Fiction Scribe

Happy Friday!

Today I have a lovely interview for you from man of many trades, Nick Oliva. The trade that brings him here to Fiction Scribe, is of course, writer. He’s written a novel that encompasses much of a lifetime called Only Moments.

Hello and welcome to Fiction Scribe. Tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Nick Oliva (O-lee-va’) and I have been a musician, composer, photographer, an audio engineer, an Entertainment Director and Technical Director for over twenty-five years and am a successful self-made money manager. I also have just opened an upscale restaurant for my brother Anthony called “Wyatt’s� in Henderson, Nevada. I live in what is known as Mount Charleston, in the mountains outside of Las Vegas.

How did you get into writing? Did you always want to be a writer?

I started in grade school writing for the school newspaper. I have always written poetry and songs, but this is my first novel. I have no formal training, but my homeroom nun who had a Master Degree in English, taught me by the stick and did a great job way back then. We had her from the sixth to the eighth grade so her influence on me on learning English and reading skills was great. We took a test in the eighth grade and I had first year and second year college level reading, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. Now you may think I’m crazy, but I think the profession finds you. I would have never thought that I would be doing the things I’m doing.

In your book, you shift from a time in the near future, back to the 1970s. Did your idea always involve jumping in time, or is it something that came to you later?

In “Only Moments” I started with the middle section as I wanted to record the experiences I had for posterity and it indeed was an experience that changed my life and outlook on the world at a very young age of 16. Then without knowing where I was going, I realized that I had to create a climax in the future for my characters and began the futuristic conclusion and then went back and wrote the beginning that leads to middle.

Once that was done, I rewrote the entire book. Originally I had the beginning in the third person, the 1970’s and forward in the first person, and then the climax back to the third and conclusion of the book in the first person as a symbolic device to show that the main character was living in the past, then went back to his roots in the flashbacks, came back to 2020 and his same situation, and then evolves to becoming a new reborn soul, hence the migration back to the first person or a rediscovery. Unfortunately, no one got it, so I rewrote the whole thing in first person.

What started for me as a documentation of a wild teenage vacation across country and through California at age 16 and changed my life permanently, morphed into an attempt at showing life’s bittersweet ride on the road to acceptance that our humanity is all we can embrace regardless of whatever technology we can muster.

What kind of research did you do to write the book?

Much of the research was for the historical references to Columbus and to the religions of the past that I studied while in college. My Senior thesis was a multi-image show entitled, “As One,” a complete look at worldwide religions and their place in all societies through the crisis of life that everyone goes through. Much research took place in the places that the characters are in the book such as Big Sur, California, Yosemite National Park, New York City, and other places that I have been through my life.

I can go out to those places and just take notes because the excitement and rush of being in those places prevents me from allowing my imagination to create my own universe. I mean why bother creating another universe in such incredible beauty that surrounds you? So I take those detailed notes and incorporate them at a later time when I’m cut off from the world. Writing is a very intense experience. There are so many ways to approach it that I don’t think there is any “one” way to do it and that is what is great about it. You can be driving along and then BAM! There is the elusive tie-in you needed to make something work at a higher level or a new idea that transforms what you’ve done. It is all about living life and creating. All things influence your thought patterns.

How do you relate to the main character, Chris Vadia?

I actually relate to Angela, his wife. She is a neurotic driving determined force that seeks perfection, is moody, and demands much of herself and those around her. Everyone thinks that I modeled Chris the male lead after me, and although Angela is a fictional character based in fantasy, I relate much more to her than to Chris.

Didn’t you actually go through a “near death experience” that you had actually written in the novel years earlier?

The first Saturday in October 2003, I woke up and could not move my left leg at all. I had a fever over 102 and had my wife, Joan take me to the Emergency Room. It was there that I was diagnosed with a spinal infection, probably caused by cortisone injections. Dr. Derrick Duke -the man who saved Roy Horn’s life after Montecore, the tiger that had just about severed Mr. Horn’s head from his body accidentally at the Siegfried and Roy Show at the Mirage -was called in and he explained the severity of my situation. Far from routine, I would be fighting for my life.

I underwent a 5-hour emergency operation that and afterwards had Vancomycin intravenously pumped into my arm directly to my heart for the next eight weeks to fight off the spinal infection.

On the second day after the operation, while in critical condition, about 2 AM in the morning, still hooked up to the heart monitors in ICU, my heart stopped for 12 seconds. I experienced an out-of-body phenomena that catapulted me into another world. This happened twice while I was there. My experience was very similar to the fiction I had written in this book many years ago. Much like the character Chris, I came back with a different understanding and as I fought to come back to the living, the transition left me with a totally changed perspective. It was my life imitating my own art. I spent the next five weeks wired-up in the hospital.

The soul has energy with no specific mass. That energy must leave the body when the body can no longer sustain itself, therefore that energy must transform. This is where the metaphysical or inter-dimensional understandings take over. I can tell you, there was no St. Peter, there was no heaven, no hell, no judgement. It was a beautiful experience until I realized that I was fading into nothingness. At that point I asked for and received, a future vision of what would happen to my wife. That vision was extremely disturbing as I saw her in hysterics, crying and so emotionally distraught that I knew I had to fight to avoid becoming absorbed into the golden river that lay before me. I intend to write this experience in a non-fictional book, it is just very difficult to bring some of those memories up as they still to this day paralyze me mentally and make me very sad. Suffice to say that there were visions of many other things that I won’t go into right now. So, I forced my way back once I made the decision or perhaps I should say I was “allowed� to make that decision.

One must understand that I just came out of emergency surgery 2 days earlier and I was taken off the morphine/valium drip because my heart was stopping-that left me in extreme pain. I was in critical condition and wired to ICU’s monitoring system. The cross-over was painless and took all of my pain away, so it was initially very wonderful. I knew I was going back to extreme pain but chose to do so in order to tell my wife and everyone else that it was okay to die. It wasn’t something one should fear. I had to let them know in order that if I should die again while there in the hospital, they would understand and not be so forlorn. My devotion to my wife was the main impetus for me to return even though I knew I might be spending the rest of my life in pain on top of the severe diabetes that I have to deal with each day. Much of what I experienced mirrored my writing years ago, though not exactly, but the scenes were similar.

Being such a skeptic that demands empirical evidence, I asked for the charts from ICU and was shown that I indeed had flat lined during the time that I went over at approximately 2 in the morning. That night after coming back I stood next to the bed waiting for them to come in with the defibrillator and they did so a few minutes later and stopped in their tracks somewhat in shock looking at me. I told them I was alright, to put them down, as they almost seemed determined to use them on me from what their machines told them. That experience changed my mode of thinking immediately upon returning to the land of the living and despite the whatever attempts I’ve made to disprove it, it did happen.

I find all of the authors I interview have a lot in their lives that seems to make writing a near impossibility sometimes. You have even recently opened up a restaurant in Nevada. How did you and how do you have time to write?

Good question! I ask myself that many days. My typical day begins at 6am working the stock market until 1pm or so and off to restaurant until 9pm or so and then back home writing emails, marketing “Only Moments,” or coming up with some marketing plan for the restaurant.

I live everyday to the fullest with no regrets. Passion is what brought me to learn the things I’ve learned and my life’s experiences is all that I have. I’ve been to the other side and I know it is this life that counts. Come what may, passion is the key for anything one does so whatever I’m doing I’m doing to make myself happy, to create self-love-the hardest love of all. Let them talk about me when I’m dead, I’m living each day, each second happy that I’m who I am, where I am, what I am.

What are you currently working on?

I am trying to put the book in an audio format and then begin my next book on my death cross-over from flat lining when I was recovering from the abscess infection of the lower spine three years ago.

Are there any authors who inspired/inspire you in your writing?

My influential authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, the triple “H”s Herman Hesse, Martin Heidegger, Ernest Hemingway, and my personal favorite is Dalton Trumbo. I don’t strive to emulate anyone, I think it is a process that develops like DNA through the generations. Their work is imprinted upon my consciousness and it seeps through my thought process as I write.

Do you have a muse? If so, who or what is it?-I have a better question as I do no have a muse.

Do you have any regrets about your writing or your life in general-would you change anything?

No I really don’t, but if I did that would be okay. I can’t change the past. The past is wrapped up in time spent, inalterable. In the long term wanting to change anything in our past can drive one crazy. I think to use the Irish word, “blarney,â€? comes forth as an aid to shield us from the failures, regrets, and disappointments of past times.

Frankly, as long as it doesn’t extend into psychotic behavior, it’s okay to regret, it’s okay to realize we screwed up. It means we grew up; we finally have taken responsibility for our own inadequacies and stopped blaming our parents (some long gone), our ex-wives and husbands, our teachers, and anybody else within a finger pointing radius. We have finally looked at the enemies of our dreams and they is us. The “old days� were certainly not the “good� old days for many; we just look back at the best of times. Perhaps if we really looked at our stupidity and mistakes our egos will come back into check and we can come to the understanding that the choices we made have dictated our present situation, be it good or bad. Experience is what is left of your butt after life takes chunks out of it.

“Luck is residue of design�-Branch Rickey. You make your own game when you go after something with passion. You’re going to screw up, you’re going to fail. From that failure your character will develop. Either you pick yourself up and keep fighting or you walk away with the loss. Either way is okay. Just remember the lessons of the struggle the next time you choose a goal or dream to come true. It’s not impossible, it just very difficult, to be happy with one’s self. The next time you hear someone telling you they have a lifetime of experience to justify what they are doing now, beware. They are looking to the past to justify the insecurities of the present. There’s bitterness where there should be confidence, there’s the warning sign. It’s just another layer to be “comfortably numb.� It’s not about the past, it is about now. Right now. Get rid of bitterness, get a life and live it!

Do you have any guilty pleasures when it comes to writing?

I don’t have guilt about anything so that’s a tough question for me. I enjoy the passion of it all, the ability to create and entangle characters in plots that unravel. I’m a diabetic so I can’t enjoy sweets, or alcohol so my rewards are based on little things like a sensible dinner out. A kind word of encouragement from someone I respect is the best pleasure I can revel in.

What are your dreams for your writing?

I hope that when someone reads my writing they are transformed to those places that I describe and feel the emotions of the characters as the dialogue engages. The book sales will never make me a rich person but the thought that others have been touched by my art will last a lifetime.

Do you have any advice for writers in general?

Once published, now comes the hard part, getting it read, getting it sold. There is no one way or miracle formula. It is persistence of effort, constantly keeping alert to opportunities to promote and market you. It will cost you money and time even if you are published with Random House or Doubleday. You have to promote yourself. If you can afford the cost get a public relations firm to assist you nationally with radio interviews and book reviews (fewer and fewer newspapers even do reviews of books now). Call your hometown newspaper; try sending copies to local periodicals for review.

The measure of your success depends on what level you want to achieve. Be careful that you do not set unrealistic goals and set yourself up for failure and despondence. Take a little chunk at a time. Start with a web presence, create a blog, get your family to buy the book (a major task believe me!), get your friends to buy the book even though they expect it for free because “you are their friend.� Explain to them how they should support your cause as once your “make it� you will mention their name on Oprah’s show. Tell them anything, just get sales going before your book goes into obscurity.

Stay positive. Many people will tear into you to make themselves look good.

Accept reality. Perhaps your book isn’t up to snuff. Go back and rewrite and make it clear to your audience and target market.

Enjoy yourself in everything you do, and keep writing if it makes you happy!

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for the “moments.”