Miami-Born Author Uncovers Masquerading Dinosaurs After Eric Garcia graduated from college, he was determined to become a writer. The Miami native had just graduated from USC with a major in creative writing and film, but he couldn’t seem to get started. So he told his wife, Sabrina, that she had to motivate him. They wanted to join friends on a trip to Las Vegas, but Garcia told Sabrina that the only way he was going to be a writer was if she told him that they couldn’t go to Vegas unless he wrote a certain number of pages a day before the trip. The strategy worked. Garcia ended up writing 15 pages of what became the first draft of Anonymous Rex, his first novel, from which he will be reading at Liberties on Tuesday evening. After writing the pages, though, the Garcias went to Vegas, and Eric put the fifteen pages aside. Some time later, when he was browsing through the material on his computer, he came across the those pages again. He read them, and thought he might have something there. “Then I took a shower and the rest of the idea came to me. I finished that draft in about a month, and then left the book sitting around for another year and a half before I went back to it.” Garcia says, “I generally dislike describing Anonymous Rex to people who don’t know what it’s about.”  It’s not surprising; the book’s “high concept” strikes even the most jaded reader as a little strange. Garcia’s premise? “The dinosaurs didn’t die out. They just went into hiding. By the time the humans appeared on the scene, the dinos realized they’d have to dress up to survive.” Thus dinosaurs began squeezing themselves into convincing latex costumes which allowed them to blend in, and now they are everywhere among us, taking on professions such as doctors, janitors and private investigators. “I was watching some experts on television talk about how the dinosaurs died out, and because they had so many different theories, it seemed like they were spreading a disinformation campaign so we don’t find out what really happened,” Garcia says. “I started thinking about dinosaurs going undercover and detectives having to go under cover, and I figured it would be a good venue, to meld the two worlds in a book.” Garcia grew up in Miami, but decided when it came to college that he wanted to see what a cold climate was like. After two and a half years in Ithaca, he figured he’d had enough of the cold, and transferred to USC, “mostly for the film & TV,” he says. His main workshop leader there was author T. Coraghessan Boyle. “He had slightly absurdist ideas so people were already primed for that kind of stuff. I wrote a short story that was revisionist history, about a five-year-old who helped develop the atomic bomb. The workshops really helped hone my style a lot.” Garcia had always been a fan of noir films and to some degree noir fiction, mostly the old masters like Chandler and Hammett, so it was natural that he’d head in that direction for his first novel. He’s also a fan of modern noir writers such as Vicki Hendricks, whose Miami Purity he particularly liked. When asked why he thinks dinosaurs are so popular, Garcia said, “It’s so weird. The example I always use is when you have a birthday party for your kid, you can get birthday plates with dinosaurs on them-- but there’s no other dead animals on them. They’re just as mythical as dragons to some degree, particularly because the fossil record is pretty spotty. I used to think that you’d go into a museum, and see a T-Rex and think that was the whole skeleton, but that’s not, it’s conjecture, they find a thigh bone and it’s so long, so they fashion a leg bone because it would have had to be that size or shape to support a thigh bone of that size. It’s all theory. Right now, they’re thinking that dinosaurs could have evolved into birds. But who knows, they could have evolved into wombats. Or they could still be around, disguised as humans.” Garcia did “a good amount” of dinosaur research, “Just reading up. I had x amount of knowledge about dinosaurs, mostly from pop culture, and to some degree that’s what I wanted to explore. I wanted to use some of the scientific research I did in trying to fashion the personalities of the dinosaur characters. Vincent is a velociraptor because they’re speedy, thought to be the most cunning of the dinosaurs. The name actually means ‘speedy thief.’ I liked the concept of a guy who was quick and who could get in and out of places easily. Vincent’s boss is a T Rex because he’s a large lumbering guy, who rules by pure force, brute power, the kind of “I’m bigger than you” thing. Tyrannosaurus Rex actually means tyrant lizard, and that describes the boss’s personality.” A movie deal is already in the works, with actors and directors expressing interest in the material. “The book has a surrealistic edge and I want somebody who can pick that up,” says Garcia. “Pitching this book to the movies has been a good experience, because I was living the life of a struggling LA screenwriter and then got to talk to people who were heads of industry who love Anonymous Rex and want to make it.” Garcia is a big fan of humorous authors such as Dave Barry, Tom Robbins, and Kurt Vonnegut, who he says is “able to meld very serious topics with incredible humor.” Growing up, he and Brad Meltzer, another young Miami-born author, “always knew of each other peripherally, even though Brad is two years older. We have the same film agent, and when Brad read about the book, he got in touch, and he read the book and liked it.” Anonymous Rex seems to span several genres. “It is a mystery, or it’s been pegged as a mystery, but it’s really more of a comedy,” says Garcia. “It’s within the concept of an alternate history book, and there are science fiction elements in that it’s revising what we think of science. I’m working on a sci-fi comedy novel now, to be called The Repossession Mambo. And I’ve already completed another book featuring Vince, Casual Rex, which is at my publishers now, and will come out next summer. More danger and insanity, of course, but it’s par for the course for V.R. Hope he doesn’t forget his trenchcoat this time.”