Bookwild - Victor Manibo: The Sleepless

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

On this episode, I talk to Victor Manibo about his thought provoking sci-fi noir The Sleepless.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsCheck out the book hereThe Sleepless SynopsisJournalist Jamie Vega is Sleepless: he can’t sleep, nor does he need to. When his boss dies on the eve of a controversial corporate takeover, Jamie doesn’t buy the too-convenient explanation of suicide, and launches an investigation of his own.But everything goes awry when Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Alarmingly, his memory loss may have to do with how he became Sleepless: not naturally, like other Sleepless people, but through a risky and illegal biohacking process.As Jamie delves deeper into Simon’s final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, all while confronting past traumas and unforeseen consequences of his medical experimentation. But Jamie soon faces the most dangerous decision of all as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him—and all of humanity. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

Hi, my name is Kate, and I love to read. Like, I was carrying books around with me before Kindles were a thing. So I decided to start a podcast where I interview the authors of some of my favorite books, ask them all of my questions so that I can read between the lines of the books. I'm back to another episode of Between the Lines. I'm here today with Victor Menebo, who is the author of The Sleepless, which is a really fantastic sci-fi book. that I read recently. So welcome to the podcast. Hi, Kate. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So before we dive into the book, I did want to get to know a little bit about you. So when did you know that you wanted to write a book or when did you know you wanted to be an author? I think I've always been

writing since I was a kid. It was something that I did as a hobby. Though I didn't really take it seriously until I was an adult. As a kid, you know, I'm Filipino. I was born of Asian parents who kind of valued the kind of job that brought you stability. And obviously, writing is not it. So they encouraged me to, you know, to go into the field that I'm in now, which is the law. And I remember my father saying, you know, once you get that degree and that law license, you can do whatever you want.

And now that I have, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to write. So I really started seriously writing a few years back. And The Sleepless is actually one of the first things I wrote and the first novel that I finished. Wow. That's like, it's so good. I wouldn't have expected that. Oh, thank you. You're welcome.

So what is your writing process like? So do you outline, do you kind of figure it out as you go? what's your structure? With the sleepless, it's a little different because I did that as part of the National Novel Writing Month. And for folks who don't know, it's a community, it's an online community that gathers every November to finish 50,000 words in 30 days. And that is a very intense requirement.

It basically means you draft 1,700 words in every day for 30 days. Which didn't allow me. Yeah, no, it's a lot. Yeah. It didn't allow me to really plan or plot out anything. Okay. Because also during a time that I was just trying to see if I could do it, right? Okay.

So with the sleepless, I didn't really plan anything out. But in my next projects after that, I realized, okay, I need to outline. I need to be more specific about things before I write them down, because otherwise I'm going to be revising over and over. Yeah. That was who I was just talking to an author yesterday, who said the same thing, where she was like, I love just like having it come to me as I'm writing, but I probably would have to do less revisions if I didn't do it that way.

So that's funny that you both said that. Exactly, exactly. And I love revision. Revision is, you know, there's also creativity there, a lot of creativity there. at the same time it's just a lot of, you know, removing things that I really enjoyed, which is always heartbreaking for me. Yeah, right. I don't know how you end up making those decisions.

So what about your characters? Like in this book or your next book? Like, how do you get to know your characters? With this book, for example, I think the plot came first. I knew the premise of a sleepless world, and I saw it in my mind before I picked the characters with which to tell this story. So because I started with a premise, I wanted to think of, well, what kind of character would best tell or would best portray this world? And I wanted someone who kind of was uneasy about his sleeplessness, who kind of maybe had some regrets about it. And also at the same time, someone who had a job or a role in society that allowed him to investigate things.

Because, yeah, at the heart of it, I wanted it to be kind of a detective story. So I chose a journalist. I chose a journalist who was sleepless. And I chose someone who is queer and Filipino just like me because, you know, like I said, It was my first novel that I really wanted to take seriously. And I just brought in everything that I knew. And I know how to be queer in Filipino. So that's really helped.

I love that. The same author that I was just mentioning talked about how she thinks, like, it is right what you know and then amplify it. So like maybe it's not exactly the same thing, but you can connect to it. So I love that. That's so cool. Yeah, no, 100%. It was definitely right what you know.

and just leaning into it and, you know, obviously making some tweaks. Jamie is a lot similar to me, but he makes choices that kind of horrify me that I'm like, no, oh my God, stop. I love that. So it is, it's definitely a sci-fi book in the near future. What do you think about sci-fi makes it such a perfect genre for speculative fiction or social commentary? I think sci-fi really likes to ask big questions about how we see ourselves in the future, right? The setting and the time just kind of forces someone to confront their own visions for the future

or, you know, for a writer to examine their own visions of the future. And you can't really talk about this is how things should be. without examining how things are right now. Yeah. You know, and it's not just science fiction. Fantasy does the same thing. Like, fantasy is not about the past. Science fiction is not about the future.

It's always about the present. But I think with science fiction, just because of the way that it's been, you know, the way that it developed, like, you know, with books like 1984 or Brave New World, those classic books, they were always, they always leaned toward the,

side of in your face about what they're trying to say in terms of social commentary. So everything that followed kind of said to themselves. Every writer was like, well, okay, I can be more explicit about these themes of social commentary in this genre. I think we got a free pass because of, you know, our forebears who started out or who were the classics of the genre. Yeah, that's a really good point. So for people who don't know what it's about, how would you describe the sleepless in a couple sentences?

So the sleepless is a sci-fi noir thriller set in a world where a part of a population does not require sleep. And it is a tale about capitalism and our drive for productivity and how time and memory and trauma and work can be. really do a number on someone. Yes, that really sums up perfectly. Where did you get the idea for it? The first time that I really thought of writing it came to me when I was riding on a train from my parents' place in New Jersey. I was coming from a long weekend, and I was having the Sunday scaries. I was looking forward to the work week and thinking, oh, wow. I have so much to do, and I just spent all this time hanging out, and I just had this sense of, well, you know, I guess I could finish everything if I didn't have to sleep.

And from that, it was like, okay, well, if I didn't have to sleep, what would that do to my body? And, you know, I asked more and more what if questions, well, if I didn't need to sleep, what if, like, everybody didn't need to sleep, what would that do to, you know, the way we work? the way we live, the way we build things, the way we structure our houses, for example. And so it was just that sense of tiredness and exhaustion from being an adult that made me think of the initial story seed, and it blew up from there. That is so cool. I love that your answer is basically like, adulting made me think of not having to sleep. Yeah, because it really does. You know, you think about. your work and balancing that with your family life, your personal life, your obligations to your

partner, to your pets, and just like daily chores, taking care of yourself. Like balancing all of that, I feel like gets harder and harder. The more complex society becomes, the more complex our lives become. Yeah. You said pets. And that was literally, I had to make sure I walked my dogs before this because otherwise they would probably interrupt so they're like sleeping but i had to like wear them out so that i could fit this and still too and it wouldn't bug us same i i walked my dog and also now she's stuck in my bedroom

because if not she'll be jumping all over me yeah they sometimes they do when my last podcast harley at the end came up and started like roaring at me and i was like okay cool i guess we're done yeah so next we are going to get into talking about the book so at this point i always tell everyone if they haven't read it to pause and go read it and come back but obviously if you've already read it you can keep listening so in in some ways the sleepless storyline kind of isn't different from our present day which you actually kind of pointed out earlier so it really mimics our obsession with consuming and producing all the time and so at the beginning of his sleeplessness, Jamie realizes I was consuming so much that after only a few months,

I felt physically bloated. My brain tired of all the media and my lists felt like drudgery. Like I had been masochistically giving myself unnecessary homework. So what similarities do you see between our non-stop culture and the world of the sleepless? Well, when I was writing those words, I was thinking specifically of media consumption as it relates to me. Because I have a kind of person who wants to be connected into what the cultural conversation is. So I need to know, let's say, like right now what's going on. You have so many big properties coming out with a lot of TV shows, and it's so hard to keep up, right? You know, you have the rings of power, you have House of the Dragon, you have Shee Hulk,

and that's like Marvel, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones all coming out with new shows in the same month. That's too much. Yeah, yeah. And so it's hard to catch up. And so I felt that and I felt like someone like Jamie would probably feel the same if that's the way that they were trying to fill up their time. They would feel like psychically bloated because, oh my God, I'm consuming all these stories. And I love stories, but sometimes it does feel like I just need to not listen to anything, not watch anything, not read anything. and kind of refill the well and rest.

Yeah. But, you know, the book itself also talked about consumption as a whole, not just like media consumption, but consumption of resources, consumption of goods and services, and how when you are in a sleepless world, when you have a big part of the population who's always awake, they're always going to be consuming something.

They're going to be consuming energy because, you know, their computers are going to be on 24, seven probably right or they're going to be consuming food because their bodies are going to need more fuel they're going to be consuming more just more things to to live those eight extra hours and and what does that look like if 25% of the globe does that our energy needs and our food needs are going to drastically change so I think those are just important things to think about and not just, you know, obviously the initial thrust of the sleepless was about hustle culture and the grind, but at the same time, what does the grind do? The grind tells us to keep working so that we can keep earning more money so that what is the end goal here?

And those are the kinds of questions that I wanted to raise. Yeah, there were some really cool explorations of that where like limitless time made the pursuit of limitless money like even more. possible and it made it easier. Like it just accelerated everything, basically. And the question is like, is that something that we want? Is that something that, as an individual, is that something that a reader would want for themselves? And is that something that the reader would want for society at large? And I think those were the questions that I really wanted to get to.

Yeah, you really, you really did on multiple fronts. You're welcome. One of the ways you did, too, was that you called it a pandemic of sleeplessness. And the way it's received in the book kind of mirrors the way society handles new groups or outsiders sometimes. So you did have anti-sleepless groups developing that basically they advocated for the stringent monitoring of the sleepless and pushed for sleepless discrimination in housing, the workplace, all spheres of social and political life. So we're using the reactions to sleeplessness as a way to discuss how parts of society treat outsiders and then the way fear can make the government overregulate people's lives. Oh yes, 100%.

I had to kind of think about how the world or how society would react if there was a new way to differentiate a group of people. Humans have been differentiating people and discriminating against the other. since you know since time immemorial right it could be on the basis of sex or race or religion or ability age and they're just like so many axes that humans have kind of othered yeah other groups and so with the sleep list I had to think about well this is a new kind of group of people it kind of shares some similarities to you know, someone who might be disabled, right?

Because it's about health, it's about the body. It's about how the sleepless bodies function differently from, you know, most of society. So there are similarities there. And I was, I'm looking at how, you know, disabled people have been treated. Some, there are, like, depending on the type of disability, be it mental or physical, some people are treated as though they're a danger or some people are treated as though they are special and need to be taken care of and it's the government's job to regulate them and to be super paternalistic toward them and you know there are different kinds of ways that people have

exercised insidious discrimination and those are things that I I wanted to explore with the sleepless. That's why I had all these kinds of different groups. Like, you know, they have religious reasons or they have, like, you know, they appear concerned, but not really concerned. They're just, like, trying to hold people at an arm's length. And obviously, there are people who are out and out haters, and they just dislike the sleepless just because they're different.

And there are many, many, like, kind of gradations of discrimination and othering. And I wanted to show all of those. Yeah. It definitely felt like it, like what you were saying, like religious, practical, like all of the different ways people approach it. Like, it is what happens on any, like, hot topic issue today even. I thought that was really cool. So there's definitely upsides to being sleepless. And so the book does talk to about how artists flourish during the pandemic and how how it.

after. So it says, did an extra time before people more money, more freedom to pursue their creative endeavors, literature, film, the visual and performing arts all blossomed despite the uncertainty and fears and chaos. So it made me wonder if you wrote this book amidst our real world pandemic restrictions, and do you feel like that extra time a lot of people had did allow some people to connect to passions that weren't just like the grind of work. Well, to answer the logistical question, yes, I was working on this book during the pandemic. I drafted it in late 2017, early 2018. So Nanorama 2017 to 2018, I was drafting it.

And then I was revising it for a couple years. by the time that the pandemic, the COVID pandemic, hit in March of 2020, I was revising it and I was getting ready to send the manuscript out to agents which is really interesting when you think about how I'm going to pitch this book. It's hard to pitch a pandemic-related book during a pandemic.

I'm lucky that I found champions, my agent and then publishing house heroin who eventually bought the book, I'm lucky that they weren't faced by the fact that a pandemic is kind of a huge plot point in this story. But yeah, I was working on it during the pandemic, and the section that you read is actually a later addition. Nice. Because I discovered, okay, this is what's going on while the COVID pandemic was happening.

Like people had basically extra time, right? We were off work for better or worse, because then some people didn't get to make money and, you know, pay their bills and stuff. But at the same time, they had extra time. And what did some people do? Some people did turn to their hobbies or they did turn to activities that somehow improve them in some way.

Maybe they learned how to cook. We saw how many banana breads and just bread in general, was like produced during that time. I know I cooked a lot and I tried to improve my cooking skills. And, you know, some people, you know, launched podcasts or wrote books. I know people who wrote books and had the time to write books during the pandemic. Yeah.

So I thought about that and how, well, in the sleepless world, in this pandemic, people did have more time and what would they do? They would probably do the same thing. what would be the effect of that? More books, more people who can, I don't know, be better at dance, for example, or sculpture, any form of art, maybe more filmmakers. And that's what I was really going at.

It was from the experience of seeing how some people reacted during the COVID pandemic and putting that into the story. Yeah. Actually, I keep mentioning other authors, but the author I talked to two episodes ago, she wrote her first one, like, entirely in the time that she was, like, home for the first few months, basically. So it is that stuff is cool when, like, some of us got a break from, like, whatever.

But, yeah, it was also frustrating if it meant you couldn't make money at the same time. Yeah, and also, I think going into hobbies was a way of coping, right? Yeah. There was this disaster that was going on. And you probably weren't making as much money as you used to. So there's like the financial strain and also the public health threat and the toll that that takes to someone's mental health. And where do we turn when things are bad?

We turn to the things that really give us, you know, joy and satisfaction. We turn to our passions, which are our hobbies. And for some people, they have tried to monetize that because they had to, right? So those sort of things that I was thinking about when I wrote this. Yeah. So the book also does discuss the negative parts, or negative ways the pandemic was handled.

And it mentions at one point, but when you're dealing with a global pandemic, overcorrection is easy, maybe even necessary. So two questions. Why do you think fear causes humans to overreact? and then if it is maybe necessary, do you think overcorrection is then sometimes what brings it back into balance?

I think overcorrection is always going to be bad. I mean, just anything in excess is bad. But when I was writing the specific part of the book, I was dealing with a situation where there were a lot of unknowns. I think at the time, this was during a flashback where governments and our institutions didn't know if sleeplessness could cause an early death or how contagious it is.

They didn't know how it was transmitted. So there means when you're confronted with something totally unknown, our reaction, or I think it's a normal human response to just flee and isolate, some people would fight, depending on what the source of the threat is. But it's not the kind of thing that encourages thoughtful deliberation, especially when it's a big global disease, which sleep business was seen at the time, right? Nobody's really clamoring for a little. Well, let's slow down and let's think about what the possibilities are, and let's investigate each one. so do I think it's good not necessarily not the way it played that in the book but I think that's a normal or at least that's an expected response especially with governments or dealing with large populations who with the interesting part of this is with the way COVID has been handled I don't know necessarily that there was an overcorrection or like

overreaction in some places there's been an underreaction where mask mandates are like on and off again and on again depending on you know what I feel like isn't necessarily public safety concerns or the science but other considerations right so so in some ways that part of it is like not exactly tracking with our current experience with the pandemic, which is still ongoing. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is. So Jamie was also a workaholic before he became sleepless, but his lack of commitment to his personal life and his relationships definitely gets more pronounced after he becomes

sleepless. And his therapist points out to him that he only noticed his memory lapses when it was stuff that was happening with work and not in his personal life, which I also thought was just like a really good touch because I've gotten called out for that in therapy before. Same, same. That's awesome. So did you kind of want to use him as an example of what happens when our priorities are like only about work or ourselves?

Oh, absolutely 100%. Like I was saying earlier, I needed my main character to be the real, I deal. way to tell the themes of the book. And one of the main themes is our culture which values optimizing time and optimizing your participation in capitalism, your participation in the workforce. And Jamie is that. And we see through his journey how he is dedicated to his job. And it's a job that has some social good, right? Because he is a journalist at least. least there is a public service in what he's trying to do even though he's working for a private corporation. But even with that kind of job, it's still a job. And it's still something that should

ideally be a part of one's life, not something that takes over someone's life, the way it does for his life, the way he's allowed it to take over his life to the detriment of his personal relationships. So because I wanted to explore those themes, Jamie definitely had to be that workaholic who, you know, neglects things until the therapist calls him out. Yes. Yeah. There was like kind of an ongoing joke with my therapist and both my husband and I, we actually work together too, and we're both workaholics. So there was like a joke for the first few years of therapy where she'd be like, okay, you've recapped me on your work and you've told me what you're doing in the future. What'd you guys do for fun? And we'd be like,

uh, um, work, it was fun. So relatable. So it was like an ongoing joke. Yeah. Yeah. So I love seeing that in the book. I was like, oh, that's familiar. But um, by the, at the end, Lochner tries to convince Jamie that he is figuring out a sleepless pill to give people the choice basically and jamie says to him it's a false choice people want to be sleepless so they can live so they can work their second third fourth job so they get hired so they get promoted so they buy all the shit you make the goods you sell the services you provide everyone will choose to be sleepless because they can't afford not to be and so it felt like you were discussing capitalism as a whole in that part um do you think being born into a capitalistic society can

feel like there's no choice to like plug into the system, make the money, and buy things? I think it definitely indoctrines us into this idea that this is the only system and that this is the best system that we can have. I mean, that's a recurring conversation every time, you know, there's something wrong happens with industry, with our corporations. Every time talk of regulation happens or every time there's a new union that's being formed people say you know well you know this is the capitalistic system this is what we have and it's the best that we can get we've tried communism and it doesn't work if you've tried other economic systems and they don't work so this is it i definitely think that that's a narrative that it is not true

ursula leguin once had a quote you know capitalism seems to escape but so did the divine right of kings at one point. That's not a direct quote, but that was the idea. We as humans have always lived in systems that we thought were unchangeable or unfixable, but they weren't. And, you know, with the monarchy, with fall of the monarchy, it took revolutions with, you know, capitalism for it to change. It might take that. It might take other ways of changing the system. but at least we have to start with the mindset of, well, things are changeable.

It doesn't have to be this way. Yeah. When Jamie, yeah, when Jamie was talking to Lochner about this, there was a sense of a little bit of hopelessness or at least a little bit of recognizing that this is how society is, that if given the choice, they would want to participate it in capitalism. They would uphold the inequalities and the demands of capitalism. They would give into the demands of capitalism.

That's what Jamie's saying here. And I think that comes from his experience as, well, you know, I did have that choice. I did take that bill. And this is how I did think. And I think this is how others would do it too. The only reason that Jamie has kind of a heel turn is because he found out about all the corruption all the, you know, the scheming that are done by all these parties and also because of his memory loss and his trauma,

but not everyone will have those things happen to them. Not everyone will experience that. And Jamie, if, you know, he sees, he probably sees that if somebody who didn't have, who had an easier life and, like, didn't know as much, and they were given the choice, they would probably take it. And more people would probably take it. yeah yeah I mean even just because like if more and more people were doing it you'd feel like you had to

to even just like be able to keep up like with what you would you would feel like all of society would be shifting anyway so it's like don't you need to do that to like not even compete even just like stay at the same level right 100% yeah so if there weren't memory destroying effects though or any negative effects would you choose to be sleepless? Okay, so I can't tell you. I mean, it's asked I've been asked this. My answer always is, you know, my relationship with sleep is I do it because I need to do it. I don't, I'm not a napper. I don't like, I don't crave sleep, but I need sleep. Yeah. So if there were no memory effects, I would probably choose to be sleepless.

But I also know that I would get so bored or like, I would be like, okay, now what do I do? I would be good at telling myself to take care of myself and not just work. I don't think I would be a workaholic. But I would definitely have those nights when I'm like, okay, what do I do now? I'm just like twiddling my fingers and killing like three or four hours. I don't know. So yes, the answer, the short end. is yes, but I won't be a hundred percent happy about it.

Right. I think I loved your point in the book about how like it's almost like better than living longer when you're older. Like you get to like have extra life but when you're still younger. And I was like, yes, that is what is so appealing about it. And I feel like my to read list is so long that I would literally never be bored. Yeah, same. I would read a lot. I would read a lot. That's for sure. Yeah. And like, probably just talk to more readers. That has been, like, the best part about, like, connecting with people for the podcast is, like, the more books you've read, the more people you can talk to about them. And also, that's one of the best parts about having written a book. More people want to talk to you about it. You can just, like, jam about, not just a book, but, you know, books in general and other authors. It's been, you know, a great experience. That's so cool. So where can people find you to follow you, keep up with everything you're doing?

People can find me at Victor Manibo. That's ad sign and then my name on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook. I luckily got the same handle because I have a fairly unique name. And they can also check out Victor Mannebo.com for my website and my upcoming events. Most of the time, I'm on Instagram and Twitter. And please feel free to message me there or, like, DM me. I always like talking to readers and other writers and just book lovers in general.