Annamaria Bazzi

ANNAMARIA BAZZI

Today, we have a new guest. Annamaria Bazzi, another Indie Author has come forth and I want to take the time out shine some light on her. 

She is an author that have read, and will continue to read. She knows how to grip you from the first line, and I am honored to do this interview.

Annamaria Bazzi, although born in the United States, she spent a great deal of her childhood in Sicily, Italy, in a town called Sciacca. Italian was the language spoken at home. Therefore, she had no problems when she found herself growing up in a strange country.

Upon returning to the states, she promised herself she would speak without an accent.
She attended Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Computers with a minor in Spanish.

Annamaria spent twenty years programming systems for large corporations, creating innovative solution, and addressing customer problems. During those years, she raised four daughters and one husband. Annamaria lives in Richmond Virginia with her small family where she now dedicates a good part of her day writing.

 
A SIMPLE MATTER OF JUSTICE

The trunk opens and she comes face to face with her abductor, rapist and killer.
Samantha receives a change to bring the killer to justice. In accepting the challenge from a talking wolf, she never imagined she would become a spirit hawk by night. In the turmoil of her new existence, will she find the courage to bring the killer to the forest where the strange and powerful will pass judgment on the man?
 
The spirit wolf goes with Samantha to help and support in her difficult endeavor. It’s a shock to discover the murderer goes into hiding when he sees her walk by his newspaper stand to go to the office the day after he left her dead in the middle of nowhere.
 
Scared and afraid, she persists with Steve, the spirit wolf, who lends support and help. Is Samantha ready to discover the secret that protects the forest and can pass judgment and punish criminals? Will she find the strength to watch the judges punish the brutal criminal she is able to bring back to the forest? Will she be able to pick up the pieces and go on living?  

SUMMARY

Brutally murdered, Samantha discovers her life doesn’t end with her death. While in spirit form, she speaks with a wolf, which offers her a chance to bring her killer to trial…but there are strings attached. Even so, she accepts his proposal, and together they hunt the city. However, when the man responsible can’t be located, she worries the wolf’s proposal might be more than a simple matter of justice.

Okay, guys, you've gotten a taste of her short story, and you've had the chance to read her summary. Now, it's the time to allow Annamaria Bazzi to take the floor, and tell us a little about herself. 

Hello KaNeshia, and thank you for having me on your blog. I must say that it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you so far, and I hope we’ll continue to get to know each other better as people and authors.

It's been a pleasure to meet you Annamaria, as well. Of course, I have a few questions. You know I enjoy your story, and cannot wait to see more.

  

What inspired you most, as a family woman, to sit down and crank out a story?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and started writing while still in Italy at the age of eight. I used to write little stories and hide them in my drawer so no one would see them. In high school and college, I took many creative writing courses, but then life took over and I had to stop to raise four daughters and one husband. When my little one was two, I was able to stay home and continue to raise them. Eventually, I eased back into writing, attended writing conferences, joined writers groups, took classes, joined critiquecircle.com, and wrote with the serious intention of publishing. 

What are some of your fears now that you've gotten out there in the Indie Author World?

I don’t really have fears as much as I have concerns. Being an Indie Author means the entire burden of marketing belongs to the author. As such, I’ve been trying to learn all I can to be able to market my books efficiently. I must admit that I found great help in Melissa Foster and her tutorials Fostering Success. The Indie Author community has shown itself to be kind and helpful, especially to new comers who need to learn the ropes. I must admit that the world of Indie Authors is overwhelming.

A Simple Matter of Justice felt like a fantasy with the spirit animals and creatures, but also had the pace of an action/suspense. Do you tend on mixing these genres, and if so, what was the inspiration to do this?

One of my college daughters enjoys watching things like Fatal Encounters, Women Killers…and other such criminal shows. 

Many times, I’ll sit and watch with her while working on my laptop. As I’ve sat through some of these stories, my imagination was fueled and ran ramped. Since I love magic and all things that come from magic, I thought that a twist to the story would be great. Going to prison for your crimes is great in real life, but I needed more for my story. I needed the kind of justice you can make up only in books.
 

Did I consciously mix genres? No, my imagination and thought process doesn’t work that way. Most of the time, scenes play in my head and I record them. Sometimes my imagination startles me with particular images, and after playing with them, they form into concrete ideas I can put down on paper or type into my word processor.

You had a strong voice for this tale. Yes, it's a short story but Samantha jumped out to me in page one. I rooted for her and hated to see her demise so quickly, but you were swift with building her back up so the reader could grasp onto her and watch her seek justice. As an author, writing for a woman character and putting her through such violence, is this a hard road to take in your writing? 

I cringed while writing the attack scene. It wasn’t pretty in my head, but violence against women is something that happens every day and we are constantly faced with it especially through the media. 

The world is filled with terrible crimes. Law enforcement solves many of these crime cases, bringing them into our court system for trial and hopefully punishment, but many remain unsolved. I guess this was my need to bring all those cases to justice.

You're working on a novel right now. True, A Simple Matter of Justice is just a taste of your work, but should we expect more of the same: spirit animals and murder? Or do you plan on switching it up a bit and experiencing other characters that may stay in solid form?

So far, every story I’ve written is different. I have a Young Adult series coming out next month, which is strictly fantasy with a different kind of twist to the story.
 

To answer your question in a direct way, I do switch things around. I also enjoy writing war scenes, so I have a few novels that have wars in them, and I also love to mix fantasy with sci-fi. The mixing doesn’t happen consciously, it happens only because of the things I love and enjoy. When stories form in my head, they have no boundaries. In other words, I don’t have a specific genre I write in because I write whatever happens to inspire me at the time.

What should readers expect from you in future, in terms of you works as they start to come out?

Next, I’ll be publishing a Young Adult fantasy I think many adults will also enjoy. I’m working on an adult urban fantasy and another paranormal short story. Almost completed is also a novella dealing with the after mat of a terrible catastrophe that destroys a good part of the world. The story doesn’t concentrate on the catastrophe itself, but on what happens to people afterwards.

As an author, I know that writing such varied books will make it hard to gather a loyal following, but the craft of writing, especially for me, is to tell the stories my imagination conjures. I have to be true to myself, only then can I write a good story, and hopefully readers will like them and enjoy them.

How do you juggle everyday life and still get a chance to make a great story, with a strong plot?

As a writer, I get to work from home. Being home, I can put a load of laundry in the wash and go back to writing. I have days where I do three to four loads. When the clothes come out of the drier, I take the time to fold and put away, then go back to writing until the next load is dry. Around three in the afternoon, I stop writing for several hours as I make dinner and pay attention to my youngest daughter, I usually pick her up after school when sports are over.
 

Many times after dinner, I sit with the family, who are watching TV, and continue to work or I read a novel for pleasure.

There was a hint of romance in your short story. Will you expand the romance factor more in your novel? And, if so, what do you like to see when you're reading romance?

In most of my novels I have a hint of romance, but only in very few do I expand on the romance. I don’t consider myself a romance writer, but many times a touch of romance is needed for character development purposes or to steer characters in a certain direction. As in A Simple Matter of Justice, I like to let the reader decide where the romance will take the characters.
 

The romance novels I enjoy reading are old romance from Jane Austin, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, George Elliot and a few others. I don’t really like erotica, I guess I actually like a good old fashioned courtship. It’s probably because movies and television are always so explicit, it gets tiring. 

Okay, that's all the time she had for us today. Thank you so much Annamaria, and I will be looking out for your next project!