Right Element at Just the Right Time
When I sat down to write Saving Nova, I wanted to create something truly unique and special. I sought after a genre that really fascinated me throughout my life. A post-apocalyptic world held so much potential waiting to be given a try. With this, I was able to create a world filled with chaos, hostile environments, no government, and even unimaginable dangers. I needed these elements to help create a sense dread and despair in Saving Nova. With everything being so bleak, the choices become harder and lean more on the kill or be killed mentality. This is where Saving Nova is really about. I want my readers to experience a world that isn’t so black and white. Here, things are blended into an overall gray. Several questions are needed to be asked and decided upon throughout the book. Is it okay for heroes to kill or be selfish? Can protagonists have a dark past and be forgiven? Are villains really villains if their motivations are understood and appreciated? All questions whose answers depend on the reader.
Along with this, I took a different path when it came to choosing my main character. I took the concept of the usual hero of any story and broke them down to nothing special. Sean Anders starts off as an eighteen-year-old boy that is like anyone you see on the street. He isn’t a chosen one or was given special powers to make him stand out. He doesn’t even have well-conditioned muscles that protect him or give him an advantage. No Sean Anders is a human as they come. I emphasized this key choice to show that really anyone can be a hero. There is no need for special powers or some prophecy to dictate who can save the world. At the same time, this also leaves room for many flaws. Sean isn’t heroic, brave, or very selfless. He is what a teenage boy can be when faced with venturing out into a dangerous world and having his entire village depend on his success. He is scared and unwilling.
With these key factors, our story begins about a boy set out to save his village. The journey to find food and help for his soon to be starving village, will be filled with many tribulations. Sean will wander into the unknown lands of the outer desert. Out there holds many dangers that can end journeys as fast as they begin. The sun’s crippling heat pours over the land relentlessly, the barren sands stretch for endless miles, and cold-hearted raiders lie in wait for unsuspecting wanderers. If this wasn’t enough to scare travelers away, then the ferocious mimic will. A man-eating beast that can camouflage itself to its surroundings make it a deadly predator to fear. This abomination caused by nuclear radiation on the land also gave it the ability to replicate its prey’s sound, earning its name as a mimic. Sean will enter these lands searching for hope. Even if he can survive against the odds to find the help he needs, it is no guarantee that it will be given to him. And if Sean were to fail then his people will slowly die.
I hope Saving Nova can give readers what I want, something new and fresh that delivers an incredible journey over several books. With it being a series, I am able to go into characters with greater depth allowing more stories to be told throughout the adventure. More opportunities can arise and allow readers to become more attached to certain characters and further submerged themselves in the story. There is much more to come and I am excited to share it with the world.
My name is Luis Martinez, just like the main character in my novel, I am no one special. I don’t have any special abilities except for a superhuman love for pizza. I am not heroic but rather timid, shy, and at times socially awkward. At one point, I tried to lift weights to mirror the size of my favorite marvel character, The Juggernaut, but failed miserably. I really am just an ordinary guy who lives in his hometown Chicago, Illinois. Looking back, I was never a writer or even thought of wanting to be. I spent most of the time playing metal music on my guitar and playing video games for hours on end. Even at times, I would draw and sketch characters or just sit down to watch a good horror movie. Whatever I did, I always followed it with pizza.
If I were to go back in a time machine to when I was in high school and tell my younger self that I wrote book, I would see myself laugh hysterically in disbelief. He would say, “Seriously? I can’t get higher than a C in my English classes and they always haunted our dreams growing up!” But here we are now with a completed book under my belt. It is strange how life turns out. I do recall one parent teacher conference though that my dad talked to me about. Like any other parent teacher meeting, I waited terrified to hear what the English teacher would say. My dad mentioned that the teacher noticed something different about me compared to the other kids in my class. He noticed that I struggled terribly when it came to research papers. Yet, when he assigned free writing activities my pen never left the paper. I was so emerged in creating a world from my imagination that I didn’t notice him staring in fascination. When the other kids struggled to write down a single paragraph I was already flipping over the page to write more. Unfortunately, I never got graded in these types of activities so I thought nothing of it and moved on.
Till one day, I sat in my room bored. I played all the games I had and put down the guitar for the day with little desire to draw. So, I grabbed my laptop turning it on and opened a Word document. I faced the blanked screen and cracked my knuckles with a smile. For what seemed like only minutes in reality were hours that went by as the screen filled with words that wouldn’t stop. The answer to my boredom before became rather a rediscovered passion of mine. Then my life changed to consist of only three things. Work, writing, and pizza. A few months later and a little weight gained for the winter, Saving Nova was born. I stared at the completed rough draft in my hands imagining it into a real book in my head. I pictured a hardcover that had a cool title font with my name at the bottom and my room filled with boxes of them. I peeked out from my room towards my dad as he watched the sports on his tv yelling at the officials for making bad calls. I whispered that one day these pages in my hand would be for real and that it would be all for him.
Author bio:
Luis Martinez lives in Chicago, Illinois where the food is great and the parking is terrible. He likes to unwind after a long week of work by ordering a pizza and watching horror movies. He uses a typewriter for his manuscripts. Saving Nova is his first book.
To every reader who holds my book in their hands, I say, “Welcome to the world that is in my head,” but most of all, “Thank you.”
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