William Ferraiolo, Author, Visits! ... And Spotlighting His Latest, The Pope of Atlantis...

 

Welcome to Book Readers Heaven William! I'm so happy to have you visit here! But I'm also happy to have first connected through your book, The Ethical Assassin which as you know, set my mind adrift on what genre the book was...LOL 

And I do have the normal question as to how you came to write this story. A personal interest? An exploration of the mind of a killer?

The Ethical Assassin: A Vigilante's Memoir is my attempt to explore the mind and actions of a man who believes that he has nothing left to lose, apart from the possibility of God's punishment. He decides to kill evil people who has escaped man's punishment, or who have met with punishment that he regards as insufficient. There are three books in that series. Only the first has been published. He struggles constantly with the moral question of whether he is or is not morally justified in his executions of child molesters, murderers, and others who damage that most innocent among us.

Before getting into our discussion further, could you tell us a little about yourself...

My personal history is not particularly interesting. I was raised in an Italian, Catholic family, and I was baptized and confirmed, but I cannot say that I currently subscribe to Catholicism. Having destroyed my knee in my senior year in high school and lost my scholarship to college, I had to chart a new path and ended up, somehow, majoring in philosophy. After graduate school, I took a job in Stockton, California in 1997, and I taught there for 25 years before taking a somewhat early retirement. While I was still teaching I wrote a number of books about Stoicism. Those can be found on my Amazon author page. After I retired, I began writing fiction. We'll see how it goes.

Now, let's go on to my favorite of the two books, and which, in my opinion, is a very special book for a number of reasons... When I discovered what your book, The Pope of Atlantis was really about, which for purposes of this discussion to ensure we don't give away anything major from the book, was based upon religion... And, in particular, the end of the world... I also began to consider your book in light of today's world...

So, I still use the first question that I normally ask: Why did you, William, write The Pope of Atlantis? 

The Pope of Atlantis is an exploration of a man cursed to walk the Earth for thousands of years because he offended his Creator. He lives for centuries in a condition of rage and rebellion against God's commands, and this leads him to commit many atrocities. He is a lonely outcast everywhere he goes, but he has brief contacts with various historical figures. God breathes new life into this cursed man's despair by allowing him, once again, to hear his Creator's voice. With the hope that his curse might eventually be lifted, the protagonist of the novel tries his best to live the remainder of his life in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord. 

With the great cataclysm that opens the novel, this man realizes that his curse, and the world, could be coming to an end. He makes his way to one of the two camps in which there are a few survivors and tries to tell them his story. Of course, they do not believe him at first. I intentionally left their attitude about his story ambiguous until the very end. Do they have the faith to repent, and do they have the time to be saved through faith or deeds? I also wrote Pope because Cain's death is not mentioned in the Bible, and I thought it would be interesting, as the writer and readers, to explore the story of a man cursed to walk the earth until the end of time. I'm happy you enjoyed it!

For instance, Cain explains to Mike that he believes that the first books of the Bible are definitely written correctly, even arguing because the others can't see how the world could be created in a week... Now, yes, Cain, in your book, did not live much longer than that period, but it obviously raises the question as to whether you, too, believe that the Bible is the Word of God? 

As for the historicity of Genesis, I am convinced that the author(s) believed that the account offered is literally, historically accurate. Whether the account actually is accurate is, of course, a controversial matter. Part of the Genesis account mentions the protagonist of Pope. His death, however, is not mentioned. So, I thought it would be interesting to construct a narrative of one possible series of events that could link this cursed man from very near the Creation to The Last Day. 

Along the way, this man is repeatedly compelled to witness unfathomable human suffering as part of his punishment. He sees war, famine, genocide, and all of the rest of the things that humans do to each other, as well as the suffering cause by nature as it groans under the weight of sin. The world, it seems to me, is still groaning. We are all still witnessing the consequences of sin. Humans are the sinning species.

As for my own religious commitments, I believe in the God of Abraham, but beyond that, I remain uncertain. Whether the Jews, the Christians, or the Muslims have the correct account of the nature of God and His relationship to humanity is not clear to me. It is, of course, possible that they are all wrong, and that God does not exist. From my perspective, the fine-tuning argument persuades me that God probably does exist, and Rabbi Keleman's argument that the Sinai revelation almost certainly could not have successfully been concocted and marketed to the descendants of those who allegedly heard God speak in an audible voice, convinces me that God really did speak at Sinai (an event that lifts the protagonist of The Pope of Atlantis out of the depths of his despair).

My point is not to argue, but rather, that I personally have allowed myself to read beyond what I was taught in a particular church, have come to question the validity that God spoke all these words to the writers, as He did Moses, which was specifically spotlighted... For me, I simply acknowledge that I call myself a Thomas--a doubting Thomas who keeps my mind open for what God really did and said...and keep learning...

Consider this, just as you took license as a writer to create a fictional story, could you imagine that the original writers of the entire Bible could not have done the same?

Given that the world ends in your book, can you share a little about your thoughts in relation to today?

I don't know the future any better than anyone else, but I am not particularly optimistic. Currently political and social phenomena are, to my way of thinking, downstream from the "fallen" sinful nature of humanity. People cause themselves trouble. It's what we do best. Whether it's Noah's flood, or Egypt, or Rome, or the USSR, or any other socio-political configuration...it goes wrong. People suffer. People die. There is nothing truly new under the sun. God offered humanity the choice of obedience and life, or disobedience followed by suffering and death. Either that...or we're on our own.

Well, I personally believe there was an additional step. God gave His Son to the world and offered His Love. He also gave us free will and only asked in return for us to place the loving God first in our lives and to love our fellow man. Many of us are living as a follower of Jesus, knowing what that means and choosing our way of life based upon the recognition that all men are created as equal (by God) and should be treated in Love as God has directed. Millions of us are doing that daily. Some chose a different path... But none are ever on our own unless we choose to be...

Where do you see your writing headed in the future?

I write about our struggle to figure out what to do with our lives, and about our struggle to do the right thing in difficult circumstances...like the sudden loss of everything that one of us ever cared about, or a global cataclysm that destroys over 8 billion human lives and leaves the survivors with no idea what just happened, what (if anything) it means, or how to survive. What makes the morally good things good, and the evil things evil, and...how can we tell the former from the latter when we encounter devastation? These are the questions that fascinate me. Hopefully, I will find readers who feel the same way.

Time will tell.

William Ferraiolo

Thanks so much for visiting and talking about your fiction writing! Best wishes for your future!

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