Interview: Author Kfir Luzzatto of “The Evelyn Project”

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It is with pleasure that we bring you a personal interview with Kfir Luzzatto who is the author of “The Evelyn Project.” Mr. Luzzatto, a resident of Israel, is a well-known patent attorney who turned his hand to writing fiction with much success! Kfir is touring with Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tours from July 2nd through August 31st in a national tour of reviews, interviews, guest posts and spotlights. Please see our Authors On Tour listing “The Evelyn Project” for a posting of his tour.

“The Evelyn Project” is a paranormal suspense/thriller written in contemporary times in a European setting. Luzzatto’s characters are vividly drawn and alive as they circle around the question of a girl’s life and her connection to a little known, related professor of Italian. A relative who is at least 100 years older than she is. Intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable, this novel is a winner! Every page brings another key to the mystery of an old story, an ancient letter and the ancestors of the Professor.

The Evelyn Project by Kfir Luzzatto

Here’s a summary of “The Evelyn Project:”

A loving father’s cry for help gets into the wrong hands, and a hundred years later things get out of control.Evelyn’s father did everything in his power to save his dying daughter, black magic included. But when a century later his plea for help gets into the wrong hands, all hell breaks loose.

Caught in the slippery battlefield between the Vatican and a cult that wants to change the past, a young Italian professor and a beautiful French actress are too busy running away from murder and conspiracy to let physical attraction develop into love. And it further complicates things when Her Majesty’s Secret Service decides to take an interest in what everyone else is doing to pull some strings of its own.

Love that lasts through the veils of time, a mystery, and a race to end a conspiracy, “The Evelyn Project” is a story that will stir both your heart and your intellect.

About Kfir Luzzatto:

Kfir Luzzatto was born and raised in Italy, and moved to Israel as a teenager. He acquired the love for the English language from his father, a former U.S. soldier, a voracious reader and a prolific writer. Kfir has a PhD in chemical engineering and works as a patent attorney.

He lives in Omer, Israel, with his full-time partner, Esther, their four children, Michal, Lilach, Tamar and Yonatan, and the dog Elvis. He has won numerous awards for his writing.

Author Kafir Luzzatto

The Interview:

Kfir, welcome to Pump Up Your Book! Your many fans would love to hear a few things about you and your book.

1) How long have you been a professional author and what led to your decision to write fiction?

Kfir: I can’t say that a decision process was involved at all. In my day job as a patent attorney I write a lot every day and writing always came natural to me. I also wrote many professional articles and had a weekly column in a financial newspaper for years, but drew little satisfaction from writing them.

Sometime in 2002 a story idea popped up in my head and then kept nagging me, asking to be written; that’s when I wrote Accidental Lazarus, a humorous zombie story, and submitted it to Fiction Inferno (the story can be read for free here). The acceptance notice and the modest check that followed took me entirely by surprise, but with those in my pocket there was no stopping me from keeping on writing.

2) What actually prompted you to write “The Evelyn Project”…what led to your searching your family archives?

Kfir: About one year before his death my father charged me with preserving the long family history; he simply told me that I should. He was well aware of my interest in our roots and of my passion for learning about the past, and knew that I would accept that burden. We had endless conversations between that day and his death, in which he told me stories I never heard before about the family (and a few that I had heard too many times before). A character that kept cropping up was my great-aunt, Evelina with the sad story of how she died at 26 of TB and what influence that had on my great-grandfather’s life.

Evelina’s life and death attracted me as a magnet, once I started reading more about her, and the urge to write about her and to keep her memory alive translated into The Evelyn Project. In the book I worked to reconcile that urge with my inclination for fast-paced, entertaining fiction – an endeavor that was at the same time challenging and rewarding.

3) What are your thoughts about marketing? How have you approached marketing your book?

Kfir: Over the years I have learned a lot about marketing and the one thing about which I am sure is that the author must be the driving force behind all marketing efforts. Assuming your book is good and you have staying power, readers will eventually hear about it, but it may take a long time before critical mass is reached. It does help to understand that you can’t do everything by yourself and that, while you should take a hands-on approach to marketing, expert marketing help is invaluable.

4) What would you say are the biggest mistakes one can make in choosing a publicist? The greatest rewards?

Kfir: I’ve met well-meaning publicists and, well…less well-meaning ones. Many of them suffer from the same problem: they think inside the box. The greatest mistake you can make is to measure success on the basis of the exposure that the publicist got you, without assessing the relevance of that exposure. I recall my excitement at giving a radio interview on prime time, only to discover later on that it had generated zero sales.

Your work with a publicist can still be rewarding, at least for a beginner, because a good publicist will help you understand some basic principles that will help you avoid at least some common pitfalls.

5) Where can we find out more about “The Evelyn Project?”

Kfir: Besides the book page on my web site, I warmly recommend reading the reviews by Susan Russo Anderson and by Kriss Morton. Although they are very different in style, they both captured the essence of the book amazingly well.

6) Do you use an editor and why are they important for writers?

Kfir: Absolutely! Editors are not merely important, they are critical. I wouldn’t dream of considering a book of mine complete before an editor I trust went through it with a fine comb, regarding both content and mechanics. Perhaps I am overemphatic about it because I also wear the editorial hat for The Harrow Press, where I work together with Dru Pagliassotti to create quality anthologies in the dark fiction genre. From that advantage view point I believe I can clearly see how important an editor is to the success of a book.

7) How do you cope with bad reviews?

Kfir: Getting a bad review every now and then is inevitable, and authors should ideally learn to grow a thick skin. I admit that I cope better if the review is clearly superficial and stupid, and then I can simply forget about it quickly. But people are entitled to their opinions, even those I don’t like, so the antidote is to remember that you had many good ones that cancel the bad one out.

8) What are your thoughts on covers?

Kfir: It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a good cover. Unfortunately, many beautiful covers are formulaic and uninteresting. It is difficult to come up with a cover that simultaneously piques the reader’s interest, is intimately linked to the story and is aesthetically pleasing. I usually hire a professional cover artist, but The Evelyn Project is such an emotionally engaging book that I asked my daughter Michal, a lawyer who after hours is a gifted digital artist, to propose the cover art. We worked long hours on the minute details after we agreed on the concept and I am exceptionally satisfied with the result.

9) Are you working on anything new?

Kfir: Yes. “An Italian Obsession” is my newest book. It is a different kind of book. Different, I mean, from what I have written so far. It is drama written as a very personal slice of life of an Italian youth, who is growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Although it is pure fiction, it is also a faithful testimony of middle class life in a healing post war society.

Thank you, Kfir. Very insightful and interesting interview! We look forward to more of your books, and talking with you again in the future.

You can find out more about Mr. Luzzatto here:

Website: Kfir Luzzatto

Twitter: @KfirLuzzatto

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kfir.luzzatto

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/155767.Kfir_Luzzatto

Purchase “The Evelyn Project” at: Amazon and Smashwords

For more information or to join the tour of “The Evelyn Project” which is being hosted from July 2nd through August 31st, please contact: Deborah Previte, The Bookish Dame, at thebookishdame@aol.com.

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