About Venancio Cadle Gomani Jr.:
I’m a 21 year old Speculative Fiction and Historical Fiction writer who loves to try tones of new things. I was born in a little city called Kitwe here in Zambia though I was mostly raised in different cities in Botswana. When I was around 5 years old my dad moved the rest of the family to Francistown in Botswana because he had just gotten a new job there. So from around the time I was 5 years old till the age of 14 years old we mostly lived there in Botswana moving from one city to another before finally moving back to Lusaka city here in Zambia where I currently live.
I’d love to travel a little more in the early months of 2016 and I’d really love to visit the city of Nanchang, China for a few weeks.
I really love being experimental and explorative with my stories and I personally believe my childhood travels are what influenced my writing style.
I’m currently studying for my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering at DMI-St. Eugene University.
What inspires you to write?
Some music and a little poetry. I love to listen to the words of a few poets and how they chose their words and play around with them artistically and poetically gets enough of my creative juices flowing. I love listening to the gospel music group Beautiful Eulogy, a little Propaganda every now and then and I’m no stranger to Watsky too.
Another thing is writing is sometimes an escape I use to play a part too in the stories I create. I love creating worlds that I can write stories inside of and whenever I create a new world I always have this insatiable wish to be a part of the stories I create; to be the protagonist or a supporting character just so I can get to explore a little more of the world.
So I’m also usually inspired by the quality and complexity and detail I place in each story I create because the more exciting and awesome the story is the more I want to play a part of it and experience events and situations with the characters.
Tell us about your writing process.
I’m a total outliner.
I usually follow this basic writing process:
Firstly I find my idea and what story it is that I want to tell and why. The more reasons the better really.
Secondly I build a little more on my idea and create or recreate a whole world around it. This is usually the part where I take the longest because this is where I create my world at the end of which. It took me around 4 years to fully complete and be satisfied with just this part of the Crest of Dreams world.
Thirdly I plan out and structure my story as best and exciting as I possibly can. This is the part where I usually divide the story thus determining just how long (how many books) the story will be. Then I divide each book into individual chapters and plan out what each must talk about and set an approximate number of pages and information each one will have.
Next is the writing which usually takes a little longer than I usually plan out for it to. I always write based off the guidelines I set up way before I even think of writing and these guidelines are ones I tend to set up when structuring out my story at the smallest level. Guidelines aren’t meant to be an inhibiting factor to how I write my story and what I write about, they mostly only exist to help direct the story and ensure I don’t veer off from the main point and start talking about a completely different topic in the midst of another.
Next is the revising where I add a few things I think would be relevant to the story and or remove things I feel are irrelevant.
Finally is the editing where I read through the book through the perspective of the reader and fine tune it just a little more to ensure it’s as exciting to read as it was to write.
Shameful to say I’ve never really taken any creative writing courses, whether in writing, arts or music even though I dabble a little in each of those avenues of entertainment. However that has never stopped me from pursuing large and ambitious projects. I do plan on taking a creative course soon.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Emphatically, YES! I recall an experience while writing my book, Quantos Rising, and my little sister, Chikie, was sitting next to me after having helped me restructure some thoughts and she was sitting in the chair right next to mine and while I was writing I frequently jumped out from chair yelling in awe at the choices the characters would make.
What advice would you give other writers?
When you have a good story, take as much of your time as is needed to make it as perfect as you can. There are too many good concepts I’ve observed that seem a little too premature. It’s rare that I would simply create a concept, pen it down into building a story out of it, and turning it into a novel project over a course of a few months. I usually spend years working, developing, and building stories before penning them down and writing the novel out of them. Not necessarily because I need it to be perfect, but simply because I just feel comfortable knowing my story inside and out to the point I know the flaws and perfections.
I spent 4 years working on the whole Crest of Dreams world before finally starting to write the first introductory novel, “Quantos Rising”. I had completed planning the whole world around July of 2014 and spent the rest of the year planning out the first few novels.
I believe it takes time to create a good story and the longer you take thinking, recreating and restructuring it, I feel the better the quality of the story.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I’ve never really published under a publishing house even though I’ve been pursuing the ideal for so many years. It wasn’t until just recently when I discovered self-publishing and thought I could either spend another five years looking for publishers and continue to stack up the number of stories I wish to tell until I eventually score one or I could simply self-publish and have my stories out there for people to read.
My advice to new authors to explore both self-publishing and publishing with a publisher. Each have some advantage over the other and you don’t usually lose out on so much by trying.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Personally it’s just a little hard to see traditional publishers going away any time soon. Readers will always expect publishers to produce top quality books and that’s just one of many reasons why. However self-publishing isn’t phasing out either. In fact it seems to stand as equal a chance at success, if not greater now, as traditional publishing.
What do you use?: Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Fiction – Young Adult, Dystopia, and Historical Fiction
What formats are your books in?: eBook
Website(s)
Venancio Cadle Gomani Jr. Home Page Link
Link To Venancio Cadle Gomani Jr. Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit, to allow you, the reader, to hear the author in their own voice.
