Ask the Author: Raphael Chayim Rosen
Answered Questions (7)
Raphael Chayim Rosen
The mystery of how so many rats came to occupy a single block in NYC.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
Meet Jay Gatsby, become friends with him, and try to help him see the world in less severe and brutally competitive terms.
Life is short (especially his)! As he is one of my favorite literary characters, I would have loved to help him enjoy life more.
Life is short (especially his)! As he is one of my favorite literary characters, I would have loved to help him enjoy life more.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
Fun question, Doni. A few answers:
1. I had the idea of Celeste (Esther) about eight years ago while writing a previous novel about Sol Van Rensselaer-Kauffman, her brother. Sol is an academically-inclined type and I'd envisioned his older sister as a business-minded, hard-nosed lady. I wanted to continue writing about the Van Rensselaer-Kauffman family and Celeste was the character I most wanted to write about. In my head she worked in finance which made her the natural heroine for "Sink."
2. I enjoy the challenge of writing from a female perspective. It often forces my writing to be more deliberate, and I appreciate that discipline.
3. Finance in my experience is indeed a "bro-centric" world as you call it, but there are all types of people in finance and Celeste and Ana seemed like a powerful pair who could easily make it big. It was definitely more fun to write about them than to write about banker stereotypes which would have been at once more cliché and also less interesting and duller to write.
1. I had the idea of Celeste (Esther) about eight years ago while writing a previous novel about Sol Van Rensselaer-Kauffman, her brother. Sol is an academically-inclined type and I'd envisioned his older sister as a business-minded, hard-nosed lady. I wanted to continue writing about the Van Rensselaer-Kauffman family and Celeste was the character I most wanted to write about. In my head she worked in finance which made her the natural heroine for "Sink."
2. I enjoy the challenge of writing from a female perspective. It often forces my writing to be more deliberate, and I appreciate that discipline.
3. Finance in my experience is indeed a "bro-centric" world as you call it, but there are all types of people in finance and Celeste and Ana seemed like a powerful pair who could easily make it big. It was definitely more fun to write about them than to write about banker stereotypes which would have been at once more cliché and also less interesting and duller to write.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
If you love it, do it. Don't put it off to some mythical day when you have time.
Also, read "On Writing" by Stephen King. It's a lovely, inspiring book from a prolific writer who had to fight hard to earn his well-deserved fame.
Also, read "On Writing" by Stephen King. It's a lovely, inspiring book from a prolific writer who had to fight hard to earn his well-deserved fame.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
I'm working on a short story set in an orphanage and am also in the very early stages of thinking about a murder mystery set in the Tech community in the SF Bay Area.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
So many ways including: music, reading other great writing, seeing great movies, thinking about loved ones, memories, and reading old journals.
Raphael Chayim Rosen
When I was living in Argentina there was a scandal involving a senior government official found hiding half a million dollars in cash in her office bathroom. The story was bizarre and fun, and I liked imagining how I would have reacted had I found that much money in a former boss's bathroom.
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