Lily Zante
Author Lily Zante is back with her new An Unexpected Gift, a novella about two people who meet in horrific circumstances
and learn to deal with the attraction between them. I loved her previous
novella Love Inc and currently I'm indulging in The Proposal, her second novella. This interview gave
me an opportunity to understand Lily Zante as an author, she’s very passionate
about writing and her love of books and writing is clear from the onset. I look
forward to reading more of her novellas. An Unexpected Gift will be available
on Kindle very soon. Enjoy and thanks to Lily Zane for the wonderful insight
into her world.
1. What inspires you to write?
I've always loved writing and it started back in my childhood. I would end up
writing pages and pages for stories that my teachers would set us! I suppose I
enjoy creating different worlds and characters and then seeing what my characters get up to. It comes from my love of
reading....not so much now (as I don't have as much time) but
when I was younger I could easily lose myself in a book. I could escape just by reading and it was bliss. I started writing again when I graduated which was about twenty years ago. I even took correspondence classes in writing and I would submit my short stories to competitions. I even submitted them to publishers, going down the traditional publishing route. I was never published...except for one article in a woman's magazine, QWF I think it was called (Quality Women's Fiction). I got lots of rejection letters with some nice constructive criticisms. Then I forgot about it and got a job instead. I only recently got back into writing about a
year ago. Amazon has made it easier for indie publishers to start writing. This
time around, we don't have to get past the gatekeepers but we can submit our work to the world and let the people who really count-
the readers tell us how we're doing.
2. What should we expect from your
new book? Are there many
similarities between Love Inc and An Unexpected Gift?
My new book, An Unexpected Gift is about two people who meet in the most horrific of circumstances and learn to deal with that as well as their attraction to one another. Love Inc was about two people who at
first seem so completely different but as they work together,
they come to realise that they are not so different after all. I suppose you could say that at the moment I am experimenting with writing romance stories. So my three latest books (An Unexpected Gift should be out in a few days) are based around two main characters who are attracted to one another and then, after a series of problems, they fall in love.
When I was at school, I read "The Diary of Anne Frank" and I
found it poignant and horrific at the same
time. I felt as though I was getting a rare glimpse into a slice
of this young girl's life with her family under what must have been
the worst situation imaginable. A diary is such a personal thing and
I felt as though I was intruding into that privacy,
yet unable to stop reading. And knowing that it is a true story, with such an unhappy ending, made it all the more sad for me. After that, I started writing a diary myself and kept it going
for about twenty years. I used to write
in it every single day. Writing my thoughts down on paper at the end of each
day helped me get through some high and low points
of my life...including my teen years which I'm sure can be quite
angst ridden for most of us!
Books that I have loved and lost myself in would be "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier. I remember reading the scene where the second Mrs De Winter unknowingly wears the same ball gown that Rebecca wore to the ball before. I was desperate to go the toilet but couldn't tear myself away from the book until I had read past that chapter. More
recently, I read Tom McNeal's "To Be Sung Underwater" and I was in tears when I finished reading it. I went for weeks thinking about the main characters and I would re-read certain paragraphs in the book. I think I became a bit obsessed by this story. And that is the
power of books. They can evoke such strong feelings and consume
you.
I read "The Hunger Games' trilogy this summer and my eleven year old daughter and I were racing to get through all the books. I loved those books and found the writing to be so fast paced. Each time I'd get to the end of a chapter, there was such a hook that I had no choice but to read the next chapter. I think I read each book overnight because in the morning my daughter would read it and we were racing to get through them all.I love that my children have the
same love of reading too.
3. Many authors hate the term
“chicklit”, what are your thoughts on being a chicklit author?
To be honest, I haven't even thought of myself as a "chicklit" author. I have only written three romance stories. I have also written two YA zombie horror books and I had a great time writing those books too! However, I am enjoying writing romance and once
I have a few more books under my belt, I'm hoping to
start working on something that is a romance story but a little darker. So, I don't label myself as being a
"chicklit" author. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters
to me is to produce something that invokes a
response in the reader. Whether that is to make them
laugh, cry, chuckle a little, lose themselves for a little while or to say "I hate this!" The last one is not the response I want, but I'm still interested in hearing why they hated it. I always use feedback to improve. I know you can't please everyone, and I don't try to - I try to write the sorts of books that I would want to read. But I am constantly learning and trying to improve.
4. You regularly use twitter, do you
enjoy interactions between
.To be fair, I am fairly new to using Twitter and Facebook. I'm trying to reach out to other writers, to learn about the whole writing process as well as to find out what it is that readers are looking for in romance books. Of course, there's a whole array of different types
of romance books and then there is the erotica stuff too. The best
compliments I have received are where the readers tell me that they really enjoyed my book because the characters are so believable and they want to read more of my work! What more could an author ask for?
5. What are your opinions on Men
writing romantic chicklits?
They say that men like pictures whereas women like to read about and connect with emotions. I think that is true to a degree but again this might also be an over generalization.
Women like connections. And I try to write from that point of view. But, to
answer your question - it doesn't matter if a man wrote a romantic chicklit, what matters is that he writes a good book that women love.
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