Ask the Author: E.E. Giorgi
Answered Questions (2)
E.E. Giorgi
To be completely honest, the inspiration for the Track Presius mystery series was a vampire book that I picked up and found so disappointing I couldn’t get it out of my head (no, I shall never pick up a vampire book again!). I guess there is such a thing as a “negative inspiration,” because I couldn’t get over how bad the book was, and how differently I would’ve written the story had I been the author.
Around the same time, I discovered that most of our genome is made of genes that have lost their function. I was reading a paper on these “silent genes,” when it occurred to me that while vampires do not exist, predators like lions and wolves not only exist—their genes are still embedded in our genome. And that’s when that alternative story brewing in my head took a completely new angle.
The idea for the main character, Detective Track Presius, came from the following question: what if the ancestral genes we have in our DNA suddenly turned on? Our predator ancestors heavily relied on their olfactory and auditory senses to hunt. Humans, instead, are most sensitive to visual stimuli. As we made the switch from olfaction to vision, evolution gradually silenced some genes and turned on others. The old genes lost their function, but they were never erased from the DNA: they became what we now call “pseudogenes.”
With CHIMERAS I took the poetic license of turning back “on” these silenced genes and created an ordinary man with extraordinary senses. The hyper-sensitivity to smells in particular has not been exploited enough in fiction, and I soon realized that it was the perfect trait for a crime investigator.
Around the same time, I discovered that most of our genome is made of genes that have lost their function. I was reading a paper on these “silent genes,” when it occurred to me that while vampires do not exist, predators like lions and wolves not only exist—their genes are still embedded in our genome. And that’s when that alternative story brewing in my head took a completely new angle.
The idea for the main character, Detective Track Presius, came from the following question: what if the ancestral genes we have in our DNA suddenly turned on? Our predator ancestors heavily relied on their olfactory and auditory senses to hunt. Humans, instead, are most sensitive to visual stimuli. As we made the switch from olfaction to vision, evolution gradually silenced some genes and turned on others. The old genes lost their function, but they were never erased from the DNA: they became what we now call “pseudogenes.”
With CHIMERAS I took the poetic license of turning back “on” these silenced genes and created an ordinary man with extraordinary senses. The hyper-sensitivity to smells in particular has not been exploited enough in fiction, and I soon realized that it was the perfect trait for a crime investigator.
E.E. Giorgi
I just sent out ARC copies for MOSAICS, book 2 in the Track Presius mystery series. I now need to do one more round of edits for GENE CARDS, a mystery set in a near future, featuring Biothreat Agent Skyler Donohue.
After that... who knows? I'm brewing some ideas for a GENE CARDS #2 ...
After that... who knows? I'm brewing some ideas for a GENE CARDS #2 ...
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