Nov
2015
C. Zampa’s Candy G – Roots
I have the pleasure of having C. Zampa stopping by today. If you haven’t read her book Candy G – Roots, you absolutely need to! She joins me for an interview where she tells us a bit about her writing process. Of course I also had to throw in a fun question at the end since that’s how I like to do things. Check out the great answers she gave, then read all about the book along with an excerpt that will make you want to find out what happens next. At the very bottom, enter for a chance to win an Amazon gift card.
Amanda C. Stone: Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing C. Zampa author of Candy G – Roots. Hi Candy, thank you for joining me today! Tell us something no one else knows about your characters.
C. Zampa: Almost every character I write is based either exactly or loosely on a real person I know. Usually their names or parts of their names; but, most importantly, their personalities.
ACS: Wow! That’s fascinating. Now I’m curious if you tell those people they’re in your books. Have you ever written something that made you cry?
CZ: Will I be a monster if I say no?
ACS: Nope. Not at all!
CZ: I have written things that made a tightness in my throat, but not that actually made me cry. I have had readers who cried at certain things I wrote. I have cried, however, many times when I have written the end to a story.
ACS: I think most authors have that reaction when they’re done writing a story. Have you ever co-written with someone before?
CZ: Not yet.
ACS: What is the most difficult part of writing for you?
CZ: The right words. Sometimes they come very naturally. Sometimes they just don’t. I don’t feel confident of them if they don’t flow easily, so the process meets a brick wall sometimes, waiting for those words.
ACS: Words are so important. Finding the right ones can be nerve wracking at times! Name your four most important food groups.
CZ: Coffee, salty stuff, chocolate and ice cream. In that order.
ACS: I have to say I’m quite a fan of those food groups. We should petition the FDA to change the food pyramid. Thank you so much for stopping by. I loved having you!
Blurb:
It’s said you can’t go home again….
The last thing Candelario “Candy” Gonzalez wants is to go back to his roots in the barrio. At sixteen, he grabs a one-way ticket to luxury and comfort as the lover and protégé of powerful drug lord, Teirso Flores.
Flores molds beautiful Candy for his own agenda—to become his exclusive attorney, and Candy’s prowess brings the term criminal defense to a new level.
But life in the very dark, very fast lane comes to a screeching halt when a child is killed by one of Flores’s thugs during a drive-by shooting. Candy walks away from his law practice and away from Flores, determined to live honestly.
Carlos Alvarez stirs both desire and confusion in Candy, because young Carlos symbolizes everything Candy left behind. Inching from his universe of opulence and power and into Carlos’s world, Candy realizes the only happiness he ever knew was in his past. Crossing the boundary isn’t easy though, and Candy’s newfound hope draws out the demons he thought he’d escaped.
Excerpt:
San Antonio, 2011
SHE PIERCED me with her stare. She willed me dead.
Who could blame her for wishing a bullet would find me, kill me, and send me straight to hell? I couldn’t. I was, after all, the attorney for the man who’d caused the death of her baby. In her eyes and in the eyes of her community, I might as well have killed the child myself.
Still, even though her hatred tried so damn hard to annihilate me through the dense forest of bodies in the courtroom, I wasn’t fazed. I had no conscience. I wasn’t paid to have one of those things—consciences, that is. I was only paid to defend the man who… caused the death of her baby.
Baby. Caused the death of.
Goddamn.
Why now, after all these years, had this alien intrusion—this fucking thing called conscience—begun to creep up?
Because deep in her brown eyes—the eyes of this mother whose child had been murdered—I saw something else besides her hate for me. I saw something I recognized and knew intimately. Something that ripped through me and knocked me to my knees.
I saw pain. And helplessness. And I knew, I knew so damn well, what an ungodly hell it was when pain, anger, and hate mingled to create helplessness.
I saw a proud, proud woman whose world had been gunned down. A proud woman who’d surely been the strength of her family, who would now—by my hands, by my legal prowess—be stripped of her pride and confidence.
I saw a woman who had done absolutely nothing to have deserved the hell my client had brought down on her. Nor had she done anything to deserve the even worse hell I was about to send her to.
Right then, as though some ungodly tight mainspring had broken inside me, my soul shattered.
I leaned close to whisper in my smug client’s ear, “I quit.”
And I walked away.
About C.:
C. Zampa’s earliest stories were not written words, but drawings. Adventures, romances—all drawn in comic book style, complete with dialogue bubbles. Countless hours were spent in her room with her Mead Academie sketch pad and pencils. While the stereo headphones piped the classics into her ears, she feverishly sketched the wonderful characters who lived in her head, creating little vignettes for them.
Even her early drawings reflected romance as she felt it—erotic, sensual, natural, uninhibited.
In her pseudo-hippie days of high school, she began to write. Her teachers encouraged her to take her writing seriously, but to her it was strictly for pleasure. Once entering the working world, she left writing behind; but, a few years ago, overwhelmed by a need to create, she opened a blank document and began to write again and has not stopped since.
Author Contact:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/authorczampa
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004QSDSG0
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carol.zampa.3
Where To Buy:
Dreamspinner Press: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=6804
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Candy-G-Roots-C-Zampa-ebook/dp/B014LMQHAO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1442884039&sr=1-1&keywords=candy+g+-+roots
ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-candygmdashroots-1870417-149.html
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/candy-groots-c-zampa/1122590753?ean=2940150803022
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/candy-g-roots
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/C_Zampa_Candy_G_Roots?id=xEB0CgAAQBAJ&hl=en
Tour Stops:
16-Oct: Bayou Book Junkie, Multitasking Mommas
23-Oct: Divine Magazine
30-Oct: Molly Lolly
6-Nov: MM Good Book Reviews, Havan Fellows
13-Nov: Love Bytes, Amanda C. Stone
20-Nov: BFD Book Blog
27-Nov: 3 Chicks After Dark
4-Dec: Foxylutely Book Reviews
11-Dec: Hearts on Fire
Giveaway:
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