Fast Track to Glory

Tomasz Chrusciel is a fiction writer. He was born in Poland, but for the last twelve years he has been living in Dublin, Ireland. His latest novel, Fast Track To Glory - just published on Amazon - got already seven 5star reviews on Amazon and a few more on Readers’ Favorite. We have conducted an interview with him.

What is 'Fast Track to Glory' about?

‘Fast Track to Glory’ tells the story of an Italian professor Nina Monte. She’s head of the Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World at the University of Padua. When one day she receives an invitation to a confidential meeting in the Heidelberg Castle in Germany, she is too intrigued to refuse. At first, what is expected form her doesn’t seem to be extraordinary, until she examines a mysterious artefact found on a forgotten galley that sank in the fifteenth century in Lake Garda, Italy. Soon her life is turned upside down as she is whisked around the world following the discovery. From that moment not only Nina’s life is in danger – at stake is freedom for all humankind.

Why did you choose to write a fictional story like this?

One of my passions is travelling. When I visit a new and sometimes exotic country, I’m always interested in people and their cultures. I gather as many information about them as I can: I take lots of pictures, pick up leaflets from every place I go to, I speak to locals. After I return home, it’s only a matter of time before I start to draft my next novel. I find the greatest pleasure in building a fictional story around real locations. I try to add to my writing not only the element of surprise and tension; my wish is that when a reader turns the last page, they will be satisfied and happy and feel as if they also visited the places my characters’ lives revolved around.

But there’s also that deeper meaning to the story about Nina, Alessandro and what they have to go through. Their internal and external journeys are intertwined. They cannot move forward and face their enemy without conquering their personal fears first.

Along your journey to write this book, have you encountered any challenge(s) and how did you overcome it/them?

It took me a lot of time to collect all the historical and scientific data so I could smoothly introduce everything into a fictional story and still make it plausible. I believe that the biggest challenge is to come up with a captivating story people would want to read and talk about, and to create the characters readers would care and identify with.

Is writing a book easier than the process of self-publishing?

Self-publishing process isn’t difficult. Especially if you’ve done that before. What’s complicated and difficult for many writers, including me, is how to reach as many readers as we can to promote our novels. Nowadays when thousands of books are published every day, the marketing poses a serious challenge for aspiring authors. Social media come to a rescue here; after all word of mouth is a great friend of every artist.

Are you more influenced by the Irish or Polish culture?

I think that every author is being influenced by the places and people he/she encounters in their lives. I wouldn’t say that any of the cities I’ve lived in, or I’ve been to, predominantly affected my writing. My feelings, my character and perception of the world around are being shaped by everyday happenings, what I see, read, experience, with whom I speak. But above all in order to create the compelling characters, which is the very gist of being a writer, I like to observe and try to understand human behaviour. Although it varies from country to country, I can safely say that deep down we’re all very similar.