Dave Droge Author Interview

Julia’s Memories is a fictional futuristic memoir that recounts the life of an artist and activist going into her 55th birthday. What were some themes you wanted to capture in this novel?

First I want to thank you for reading the novel, it’s not an easy read. But to answer this first question: I can’t really remember right now anymore what themes I was thinking of when starting with the writing of this novel. I guess I wanted to explore Julia’s live as the daughter of Henk, the protagonist of The Game Changer, and I wanted the atmosphere to be different then this book about the harbor of Rotterdam. I think I remember just now that I had something like the writing of Proust, Nadas and Faulkner in mind. In this sense though the novel is finished for me and the notes I wrote have been burned.

Julia is an artist and activist and it seems that shes has done many interesting things in her life. Did you put anything from your own life into this book?

No, not that I recall. But probably there is some of this influence in between the lines, although the main character is a woman. Probably it’s more present in Daan his letter after her asking how he sees events of the past.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

Now that part 1 and 2 are being proof-edited by Cate Baum, I am working on Part 3 of the Amor Mundi series. I have no idea when it will be finished yet. Thanks for having this interview.

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Julia’s memories (part 1 of the Amor Mundi series) is a biography and coming of age novel, written from the future.

Julia, a passionate artist and activist, writes her memoires. She does so within the year 2050. This gives us an idea how the Transition has been shaped, how the social revolution is partly achieved through her artworks, after her father fled the Netherlands in 2014.

June 2050. Julia, a renowned artist, celebrates her 55th birthday. Encouraged by the mayor of Rotterdam she decides to write her memoirs. She wants unravel her past, to understand it better, and hopes that youth will be able to learn something from this candid quest in her hard-won life. Being the daughter of a born entrepreneur and businessman and partly raised by the high society family from her mothers site, being confronted with tragedy in her youth, she describes how she struggles to get a grip and slowly manages to form her own, powerful, identity. Fortunately, she gets help from her imaginary friends, from a local artist and from the Romenian secretary of her father. Meanwhile however, during her writing, fragments of another reality, fragments that increase in quantity and intensity, distract her and influence her memoirs.