“In Live Like a Fruit Fly, Gabe Berman shares his recipe for living a more joyful,worthwhile, and abundant life in every way. A witty, entertaining, and insightful read.” ~Deepak Chopra

In his newly released book, native New Yorker Gabe Berman shares his engaging perspective about following our passions, staying present, and practicing active appreciation. Filled with insightful musings, humor, and stories everyone can relate to, Live Like a Fruit Fly will help you awaken to the joy and meaning available in every moment.

An interview with Gabe Berman

Why should we live like a fruit fly?
Gabe: Fruit flies usually die of old age within ten days of being born. Seizing the day is their
only option. Likewise, your tomorrows aren’t guaranteed either. You may have your
whole life ahead of you, but as you grow older, it seems as though less and less time
elapses between birthdays. If you haven’t felt this yet, you will.

Q: What prompted you to write the book?
Gabe: After college, I jumped from one sales job to another. Towards the end of my tenure of
trying to coax people into buying things they weren’t interested in, I hung up the phone
after a making a sales call and thought, “My life is too short for this. I can’t waste it. I
need to live like a fruit fly.”

Q: Your writing style is unusual for the self-help genre. It’s more conversational
and less dogmatic. Is there a reason for this?
Gabe: I’ve plowed through many books in the self-help, new age and eastern philosophy
sections and I don’t relate to writers who preach to me so I vowed not to do the same.
My goal was to sound like a trustworthy friend.

Q: Which authors have influenced you the most?
Gabe: On the spiritual side, there’s Neale Donald Walsch, Deepak Chopra, and U.S. Anderson.
I’ve also made plenty of room for J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Hunter S.
Thompson. But it was a book I read as a kid that made me want to be a writer –The Spy
in the Ointment by Donald E. Westlake. In this spy novel, the main character speaks to
the reader in parenthesis as if he’s talking to the camera in a movie. My book is similar
but I’ve made myself the main character and all I do is talk to the camera.

Q: You sporadically quote others throughout your book. Can you pinpoint the one
that means the most to you?
Gabe: I used a quote from Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl. I believe life boils
down to the choices you make and I couldn’t have said it better than this, “We who lived
in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting
others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but
they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the
last of all human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one’s own way.”

Q: Although you mock yourself for doing so, you make a few references to the Star
Wars movies. Care to comment on this?
Gabe: I grew up with Star Wars and thanks to the prequels, my young nephews are doing so as well.
As with Harry Potter, I believe people are so attracted to these stories because it shows how
one unassuming person can make such a difference. Luke Skywalker was just a farm
boy with a bad haircut who ends up saving the universe from evil. What’s there not to
love?

Q: You mention the events of 9/11 in the beginning of the book. It’s a significant
day for everyone but what does it mean to you?
Gabe: If 9/11 doesn’t show you how unpredictable life is, nothing will. All the planning and
all the worrying ended up meaning nothing for those people caught in the buildings that
day. We need to worry less and live more. We need to live for today.

Q: Do you have advice for aspiring writers?
Gabe: It’s the same advice I’d give to anyone who’s aspiring to do anything bold. You must
kick the first door open to have other doors open for you. It’s rare that the first door
opens without a bit of force. People are always telling me that they’d like to write a
book. But how many of them have actually started writing? Almost none. You need to
start writing if you want to be a writer. You need to start juggling if you want to be a
clown in the circus. It seems as if the Universe doesn’t budge from your desire alone.
It needs to see some action.

Q: Are you working on a new book?
Gabe: Yes, you can see it unfold at blog.livelikeafruitfly.com.

Read reviews of Live Like a Fruit Fly and order your copy at Amazon.