Ask the Author: Gabriel Boutros
Answered Questions (5)
Gabriel Boutros
Hi Paul, In the "real world" I was a defence attorney in a shooting that was similar to the one in the book. (There were actually 3 shooters and 4 victims, one of whom survived to testify against the accused. I reduced the number of each in the book because too many characters would have made the story unwieldy for me, a first-time novelist.) Some of the differences from the book:: none of the co-accused made deals to testify against the others; we had no alibi witnesses, false or otherwise; and my client was a pleasant young man who was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was very easy to get along with.
The things I found troubling as a lawyer were not from this specific case, but rather things I saw and heard over the years. They never made me doubt myself, because I never felt I crossed any ethical lines, but I knew they would make for a dramatic story.
Thanks for an excellent question and for taking an interest in my book.
Gabriel
(By the way, my client was the only one of the three co-accused to be found not-guilty.)
The things I found troubling as a lawyer were not from this specific case, but rather things I saw and heard over the years. They never made me doubt myself, because I never felt I crossed any ethical lines, but I knew they would make for a dramatic story.
Thanks for an excellent question and for taking an interest in my book.
Gabriel
(By the way, my client was the only one of the three co-accused to be found not-guilty.)
Gabriel Boutros
Hi Elizabeth. If you're referring to books that I wrote and didn't want appearing on my page I had one experience. I had an earlier edition of The Guilty that even had a different title which I wanted removed, especially since it wasn't even available to be bought anywhere. I wrote a question on one of the GR threads (I don't remember which one), and the best that could be done was that the two editions were "combined" under one title. I'm not really sure why an author can't have a title that he wrote removed from his page, which is what I was told. I'd think we should be free to list the books we want to, and not list the ones we don't want. So, I guess I haven't figured it out. Please let me know what your experience is if you're faced with a similar situation.
Gabriel Boutros
I hope to have my new novel, Face/Mask, out later this fall. It's a dystopian view of our world in the very near future, but it revolves around the moral and emotional decay of the characters, which mirrors the devolving condition of the world as a whole. I've posted the first few chapters so readers can get an idea what it'll be about, and let me know what they think.
Gabriel Boutros
It isn't necessarily the most original advice, but I believe that if you don't read widely, it will be very hard to write with any skill. I try to read everything from commercial, pop fiction, to the classic, and modern literary works. If someone wrote a book that many people read and enjoyed, whatever the era, then I try to learn what that particular story-teller's strengths and weaknesses. are. But I've read many books that are not as well written, and those can be just as useful if not more so. If I'm reading a scene that isn't working, whether it's because it's too slow, the dialogue is unbelievable or too clunky, or any other reason, I can look at my own writing and see if I'm making the same mistakes. We can all learn from our own mistakes, and other people's mistakes as well.
Gabriel Boutros
The book I'm working on now, which I've recently renamed Face/Mask, comes from two different story ideas. The first is a story about a man who is so vain and petty that he would hurt someone who has tried to be nice to him, just to satisfy his own warped ego. (I like writing about small, stupid people who do things to hurt each other, and end up having a greater impact on the world around them than they expected.) The other story idea is a bit more prosaic: a look at our world in the near future, much more polluted, the war on terror going on endlessly, civil rights being eroded, etc.
I know, it's far from the first (or the last) grim look at our potential future. I think what will set this story apart is the setting (my home town of Montreal), the condition I imagine the world will be in, and the characters who inhabit it. Only time will tell if I can successfully get these two very distinct ideas to meld into one good story.
I know, it's far from the first (or the last) grim look at our potential future. I think what will set this story apart is the setting (my home town of Montreal), the condition I imagine the world will be in, and the characters who inhabit it. Only time will tell if I can successfully get these two very distinct ideas to meld into one good story.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:06AM · flag