interview: Author Rocsanne Shield

Hi guys! Today I'm very delighted to welcome Author Rocsanne Shield for an interview. She is the author of Save Magic City, a children fantasy novel. I love her book and my review will be up in a few days. The interview today is a part of Rocsanne Shield Virtual Book Tour sponsored by The YP Publishing.

D: Welcome Rocsanne to Darlyn & Books! It's a pleasure to have you here.

RS: Thank you, the pleasure is mine. I'm ready to answer your questions.

D: How did you get started as a writer and why did you choose fantasy as your debut genre?

RS: I think I started writing from the second grade, when I produced a puppet show based on my own script. One of the dolls had initially had beautiful hair, but I felt the need to improve it until I left her without much to brag about. I started calling her "Forest Hag" and this was my first fantasy character.

D: What were some of your literary influences when you were a child, and what are some contemporary ones?

RS: I am of Romanian origin and at the time I loved fairy tales, just like most children everywhere. But we had very specific local fairy tales, collected by Romanian writers during their walks among farmers...Then, of course, Brothers Grimm, and then, Russian folk stories. If you want to know why Russian, the answer is simple -- I lived in a country under Russian control.

Contemporary influences are more difficult to pinpoint as I started writing Medieval Romance and changed direction in midstride. A book that I love to read again and again is "Faerie Wars" by Herbie Brennan.

D: What are your favourite fantasy books, would you mind to share your top five?

RS: I enjoyed the Nancy Drew series, the Faerie Wars that I mentioned before, but before gearing my writing to children, I loved romance. Avery sweet story I fins "A Knight in Shinning Armor" by Jude Devereaux, and "Vision in White" by Nora Roberts. And, of course, Agatha Christie.

D: Did you always know that you will be a writer? If you could not be a writer, what would you be?

RS: I knew I could write, but my parents discouraged me from the career of writer. It was not a good way to earn one's living. I choose to be a geologist because I like being outdoors, and when prospecting, one is mostly alone with one's thoughts. Today I am retired so the "making a living" went on second place.

D: What are some must you have to write? Anything in particular that gets the creative juices flowing?

When I said I did not become a writer until I retired does not mean I did not write all those years. Being an immigrant, many of my friends are immigrants too, and their stories made me want to immortalize them on paper. I have quite a collection of short stories about people I met during my lifetime.

D: Why would you think the readers will love your book? You know I love our book =)

RS: I hope the readers will find points of commonality, even if I used magic to solve most important problems. Who does not know a school fellow whose parents are separated? Or who does not know at least one whose parents lost their jobs and have to make do, maybe even lost their house. The times we are living-in could have looked fantastic when I was writing the book, but history confirmed my fantasy in the worst way. My example is Detroit. I finished the book for February 2009 when I entered it in a competition organized by Amazon. A year later I heard on the TV something that shocked me.

I wrote about this no-name American city that gets renamed to "Magic City" -- a place where there were so many jobless people, that they left town without even trying to sell their homes, for who would have money to take them over? And here they say over the TV that 23, 000 houses are taken over by Detroit City-hall to help them attract new businesses! And I thought I was exaggerating!

D: Do you plan to write other kind of genre in future or just stick to this genre?

RS: Hard to say. A good book asks for a sequel, or more. Edmund the sorcerer is in demand for his do-only-good-magic. I plan to continue the children's saga, sometimes with, sometimes without Edmund or Leona. And I have couple of novels still in the Medieval Romance genre, as well as a lot of short memoir stories that I would like to finish as a whole book, to leave my son and nephews.

D: What other hobbies or activities do you enjoy besides writing?

RS: That's an easy question. I like using my hands. I crochet though it is out of fashion, and I make silk flowers, so beautiful, I do not want to part with; I love puttering in my garden, taking pictures with my Canon camera, reading books with happy enough endings, dancing and eating. Ooops -- eating is an addiction not a hobby.

D: Can you tell us something about yourself that not a lot of people know?

RS: Well, only those who have worked with me know that I don't know how to keep a work place organized. Once a colleague wrote on the door to my office "Keep out! Disaster area!", but then, I was working with two sets of blueprints, comparing them for change work-orders, and I had them strewn all over the floor to better study them.

Thank you, Darlyn.

About the Author

Rocsanne was born in Romania many years ago, when communism was still the way of life in her country. She desired to escape the communism and find more about a freer way of life in the West. For this, she left Romania as a tourist, and never looked back. Her education includes Geological Engineering and Construction Estimating, thus being able to find work wherever she went. During all these years she wrote short stories, mostly about the people she met, finding them extremely interesting. But always she was sure she will write a novel someday. After she retired, she finally found the time to transform her dream into reality, and four novels in the Historical Romance genre were written, one connected to the next through their common heroes and heroines. And here she found herself in a quandary -- where to send the banished sorcerer -- the solution to her fourth novel, in which Edmund, the bad sorcerer is banished by his enemies, and disappears in thin air. She can say that inspiration comes from the most extraordinary places. In this case it was the TV, watching an animated movie for children. Forgotten was the romance; children, together with their parents became the new heroes. "Save Magic City" was born.

Visit her at: Website | Email

Thanks Rocsanne for your time to stop by!