Ask the Author: S.E. Sasaki
Answered Questions (30)
S.E. Sasaki
My mother ate my little sister. Then she came for me.
S.E. Sasaki
Well, Richard, I don't know what the best way is, but I have my first book, Welcome to the Madhouse, available as a permafree book and I do use Amazon Ads to promote the book. My hope is that if people enjoy Welcome to the Madhouse, they will go on to buy the other books. I have two available - Genesis and Bud by the Grace of God - as ebooks. Readers often buy the two at once, presumably after they have read Madhouse. That being said, I have lots of downloads of Madhouse but not as many sales of Genesis and Bud as I would like. I am launching the third book in the series, Amazing Grace, and I hope if I do the launch right, I will get more sales of the earlier books as well. Haha. Fingers crossed! ;D
S.E. Sasaki
Hi James. I forgot about the one-to-one review page. Did you want to read and review Bud by the Grace of God? If you send me your email, I will send you an ePub of it and thank you!
S.E. Sasaki
Oh, man! Tough question! The author would probably be Roger Zelazny. He was a beautiful writer and was very prolific, so I would not run out of reading material, nor would I get bored. I loved his Amber series as well as Lord of Light and creatures of Light and Darkness. Runners up would be Steven Erikson or Gene Wolfe. The band would probably be U2. I love their music. The food would have to be spaghetti! lol.
S.E. Sasaki
Thank you for this question, Raquel. It is a very good one. I am a very 'visual' writer. I write what I 'see'. For me, the challenge is finding the correct words in the right sequence to convey what I visualize and create the emotions I want in my reader. My artwork helps me envision the scenes in my stories. Creating pictures stimulates my creative side. For example, I have created a series of dragon paintings that have become the basis for a dragon trilogy I am almost finished writing. In this way, my artwork can definitely compliment my writing just by stimulating my imagination.
S.E. Sasaki
I think I would choose Arrakis from Frank Herbert's Dune and I would want to smell spice and fly in a 'copter above one of the great sandworms of Arrakis.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Noor. I do not know how to personally message you. Where do I find that on your author page? Haha. I can read your book for a one-on-one review. I don't know how it works. Do you read mine or does someone else have to do that? Very confusing!
S.E. Sasaki
Infinity Engine by Neal Asher, Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald, The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Beren and Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien
S.E. Sasaki
My grandfathers came over from Japan to Canada around 1900. My father's mother came with her husband and left her five year old daughter behind. She died when I was two. I wonder how she coped with leaving her daughter to go to a new country so far across the sea. My mother's mother sailed from Japan to Canada to marry a man she had only seen in a photograph. I wonder how that must have been for her. I hope to tackle this book some day: A Tale of Two Women.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi William! Thanks so much for asking me this question. I have thought long and hard on this one. I have to say that my vision of what will happen in the next 100 years is pretty bleak and it is based largely on what I see happening already in the world. There will continue to be a greater division between the 'haves' and 'have-nots', the rich and the poor. As our world population reaches over 8 billion, food and clean water will become more and more scarce, as will fertile land. With the seas being overfished and bees dying, food production will become less. Starvation will lead to illness (pestilence) and war. Medicine may advance in the rich countries - extending life and perhaps eliminating most cancers - but will be reserved for the rich. The poor will be locked out or walled off. Thus, there will be a marked dichotomy in medical treatment. The rich will thrive and live longer. The poor, which will be the vast majority, will have no affordable health care and will die off at a younger and younger age. This will likely be encouraged. With antibiotic resistance growing, there will be fewer medications that can treat the resistant organisms and the world may face epidemics of superbugs. As oil runs out, the production of so much of what we take for granted today will disappear, such as all of our plastics and many of our synthetic chemicals. Robotics will continue to take jobs from humans, including in the medical field. As the population climbs towards 10 billion, I fear there may be the manufacture of diseases to cull the population, unless war does so first. Much of the medical advances will probably be related to war, whether it be in the field of biological warfare or in the treatment of those harmful biological agents. My own science fiction book, Welcome to the Madhouse, predicts the use of gene modification of humans to make them better adapted to harsher environments and also predicts the increased use of androids and robots in the provision of medical care as well as the use of nanobots. Unless the world's population can come under some strict reproductive controls, I fear the worst is approaching. Sorry for the doom and gloom picture but I can't see how things can be averted.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Mackenzie! Thank you for this question! I would love to write a historical fiction novel loosely based on my two grandmothers who came from Japan to Canada around the 1900's. Their stories are very different and reveal what it was like for Japanese women leaving their home country for a foreign land. They were from two different social classes: upper and middle, and they faced great hardship coming to a foreign land and facing WWII and evacuation camps. I hope to hone my writing skills a little more before I tackle that project.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Regine! Thank you for your question: How much do you identify with Grace and why? I identify a lot with Grace. The ethical questions she deliberates upon are questions I have. She is my conscience. I wanted to raise questions about our society regarding prejudice, second class citizens, free will, acceptance, redemption, immortality, war. Grace mulls these ideas over and I hope gets the reader thinking on these issues.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Eric! Thank you for this interesting question. I practiced for over 20 years as a family physician and I got to know a lot of my patients and their families very well. I saw the impact disease and disability had on them all firsthand and I suffered with them. My family members have not been without their troubles, either, unfortunately. My brother developed cancer very early in life and also suffered from a brain hemorrhage and my parents have had cancer, just to cite a few things. So I think I am in tune with what a family goes through when there is a devastating illness. What I have learnt in my 30 years of practice is that people are incredibly strong and resourceful and brave.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Jeanette! Haha. Is that a leading question? I would have to say I love 'Bones' or Doctor McCoy from the original Star Trek. He is curmudgeonly, sarcastic, funny, and loyal. He often played the ethicist, the moralist in the show. In my mind, he represented our 'conscience'. I would like to think most doctors play this role in real life and my character, Grace Lord, is my conscience in my books. She asks the ethical questions. We need someone to ask these questions. Technology can do miracles, but is it right? Is it good for humanity? What are the downsides? What are the dangers? Just because we can do something, does not necessarily mean we should in every case.
S.E. Sasaki
Hi E.M. Swift-Hook! Wow, that is a toughie! I love most of my characters or should I say that I enjoy being in their heads. There are a few that I don't enjoy being in, but that is the cost of being a writer. If I had to pick one, I would have to say it is Bud. Everyone who has read my books says the same thing. They LOVE Bud. They want MORE BUD. I'll say no more. ;D
S.E. Sasaki
Hi N.C. Stow! Thank you for this question. Well, I have to be honest. Writing is a spiritual way for 'fixing' me. Lol. Writing is an expression of my inner self and very necessary as an outlet for me. Medicine is very serious. It deals with illness, trauma, disability, death, relationship problems, etc. Most people do not come to the doctor when everything is going fine. They come when they are troubled. But I do believe in the saying, "Laughter is the best medicine." I like to make people laugh and I did it a lot with my patients. My books, Welcome to the Madhouse and Bud by the Grace of God have a lot of comedic scenes sprinkled amidst the suspenseful ones. If I can take people's minds off of their troubles for a little while - make them laugh out loud, perhaps - then I will feel I have done what had I set out to do, which was 'entertain' people. If I can bring happiness and joy to someone, then I hope I have helped them on a spiritual level, at least for the moment. ;D
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Claire! Interesting question. I never really watched Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5. At the time, I was a very busy family physician with a solo general practice and was raising two children. I don't think I ever had time for TV! Lol. I watched the original Star Trek and subsequent movies and spinoffs. The medical space station was my question of what would a 'hospital' look like in the future. What would the facility be treating? Would there still be doctors? Would they all be replaced by machines? (I hope not). I believe the act of treating people is just as important to humans as is the need to be treated. Caring for others makes us compassionate and is part of what makes us human. When the art of treating people becomes just a money grab for profit, it loses its way. I would not want to see medicine taken over by the machines. Welcome to the Madhouse is my effort to show that empathic doctors will still be required in the future or at least humane, caring doctors, whether they be human, part human, or android. ;D
I hope I have answered your question?
I hope I have answered your question?
S.E. Sasaki
Hi Warren. Thank you for the question. The first part is easy and I could go on and on, but I will give you the short list. ;D Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Frank Herbert, Gene Wolfe, Ian McDonald, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neal Asher, Connie Willis, Sherri Tepper, Ursula K. LeGuin, Arthur C. Clarke, . . .
As for which of the authors have had the biggest influence on my writing, I can't say. Reviewers like Kirkus Reviews state that my novels take them back to the golden age of science fiction, so I guess it would have to be the older writers. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein. I wish I could write like Ian McDonald, Patricia McKillop, or Steven Erikson. I can only read them and drool in awe. ;D
As for which of the authors have had the biggest influence on my writing, I can't say. Reviewers like Kirkus Reviews state that my novels take them back to the golden age of science fiction, so I guess it would have to be the older writers. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein. I wish I could write like Ian McDonald, Patricia McKillop, or Steven Erikson. I can only read them and drool in awe. ;D
S.E. Sasaki
I created a series of dragon collages that are the basis for a dragon fantasy trilogy I am writing for a publisher in Canada which will be coming out in 2020. So in that instance, the art fuelled the writing. But often my writing inspires me to create the artwork. My collages tend to be more fantastical in nature (and I have shown at Ad Astra and the World Fantasy Convention) while my writing tends to be more scientific. I guess I need to express myself in more than one way, in more than one medium.
S.E. Sasaki
I usually write at my dining room table at home, but I try and write wherever I can, so that also means at the hospital in the doctors' lounge, the hospital library, the call room, or the cafeteria.
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