Author Interview "Caesar Rondina"
Author, Caesar Rondina's books are influenced by his experience as a paramedic, educator, and retired professional firefighter. During his medical career, Caesar Rondina has provided medical care for over 76,000 patients: listening to over 76,000 stories, both tragic and joyous, that have inspired his writing.
Exclusive Interview
You have a long career in the medical field, how did you begin writing?
I began writing by creating medical powerpoint presentations and writing for articles for publication in medical journals and emergency service magazines. As my career led to management positions and attending college for business and education, I wrote my first book which was my best seller Management and Employee Relations. Having a minor in psychology helped me to be a better healthcare provider since I learned how to understand and communicate well with people. During my medical career, I cared for 76,251 patients, delivered 13 babies, and had the unfortunate experience to have to pronounce many peop0le deceased, and care for their family members. These experiences taught me as much about life, as the care I care to each of my patients. Being a part of such a diversity of medical problems I started to write self-help books and soon learned that I loved to help people in other ways. As my experience in writing grew, I branched out and started to write murder mysteries, love stories, and crime novels. How has your medical career inspired your writing?
Pre-hospital medicine is a career where you rarely if ever see people at their best. A paramedic experiences many emotions and must deal in life and death situations in minutes. My career has offered me the opportunity to testify in numerous trials, work with child and safety care agencies, and well as work on numerous crime scenes. I know the reality of how a murder trial works, and how crime scenes are investigated. This knowledge allows me to add the reality of how the processes actually work to the most accurate details, even in a fiction book. The real world does not work like what we see on a television show, therefore, when I write about a crime scene or a trial as part of my plot, it seems real because it is real. I believe what makes a book interesting and captivating is realism. Making a reader feel this can actually happen, and if it does, this is what will happen. Taking nothing away from the talent of other writers, I believe this is what gives me my edge.
In your latest book, Life Through A Mirror, there are many twists and turns. Are any of your characters based on real people?
This is a great question. Life Through A Mirror is based on a total of six calls I personally was involved with. Although some of the events have been elaborated on for the purpose of the storyline, the cases are actually real cases with my special twists added, and the characters are based on three different individual couples whose stories I put together as one couple that followed their life through each of the three book series, and the murder plots changed. You have written many books, do you have a favorite?
I think any author would answer that by saying they are all my favorites, and to some degree they are. Writing the Life Through A Mirror murder mystery series was a fascinating experience. However, with that said, I do have a passion. I call it my crusade. I believe that God gifted me with a sixth sense about people. I get them, and I understand them. I have the ability to not be judgemental and see things through the eyes of others. This gives me the ability to understand what and why they are thinking the way they do. I believe this gift is what made me an effective health care provider. People have many passions, however, no matter how many they have, one is always special. For me, that passion is female abuse. I have seen it far too many times and in the most severe ways. I am very involved with speaking with support groups for women who have been victims of abuse, survived it, and are either healed and helping others, or in the process of healing themselves. My book "A Woman's Fear" is about this topic with a focus on awareness and prevention with numerous true stories. This book comes out for pre-orders in December with a January 7th. release date. As much as all my books are my favorite for one reason or another, this book is my passion, therefore, I would have to say because of the nature of this book and what help it could bring to women, I would have to say "A Women's Fear" would be my choice.
You're a successful author and public speaker. What do you feel is the best lesson you can teach new writers?
One word sums it up. "LISTEN." Listen to your readers, interact with them. Trust the people you have teamed with that know more about what they do than you do. Writing is not an individual success. The success comes from your team. Your publisher, your publicist, your narrator if you do audiobooks, and your literary agent if you have one. The day any writer feels they can do it alone and does not give their team the credit they deserve, their career is over. In many cases, before it even starts. I have a great team. I trust them all and I do what they tell me to do. My job is to write and interact with any reader that wants to. The rest, I leave to the experts I work with.
Your next book is called A Woman’s Fear, it sounds powerful, can you tell me more about that?
This is a very powerful and impactful book. Although the main theme is prevention and awareness, which is the key to reducing many things, the book also covers child sex trafficking and child abuse. Abuse comes in many forms at all ages. Emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual. These are all discussed in detail. The true stories are included and are a combination of real calls I have been on as well as stories told to me by women in the support groups. Briefly, the first time I was invited to speak at one of these support groups, I walked into a room of 35 women. When they looked at me I could see the discontent in their minds. I thought to myself, how can I reach these women? The first rule of public speaking is being a good listener and engage your audience. I just sat and listened. I did not say a word. Eventually, I was asked a question. This told me they were ready to hear what I had to say. By the end of that meeting, we established a degree of trust. I am proud to say I have been invited back six times to that group over the past two years. As a man, there is no man that could give me a legitimate reason to abuse a woman during the course of normal life. Also, as a man, no matter what I have seen in my medical career, no matter what I have heard, I could never feel what they feel. To stand up and lecture to them would be ludicrous. To listen, understand, and gain trust, is the key to helping them. Due to the sensitive nature of these stories, at no time are any names, dates, or locations ever referenced or referred to. I would never betray their trust.
That is not my style. This book talks about reality. The things you never hear about on the news. I am asked many times, "Due to your profession, what should we be afraid of." My answer is always, "Never fear what you hear on the news. You are lucky to have been informed about it. What you need to fear is what you don't hear about on the news. As unfortunate as it is, the news is limited to time. They only have time to report either what they know about, or something that had a large impact. The reality is, those stories are only a small fraction of what actually happens. "A Woman's Fear," tells it all. Most importantly, it tells it in an educational and informative way. This book was sent out to 24 beta readers across the country who had these experiences. Some reviews had suggestions which I included in the re-writes. Remember what I said earlier, listen to your readers. With that said, the main theme of the beta readers reviewers was this was the best-written book on this subject they had ever read.
Life Through a Mirror, is the first installment of a new murder mystery series, capturing how the past can come back to haunt you. It tells the story of Allie and David, both from a small New England town whose lives converge. As their stories unfold in this spine-tingling thriller, you will learn about each of their lives and the tangled web that includes murder, sex, intrigue and ghosts from the past they face and strive to overcome.
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