1. When and why did you decide to become a writer?
I started writing when I was 8 and never looked back. Even if I actually started writing in school – like a lot of French kids, who are at first nudged or forced to write in class – I enjoyed it! I loved the opportunity to creatively express myself: if I could draw, I would have been a painter or artist, but I can’t draw even if my life depended on it! With my short stories, poems, and then my novels, I could put down on paper all this creativity that was bubbling inside me, and all those ideas that kept pouring out! I could share my ideas with people and exchange on them. Another thing that helped as well is the fact that my parents are avid readers: they were great models for me. At the same age I started writing, I was already reading at least one book per week – and I’m not talking Paddington Bear books, but The Three Musketeers books, for instance! That really pushed me to reach for the greats of literature. I even wrote a play in rhymes like Molière used to write, again that’s my French background coming out J.

2. What authors/books influenced you when you were younger? Who inspires you today?
I’ve always been a huge huge fan of Victor Hugo, in French literature, and Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck, in the American literature. Grant Morrison, as a comic book writer, also inspires me greatly.

Victor Hugo because he has a sense of what I call the “personal epic” that is just without equal. He can write incredibly large battles, with thousands of soldiers; and yet, you always care for whoever lives and dies, because he has created fully-fleshed characters that you are dying to follow through the bullets and the dust (if you haven’t heard or read Toilers of the Sea, Ninety-Three, or The Man Who Laughs, then you’ve missed some of greatest literature ever, all languages included!)

Stephen King for his sense of suspense: he has a way to end a page or a chapter that absolutely compels you to turn the page. Your next breath depends on it! He’s just a master of that. He also creates very compelling characters: people could think that they’re all cookie-cutter persona because they’re mostly writers from Maine, but each one is unique in himself, with a small part of the author in him, of course. King has actually created some of the strongest female heroines ever, whether in Shining or Cujo, which shows how good he is with immortal characters.

Hemingway and Steinbeck are just amazing with tragedy, human desperation and heroism, glory and fear, and their description of simple feelings, which are still mind-blowing in their intricacy.

Speaking of mind-blowing, Grant Morrison is an incredible writer, not just of comic books. But the number of high concepts he is able to come up with in each page of a comic book is awe-inspiring!

3. What was the inspiration behind Saving Kennedy?
This is something that I mentioned in the afterword of the novel, but without spoiling anything, it all started during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Barrack Obama was looking more and more like the Democratic candidate, and some pundits were saying things like “What would Martin Luther King say if he met with Obama”. It got me thinking about a President being sent back in time with his bodyguard by accident. And then it morphed into a soldier being sent back in time, and it evolved into a Government program voluntarily sending soldiers back in time to “right the past’s wrongs”, as they said in Quantum Leap.

So, it was taking all the zeitgeist around Navy SEALs, that have become this amazing American hero archetype, that can do almost anything (and they are indeed just that good!) and my love of time travel stories, and blending them together to make a cool and entertaining story.

4. You're French-born, but this novel is about American history. What made you interested in the Kennedy assassination?

France has already been fascinated by America. Ever since Tocqueville came back from his trip to the young United States with stars and stripes in his eyes, France has had an incredible admiration for America. Sometimes it’s a “love/hate” relationship, but it’s more like an “older” sister (much smaller, but still older) looking down on its younger sibling, yet being full of pride and admiration of its success and achievements, even though it had little/nothing to do with them.

As for Kennedy himself, some consider him the greatest President of these last 50 years. Others consider him a fraud. But he’s such a charismatic character – because he could be a made-up character in a book! – that he’s inspired some great fiction. And most of all, since this was the first filmed assassination of a Head of State, it resonated around the world. Even though I wasn’t born in 1963; I can almost hear the famous “Where were you when you heard of…” Kennedy’s death and 9/11?

5. Do you think, had you been born in America, that the story would've been different?
I believe it would probably have been. Even if I’ve been very inspired by a lot of popular culture that makes me close to an American, I still wasn’t raised entirely in America. So, I have a very external view of racism, conspiracy theories, but also American heroism. Like a lot of people who were raised admiring American heroism, before it was popular in France to do any America-bashing, I have a pure unadulterated admiration of America, what it stands for, and how much you can achieve when you’re American or you live in America. That is why one of my greatest hero is Superman, because he stands for three very core American values (Truth, Justice, the American Way), that are very hard to define, especially in the gray world where we now live, and yet those are values that we should strive to follow every day. That is always why I admire the American military philosophy of “No man left behind”: It doesn’t mean that you should blindly support any American interventionism, but you should also not criticize soldiers or the Military for following orders, and you should never ever rejoice at American deaths abroad to prove a point, whether political or religious. Especially political or religious!!

6. You're also a poet. What is it that you enjoy most about that art form?
I’m a big romantic at heart! My parents got engaged three days after they met… and have been married for almost 40 years! So I’ve always been fascinated by the concepts of “soul mates”, “true love”, and “fidelity”. Poems help express love in an artful way, in a meaningful way. But most of all, I love the challenge of writing in alexandrines! Ever since I started writing in alexandrines, I feel my poems have withstood the test of time much more than simple poems with no “rules” or “challenges”. So, alexandrine poems mix the constraints and almost mathematic rules of strict scriptures, with the creativity, art and openness of inventive poems.

7. If you could only choose to write either prose or poetry, which would you choose and why?
That’s a trick question: it’s like asking a parent to choose a favorite among his children! I’ll answer with a trick answer, then: I’d rather stick to prose in English and poetry in French. I’ve only written a few poems in English, and prose comes more easily now in Shakespeare’s language. I haven’t written prose in French in a while and I feel poetry comes more easily in Molière’s language. 

8. It says in your bio on Amazon that you've written scripts. What were those for and what made you decide to write them?
I’m a geek: I love big movies, genre movies, comic book movies. Everything that comprises American pop culture. I love baseball (let’s not get into baseball movies, I’ve seen them all!). I also love romantic comedies. I’m just a huge fan of Hollywood, because I feel it’s an inherent part of America: it helps to fashion American culture, and is also a great mirror of what America is at any given time.

Writing scripts is a different exercise than writing novels. But at the end of day, to me, both have to completely entertain: I’m not out to make small indie movies of French art films. I wrote big action pieces, sweet romantic scenes, all to create a knot in the viewers’ stomach or a tear in their eyes. I’m an entertainer, and I feel there’s not better media to fully and purely entertain than movies.

9. Are you working on a new novel? If yes, is there anything about it that you can share with the readers of KSR?

I’ve started working a on new novel based on an old short story I wrote more than 15 years ago. It’s a mix of science fiction and human characters just like Saving Kennedy. It’s the story of a world where a new transportation technology is ubiquitous and has impacted every part of society. In that strange and extraordinary world, the story focuses on a surgeon, an everyday man, that will be confronted to this brave new world and a murder mystery were teleportation is the murder weapon AND the motive.

10. Why did you decide to tell the story through letters, journals, etc., as opposed to a "typical" narration?
Without answering the “Wouldn’t this make a great movie?” question first, which you ask below, I felt that even if the book was very cinematic and had some great action pieces, I wanted it to “feel” like a book. I didn’t want it to just be punches after punches, and fights after fights. I felt that the best way to get into the characters’ head was to have diaries, letters, and sometime the full history of the characters. To me, this grounded the characters more. It has recently become a bit of a fashion, but when you read Bram Stocker’s Dracula there are some newspaper “clippings” and letters, so it adds some originality to it. More recently; Gone Girl as used this format to incredible and “amazing” effect. And most of all, it’s a nice challenge to a writer because you have to adopt different styles and characterizations to make it feel real.

11. As a scriptwriter, would you like to see the novel you wrote made into a film?
As I briefly stated above, Navy SEALs are quite fashionable right now, and Kennedy is as well! Whether on the small or big screen. I would love to see Saving Kennedy turned into a movie, because I feel it’s a great story to tell visually, but I also hope the novel stands on its own.

12. Where do you see yourself & your career in the next ten years?
I would love to eventually be able to live from my writing, either as a successful novelist or screenwriter. But I do feel that having a “real” full-time job also helps me to get inspiration from everyday meetings, from traveling the world, and from just being with real colleagues rather than imaginary people! I also have an incredible family: my wife is very supportive and my two children fill me with joy. My parents are just amazing and my friends love my writing, too! So, even if in ten years I am where I am today, I would still be quite happy and content! I would just like to have a few more readers J

13. What would you like readers to take from your novel once they've finished it?
Well, the last two words of the novel are pure irony, I feel, so I hope that once the reader is finished, he’ll go searching the web to check that what I wrote is true (and it is true!) and that even if you can travel through time, you never know the consequences of your actions. Whether you’re an obscure government organization controlling lives, or a Navy SEAL stepping into a time sarcophagus, time is not yours to control.

14. Are there any professional goals you hope to reach in your career?
I’m already very proud of my achievements in my everyday job. But I would really love to just catch the reader’s attention and fully entertain him. I would also love to sell a few movie scripts, as I feel those have great potential. But that would be pure bonus

15. Thank you for participating in this interview! Can you please leave the readers with three things that may surprise them about you?

I’m currently writing a children’s story about a spider: I love to create sweet imaginative stories for children.

I’ve been lucky enough to work in more than 30 countries; so I’ve tried to put a piece of each country I’ve visited in my writings

I’ve probably written a short story or movie script in every conceivable genre, from horror to science fiction, through romantic comedy, cartoons, young adult, action thriller and pure murder mystery.