My name is Gary Shapero, I am a born and bred Torontonian and still live a mere walk from the neighbourhood where I grew up. Regrettably and unapologetically, I am also a diehard Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan. It is a painful fandom, but sadly, I know no other way. By day I work as physician, practicing in the field of headache and pain medicine. In my spare time, amongst other things, I write.

Many people have asked me, with no previous literary experience, what on earth motivated you to write a book?

The vision of writing this novel started nearly twenty-five years ago, following the tragic events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Although I was not personally affected, I still felt immersed, like so many others, in the pervasive angst that followed this calamity. It was during this time, almost out of no where, a spark ignited in my mind that kindled a desire to write.  

With the Clashes of the Civilizations the mantra of the day, It felt to me that we were at the precipice of a tsunami of tribal and cultural acrimony that could very well be our undoing. With technological advances and globalization, our world had become smaller and we were now experiencing the terrifying ramifications of this divisiveness closer and closer to home.

I kept reflecting on how our ability to harm and destroy one another had evolved much more rapidly than our ability to live peacefully amongst one other.

With all this ruminating in my mind, I began to think. What were the evolutionary and social forces that were fueling this divisiveness?  Then I considered, what would the world look like if we were all one race and how could this be accomplished? Would we be better off and safer from our most baser instincts? How would the loss of our unique tribal identities affect us and would we simply find something else that would then once again divide us?

With all these questions circling in my mind, cathartically, I began to put my thoughts into words and organize my ideas into essays.

It was a start, but what I really wanted was a story. For stories, in my view, were more liberating and relatable. Stories allowed one to better expand ideas and connect to the reader through emotions and feelings, not just evolutionary theories or speculative notions.

So I turned to a genre, speculative literary fiction, that I had been drawn to my entire life, and began to write my own story. I had no outline, no idea were it was heading and no ending in sight. I did everything that I later learned was incorrect, but in reality, I never thought that I would finish this manuscript, so it didn’t really matter, I just wrote.

But as time went on, the story evolved and much to my surprise, I eventually finished my first draft. To say it was raw, is a gross understatement, but what I did have, at least in my mind, was the bones of a good story.

What I subsequently learned, is that writing is very much about rewriting. And so, after several revisions and refinements, I handed my manuscript over to a skilled editor who took my story and helped me add texture, descriptions and nuance to my text.  One of his most pertinent suggestions concurrently opened the floodgates to expand the storyline into a multigenerational trilogy. So yes, there are two more books to come in the TRIBE trilogy, and I get to keep writing!

The final product, TRIBE, has been literally decades in the making and I am overjoyed that I have accomplished this goal. It truly was an aspiration, that when I began, I never really believed I could or would complete. But I did, and I am proud of that, and most importantly, I am proud of the final story.  

I hope that when you read TRIBE, it will somehow give those of us who are still perennially mired, and fearful of the unrelenting divisiveness that we see in our world today, pause to think and the liberty to hope, through the reading of a story, of a brighter future for us all.