Featured Interview With Page Zaplendam
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
If Page was a Peanuts character she would be Peppermint Patty, in all the best ways, of course. She grew up in South Texas and in her household hot sauce and salsa are more common than ketchup. As the daughter of a philosophic survivalist and a pragmatic romantic, she grew up with a love for survival and preparedness, Star Trek, Jane Austen, and political and social theory.
She currently resides in Florida with more spiders than she cares to have and whole passel of rug rats that make life worth living and publishing times slower than she’d like.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have always wanted to be a writer. But I wanted to be a marine biologist, an astronaut, a infectious diseases doctor at the CDC, and much more. As time went on and the looming college degree made me realize how unsuited I was for much of those things, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I always wrote, but the words were hollow, the story lines tepid, the characters flat. I hadn’t lived long enough or understand humans or myself well enough to be able to write fiction in a convincing way. Nor did I have the discipline to stay in college for longer than the requisite four years.
It wasn’t until after I was married, and went through the crucible of parenthood, that I came into my own as a writer and realized myself. And when Amazon’s self-publishing platform came along, and publishing became an attainable dream, that’s when I began to write seriously. I actually enjoyed what I wrote. I still do. After a few years, I forget what I’ve written and I’ll pick it up again and love it so much, I think to myself, “if I hadn’t written this, I would totally buy it!”
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have a lot of favorite authors and a bad memory for names. They run the range from sweet romance to military science fiction. I’m a fan of pop fiction, although I started with the classics and still have a great love for them. My current favorite authors are Amy Patrick, Lindsay Buroker, Judy Corry, and Ryk Brown, just to name a few (but there are sooo many more than that.)
I love science fiction and fantasy of all types and clean romance of almost all types (small town romance is generally the exception.) I especially like books that tickle my sense of humor and identify the secret emotions that none of us ever admit to, or perhaps even understand ourselves. That sort of writing has me in awe. if you ever wonder what author envy is like, that’s it.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The Ogress’ Son is a new release that came out in early January of 2018. It’s about a world gone wrong, about a new dark age that is also a technocracy. Slade, the hero, is a young man who grows up in the cloistered environment of the Iron Wood, occasionally visiting the local village to trade. When his life is turned upside down by the murder of his mother, the Ogress, he decides to leave the protection of the Iron Wood and hazard human society. This vengeance quest spawns a whole host of other challenges that he must overcome. Like I did, he has to grow into himself and he begins to realize that there’s lot of gray in life. It’s not all black and white.
My writing doesn’t tend to linger. There’s a lot of action, along with introspection and snarky humor. Swords, bows and arrows, and steam based weaponry were a big part of this book – which was probably the most enjoyable part of writing it. I also incorporated some fairy tales in there because I think that’s one way we explain the unexplainable – by building a legend around it.
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