Featured Interview With Stephen Andrew Salamon
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised on the Southside of Chicago and presently live on the Northside… of Chicago. I live with my soul mate and we have one perfect dog. My blood thrives with Chicago passion, and though I was asked to move to places like LA, or for some reason, a farm, my feet are so deep in the Chicago soil, that I don’t think I can ever leave.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My fascination with books began when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. I was in a Walden Books store with my Mom and I saw a thick novel called “Swan Song”. I opened it and saw all these words and just thought how amazing and impossible it was to create such a thick book with only words. Then I closed it and saw the book cover; it painted a picture for me. Then I opened it again. Closed and opened, closed and opened; it was mindboggling to think that all of these words came out of one person. To me, it was impossible. Then when I was around 12, we were given an assignment in school to write a short story. And I LOVED IT. It didn’t seem like homework to me, and my teacher gave me an A. I still have that book. But… even though I didn’t connect the dots that the Universe was trying to point me in the ‘writers’ direction, at about 13 I had my first seizure. After that, I had 20 seizures a day till it was controlled by medicine. It… opened up something in me. A floodgate. I turned 14, and I just started writing, writing and writing. I kept it a secret though. This, to me, was just a passion, a hobby, a way of pleasing my mind. 100 pages later I wrote my first short story at 14. I wrote another book after that, right away, till each story’s page numbers grew larger and larger to the point where a thousand pages seemed like nothing to me, because I loved it! I love the trance I enter into where my fingers are typing so fast that all I hear is silence and see the story only. It’s funny, because I was taught, subliminally of course, to never speak about my seizures. But through it all, even though they are horrible, paralyzed my life in so many ways, it was a gift. Even my doctor told me he didn’t want to raise my medication dosage anymore for fear that it would mess up my creativity. I still remember that day. A doctor asking me to choose between having some seizures, or writing, what he saw and thought was, great stories. I love him for that. And if he reads this, “Thank you for giving me that hard choice to make.”
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I enjoy reading spiritual non-fiction, new age, anything that has curious writers with the bravery to express their brilliant ideas on life. I really have no favorite author. It’s amusing, even though I enjoy reading, I fear sometimes that when I read a fiction story, it will somehow interfere with my writing style, get infused with it.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book was really my first book I wrote at 18; long story about it. I am bringing them out again, and getting the new ones and old ones ready for the read that they rightfully deserve. Being humble has its downfalls, one of which is feeling uncomfortable talking about myself or my stories, but my latest book is called “Sugar Valley (Hollywood’s Darkest Secret). It’s about that drive, passion, that invisible urge that we all have, especially at a young age, to do something that we were never taught to do. The main character, Damen Schultz and his friends, though hard working farmers, have an urge to become famous movie stars and attempt to become that by heading to Hollywood. It shows a story on their survival when hunted by the metaphorical wolves and how innocence can be altered, defined and even changed by temptation of getting things the easy way. Yes, deceit, rage, murder, suspense are all included in their journey. And only one can and will win the Oscar, the one thing that they coveted back home in their valley they grew up in. “What’s more important?” is the theme out of many themes attached to Sugar Valley. The strange thing about Sugar Valley is, in a way, I was going through the same thing trying to get this book published; leaving out the murders. Call it the Law of Attraction, but here it is, finally. On my own terms.
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