Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I spent my entire life as a rolling stone, and I soon felt the need to share my experiences with others. I started writing at a very early age about my first adventures on the road, and got to like it so much that while other children wanted to be football players, astronauts or firemen, I wanted to be a writer.
In 1979, at the age of six, I was uprooted from the Great Hungarian Plain and planted in Spain, amidst the wonderful beaches and sharp peaks of Asturias. However, instead of roots I soon grew wings, spread them wide and spent my summers travelling around Europe, mostly on my own, until I finally soared away from the nest. I left Spain in 1998 after graduating from university with a BA in English philology and a master’s degree in conference interpretation, and settled in Paris. There I started a career as a conference interpreter that would take me to more than thirty countries around the world. Then, for the next fifteen years my life was divided between France, Belgium, Hungary and Spain, until in 2013 I landed on the serene shores of Lake Geneva, where I still live today. In 2018, after twenty years of being somebody else’s voice, I decided to have my own and embarked on a new journey as a writer, fulfilling thus my childhood dream.
So far, in June this year, I published my first book in English under the title “Looking for Happiness? Look Inside!”, currently available on Amazon in both eBook & paperback formats. It’s a book aimed at helping people live better, happier lives: I don’t promise readers will achieve instant redemption and eternal happiness, but, if applied, the little changes I offer in this book can go a long way! And, yes, I do believe readers will be better equipped to live their life as they always wanted it to be.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I’m delighted to announce that my second book “Awake, Arise, or be forever fallen!” will be published before the end of September 2019! All the versions are ready and I’m having it printed now, getting ready to launch it officially in a few weeks.
What inspired this book? I started writing this book a couple of years ago with a clear intention in mind: in my early twenties I fought a bitter battle with a serious eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, and, now, after two decades keeping it secret, I felt a compelling need to share it with the people I love most: my children. However, they were (and still are) way too young to understand the depth of my message, and that’s why I decided to write down my experience so that it won’t get lost if I should disappear too early. However, I soon realized that I couldn’t keep it only for my children, that I had to share with the world everything I went through during those dark years, in sum, to leave a written legacy that will help readers avoid making the same mistakes – way too many – that I made.
Finally, I’m all excited about the design of the book: the cover and inside illustrations are the work of an artist and friend I greatly admire, Alicia Varela.
A French and a Hungarian translations of this book will also be published in a near future, but I can’t tell now how near…
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Unusual? If you mean whether I write with blood, no, I don’t. I write mainly at night, not so much because that’s when the muses treat me with some benevolence, but because I have a 9 to 5 job and also young children, and, while the former fills my pocket with money, the latter fill my heart with joy!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Too many to fit here, so I’ll just mention a few off the cuff: Giacomo Casanova; Sándor Márai; Valle-Inclán; Cervantes; Epictetus; John Stuart Mill; Hermann Hesse; Friedrich Nietzsche; Niccolò Machiavelli; Heinrich Böll; Lao Tzu; John Steinbeck… and many, many more. Sándor Márai once wrote that a writer can spend a day without writing, but not without reading.
What are you working on now?
I’m re-reading the third and final book of the mind/anorexia/happiness series, which I hope to publish early next year, but I’d rather devote the little time I have to my creative work. Indeed, I’m writing a fiction book in Spanish and I’m so absorbed by it that I sometimes just forget to eat or sleep. I have no idea how other writers write their books, but for me writing is like an addiction: some ideas torture my mind until I free them, and the only way I have to release them is by giving them a physical, verbal shape that, albeit imperfect, will give them a body to live a life of their own… as Ovid put it: “Habent sua fata libelli”. Now, this book I’m writing will give life to an idea that came all of a sudden and blew my mind like a thunderbolt. There’s nothing I can do about it, only write and release the pressure, or it will grow in my mind until it usurps my place.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I created my own website, but, to be honest, I know nothing about promoting a book… I’m reading blogs and watching youtube videos, doing what everybody else does, and doing what people with more experience tell me to do… that’s how I ended up here tonight!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write, read… and repeat. Eat and sleep now and then, when you must. Find inspiration by living boldly your own life as you want it to be. And don’t forget to enjoy every single second: that’s all you’ve got. It’s called life.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I assume you mean writing-related advice. If that’s the case, the best advice I ever read was to avoid falling into the trap of wanting to be liked, of wanting to be a successful writer. Have the courage to be yourself, more than ever when it comes to writing, have your own style, your own voice, and never, ever compromise. Otherwise everybody will be writing the same things and literary creation as such will disappear forever.
What are you reading now?
Erich Maria Remarque’s “A Time to Love and a Time to Die” (in a Hungarian translation), and Sándor Márai’s “Napló” (Diary), which covers the period from 1943–1989.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Finish the book I’m writing now. Then, start anew.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I see no point in bringing only 3 or 4 books: I’d finish them in a few weeks, and then what? I’d rather bring blank paper and a pen, for while reality is limited, imagination is not.
Author Websites and Profiles
Alberto Vezendi Website
Alberto Vezendi Amazon Profile
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