at the past two years through a unique lens by adding a new character into the mix and seeing how it plays out.  I have always been inspired by Star Trek and Twilight Zone, which use this type of fictional device to look at our own society.  More recently, Amazon’s Man in the High Castle did a wonderful job with this, as did Phillip Roth in The Plot Against America.

How long did it take you to complete?  .

I completed the book in 6 months.  It was fun to write and I zipped through it.

Who are some of your top 5 authors or writers you look up to & admire?

Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and various authors of history

Why do you write?

I love writing, burying myself in worlds of my own creation, developing and living with characters, altering the world around me in a way that makes sense.

What’s the biggest take away you want your readers to come away with after  reading your latest work?

When we look at events that occur in our lifetime, we have to view them through lenses that are not always how they are portrayed on TV, by our friends and those we trust, or even by ourselves.  Sometimes when we tweak the story a bit, as I did, we can view these events differently and broaden our understanding of them/  Because I am a front-line COVID doctor who has studied and lived through the pandemic very differently than most people, and because I have a very sharp sense of how fragile both our democracy and science can be when they are taken for granted, I wanted to show this event in another more frightening way, because to me the pandemic threated both democracy and scientific integrity in ways that most people from their very protected perches did not recognize.

What’s the best book you’ve ever read? 

The best fiction book was Dune, which was nuanced and complex; there was no binary concept of good and evil.  The best nonfiction book was the Johnson Series by Cairo, which again shows that life and events can’t be split into good vs bad.

When did you first realize you wanted to become a writer? 

I have been writing since middle school, and finished my first novel in College.  It’s still not published!

How have you evolved as a writer over the last year?

I wrote 4 fiction books in the past year, some satire, some historical, some literary fiction  I have become more aware that I have to keep the books moving fast and shorter

If you could meet, have dinner, have a drink with anyone (writer/non-writer) (dead or alive) who would it be? 

Clearly Albert Einstein!  Other than his brain, I share so much with him.  We are both comfortable in our own shoes and don’t wear sox, we refuse to follow dogma or someone else’s truth, we both value science and democracy in the truest sense, and we would have a great time together talking about everything under the sun and laughing the night away.

What’s next for you? 

I am working on two non-fiction books, one which looks at the roots of our dysfunctional health care system, and one that looks at marriage through the lens of how society has shaped it.  I will also start work on the third and final volume of my Yadel trilogy which takes us on a whirlwind tour of Jewish History through the fabricated creator of Hannukah, Yadel the Dreidel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.dementia.org/authors/andy-lazris-md

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/doclazris?lang=en

End of Interview