Q1. Hello, can you please introduce yourself? Readers would love to know more about you.
As you know, my name is Ryan. I went to undergrad for English Literature and Language, and completed my master’s degree in Cybersecurity earlier this year. I am married to a beautiful and supportive wife, Abigail, and have two cats that I would love to say are angels, but cats do be cats.
I’ve been writing essentially ever since I was able to comprehend a basic story structure. I was six when I wrote Finbur and the Lilly, a tight ten pages with full illustration about a scientist whose family was abducted so he used a flower to make a smoke bomb so he could save them. Riveting, really. After that, I wrote The Black Samurai and the Alien Invasion. I was a prodigy. If the sarcasm wasn’t evident, I will say that I have come a long way since my early attempts, but I lost the goal that I had back then: to enjoy what I wrote.
Q2. What were the key challenges you faced while writing your book “Neon Nothing”?
The primary challenge I faced was the impostor syndrome. Every writer faces it for different reasons; my reason was writing in the Cyberpunk genre.
Q3. What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
I don’t think that there is a Cyberpunk author that can say they didn’t draw from Neuromancer – indirectly or not.
Q4. What’s your favorite spot to visit in your own country? And what makes it so special to you?
My favorite spot is, unfortunately, one I don’t get to visit often anymore, the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park West, right around 83rd street. From my little spot, I could see Belvedere Castle and the Turtle Pond. I had this very romantic notion of being a boy in Ireland, looking over the fields of my ancestors, and those things they built. So, having a place, in the middle of New York City, where I could sit and stare across a field at a castle was the greatest thing ever to me.
Q5. What inspired you to write the book ‘Neon Nothing’?
Dogs: Bullets and Carnage. In the manga, one of the main characters has a collar that is part of a “Spine of Kerberos”. I latched onto the concept and, over time, took that campaign and turned it into a story. That story went through three iterations before I arrived at something I can actually refer to as Neon Nothing.
Q6. How long did it take you to write your book ‘Neon Nothing’?
I can give three different answers to this question that I feel are all true, however, I think the truest answer is twenty-one years. I was not born able to write like this. I was not this good of a writer when I was six, thirteen, or even twenty. I had to develop my skills over the course of a lifetime. So, in order for Neon Nothing – in order for anything I write from here forward – to come into being, those years were a part of that process.
Q7. On what platforms can readers buy your books?
Amazon or Barnes & Noble! Some others may come up, but those are the primary two that my publisher, Acorn, partners with.
Q8. Tell us about the process of coming up with the book cover and the title ‘Neon Nothing’?
I took inspiration for my cover from the likes of Akira, Altered Carbon, and the falling up scene from Into the Spiderverse. What brought this particular cover into being was the two main characters of the story, Key and Shio. On the cover, it is Key that is facing away. You can’t see his face because he can’t. He doesn’t know who he is, so we can’t see him. Shio, meanwhile, knows who he is, but is coming to be someone else over the course of the narrative. We can see his face, we know him, but he’s moving away – he’s moving into something new.
Q9. When writing a book how do you keep things fresh, for both your readers and also yourself?
Plagiarism. I joke, but only kind of. I spent a lot of time trying to be “original” before I realized that it’s much more important to write the story your way. I didn’t invent Cyberpunk. I didn’t invent a lot of the core concepts my book deals with. What is completely me – and always fresh – is how I put those things together and progress a narrative. The perspective I have and the story I choose to tell is all my own.
Q10. What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?
Write. Just write.
Sassy Reviews 