Anthony Dobranski Online

Tag: backstory

  • Q&A about The Demon in Business Class

    Q&A about The Demon in Business Class

    Let’s talk about The Demon in Business Class!

    The Demon in Business Class is a modern fantasy about two people, Zarabeth and Gabriel. They each find a place in the world, a secret magic, where they fit, but they also find each other — and they can’t have both.

    It’s also a story of hidden international conspiracies, set in multiple countries around the world — a supernatural corporate thriller love story.

    So what does the demon do in Business Class?

    The demon gives Zarabeth just one power: it lets her speak and understand all languages. Imagine what you could do with that! Of course, it has a cost… but it lets Zarabeth cause a lot of problems, in many countries. Which she enjoys.

    Gabriel’s a psychic sensitive to evil. When we meet him he doesn’t understand that, so mostly he gets into fights. He tamps down on a lot of his power to manage it, but that isn’t working any more. He has to find another way to be.

    What’s the conspiracy?

    That would be telling! On the back of the book, I share this much: Zarabeth is working to start a war. Gabriel is trying to stop one. It’s a big thing, though, and neither has anything close to all the information.

    Demon is a stand-alone novel, and in fantasy at least, that’s not common. Why did you write it that way?

    It’s the story, finally. The characters change. Not all their problems are solved, of course, and they have some new ones, but this is a time in their lives they live through.

    Plus, I like an ending.

    I think readers like an ending too! Before the pandemic, I promoted the book at literary festivals and comic-cons. I’m trying to find my best audience, so I would say up-front it was a stand-alone. I was surprised by how positive a response I got. Readers would talk about how they got tired of waiting for the next book, or how they also liked to have something to mix in between long series, like watching a movie between bingeing shows.

    This one novel is also a tremendous journey – a dozen countries and a large cast of characters, from the viewpoints of two distinctive characters, with some big ideas, told crisply and with style.

    Will you write another book with these characters?

    Hmmm… I have no plans. Of course, I have some ideas!

    Enough characters are alive at the end that their story could continue, and while the main characters get to a different place in their lives, the conspiracies continue too.

    I have no plans, though. I have other books to write first.

    See more at the Demon+ page, including samples, interviews and posts.

  • The first idea

    The idea for The Demon in Business Class came at a weird time. I had a good job, opening overseas offices for the internet company AOL. I had just finished a six-month stint in Tokyo, a life-changing and confidence-building experience. I was waiting to start my upcoming assignment in Sydney — waiting far longer than expected. After the energy and focus of startup life overseas, I suddenly had very little to do at what had become an enormous company. I felt like a snowboard in summer.

    I was still processing a bad relationship from the year before — or, really, back to processing it, cleaning out the emotional junk I had ignored while working in Japan. Many friends had settled down while I was away, so social life was hard to find. I ate a lot of dinners, at home and in restaurants, alone with a book.

    My dear friend Erik Bennett was working as an actor in Los Angeles. He and I had created a short-lived arts magazine some years before, and he was my only connection to my early creative dreams. At one point Erik had said, lightheartedly but with a sense of real possibility, that I should ditch my job and come make movies with him. As the boredom of waiting had grown, it was on my mind.

    One evening I wrote him a letter — on AOL Japan stationery, with a fountain pen given to me by a London colleague.

    Indie movies sounded fun, I wrote, but I was in a navel-gazing place. I could write about corporate life, but while I enjoyed it from the inside, it wasn’t exciting from the outside. I’d probably need some big plot, maybe something archetypal and fantastic. Like, if Good and Evil were rival companies, and two people who were on either side of that somehow fell in love.

    The great juggler Michael Moschen once talked about how he might pick up an object, like a bent piece of rebar, and feel a sickening in his stomach. He knew from that single heft he could do something with it, and that it would take him a year of hard work.

    I understood that feeling, then.

    It took me more than a decade. I did go to Sydney, and after that to Hong Kong. When I stopped living in hotels, life was waiting for me: my mother’s illness and death, meeting my wife, starting a family. I wrote some screenplay scenes, but I liked fiction better — even though I had to relearn how to write it, and learn more. I wrote 400 pages, tossed them out, and started over.

    What surprises me still is how I didn’t let go of this basic idea, or it of me. Now I have new books in me, but this is the book that made me a writer.

    Welcome aboard. Fasten your seat belt. Bon Voyage!