I am thrilled to welcome author Bruce Forciea to Plain Talk.

Bruce Forciea is known for taking complex scientific concepts and making them easy to understand through engaging stories and simple explanations. He is an Amazon Best Selling Author and has written several books on healing and biology which include Unlocking the Healing Code, An Easy Guide to Learning Anatomy and Physiology and An eText of Anatomy and Physiology.

The X-Cure is his debut fiction work. Dr. Forciea teaches Anatomy and Physiology for Moraine Park Technical College and Unitek College. Professional projects include writing and producing college science courses, producing digital media including over one hundred science videos, ebooks, custom labs and websites. His fiction writing draws on a diverse and eclectic background that includes touring and performing with a professional show, designing digital circuits for a defense contractor, treating thousands of patients while running successful chiropractic and wellness clinics and now teaching life science and wellness.

Dr. Forciea lives in Wisconsin and loves writing during the solitude of the long Northern winters.

Here’s the interview. 

What writing problems do you struggle with, and how do you solve them?

Probably, like most writers, finding the time to write without demands from my day job, family, life, and so on. Fortunately, my work as a college instructor affords some blocks of time that I can use to write. For example, I have more time during the summer months. Also, we have long dark winters here in Wisconsin which is a great time to write. I’m also a bit on the obsessive side which means that I’ll tend to get on a roll and won’t stop until I’m finished with a project.

What sparks your creativity? 

That is a great question and will be difficult for me to answer because many things can spark my creativity. Sometimes, it is as simple as a song, or an idea in a great book, movie or television show. Many times a story will pop into my head from virtually nowhere. I’ll then write it down in a paragraph or two and it lurks around the back of my mind like a problem that needs to be solved. During quiet times it may surface and I’ll further develop it into a more detailed story.

Who is your hero?  And why? 

Wow, I have many heroes for different things. Scientists like Einstein, Schrodinger, Steven Hawking, along with artists like Salvador Dali, Monet, Van Gogh. I play guitar and my hero is Joe Satriani for guitar.  I think for me heroes are the people who can do things that are seemingly inhuman, almost supernatural. Some people possess that sort of talent or ability to go beyond what anyone would think a human being can do.

If you could have a quiet dinner with just one author, who would you choose? What would you want to discuss? What questions would you ask?

That is a hard one because there are so many authors I’d love to meet in both the fiction and non-fiction worlds. I guess if I’d have to choose just one, and this is going to sound very cliché, it would be Stephen King. My daughter (who also writes) and I both read a lot of his books and I’ve been reading them since the 1970’s.

I would want to discuss how he feels about the changes in the book world such as the disappearance of bookstores, the rise of electronic readers, how reading is losing popularity to television series and so on. I would also like to discuss what he feels makes a good book.

Why did you write this book?

I’ve written a fair amount of non-fiction including science books, labs and materials for the college courses I teach and I always wanted to write fiction. I often thought writing fiction would be a completely different and freeing experience and I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful the experience was.

I also wanted to tell a story that contained elements of truth such as the suppression of alternative medicine, the negative actions of Big Pharma justified by profits, and the difficulties in starting a new company.

What do you hope readers would take away from this book?

My first goal was to entertain readers by giving them a fast-paced story with a number of twists and turns. I also hoped that the story would get readers to think about the manipulation and control large companies exhibit on the public as well as the idea that there are valid treatments and cures in alternative medicine.

How long did it take you to write this book?

It took about four months to write the story and about three months of tweaking until I submitted it to publishers. After getting a contract from Open Books, it took another two months of editing. So all in all about nine months.

What’s next for you?

My next novel, Alan2, has just been submitted to my publisher. This one is a cyber-thriller about an artificial intelligence scientist (with a certain amount of dysfunction in his life) who develops a way to combine the knowledge in the frontal lobes of his brain with a computer operating system. Besides artificial intelligence, the story contains elements of cybercrime, cults, hacking, and an international chase with a very dramatic conclusion. It’s kind of like a combination of the movie “Her” with Terminator’s Skynet and a completely different twist. I’m hoping readers will like the play on today’s concerns about artificial intelligence.

 

 

Title: The X-Cure by Bruce Forciea
Genre: Medical Thriller / Science Fiction

Synopsis

Dr. Alex Winter, a brilliant biomedical engineer, teams with Dr. Xiu Ling, a beautiful Chinese scientist, to discover a revolutionary cure for cancer. But Tando Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest and richest drug producer, also has an interest in the cure, and when they discover that the treatment is flawed as recipients begin to die after four months, causing a media frenzy and a drop in Tando’s stock, they call upon their ‘Mercenary Soldiers of Medicine’ to maintain global domination.

Purchase The X Cure on Amazon.

Connect with Bruce Forciea on Facebook | Twitter | Facebook | Website