Ask the Author: Andy Lazris
Answered Questions (8)
Andy Lazris
The Great Stupidity came to me during COVID, when I read about the Black Death and realized that the doctors and scholars in 1450 were just as dogmatic and moronic as those "scientists" telling us how to save the world from COVID. I am a doctor on the front lines of COVID and have written two scholarly books on it, but nothing beats satire, and that's what this book is. From the Great Frenchie who tells everyone that to stop from dying they have to wave their hands in just the right way and then later to wave two hands, to Monks who dip artifacts in water and sell it as a cure, to Flagellants who who whip themselves to purify their internal air and then bleed all over to help cure people, to the doctors who wore long masks and studied peoples bowel movements, we really haven't come very far in 600 years! It's a fun book to write, and I have finished 11 out of my 12 songs for it and will have all of it up on my website soon!
Andy Lazris
I am always inspired to write. Ideas float into my head like a tidal wave, and the madness of the world in which we live makes we want to confront it in the only way I am capable, which is to write fiction and nonfiction.
Andy Lazris
I am writing two fiction books. Both will have music that I will also write. One, the Great Stupidity, follows a blacksmith during the Black Death as he tries to save his village by finding the other half of Saint Ambrose's toe nail and gluing it back together, as he finds friends along the way, and plenty of people who have figured out bizarre ways to end the death, all of which are based on historical reality. The other book which I just started is called Thomas Jefferson and the Abduction of Hell, and it's a lot of fun to write! I'm working on a nonfiction book with my good friend Alan Roth that is almost done being edited, and it is our passionate expose on the health care system ever since the sage guidance of Dr. William Osler became supplanted by the Flexner Report in 1911 and led our system into a pursuit more intent to measure and fix numbers than to care for humans.
Andy Lazris
This is what I tell all aspiring writers: write for yourself, and no for anyone or anything else. You'll have far more disappointments than successes, and unless the writing process is fulfilling to you, as it is to me, and if you gauge your success by how many books get published and read, 999/1000 authors will fail and give up. I write because I love it!! When I spoke several times to a 4th grade class about writing, I showed them my funniest rejection letters. I told them that you have to laugh at the world's judgment and then move on. Writing is therapy. It is life.
Andy Lazris
Creating worlds that I can control! In my novels Three Brothers from Virginia and The Geriatrics Vengeance Club I was able to create wonderful characters and have them face all the horror of the world and come out on top! Most of their success came after realizing that only by escaping the wrench of society can one fully be free, a Stoic idea that I personally embrace. It's hard for me to do that in the real world; as a doctor I'm often muffled and paralyzed by the prevailing dogma that prevents me from helping my patients. But in my fictional world, it always world out. And just when my character in the Geriatrics Vengeance Club, Doctor Ben, gives up and is ready to end his live when COVID's vicious censorship and dogma destroys him, everything works out for him and he gets his every wish! Ah, if only I could be an author of my own life!
Andy Lazris
Most of my inspiration, dialogue, songs, and ideas come to me when I run, bike, swim, or kayak. When I have writer's block, I go somewhere alone, preferably doing one of the activities I described, or hiking, staring into the Bay, or sitting in a coffees shop. When I do that, ideas flow into me!
Andy Lazris
I would go to Rome! I have read so much about Rome, from SPQR now to the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris to the very exciting book about the end of the republic, The Storm before the Storm. How much alike we are to the Romans, and how much we can learn from their successes and failures! My most recent book, Yadel the Dreidel, takes place in Rome and Roman Judea and I love writing about it as much as reading about it. I think we'd all feel very much at home in Rome.
Andy Lazris
I am reading a lot of history including Mary Beard's SPQR, The Man who Ran Washington by Peter Baker, The Dead are Arising about Malcom X by Les Payne, Children of Ash and Elm about the Vikings by Neil Price, Calhoun by Robert Elder, Say Nothing about the IRA by Patrick Keefe, Hitler Volume Two by Volker Ulrich, Providence Lost by Paul Lay that talks about Oliver Cromwell, Evening in the Palace of Reason about Bach and Frederick the Great by Gardner, and all three of the Stoic books by Ryan Holiday. I still hope to read Noise by Kanahman before the summer ends!
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more