Indie Author Interview: Welcome Ted Galdi

Welcome to Author Interview Thursday hosted by the Never Too Old for YA and NA Books group on Goodreads. September is our Indie Author Interview month and we're very excited to share it with you!

Today we welcome author Ted Galdi!

Meet 14-year-old Sean Malone.  He has an IQ above 200, a full-ride scholarship to one of the country’s top universities, and more than one million dollars from his winning streak on Jeopardy!  However, Sean wishes he could just be normal.

But his life is anything but normal.  The US government manipulates him, using him as a codebreaker in pursuit of a drug lord and killing innocent people along the way.  
For reasons related to his personal security, Sean finds himself in Rome, building a new life under a new name, abandoning academics, and hiding his genius from everyone.  When he’s 18 he falls in love.  

The thrills begin again when he learns that his girlfriend is critically ill and it’s up to him to use his intellect to find a cure, a battle pitting him against a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company and the demons of his past.   

Elixir is a story about identity, secrets, and above all, love.

Welcome to the blog!

1.    Did you always know you wanted to be a writer or did you want to be something else? 

The writing thing was a part of me from a really young age.  When I was a little kid I’d take superheroes like Batman and create my own little stories with them, mostly stick-figure drawings with short sentences on notebook paper.  The artwork was terrible, and the stories were very short, but they were definitely stories, with beginnings, middles, and ends.  I loved doing stuff like that for as long as I can remember.

When I got a little older and got into sports, there was a stretch when I thought I was going to play first base for the New York Yankees, but as I’m sure you know, that never happened.

After college I got into the business world, starting my own company.  It was great, but in the back of my mind writing was still a passion, which I unfortunately put on pause for a while to focus on my company.  Elixir, my new book, is my first official venture into professional writing.  It’s really exciting to have had a passion for over twenty years, and now finally being able to turn it into a finished product to share with everyone else.

 2.   How long does it take you to write a book from start to finish?

I’ve only written one book so far, Elixir, which took me a little under a year to do, if you define writing as the time spent actually hitting the keys.  However, for six months or so before I began the first chapter, I carried the premise for Elixir in my head, weighing certain things until it all felt right and ready to go on paper.  From the conception of the initial premise to the final draft it took about a year and a half.

3.   How do you come up with themes for your stories?

A good theme is something that’s emotionally compelling and relatable across a wide spectrum of potential readers.  However, it must also be able to sync with the plot of your story, because the core purpose of the plot is to essentially “prove” your theme; you may have a great theme as a standalone idea, but if it doesn’t sync with the character choices and outcomes in the story, it will feel forced and the writing can come off as preachy, as if the author is talking “at” the reader instead of letting the reader deduce his/her own thematic conclusions from the actions of the characters.

With Elixir the theme is: you may be born with something you think is a burden, but if looked at in the right way, it may actually be something wonderful.  In order to stress that, I had to make sure the world of my story supported it from the first page to the last.  The book’s protagonist, Sean Malone, is a teenage genius who first feels his high intelligence is a curse, but then is forced to embrace it in a very unique way that leads him to begin changing his opinion.

 4.   Do you have a schedule of when you write? 

While writing Elixir I had a full-time job to go to from morning until evening.  By the time I chilled out after work and then ate dinner and went to the gym, it was usually about nine o’clock.  I’d begin writing around then and go until around 1:00 AM each night during the week.  On the weekends it was a little easier; I’d get a solid chunk of writing done from late morning through late afternoon every Saturday and Sunday.

5.   How are you able to balance other aspects of your life with your writing?

As I discussed in Question 4, it was a challenge to balance writing with a full-time job.  I also made sure I didn’t cut out my social life.  I feel it’s not just important to have a social life as a human being, but also as an author in particular; it helps break up those intense writing periods and lets you refuel your mind.  Until the very end, about a month before I released Elixir and I was really deep into the editing, I made sure I never wrote on Friday or Saturday night.  This gave me some much-needed release time. 

When balancing anything around your writing, the best thing to do is give yourself some rules you promise you won’t break.  For instance, for me it was simply “never write on Friday or Saturday night.”  For other people it may be something entirely different; however, as long as it’s a rule that works for you and you promise yourself you won’t go back on it, you should be able to find a good sense of balance. 

6.   What elements do you think make a great story line?

The big three for me are plot, relatability, and message.  Plot meaning: is what’s happening in the world of the story interesting and attention keeping at face value?  Relatability meaning: do I care about the characters and are their actions believable?  Message meaning: do the other two elements, plot and relatability, mesh in such a way that a clear and poignant theme – or message – is put forth by the author at the end of the story?    

7.   What was the hardest thing about writing a book?

With Elixir the hardest thing was having a full-time job to dedicate my attention to, while also writing a book.  I of course didn’t want my performance at work to suffer at all because of the writing, so I had to make sure when I was at the office the author part of my mind was “shut off.”  Then when I was back home I had to sort of flip that part of my brain on again.  Having to toggle such a major piece of your mind on and off constantly for almost a year was very difficult.

 8.   How many books have you written so far? Do you have a favorite? 

Just one…but there will be more : )

 9.   Do you have a favorite character?

My favorite in any book is Max, the main character in Where the Wild Things Are.

 10.  Where do you write?  

I like to be in private.  I live alone, so once I’m home it’s pretty easy to find some peace and quiet and write on my own terms. 

Thanks so much for being here with us today, Ted!

• Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MAYJIZM
• Goodreads book link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22849611-elixir
• Goodreads author link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8155632.Ted_Galdi