Meet Candice Zee

We recently connected with Candice Zee and have shared our conversation below.

Candice, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
I think I’ve been innately creative my whole life. When I was a kid especially, I had a very vivid imagination, and I would create stories and make up TV shows, then act them out as if it was a script with my brother. We’d make up our own songs, comedy sketches, F*ke commercials and commercial jingles, puppet shows for our parents, and record it on audio tape, then later video tape. Sometimes we wouldn’t record it in any manner at all, just make it up out of the blue for fun. I wish I still had some of those tapes-I remember making whole cassette tapes back in the 80s with different themes, like songs I made up about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which I can still sing to this day!) and parodies of TV commercials lol. My childhood imagination is what led me to writing my book series The Munchkins, the whole concept is based on a story I created and acted out in my head when I was a kid. I think humans are at their most naturally creative during childhood, so when it comes to keeping creativity alive as an adult, I think the key is to tap into your “inner child.” so to speak-you’ve got to be willing to embrace spontaneity, play, and imagination. I’ve always been a kid at heart, so I find this very easy to do. I’m still making up parody songs at the spur of the moment lol.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am the author of the upper middle-grade/YA fantasy series The Munchkins. My debut novel The Munchkins won four literary awards, including winning the Gold Award in the Teen Category of the 2021-22 Reader Views Literary Awards. It has been so successful that it was picked up by a foreign publisher, Eksmo Publishing House, and will soon be available in two different languages: English and Russian. The book is a dark fantasy in the realm of supernatural suspense and magical realism. It’s about Capricorn Munch and her 12 siblings and their loving and protective adoptive father, Casey Munch. The Munch children mysteriously stop aging once they reach the age of 10 and develop extraordinary powers that let them do things like heal wounds and spontaneously create objects. Their father devises strict rules around using the powers responsibly, but then an evil neighbor, Big Boss, moves next door to them and upends their lives in more ways than they could possibly imagine. The book has strong themes of family bonds, sibling relationships, and good vs. evil, and is written for a young audience, but adults enjoy it equally as much.

The long-awaited sequel to The Munchkins will be coming out soon! Part 2, Capricorn’s Journal: My Family’s Fight for Survival, will likely be published in December or January, and I am very excited about it. While the first book was written for the upper middle-grade level, the second book is very much at the YA age level and recommended for ages 12 years and up. This book is more violent, darker, and intense than the first book, which is why it is being labeled for an older audience. In the second book, Capricorn Munch is telling her family’s story in her journal while she is imprisoned by Big Boss. Their father goes missing, and their lives rapidly spiral into a living nightmare, as they struggle to find money, food, and avenues of help, while they fear being separated. Then Big Boss begins to terrorize them daily and through it all, they uncover a deep sinister plot against them. The Munch children go through a lot of trauma and hardship together, and they will need to depend on each other more than they ever did before in order to survive, but will it be enough? A full book description is available on my website munchkinsbooks.com, and you can even sign up to get a free sneak preview chapter. The book is deeply emotional and thrilling and suspenseful at the same time. I think the readers who have been waiting for this sequel for a while will not be disappointed.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
That’s a hard question. I guess first I would say dedication and the willingness to achieve your goals even when you have to find alternative means to do it. I knew pretty much right away that the traditional publishing route wasn’t going to work for me. The process was too slow, and I didn’t want to have to wait years and years to get lucky enough for my book to get picked out of the lottery of millions of manuscript submissions. Furthermore, I wanted to have creative control of my story. So I researched and read everything I could about how to publish a book of professional quality yourself, and saved money to afford the publishing costs to hire professionals to do the editing, formatting, and cover design. Once the book was published, I then had to do a lot of research and read every article about how to market and promote your book, and then find creative strategies to do it when the average routes didn’t work. So I guess for the second skill I would say being resourceful and using some DIY initiative, which is also related to dedication. I’m not quite sure how to develop this except to say be willing to think outside the box and read and research everything on the topic, but with a critical lens because you do have to watch out for scam artists who like to prey on new authors. Make sure you look into reviews and do background research on every source before you pay anyone for a service and remember that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. For the third quality I guess I would say creativity, which goes back to what I said before. To develop creativity, you have to embrace your inner-child-be spontaneous, be silly and wacky, and be willing to play and experiment.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
The challenge I’m currently facing right now is saving enough money to publish my second book by the end of the year. As it currently stands, I do not have enough to afford the publishing and marketing costs, which is why there has been a significant delay in releasing the sequel to The Munchkins. I know this is a common problem for many indie authors. I just got a new job though, so hopefully that will help with that.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Jeff Brown Graphics Joan Luke Silver Dagger Book Tours

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