To celebrate the release of the new charity anthology, Children of War (review), I am doing a series of author interviews and guest posts, featuring several of the authors who wrote a short story for this anthology. This multigenre anthology supports the children of Ukraine. All proceeds of this anthology will be donated in perpetuity to the Voices of Children Foundation in Ukraine or another similar charity. This foundation is “a Ukrainian charity providing counselling and other forms of psychological support to war-trauma victims. The charity was established in 2015 and has been working with volunteer psychologists to bring art therapy and mobile psychologists to the most vulnerable in Ukrainian society, victims now of yet another armed conflict.”
The second author I’ve interviewed is I. Vélez! Her story in Children of War is A Vampire’s Heart. This is a fantasy story about a vampire haunted by memories of the war. This short story is set in the world of the Last Days Series. Check out my review of the anthology for more info!
Author Interview
About the author
Hobbies: Reading, hearing music, drawing, and painting
What was your favourite book as a kid? A picture book of Disney’s Bambi.
What kind of a book would you love to write one day? I would love to write steamy sci-fi romance one day. It will surely be on Spanish since the vocabulary of sci-fi is a bit complex for me to write it in English, my second language. However, it would end up in English anyways because I like translating my works and putting them in free reading platforms for my fans.
What is your motto as a writer? Darkness is the new light. Let me explain it a bit because I’m sure you’d appreciate it. Since my writings are mostly paranormal romances, they’re usually dark in nature. I always wanted monsters to win and get the girl in the classic old movies, so my writing reflects that. I want people to understand that Dracula—for example—isn’t all evil and that he deserves to be loved as well. That philosophy is extended to all supernatural and fantastic creatures in my books. That’s the reason behind my motto. I want the audience to see everything isn’t black and white. Just like with humans, supernatural beings in my works have the same capacity of evil and goodness, no matter who or what they are. Just because my characters are angels, light elves, or unicorns doesn’t make them all good, they can have darkness as well. The same goes for demons, dark elves, or kelpies; they can have light among all their darkness.
About the anthology
Why did you decide to write a story for this anthology? The moment I saw the call for authors to submit stories for the anthology tugged my heartstrings because the chosen charity provided psychological help to children traumatized by this war. I had never contributed to charity before nor had I participated in a collaborative anthology, so I was diving into the unknown. However, I figured that a charity who help the mental health of children was the best way I could start this new journey in my indie author career. And after that decision, I began writing A Vampire’s Heart.
If there was one message linked to this that you could pass on to the world, what would it be? Mental health is very important to heal, or, at least, learn to live with war traumas. One simple word of love or support can help a victim in a huge way. If you know someone, a soldier or civilian, struggling to surpass whatever they lived because of war, lend them a hand and show your support in what you can.
Quick Round
Tropical island or Antarctica? Antarctica
Night or day? Night
Ice cream or pizza? Always, always pizza.
Coffee or chocolate? Coffee. I’m Latina after all, lol.
Culture or nature? Nature