Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. Nominated for the Pushcart, Dwarf Stars and Best of the Net awards, his poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, including The McNeese Review (McNeese State University, Louisiana), Agape Review, The Lyric, Poetry Salzburg Review (University of Salzburg, Austria), Anglican Theological Review, The Cape Rock (Southern Missouri State University), Chiron Review and Invisible City (University of San Francisco). His poetry collections include Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), 50 Acrostic Poems, (Cyberwit, India), In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), Instrumentals(Lemures Press), and Pan’s Saxophone (Weasel Press, Texas). He is a nature lover and an advocate for the environment and animal rights and comforts. He has three companion dogs-Yves, Donna and their daughter Daisy. Healers is his first novel in his planned three-novel series. Jonel met with the Asian Review’s literary Inrerviewer Dhanuka Dickwella and thus talked about his new book ‘Healer’ and his life as a writer.

The book is described as a blend of historical fantasy, supernatural, andmagical realism. How do these elements contribute to the overall storytelling, and what effect do they have on the reader’s experience?

I did have the intention of writing a historical novel, and I also wanted to imbue a strong sense of the sacred in the narrative. By ‘sacred,’ I don’t intend to mean God or something religious in the quotidian sense, but the ‘sacred‘ in poetry, the irrational part of the spirit. I had been interacting with the ‘sacred’ in my poetry for decades, and I wanted readers of my fiction to feel this sense of awe. It is a presence that brings out the memorable in a story and helps it stay longer in the reader’s heart and mind. I wanted to inculcate a strong historical sense in my readers, and this, tempered with the sacred, is my layman’s formula for creating, I hope, generations of readers that are more attuned to the humanities being interfaced with history as its background. Setting. I was never aware that I was writing something magical-realist.

What is the sort of research you carried out on each of those elements, and how did you strike a balance, bringing just about the mix of things?

I wove a lot of my stories from memory. Years ago, I ditched the practice of carrying a notebook to record insights in life’s other settings. I intended to turn my subconscious and unconscious mind into a trustworthy and bottomless repository of my original thoughts and insights. I practised my intuitive perception. It took me five and a half years to write the novel. Many of those years were spent reading other books and scientific papers, watching YouTube videos of specialised fields and top thinkers and conversationalists like Jeffrey Mishlove and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and long documentaries such as those on Ancient Egypt and Quantum Mechanics. I wasn’t consciously striking a balance with different elements of the narrative. It was all reflexive – you get a good story because I got the voice for the narrative that grips.

The story is set on the Philippine island of Cebu. How do the setting and the cultural context influence the characters and plot of the book? What did you find most captivating about this aspect?

Many Cebuano traits are perceivable from the character, especially with the ways they talk and carry out their arguments. I also intended the historical arc of the novel to not so much mirror but mimic reality. Through this dynamic, I trust the reader’s memory of their cultural context to be projected onto character behaviour. In the battle during the revolution in Cebu, for instance, the Cebuano reader would not recognise so much the settings as how the characters carry themselves in battle and shouting matches. It’s captivating knowing you have written something that would grab the reader and relocate them, as it were, in a strange fictional world that is ironically familiar. The way the characters behave, albeit within different historical milieus, becomes a blend with their own projected ideas of how they would behave. Readers would remember their childhood, for instance, and see themselves in the characters.

The three main characters, Luis, Armand, and Victoria, possess supernatural healing skills. How does the author portray these abilities, and how do they shape the character’s journeys and decisions throughout the book?

The three characters have different modes of healing – Victoria by touch, Luis by the healing poetry he writes in his leather notebook, and Armand via the third eye by mere looking and wishing from the depths of his stomach where hunger resides. These modes of healing appear to impinge directly on the decisions they make, and they shape their choices, like, for instance, the appearance of Victoria later in the narrative in huge prayer rallies to do the actual healing by touch. Luis carries his leather notebook wherever he goes because he couldn’t heal anyone without the help of its pages. After that, he writes the verses that heal. In World War II, Luis kept going near Japanese headquarters to see if his poetry had come true; by this time, he had realised that he could commit murder, not just heal, with the help of his notebook because whatever he wrote in it turns into reality.

Healers is a Trilogy. How do you keep your readers hooked from one book to another?

To continually give readers the memorable, something they could instantly recall, a memory they could bring with them wherever they go. To tell the story honestly, through and through. To inculcate a sense of humility, reverence, and mystery. The sacred in poetry, applicable in fiction, happens only after the master has appeared because the student is at last ready, thus teachable and capable of self-education. The true education from the proverbial Master of Storytelling is the master’s ability transposed into the writer himself. So that the writer looks like he is teaching himself through self-education. The truth is, he has known and adopted humility as his potent learning tool, making him capable of formulating the sharpest and keenest insights – those that remain with readers for life. I intend to achieve such a feat throughout the narrative arc of three books.

One of the central themes of the book is the desire to shed immortality and experience adulthood. How does this theme resonate with you, and what do you think it says about human nature and our pursuit of dreams and aspirations?

Forget about me and my opinions. What resonates with me from the book is my treasure. Listen to the characters; instead, care about what’s dear to them. I thought I’d written a very, very good novel that I don’t have to answer any questions. I intended it to gain a life of its own across years, become independent of me, its author, and stand on its own merits. I’m overestimating myself.

The book spans generations and explores personal growth. Can you share your thoughts on how the narrative handles the passage of time and the the character development of the protagonists?

One of the themes I tried to develop for the novel is temporal, and specifically and structurally nonlinear time. I intend to develop this theme across the three books. The structure of the narrative is designed to mimic the spiral, and by ‘spiral‘ I mean those found in the conch shell or how the Fibonacci Sequence unfolds. I intend to portray structural time via different dimensions in superimposition. The development of characters across this arc relies heavily on well–muscled memory by the reader, which I wish to help create, especially in younger demographics. Memory vis-a-vis the structural scaffolding of time’s nonlinear arc will also be spiralling in nature or almost circular. There may be what I call huge jumps in characterisation, going back and forth the linear progression of, say, age, but my appeal to memory opens the endless vista of long-term memory. I rely heavily on universal experience to achieve the congruence of a mind. Readers would recognise visual details and remember their own experiences. This is how I achieve reader participation in the creation of the final version of the story in the reader’s mind. 

There is a transformation process of characters from childhood to adulthood. The way one resonates with one’s experience differs between these age blocks. How do you handle the language to suit this complexity?

Take note of what is similar to a lag time in the passage of time vis-a-vis setting, including dialogues. If several years have passed, say, when a dialogue happens, for instance, between Luis and his biological father, Miguel, then Luis’ mental acuity has matured so he could sound like an adult and still look like a boy who has stopped growing. I made it explicitly clear in the novel that though their bodies ceased to grow at a certain age, they continued to mature into adulthood intellectually. They may continue as children in my visual language, but the way they speak should recognisably sound like adults. The narrative also devotes more time to characterisation when dozens or even hundreds of years may have passed while they remain children physically.

The story touches on modern-day struggles and existential conflicts. How do these contemporary elements intersect with the historical and supernatural aspects of the plot, and what message or reflection do you think the author is conveying through this combination?

What you called ‘modern-day struggles and existential conflicts‘ are not contemporary elements but rather universal elements, unfolding again and again across ages and epochs in different guises but practically similar in nature. Maybe by ‘contemporary‘ you meant ‘contemporaneous.‘ All universal experiences that dress human nature in different guises would unfold in recognisable patterns. The characters may be placed in different historical milieus, but the reader will ‘remember‘ their human behaviour so that a ‘Spanish period,’ for instance, is by nature not that different from, say the World War II period. Take away the Japanese dive bombers and the samurai swords, and then you are left with human nature, unadorned and naked.

Again, I discourage readers from cutting their teeth on ‘what the author is conveying.‘ I would encourage, instead, the keep, perspicacious reading of the characters’ joys and sorrows, how they make choices, ways they deal with both internal and external conflicts, and ‘remember‘ the universal in the human experience. If there were a message I wish to convey, then it is this – the universality of human experience should be our fulcrum for achieving true and lasting unity across all demographics. Across millennia, everything has been tried to unite different factions or communities, but we are as divided as ever. The understanding and not so much the recognition as the agreement that we are all not that different from each other because of universal experience, perhaps, might raise the next generations of readers that recognise our one big human family via universal experience. The universal experience is a major theme of my fiction.

The characters are faced with the question of whether they are willing to live forever once again. How does this dilemma affect their choices and relationships, and what does it say about the nature of mortality and immortality?

This “dilemma” you mentioned is mentioned only at the very end of the novel, and the question is sudden. This is the spiral link that will bridge the story, not necessarily to Book Two but more prominently in Book Three.

Immortality is the ultimate goal of all human beings. To live forever is the Holy Grail for each man and each woman, and this doesn’t need more explanation. In a sense, I’m projecting my fears of mortality and desires for immortality onto my characters. The moment the characters terminate their immortality, the question of whether they wish to live forever again is instantly implied. By universal experience, the reader will project their thoughts as the thoughts of the characters even as they read different epochal milieus and will interrogate their mortality and wish for immortality. The readers will interact with their ideas of immortality while reading the novel. The brain’s ability to multitask can’t be overstated. The reader will remember their desire to live forever and project their pictures of themselves as how the characters behave.

‘Healers’ is described as an ‘OwnVoices’ work. How does the author’s personal background and experiences enhance the authenticity and depth of the narrative?

I won’t fall into this intellectual trap. (he crackled)

You have been nominated for several awards in poetry and fiction. How does your background in poetry influence the prose and storytelling in this novel? Did you notice any poetic elements in the writing?

I have been nominated for poetry only, not fiction. You have misread my bio, but that’s my fault because I wasn’t so specific. Well, in this case, you have made the wrong presumption and thus misread my bio.

My background in poetry influenced my work in fiction so much, especially since I make no distinctions practically. I don’t call the basic structure of how thoughts unfold in time a sentence, for instance, but a line. There is a lot of internal rhyming, assonance, consonance, and alliteration in the text. I relied on echoes and buoyed my narrative voice on rhythms. I had always been mindfully conscious of writing the novel as poetry that looks like prose. I employed synecdoche, for instance, to achieve an economy of details. I relied heavily on metaphor and symbolism, for instance, with my use of colours, which is highly reliant on the symbolic nature of objective reality. I trust the perspicacious reader, self-trained at total recall to recognise the cultural dynamics in time.

The book weaves together various themes, such as identity and mortality. Which theme resonated with you the most, and why?

The theme of mortality resonated with me most, especially near the end of its writing, when I had fallen ill. I remember pausing for weeks, postponing the completion of my novel, to reflect on my mortality and death. I was sick, vomiting sick, in fact, when I worked with my content and copy editors. I’m grateful that I’ve retained some intellectual edge to complete the second book, which I’ve submitted to my publisher of choice for consideration.

Your works have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. How does your experience as a writer contribute to the quality of the storytelling in ‘Healers?’

It doesn’t. Years, even decades of practice, have honed my style and desire for clarity and precision. It’s not different from being a concert pianist or a violin soloist – the arts require years of hard work. Ninety-nine per cent of it is indeed perspiration.

Can you share any specific moments or passages from the book that left a lasting impression on you, and why?

That moment was when the Archangel Raphael explained to Luis the true function of the human heart, which is to produce the electromagnetic torus field. This is why the human heart runs with blood to continue pumping, thereby maintaining the human torus field.

I’m proud of that moment because the thought behind it was originally mine. It is biologically true that every human being has a torus field. This is not science fiction; they have scientific devices to measure it. But the idea that the real function of the pumping heart is to maintain the torus field is mine. I haven’t read it from any book or scientific paper, nor heard it from YouTube or Facebook videos. The idea is wholly mine.

Interviewed by Dhanuka Nadeera Dickwella