What Inspired Me To Write Icarus Rising – Rob Manary @robmanary

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I was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell from the tree and struck me rather soundly on the head. It was a revelation. Shit fell down! I was about to tell someone about this amazing discovery when I realized that Isaac Newton was sitting beside me and saw the whole thing, and he was writing feverishly about laws of acceleration. I only thought it neat that apples fell towards the earth and not in the other direction, and how difficult making an apple pie would be if the reverse were true. I had nothing.

So I was flying a kite with a key on a string on it in a lightning storm with a friend named Ben, and he was prattling on about wood stoves and bifocals, and just as I was hoping to get hit by lightening and put out of my misery, I was hit by lightening and…

What is wrong with me? A perfectly sensible question like, “What inspired you to write “Icarus Rising”?” and I am taking you on a demented adventure through history. What inspired me to write “Icarus Rising?” I was thinking of growing up and all the many times I pleasured myself to grainy bootlegged VHS copies of Madonna videos when I realized… that didn’t happen either but I bet I put an image in your head, didn’t I? I apologize; this is not a very good post. Read “Icarus Rising”. It is much better, I promise.

The simple, and honest, answer is two characters came almost fully developed into my head, a world renowned female rock star and an infamous “bad boy” abstract artist. It seems our culture is fascinated with celebrity to such an extent we build them up and almost worship them like a golden calf. I was hoping to get inside my creations heads, to show that they have vulnerabilities and insecurities too. That they are human with human failings like everyone else, but they are in the position where their lives are under constant scrutiny. In “Icarus Rising” the media constantly watching as an almost villain is a theme I begin to explore.

In the second book, “Icarus Ascendant”, the media is a much more oppressive enemy of my two characters, and that will continue and intensify in the final book of the trilogy. I guess the answer to the question, “What inspired me to write Icarus Rising?” would have to be: one day these characters sprang to life and I wanted to tell their story. I wanted to step into the skin of a couple of fictional pop icons and see how they lived, see how they filled the minutes of their days, and see how one would live without the constant shackles of monetary worries. And the reverse of that as well. What could a suitor do to woo a woman who would be somewhat jaded and not easily impressed? I also wanted to tell a great love story and I hope I have succeeded in that.

Or was I inspired when I was with a pal, George, and he chopped down a cherry tree and tried to blame it on me?!