About Effrosyni Moschoudi:
Effrosyni Moschoudi was born and raised in Athens, Greece. As a child, she often sat alone in her granny’s garden scribbling rhymes about flowers, butterflies and ants. She’s passionate about books and movies and simply couldn’t live without them. She lives in a quaint seaside town near Athens with her husband Andy and a naughty cat called Felix. Her debut novel, The Necklace of Goddess Athena, is a #1 Amazon bestseller in Greek & Roman literature. The first part of her romance trilogy, The Lady of the Pier – The Ebb, is an ABNA Quarter-Finalist.
What inspires you to write?
My personal experiences and feelings most of all, mainly from my younger years. I have a huge affinity for the sea and animals too, and this is why they keep turning up in my novels.
Tell us about your writing process.
I used to be a pantser all the way but I pushed myself to change, because I found out the hard way that being a pantser invites writer’s block into your daily routine. Add procrastination into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster for your creativity. So, what I did, is start to write a summary per chapter – not for the whole book necessarily, but always having a few chapters ahead to work with. Then, when I sat down to write, I’d look at the summary and knew what I had to write that day. Also, I have this thing that when I go to bed at night or go round the house doing chores, I think of the next chapter to write. Thanks to the chapter summary, I know what the next step is, so ideas about how to write that flood in. I have found this method has helped me immensely. I haven’t experienced writer’s block ever since.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I simply listen to my characters rather than talk to them but there’s been one exception: the villain, Charles, in my trilogy, The Lady of the Pier. When I came close to writing a pivotal point in the story where he got to do something really nasty, he got really persistent in my head. I couldn’t sleep at night as ideas flooded in about how this act would unfold, what his words would be etc. One morning I woke up and he got insistent as soon as I opened my eyes, didn’t let me stay in bed a second longer, commanding me to get up and start writing at once. I wound up getting out of bed in a huff shouting at him as if he were a real person, there in the room. It was very weird!
What advice would you give other writers?
Don’t condition your mind and fall into the trap of seeing fellow authors as competition. You are unique and so is your book. There are enough readers out there for all of us. We can all do well, so if someone is successful, instead of feeling jealous or bitter, get inspired! Study them and make an example out of them. You have just as many chances to succeed as everyone else, as long as you’re willing to persist and to network, paying it forward and being of service to others.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
Personally I see self-publishing as more beneficial to being traditionally published. I like to be my own boss and to call the shots. After all, these days, unless you have a publishing deal with one of the big guns, every other publisher will expect you to do your own marketing, so why not do it all yourself and make all the decisions too? I got really excited when I found out I could self-publish with Amazon and I have both my published books on KDP Select. I hear sales in other sellers are very low compared to Amazon sales so I see no reason to explore those and lose the extra benefits KDP Select offers me.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think traditional publishing, the way we understand it today, will gradually fade away, or at least small publishers operating in the traditional sense will. With self-publishing going as strong as it does these days, only hybrid publishers with innovative practices, such as Booktrope, can survive as competition.
What do you use?: Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Fantasy, romance, literary, paranormal, historical
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Effrosyni Moschoudi Home Page Link
Link To Effrosyni Moschoudi Page On Amazon
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