List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

As a child, and into my later school career, I had high marks in reading tests. It was off the charts by the twelve grade, so reading was a sport for me.

I will list novels from last to first.

Third, The Odyssey. This was a reading requirement in the sixth grade. I love all types of mythology, but Greek Mythology filled my cup each and every time. The trials and tribulations of Odysseus and his crew faced were unmatched in any other book I had read at that time. It was fanciful, nail biting and comical at times even. This broadened my love for Fantasy.

The second book I would say is Anna Karenina, which I read and memorized at the age of ten! It was available in my abuela’s library, so imagine my shock when a film was made. Leo Tolstoy was an excellent writer, so I felt the films didn’t do it enough justice. This book impacted me on various levels, but mostly how cruel the world can be – no matter your standing. Society and its beliefs are absolute and terrible. I never related so much to a novel before. I re-read it a handful of times after I grew up, and it still affected me the same.

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Lastly, is my own novel Bleeding Stars and Paper Hearts – Adrianna is Mine. Do what you want with me suggesting this. Writing this series (that is still unfinished) opened my eyes to the grit, filth, desperation and twinkling filtered awe of societal demands, crumbling governments and how the general public assesses such things. Though the two main protagonists are direct descendants of angels, they are experiencing a swirling abyss of others lies, betrayal, greed, sexual exploitation and hunger befitting the cannibalistic angels and synthetic humans that take up space in the series.

It was written at a time I threw away religion altogether, with some obvious parts in the novel pointing to this. And it’s does not, in anyway, delicately tiptoe around the truth of existence. This was my first take on dystopian. When featured on Authonony at the time, it stayed at number one for nearly three weeks, and cradled about at number seven for the rest of its stint on the site before I self published it, in 2013.

After it was widely received by readers who dare not touch Dystopian/Cyber Punk, or Sci-fi for that matter, I knew I had accomplished what I sat out to do.